Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old Politics

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ezra Klein Show - "Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old Politics"

Release Date: June 28, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Ezra Klein Show, Ezra Klein engages in a deep-dive conversation with Chris Hayes, MSNBC anchor and author of The Siren's Call, about the recent Democratic primary in New York City. The focus centers on the unexpected victory of Zoran Mamdani over the established figure, Andrew Cuomo, highlighting a pivotal shift in political campaign strategies and the evolving landscape of political attention.

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Campaign Strategies: Traditional vs. Viral Attention

Chris Hayes opens the discussion by contrasting the campaign strategies of Andrew Cuomo and Zoran Mamdani. Cuomo's approach was rooted in traditional methods, leveraging a substantial super PAC to flood the airwaves with negative advertising:

"Andrew Cuomo ran a campaign that was based on a tried and true strategy of buying attention. He had this gigantic super PAC with tens of millions of dollars purchasing all the advertising money can buy." (01:02)

In stark contrast, Mamdani adopted a modern, viral-centric strategy utilizing short vertical videos tailored for platforms like Instagram and TikTok:

"Zoran Mandani, a risk New York can't afford, paid for by Fix the City." (01:55)

This innovative approach allowed Mamdani to transition from obscurity to dominating online attention, effectively circumventing the traditional media channels that Cuomo depended upon.

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The Power of Social Media in Modern Campaigns

Chris Hayes emphasizes the significance of Mamdani's native use of social media, particularly focusing on vertical video formats:

"Zoran was not dominant as a figure in like text on X. No, it was videos, it was visuals." (07:19)

Mamdani's campaign harnessed the aesthetic and algorithmic advantages of modern social media, presenting a consistent and visually engaging image that resonated with younger and more digitally-connected voters. This strategy marks a departure from previous digital campaigns dominated by text-based interactions, as seen with figures like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

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Implications for Future Political Campaigns

The conversation delves into the broader implications of Mamdani's victory for future political campaigns. Hayes posits that traditional metrics of fundraising may give way to the ability to generate and maintain social media attention:

"If you're an Ohio Senate candidate or a Wisconsin Senate candidate than if you're a New York City mayoral. Absolutely. Candidate. But Wisconsin and Ohio and Missouri and all these places have their own things that people care about and their own cultures." (14:21)

This shift necessitates that political parties, particularly the Democratic and Republican Committees, reassess their candidate selection criteria, prioritizing attentional skills and social media proficiency alongside traditional fundraising prowess.

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Challenges in Policy Implementation and Governance

While Mamdani's campaign promises energized his base, Hayes raises concerns about the feasibility of delivering on complex policies such as rent freezes and free daycare:

"There's a question about whether or not he can deliver affordability if he's not able to increase supply." (37:07)

The discussion highlights the perennial tension between ambitious campaign promises and the pragmatic constraints of governance, questioning whether Mamdani's policies can withstand the structural challenges of implementation in a complex urban environment like New York City.

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Internal Democratic Party Dynamics: Israel and Gaza

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the internal conflicts within the Democratic Party, particularly concerning the Israel-Gaza conflict. Mamdani's handling of sensitive issues related to Israel drew both support and criticism:

"I believe Mamdani is anti Zionist and not anti Semitic. And he did a very, very, very good job in my view, in answers of making that clear." (80:36)

Hayes and Klein explore the delicate balance Mamdani must maintain to support Jewish New Yorkers while addressing broader concerns about Israeli policies, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism to navigate these contentious waters effectively.

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Narrating Policy and Maintaining Support

The conversation touches upon the struggle politicians face in aligning campaign narratives with governance realities. Hayes references Barack Obama's challenges in managing public expectations versus legislative achievements:

"Obama never sort of was able to narrativize that... to ease the disappointment a lot of people felt." (41:11)

Similarly, Mamdani faces the task of delivering on his campaign promises without alienating his supporters, stressing the need for transparent communication and continuous engagement with constituents.

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The Future of Political Communication

Hayes and Klein conclude by reflecting on the transformative impact of social media on political communication. They discuss the inherent challenges and opportunities presented by algorithm-driven platforms, which favor high-engagement content often characterized by simplicity and emotional resonance over nuanced discourse:

"Politics economically is going to be about... bringing costs down, not just bringing subsidies up and whether Mamdani's particular policies will work to do." (35:20)

This paradigm shift underscores the necessity for politicians to adapt to new communication modalities, balancing the demand for authentic, relatable content with the imperative of substantive policy discussions.

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Notable Quotes

• Chris Hayes on Mamdani's viral strategy:
  "It's the first time I've seen a Democratic candidate be totally native to the medium of our time, which is short vertical video in the algorithmic feed." (04:01)

• Zoran Mamdani emphasizing affordability:
  "If there was a candidate talking about freezing the rent, making buses free, making universal childcare a reality, are those Things that you'd support?" (05:42)

• Chris Hayes on the limitations of traditional media buys:
  "You cannot buy attention now the way you once could. You can only earn it." (12:42)

• Zoran Mamdani addressing criticism:
  "I disagree with you on one issue. I'm pretty sure you know which one it is. And I agree with you on the others. And I'm gonna be ranking you on your." (73:27)

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Conclusion

This episode of The Ezra Klein Show illuminates the evolving strategies in political campaigning, underscored by the shift from traditional media dominance to the potent influence of social media-driven viral content. Through the lens of Zoran Mamdani's groundbreaking primary victory, Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes explore the complexities and future trajectories of political communication, policy implementation, and internal party dynamics. The conversation serves as a pivotal analysis for understanding the intersection of media, politics, and governance in the contemporary landscape.

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Transcript

[Ezra Klein]

This podcast is supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The most significant environmental battle in generations is unfolding right now. The Trump administration is attacking the environment at a blistering pace. Oceans, forests, wildlife, wild lands and the climate hang in the balance. NRDC has already filed its first slate of lawsuits and will leverage the full power of the law and the courts to defend the environment and human health. Donate to support this urgent [e-mail] Ezra.

[Unknown]

SA.

[Chris Hayes]

The Democratic primary that just wrapped up in New York was a collision between two very different candidates on almost every level. Ideologically outsider versus insider name recognition. But it was also a collision in a way that I think matters for much beyond New York City politics of two very different theories of attention. Andrew Cuomo ran a campaign that was based on a tried and true strategy of buying attention. He had this gigantic super PAC with tens of millions of dollars purchasing all the advertising money can buy. Absolutely dominating airwaves with negative ads about Zoran Mamdani. In his own words, Zoran Mamdani wants.

[Unknown]

To defund the police. Zoran Mamdani is a 33 year old, dangerously inexperienced legislator who's passed just three bills.

[Chris Hayes]

Zoran Mandani, a risk New York can't afford, paid for by Fix the City. And then you had Mamdani, who was running a campaign on a very different theory of attention, a theory of viral attention. A campaign built on these vertical videos that if you opened Instagram, if you opened TikTok, and you were in any way connected to his ideas or to New York City, this was all you saw.

[Unknown]

So what's your take?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I should be the mayor. New York is suffering from a crisis and. And it's called halal afflation. Did you know that Andrew Cuomo gutted the pensions of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers? Mr. Cuomo. And furthermore, the name is Mamdani. M A M D A N I. You should learn how to say it.

[Chris Hayes]

Attention works differently. Now this is one of the core political theses of this entire podcast. It is laced through so many of these episodes and you just watched these two incredibly different attentional strategies collide. And Cuomo got flattened. He got flattened. It was not close. There are things you cannot learn about how to win elections in other places. From a off year June Democratic primary in New York City using ranked choice voting. But there are things you can learn about how attention works right now. And that's in a large part the subject of this conversation. Now, I'm not a New Yorker, but I want somebody who is a New Yorker. His deep roots here and who really understands political tension. And so I asked my friend Chris Hayes, an MSNBC anchor and the author of a phenomenal book on attention and politics, the Siren's Call, to join me. As always, my email Ezra kleinshoneytimes.com Chris Hayes, welcome back to the show.

[Unknown]

It's great to be back.

[Chris Hayes]

So Zoramndani won the primary.

[Unknown]

He sure did.

[Chris Hayes]

You just wrote a book about political attention, and this was one of the most attentionally, sort of remarkable and innovative campaigns I've seen.

[Unknown]

Totally.

[Chris Hayes]

So I want to hear the sirens call analysis of the Zoran Mamdani campaign.

[Unknown]

So the first thing I would say about him is he genuinely came from nowhere. I live in New York City and spend between 16 and 20 hours a day reading about and thinking about politics. And like, I knew there was a Democratic socialist assemblyman named Zoram Mandani. I didn't even know he was running for mayor until he popped up in my Instagram feed or TikTok. Right. So at one level, like just to level set here, this is someone who had zero attention on him, who went from having zero attention to him to monopolizing attention in the race. And I think the way he did it was viral videos. It's the first time I've seen a Democratic candidate be totally native to the medium of our time, which is short vertical video in the algorithmic feed.

[Chris Hayes]

I want to play one of them here. This is one of the first times he came across my radar, which was this video he did right after the 2024 election.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday?

[Unknown]

I didn't vote.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And why did you not vote?

[Chris Hayes]

Because I don't believe in the system anymore.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday?

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And who did you vote for?

[Unknown]

Trump. Ah, the million dollar question.

[Chris Hayes]

Trump and I voted Donald Trump.

[Unknown]

Hillside Avenue in Queens and Fordham Road in the Bronx are two areas that saw the biggest shift towards Trump in last week's election. Even more residents didn't vote at all.

[Chris Hayes]

Most of these people are working families. They're working one to two, three jobs. And rent is expensive, foods are going up, utility bills are up.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And that's your hope to see a little bit more of an affordable life?

[Unknown]

Absolutely.

[Chris Hayes]

You know, Gaza, who should I vote? Either side will go ahead, send bombs from here to kill my brothers and sisters.

[Zoran Mamdani]

You know, we have a mayor's race coming up next year, and if there was a candidate talking about freezing the rent, making buses free, making universal childcare a reality, are those Things that you'd support?

[Chris Hayes]

Absolutely.

[Unknown]

He'd have my vote all day.

[Chris Hayes]

We need child care that is affordable. Buses should be free. The hike in the metrocards is like two totally unaffordable.

[Zoran Mamdani]

So my name is Zoran Mamdani. I'm gonna be running for mayor next year.

[Ezra Klein]

Wow.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Yes. Yes, sir. And I'm gonna be running on that platform. Thank you.

[Chris Hayes]

I'm gonna vote for you. Your energy is. Thank you. Thank you. What struck me about that video when I saw it was so many politicians do communication in terms of what they are telling you. And a lot of what was fascinating about Mamdani's campaign was, was he turned the act of listening into a form of broadcasting.

[Unknown]

That's exactly what I found so striking about it when I first saw the video. I didn't know he until you get the end where he's like, I'm running for mayor. I was like, oh. There's two things about it. One is the whole point is he's listening to people. And two, that is a very recognizable trope of this form of video. The guy on the street, like the infamous Hoktua girl is because there's a guy walking around Broadway in Nashville sticking microphones in people's faces. This is an established genre. So he's taking this established genre that has its own kind of like features and is familiar. And then he's doing this really innovative thing. I, as the politician, am not going to speak at you. I'm just going to put mics in people's faces and ask them questions. It's incredibly effective.

[Chris Hayes]

He is the first politician I have seen be native to the thing that is after what I think we think of as social media.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Right. So there are a lot of politicians. Donald Trump is one of them. Bernie Sanders is another who in a way they were very dominant on Twitter, on Facebook, on a kind of mostly text based, high engagement, social sharing era of media. And the thing that's come after it with TikTok on Instagram. You see it now more on X too, is much more algorithmic. Right. You can come out of nowhere much easier and very visual. Vertical video, not primarily text based. Zoran was not dominant as a figure in like text on X. No, it was videos, it was visuals. It was fucking. The graphic design in that campaign was beautiful.

[Unknown]

Yeah. There's a great New York magazine piece about this.

[Chris Hayes]

And always in a suit. Right. So highly recognizable outfit. I mean, he was very visual. Like there was an incredibly consistent visual grammar.

[Unknown]

Totally.

[Chris Hayes]

Right. There were very certain filters on most of his videos. And then when he would do, like, videos about more intense subjects like ice, they would take those filters off or make a starker one. Right. His.

[Unknown]

There's a really funny.

[Chris Hayes]

His father is like an amazing filmmaker.

[Unknown]

Exactly right.

[Chris Hayes]

His sense of film and visual grammar was very, very, very strong.

[Unknown]

The last time I think I saw something like it would be Howard Dean with meetup back in 2004, or Barack Obama with Facebook in 2008.

[Chris Hayes]

Or Trump on Twitter.

[Unknown]

Trump on Twitter.

[Chris Hayes]

Trump was truly native to what Twitter is.

[Unknown]

Yes, you're right. That's a great point. Yeah. I'm thinking Democratic candidates, but yes, Donald Trump and Twitter in 2015. And the way that. That his performance on Twitter became the way that people, A lot of people came to know him. Right. As a politician. One point I want to make here that I think it's important, I think we both agree on is with all these discussions, there's stuff that's new and there's stuff that's timeless. Right. The guy is very charismatic. He is very politically talented. That would be true if he was running in the 1950s. It'd be true you know, if he was doing whistle stop tours. Like, the guy can talk. He is a very talented communicator. So I don't want to overstate the degree to which the medium is determinative. You could make short form videos and they wouldn't work as well unless you. He's got Riz. Like, he just does. The thing that's so wild about it, though, is that there's a perfect pairing between that charisma, that way of communicating with the form that he used, and then the fact that the algorithmic social media means a thing can blow up.

[Chris Hayes]

And I don't think you can even talk about the Mamdani one without also, like, what his foil was. Andrew Cuomo and Zoran Mamdani were perfect foils for each other.

[Unknown]

Totally.

[Chris Hayes]

Like, you could not have scripted it better. And Cuomo had this gigantic super PAC behind him and there was this real sense, I mean, correctly so, from any sort of normal rules of politics, that how is Mamdani or anyone else going to climb uphill against the amount of attentional artillery that that super PAC could and would buy? And we know that they were just absolutely dominating the airwaves 24 7. Basically.

[Unknown]

I cannot overstate to people outside the New York view. Okay, but how insane the rep. The same ad. 25.

[Chris Hayes]

You know what I saw this ad was. I saw this ad one time. I mean, I saw it like 17 times in this one experience, right?

[Unknown]

Yes, yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Cause I was at a bar and they had a TV on exact same. One of the things that struck me the whole way through on the Andrew Cuomo campaign was how old its understanding of communication was. And the idea, at some point I would watch people talking about Cuomo as a juggernaut and intentionally, in my world, he didn't exist.

[Unknown]

And in fact, I think this.

[Chris Hayes]

And he was hiding from it, by the way too. But like he.

[Unknown]

Well, that's another thing we can get to is the sort of what Mandani was doing on social media through things he was creating. And then there was what he was doing in other media outlets, which was also the opposite of Cuomo.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes, very much so.

[Unknown]

But on the first point, to take a step back, I mean, people really have to understand that for probably, I'd say the last 40 years, there's this formula for how. And I think it's true for both parties, but I know Democratic politics better. You raise a lot of money and then you spend it on TV buys. That's what a campaign is. Raise a lot of money, spend it on TV buys.

[Chris Hayes]

And that is how they choose candidates.

[Unknown]

Is can you raise the money so that you can do the TV buys?

[Chris Hayes]

The SEC and the DCCC who recruit congressional candidates and Senate candidates, one of the main things that they are testing is can you raise the money?

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Chris Hayes]

And what are you doing to raise them with the money? You are buying attention, and what you're.

[Unknown]

Doing is buying attention through 30 second ads that are going to run on the local news in the three weeks before the election. Yes, that is 90% of the campaign. The last 10% is yes. You got to go to. You go to events and you shake hands. I mean, maybe it's 80%, I'm sort of overstating a little bit, but. But you saw Cuomo just run this play, which was limit media availabilities, only pick your spots. Be confident that this enormous carpet bombing is gonna happen late down the stretch. And it totally backfired and didn't work.

[Chris Hayes]

And I really wanna hold on this for a minute because you cannot buy attention now the way you once could. You can only earn it. Yeah, this goes back to the conversation we had right after the 2024 election, because, I mean, that was also a period for all that Donald Trump really did have a lot of money behind him in that election. Kamala Harris had more. Yeah, she raised a ton of money. They spent a ton of money. And they absolutely did not dominate attention. Yeah, you were almost Watching between Cuomo and Mamdani an almost pitch perfect version of the old attentional strategy versus a pitch perfect version of the most modern native attentional strategy collide. And I do think the underlying product here matters. Cuomo was just a bad product. He was a scandal ridden, high negatives, very widely disliked former governor who had had to resign in disgrace running against this sort of fresh faced figure. But it also was a real collision of these strategies in a way that I do think people should watch. Like if I'm the DSCC or the nccc, I would start thinking not about who do I think can raise money, but who can raise attention themselves by being out there on all these platforms and actually creating things that are native to the places they're running in. Which will be different if you're an Ohio Senate candidate or a Wisconsin Senate candidate than if you're a New York City mayoral. Absolutely. Candidate. But Wisconsin and Ohio and Missouri and all these places and Kansas, they have their own things that people care about and their own cultures.

[Unknown]

And they also, just to be clear, how else are people getting information now? I mean, look above a certain age and among certain demographics, people still sort of like consume the news as the news in whatever form that takes more and more voters, and particularly voters who are in that outer concentric circle of political or news interest that Democrats lost by 15 points in 2024, that Democrats have struggled to win, that you have to win if you're going to win Ohio, those folks, how else are they going to know about you? They're not. If they're not watching the evening news when you're buying your ad points and they're not watching network news and they're not watching linear cable, literally, how do they find out about you? They're going to find out about you from, from their phones. So. Well, how do you get to them? I mean, you really have to like think through this. Like, how will this person know that I'm running, what my face is, what I look like, what I stand for, how will. And if you don't have a theory for that, that's other than, well, we bought a bunch of points on tv. You're cooked. It's not gonna work.

[Chris Hayes]

We did this show a couple months ago about attention. It was after the election and that particular show got very wide distribution among Democratic politicians. I'm sure you heard this too. And then so some of them would come to talk to me later and they were trying to do video and they were. And I have just thought a lot since then about why their videos are so bad. Members of the Senate Democrats, and for that matter, the House Democrats, they have a lot of money in their campaign committees. They have a lot of money for communications. They could hire very, very good people. And it's actually not the case that you can't make an argument about the big beautiful bill or something go viral. Like, I know you can. Cause I do it. And you know you can, because you do it. And I just look at what all of their content looks like and I think, does nobody there have a sense of what they like to watch? Because definitely they don't like to watch this. But the absence of taste among people who are.

[Unknown]

Well, you've been to Washington.

[Chris Hayes]

Theories, political communicators.

[Unknown]

Well, but that's weird to me. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. Here's a structural answer to that question, which I don't hold me to, but here's a hypothesis. Democratic Party politics are really complicated politics of multi racial, multi ethnic, multilingual coalitions. I think often the things that success in Democratic politics selects for is skill at managing these coalitional tensions, which is a really difficult thing to do. Like, Hakeem Jeffries is very good at that. Nancy Pelosi is the best at it. No one, and I think including Nancy Pelosi would be like, I want to listen to a Nancy Pelosi podcast. Nancy Pelosi is not a great public communicator. She is a legendary, all time great manager of coalitional tension. I think the coalitional politics of Democratic politics select for people who are very skilled at managing these very different, difficult coalitional issues. That is a different skill than public communication to the normies.

[Chris Hayes]

Okay, but let me push on this a little bit. I think you're right about a Hakeem Jeffries here, a Chuck Schumer, right? Absolutely. But you think about a Cory Booker.

[Unknown]

Yeah, he's quite skilled.

[Chris Hayes]

You think about a Chris Murphy. Yeah, there are high level.

[Unknown]

Why can't they do.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, they are high level.

[Unknown]

Chris Murphy walks across Connecticut every year.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, he does that too. Cory Booker did the 25 hour filibuster, or not quite filibuster, but long speech. There is a dimension where I know they want to communicate. I know they want what they're saying to break through. They are willing to say things. I mean, Chris Murphy's been very out there on the level of alarm he is raising. They're good podcast guests. Right. If you were to rank Senate Democrats on how good they are on a podcast, Murphy and Booker would be high up there.

[Unknown]

Yeah, definitely.

[Chris Hayes]

But I guess the thing I am saying is that the amount of agita I have heard Democrats express about the lack of a liberal, Joe Rogan, whatever it might be, as opposed to understanding attention as not something other people gift to you.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

But something you earn yourself or you look for as a skill in other people, or you have some other kind of filmmaker coach you in. It's just the gap is so much wider than it seems like it needs to be at this point. And watching all these people just get flattened by someone like Mamdani really speaks to it.

[Unknown]

Yeah. I mean, part of the question here, though, Right. Is about being native to new forms. I have made a few TikTok videos and they're not that good.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes.

[Unknown]

And I'm. I think.

[Chris Hayes]

I don't mean. Yeah. I've not seen your technology. No.

[Unknown]

But I think I'm a pretty skilled public communicator. Like, this is what I do for a living. It's what I've done for a long time. There are these, like, weird, you know, we talked about sort of grammar or like there are these sort of differences of different mediums, formats, visual grammars at different times that I also think here's actually a key thing. I think you have to be a consumer to be a producer. I agree with that. And I think this is a huge gap. I really think this is a real problem now. If I started to get serious about making TikTok videos where I, like, talk to camera, having watched a lot more, I would be better now. And if I practiced, I'd get better. But the sort of like, textural sense Mamdani has for the format, you can't just like, read some packet or just jump in from nowhere.

[Chris Hayes]

But that seems like a thing where you should be looking for certain kinds of talent.

[Unknown]

Yeah, that I agree with.

[Chris Hayes]

Right. There's a real. There's a reality that a lot of people who run for office are news anchors.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Mike Pence had been a talk radio host. Carrie Blake. Right. Had been a news anchor. Right. Like a lot of these people have experience in front of a camera. And I just think you're going to start. If both parties were smart, they would be looking for people who have attentional skill.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

So one thing we saw here is that, yes, Mamdani was trying to make a selection about affordability, about material concerns, but Cuomo won the precincts where the median income was under $50,000. What did you make of the somewhat strange structure of the coalitions?

[Unknown]

I don't really have A good theory on it yet. The one piece of election analysis that has stuck out the most to me is this triangle that breaks down precincts by their degree of racial integration. Have you seen this triangle? It's so fascinating. So basically, it breaks down precincts by how white they are, how black they are, or how other they are. This is by census. So these are not the racial categories that I would use to describe you. But basically what it finds is that the precincts that are basically all black and then the precincts that are all white were Cuomo precincts. And the more mixed a neighborhood was in its racial makeup, the better Mamdani did, which I find to be a fascinating result. Now, that might just be a proxy for.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, it might cross correlate something between.

[Unknown]

The income stuff you're talking about. I mean, I think I understand. My mom and I were talking about this because my mom was talking about the Bronx, and the Bronx was like a Cuomo borough, which is sort of ironic because if you go back to the whole opening bid of Mamdani, which is like, I'm here in the Bronx, in Fordham Road, in this place that swung. I'm talking to people. I'm gonna address your concerns. And then he ran up the numbers in the DSA precincts, but he couldn't have won unless he made it outside those perimeters. I think, Look, I think name recogn is part of it. I think the devil you know, or familiarity matters to voters, often on the kind of periphery of an electorate in a Democratic primary. But I don't have, like, a good theory of why it was the case. Like, if it was, there are other patchworks that I could sort of theorize better than those. What do you think?

[Chris Hayes]

I don't know either. I mean, I think you could come up with a couple of arguments. One is that maybe that's cross correlating something that's just informational. Those voters were less attached to the discourse, not telling the algorithm. They wanted to see a bunch of Sarah Mamdani videos. They sort of know who Andrew Cuomo is. And they're more mobilized by interest groups that used to be more powerful, but that were largely like the interest groups largely signed up with Cuomo, the unions, churches. Right. Cuomo did a lot of his campaigning among black churches. So you might be seeing something that has to do with almost machine politics and mobilization politics, which Cuomo was leaning on very heavily. There's also a crime and disorder question here. Right. So if you're a voter making like $35,000 a year you're living in NYCHA housing, you are much more exposed to crime and disorder than, you know, a voter in Williamsburg making $137,000.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Adams won running against crime and disorder, running up the totals among, you know, working class voters. So we know that. That politics is powerful. I have this sort of view that Mamdani could only have won in a time when crime had actually gone down quite a lot, as it has, because if there' a big crime and disorder election, I think that that would have been a big problem for him and he wasn't well trusted on those issues. Another is that this is a consistent thing we see in the data with left wing candidates. So I think you could just say this is something we've seen happening a lot. I mean, Donald Trump also won voters under $50,000. So that there are different things happening as you move up the income scale, where people are voting much more expressively.

[Unknown]

Even though Mamdani tried desperately hard to run the most materialist campaign possible.

[Chris Hayes]

But. But politics is very expressive. It's not like a bad thing about it. It's just a reality.

[Unknown]

And I voted against my material interests in this mayoral election, so everyone gets to do that.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, as did I.

[Ezra Klein]

This podcast is supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The Trump administration has launched the most aggressive assault on the environment in American history, pushing to expand oil drilling in the oceans, censoring climate science, clear cutting in national forests, stripping away wildlife protections. This is what is coming. These devastating actions will impact generations to come. NRDC stands fearlessly against these threats and has already filed its first slate of lawsuits. Help them fight back. [e-mail] Ezra.

[Chris Hayes]

So I think you can cut politicians into these two categories. They're the politicians for whom you can identify a policy that stands for them. Yeah, immediately build the wall for Donald Trump. That is a policy, but it is a metonym for Donald Trump. Medicare for all for Bernie Sanders. The Green New Deal for aoc. Mamdani had like four or five. Right. It was freezer rent, it was free buses, it was free daycare, it was publicly owned grocery stores. All these are actual policies. And they're worth talking about, but what they are is mimetic.

[Unknown]

Yeah, totally.

[Chris Hayes]

So Hillary Clinton running against Bernie Sanders, had 70 policies, you know, or some very large number, but none that actually defined her. Kamala Harris. I cannot give you the policy that stands for Kamala Harris. The same is true for Brad Lander and a bunch of the other people in this campaign, which is not to.

[Unknown]

Say they didn't have them. They had them.

[Chris Hayes]

Brad Lander had a depth of policy on his campaign website in this mayoral race that I only associate with presidential campaigns. It was so detailed. And a lot of them are great, right? Yes, Brad Lander was my choice in the campaign, but. But I said this when I wrote this piece about him, that there are politicians who communicate about policy, and there are politicians who use policy to communicate. And one problem with a lot of establishment politicians is they communicate about policy. And the people who thrive right now on the attentional networks use policy to communicate. And you can lament that what modern media is doing is flattening policy down to this sort of bumper sticker level of mimetic communication. And I kind of do lament it, but it's also true, like, abundance has been a big deal, but it's the word. And then it's like, there's all the stuff behind it. And that's a much more complicated set of conversations, but it cuts through. But if you don't have the memetic tip of the spear.

[Unknown]

Yes. I mean, there's a question here that I think is interesting in terms of replicability is like, how much that ability is structurally producible and how much is just like telling someone to dunk a basketball, you know what I mean? Like, certain people have talents for things, right? Like, there is a question here to me about how much it comes down to talent. Like, people have instincts and knacks for this. But you're absolutely correct about this. And I think to go back to that video, like, there is this kind of one plus one equals two thing happening there. He goes up to Fordham Road in the Bronx area. I know. Well, it's like, right by where my mom grew up. In fact, I was just having lunch around there for Father's Day, and he asked people, and they're like, groceries cost too much. And then at the end, it's like, we're going to try public grocery stores. Now, to be clear, the grocery business runs at margins of like 1 to 3%. So it's not private profit that's making the price of groceries more. I'm not convinced that the solution is going to solve the problem, particularly in this case, which I think is sort of the most dubious. But it's also, like, I don't know, worth trying. And it also is an attempt to address people's concerns.

[Chris Hayes]

I've had a lot of conversations with people about publicly owned grocery stores, and I basically understand this modest pilot of, like, five stores that you can find.

[Unknown]

One in each borough. Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

As getting caught trying on something.

[Unknown]

Yeah. Right.

[Chris Hayes]

I do think this gets to something very real. Are the only policies that can become mimetic in this way? These sort of huge, sweeping conflict at their heart, they make people not like them. At the same time, they make people like them. Build the wall. Medicare for all, you know, ongoing rent freeze. Can policy be mimetic? Can it be communicative and be good? I don't just mean be good because I'm not. Like, I think it would be great. Like, if you can pay for free daycare. Terrific. Right. I think we should have free daycare. So I don't want to just create a good, bad division here. Like, all good policy is complicated and, you know, that's not my belief. But there is a way in which to survive. Mimetic products have to be simple. Yeah, Memes are simple. The thing behind the meme might be complicated and good or bad or whatever, but for something to get energy, I think it has to be easily rememberable. I think it has to be big.

[Unknown]

Yep.

[Chris Hayes]

It has to activate something people care about. And it probably has to be controversial. Medicare for all dominated people forget this now. Every 2020 Democratic primary was like just a lot of Medicare for All debate. Anybody who knew anything about what kind of Congress that Democrat was gonna be facing, no matter who won the primary, knew we were not gonna get Medicare for All. Faz Shakira, Bernie Sanders, campaign manager, was on my show, like, earlier this year or maybe late last year.

[Unknown]

Right. Saying, like, we would have gotten as close as we could get, but we.

[Chris Hayes]

Said we would have expanded the age range of Medicare.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

And everybody knew it. But the reason that it could dominate so much was it unleashed controversial energy. There was a debate, would you abolish all private health insurance? Were you willing to raise taxes on middle class Americans to find it intentionally salient?

[Unknown]

Because conflict is intentionally salient.

[Chris Hayes]

Exactly. A lot of policy is built for compromise.

[Unknown]

Yeah, right.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, can I not Built for compromise.

[Unknown]

I think we have a good tangible example in recent history in exactly this context from the mayor that Zoran Mandani says was the best mayor of his life, that got the New York Times very mad at him, which was Bill de Blasio's universal pre K bill.

[Chris Hayes]

As a non New Yorker, Bill de Blasio sure seemed like a perfectly good mayor to me. My kids in 3K.

[Unknown]

I'm a DE Blasio. Let's talk about universal pre K for a second. De Blasio. Universal pre K. Universal pre K did have that Memetic energy. Simple and straightforward. Like, every kid in the city has to go to kindergarten.

[Chris Hayes]

Yep.

[Unknown]

We're going to make a pre. A new grade below it. And this is informed by real empirical work that's been done. And we're going to have a tax structure that funds it and makes it happen. It was controversial at the time. There were lots of people who said, this is a bad idea. You're going to put local daycares out of business. I mean, there was. There was conflictual energy around it. And then they delivered it. And I sent my kid, My first kid to. It was year two, maybe, that it was up and running. And I walked into this school that had been leased by the Department of Education, that had formerly, I think, been a big Catholic school. There were like, this is like, one of the biggest pre ks in the whole city. It was like 20 classes. I was like, this is the most extraordinary accomplishment I've ever. Like, I can't believe you guys stood this thing up. And then my kid's going here for free and comes out every day. Like, so. Like so. That's an example. I just want to give an example of, like, everything that you said. It was memetic policy. It cut through. It identified Bill de Blasio. It was one of the hugest things. They got into power. They actually did it. It actually worked. That is an example of all of those things happening.

[Chris Hayes]

And yet it didn't stop everybody from turning on Bill de Blasio.

[Unknown]

Right. Because then it's like, what have you done for me lately? Also, if you don't have a. Here's the thing about that promise, I will say, if you don't have a kid that age, it's highly salient to me.

[Chris Hayes]

I have a three year old.

[Unknown]

Yeah. Yeah. For me, I was like, this is awesome.

[Chris Hayes]

I see a lot of people on Twitter celebrating Mamdani's win. And I think Mamdani's win is exciting. But I've said this before. The downside for him is not that he loses a primary. The bad outcome is that he wins and fails at governing. He cannot get the tax increases he needs from Albany. He does not control the tax increases he needs for this agenda. And Kathy Hochul has said.

[Unknown]

Has already said no.

[Chris Hayes]

She is very clearly no, like, raising taxes, like this pledge, and she's not going to break it. So he's not going to have the money. He needs an extended rent freeze. I know people do nonprofit housing. Same. And there are people who are ideologically aligned with Mamdani and They do not think this is a good idea.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I know people in nonprofit housing who feel the same way.

[Chris Hayes]

You do it for one year, okay, fine. But over an extended period of time, you will reduce the incentive to build that housing. You will reduce the incentive to care for that housing. He's like, Mamdani will say, oh, you have these other. Other programs you can apply to for relief. All that stuff is complicated, and you make a market less profitable to be in, and fewer people will be in it. A lot of the things like free daycare, you probably just can't pay for. So if you set up these expectations and then you don't meet them, is it okay because your supporters know you tried, or is it a kind of like a structural thing where you have set yourself up for failure?

[Unknown]

I think it's the most important question in some ways. I mean, one thing I would say is I like experimentation and new ideas. So when he was asked about the public groceries, I think it's in the Bulwark podcast, and he says, like, we'll try, and if it doesn't work, c' est la vie.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And, like, I love that answer. Politicians never give that answer. They never give that answer. Like, let's try. You know, the person who really most embodied that spirit is fdr. If you go back and you read about, like, you know, the first hundred days, and, like, they're just trying a lot. Like, we now think about FDR as this colossus who remade the relationship between the citizen and the federal government. Right. A lot of that stuff did not work, like, fully failed. Like, a lot of the interventions failed. They did a lot of clunky stuff. Like, there was a lot of now totally different time. He had these enormous mandate. It was a crisis. But I will say that, like, I like the idea of experimentation. I like the idea of these ideas coming from outside of what, like, the consensus around sensible policy is. But the test for it is, can you deliver?

[Chris Hayes]

One thing that struck me a lot about Mamdani was his ability to listen to census zeitgeist, but also to listen to voters. Right. The relentless focus on affordability, that was an act of listening totally and then being able to respond to it. And it's been one of my views for a while. It's actually is the introduction of my book that we have moved into an era of politics that is going to be all about affordability. Housing inflation.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Cost of childcare inflation, cost of health care inflation. Actually moderated in some ways, but it's still quite bad. Educational Pricing. Right. For four year colleges, that kind of thing that had been building for decades.

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Chris Hayes]

That is not a thing that happened in 2022 and 2023 that had been building for decades. And now, you know, things are like, they kind of rise and like they're an issue and then like, they're actually intolerable.

[Unknown]

Yeah. Right.

[Chris Hayes]

And so like future politicians were going to have to develop a set of ideas and a way of talking about bringing costs down, not just bringing subsidies up and whether Mamdani's particular policies will work to do, do that. That was struck me as a politician native to this era of concerns.

[Unknown]

I mean, think about the rent freeze. Right. He wasn't saying, we're going to give rent rebates through a tax filing, where you file a tax and we'll give you $150 back. It was like, no, we're just going to cap the price.

[Chris Hayes]

The concern is whether or not from a policy perspective, my concern works. Mamdani talks a very, very good. I'm just in game. Like, I think he gets that you need housing supply.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

But his plans are all public housing, which is fine, but that's much harder. And, and then when he talks about market rate housing, he sort of is like as like, I really believe in market rate housing as long as it accords to our sustainability union and affordability needs.

[Unknown]

Right. Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

And it's like when you need a lot of housing, adding a lot of conditions to that housing is going to both like raise the price. And so I really think there's a question about whether or not he can deliver affordability ability if he's not able to increase supply.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

I would feel better about a rent freeze that was paired with an incredible explosion of building if what was happening was like we were freezing rents and there were cranes everywhere.

[Unknown]

Right. Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Okay, fine. Like, because maybe in three years we have a lot of housing coming online.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

But if you, at this level of supply creation.

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Chris Hayes]

You freeze around for an extended period of time, you might begin to like constrict supply down the road and create a bigger problem for the future. There are some levers we could pull on this. Housing is a particularly tough one because it takes time to build houses and we make it hard to build houses. I'm very skeptical that Mamdani can make free daycare happen. I don't think he's got the money to do it. There's more infrastructure that would need than was needed even for a 3K. But you could conceptually do free daycare. You Definitely do it nationally. There are ways to approach some of these things, but I think this is what politics economically is going to be about for an extended period.

[Unknown]

I think one. One wrinkle to the housing question, which I think is a really important thing to always keep coming back to when you discuss in your book, you know, one person's price is another person's income. And there is a real, genuine material conflict in New York City between renters and homeowners. It's not false consciousness. It's not a distraction. It's not culture war bullshit. Like, if you own a home and most of your wealth is in your home, you want to see that wealth go up. If you are trying to enter the housing market or a renter, rising house prices are bad for you.

[Chris Hayes]

And you will not be excited about Mamdani or anyone to come in saying, we're going to build a ton of public housing next to you. Like, that's the other thing that's very difficult about public housing and affordable housing is that all these homeowners who want their high home prices do not want that down the block from them.

[Unknown]

And that and that material fight, you know, huge problems which the homeowners have been winning in California, have been beating the brains out of the people trying to buy homes and renters for decades now to a degree that's like, truly catastrophic. I think it's fair to say. I do worry that the structural nature of public opinion now is negative in a way that makes even good governance not resonate with people, if that makes sense, or the structural limitations on governing one of the two, that it's just very hard because of how many things contribute to a working class person who lives on Fordham Road being like, man, I am squeezed in every direction. Can Zora Mandani unilaterally make it so they don't feel that way? It's hard to say. Can they feel that I got a mayor who's trying to make my life better? Yes.

[Chris Hayes]

So translating this kind of communication from campaign to governance, not that many people have had to do it, but Obama had to do it. And I think I would say he failed to do that. I think the sense is that he was an amazing, amazing, amazing campaigner. And then given the reality of incremental victory, he was never sort of able to narrativize that. I think that's true in a way that could ease the disappointment a lot of people felt. And I think that's in some ways why the liberalism he represented after him for at least some time had A hard time because he had raised hopes so high for a lot of people. And then it's like, eh. I mean, things did change. I'm a big fan of Barack Obama. The affordable character was a huge and ongoing achievement. But how do you narrativize the difference between people's hopes for your campaign and what they got? Donald Trump is interesting because he comes after Obama. He also makes huge, sweeping, wild promises on scale. Obama never did. Right.

[Unknown]

They never built the wall.

[Chris Hayes]

They don't build the wall. But Donald Trump has this way of communicating throughout his entire presidency. And I mean, he loses reelection. Right. So it doesn't work. Exactly. But that he is. It's like somehow he's a president, but he's not responsible for what happens. No.

[Unknown]

He's at war with his own government.

[Chris Hayes]

Deep state. So there was a narrative that Donald Trump maintained as president that allowed him to explain away the difference between what he attempted and what he achieved. And now Trump is president again and he has much more control over the government. So it's not as much of a deep state narrative this time.

[Unknown]

Although he has spent the last 24 hours railing against the intelligence apparatus.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes, exactly.

[Unknown]

Like, it's very classic.

[Chris Hayes]

So, yes, because they say that the Iranian strikes only set it back by a couple months, and he's saying it's false. So there's one is like, can you use it as a form of power? But then is, can you use it if you're not being able to get it done? Right. Can you narrativize the grimy, gritty, just reality of governing in a way that maintains the faith people have in you, even as you're not being able to deliver to them what you promised?

[Unknown]

I think there's a few things I'd say about that. 1. I think Mayor is different than president in a lot of ways, partly because it is much more retail. And you can get a long way by showing up a lot. I mean, Eric Adams actually does that pretty well. And you know, I thought the.

[Chris Hayes]

There's a club opening.

[Unknown]

What's that? You know, and this is, you know, this is Chuck Schumer's legendary talent. Not as mayor, as senator, but before that as congressman. There is a little bit of a just trap that is difficult to avoid, which is like it will be more difficult to govern than it is to campaign always. Andrew Cuomo's father quite famously said, we campaign in poetry and we govern in prose. And I think that part of the way, I guess, that you escape that trap is talented political communication. I mean, I really do. I think you have to do a good job. You can't be a total failure as a mayor. Right. The city has to feel like there's tangible improvements in people's lives, but that alone won't be enough. You basically need votes. You know, I thought the Mamdani video to close out the campaign, where he walks the length of Manhattan and he's just, like, talking to people, dabbing people up, eating a slice of pizza, drinking water. Like, you have to keep doing that, I think, to be an effective mayor. And I think that does actually allow you to narrativize.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Because it's like I'm out here in the streets and I'm talking to people, and I'm hearing what you're saying about what you're trying to do, and I'm communicating to you about what we're trying to do. The getting caught trying, I think, is sort of the key part of that.

[Chris Hayes]

I think it's because it's something you're seeing with Donald Trump right now, which is he actually has an instinct for how to turn policy that isn't affecting that many people into something that is intentionally salient.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Which is to make it a performance.

[Unknown]

Yeah. He performs everything. Including war.

[Chris Hayes]

Including war. The deportations, the sending people to foreign prisons, and having Kristi Noem, like, pose at them in her flak jacket. That there's a way that he. I mean, he's a genuine attentional innovator. Say what you will about Donald Trump.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

And that he is trying to make much more of policy into a public performance. I mean, there is a reason.

[Unknown]

I mean, Dr. Phil's embedded with the ICE teams.

[Chris Hayes]

Dr. Phil's embedded with the ice teams. His cabinet is full of people from TV, be they reality TV stars from one period, like Sean Duffy, all the way over to the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who's a weekend cable news host. So there is this way in which I think Trump has been trying to sort of squ is like, most people will not feel the effect of most of his policies. But what if he can turn those policies into programming?

[Unknown]

Yes, but here's the irony, right? He's at 10 points underwater, and all this stuff's pulling at exactly what you would predict from thermostatic public opinion and from the use of the bully pulpit. I mean, David Shore had a thing the other day about one of the most consistent counterintuitive findings is that when a president talks about something, its negatives go up. Right. The sort of negative bully pulpit. Now, the Question to me is, and this is the thing that I think feels very unresolved because of how sui generous Trump is and how sui generous his trajectory has been is like, does it net out as a positive the question of attentional domination? He does it better than anyone. He is a genuine innovator and a weird genius for attention at a pathological and feral level that is not replicable. But the constant show, the constant conflict, like, his negatives are high. He lost reelection. He stuck around. He won. He almost immediately started to tank in the polls. He's a very polarizing figure. It works at some level. There's some power to it. But, like, how much does it work still remains unclear to me.

[Chris Hayes]

I think that's right. But what it works to do is set narrative, and that is its own dimension of power. It is a kind of power that he exerts in a way few presidents do over culture. And I'd say this is true for Mamdani. Right? Mamdani as a discourse object. Trump is a discourse object. Right. It's not like Zoran Mamdani is the only person to have recently won a Democratic primary anywhere in the country. In Jersey, Mikey Sherrill just won, who's a House member, just won the primary for governor. Cheryl, I think, is an incredibly impressive politician, a former Navy helicopter pilot. Right. Like, I find her very, very, very charismatic.

[Unknown]

Yeah, she's very good.

[Chris Hayes]

More on the moderate side of things. Right. There was not a debate. Does every Democrat need to reckon with the victory of Cheryl in the way that right now there's a discourse of how does every Democrat and possibly every politician possibly need to reckon with what we just saw in this June Democratic primary in New York City?

[Unknown]

The governor, you know, the former governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, who served two terms in a state that Trump has won every time that he's been on the ballot there and left with, I think, 55, 56% approval rating? No one's like, we need to find the next Roy Cooper, like that guy. It's like he was an insanely effective politician in very difficult terrain and has none of these, like, attentionally salient qualities. Right. And we talked about this last time, which is like, high risk, high reward, high volatility stuff. There are trade offs here.

[Chris Hayes]

I guess this is where the question you were asking a minute ago feels like it bites to me, which is you were saying, does this kind of attentional dominance net out as a positive? It can clearly win. It can clearly win primaries. It clearly can help you exert a cultural and narrative force and an ideological force like above and beyond what you would be able to do. Right. AOC is not the only Democrat who has knocked off another Democrat in a primary. She's not the only Democrat to win a House seat. She is incredibly salient as a national politician because of her ability to drive attention. And on the other hand, I recently was talking to a bunch of various people in the sort of New Democrats caucus, which is the more moderate House Democrats caucus. And one thing that struck me, just talking to them is a couple of them are very talented communicators, but they're actually what most of them communicate in their bearing. And the way they are is not flashy, aggressive ideological projects. It's a kind of like, this person might coach your Little League team. And so these things work and don't work in different places. And I don't think we have a good way of answering the question of, like, when is it valuable to drive this kind of attention and when is it not?

[Unknown]

Okay, so here's what I would say. I think one place where it matters is presidential politics.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes.

[Unknown]

I think presidential politics, like, there's just no question that it matters at that level. And you need someone who is a insanely skilled communicator with an incredible appetite and instinct for attention. The kind of person who wants to go do three hour podcast interviews.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes.

[Unknown]

I think if you have a person who's not that, you're really in trouble. The other thing that I think is worth considering is the valence of incumbent versus challenger, where I actually think this sort of is interesting to think about. I think this kind of attentional dominance works better as a challenger than an incumbent.

[Chris Hayes]

Sure.

[Unknown]

For exactly the reason we're talking about. Right. So like we're seeing right now, Donald Trump recreate some of the thermostatic public opinion on immigration that he had the first term.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Which was part of what drove Democrats to adopting a line on immigration that was to the left of what their previous line had been, partly along the lines of how public opinion had changed in recoiling in horror at what Donald Trump was doing on immigration. So my point being here is that there are more upsides to downsides of the challenger for this high volatility, high risk, high reward, attentional trade than there are for the incumbent.

[Chris Hayes]

I also think there's a dimension here where they work. This is very, very, very valuable in primaries.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Everything we were saying a minute ago about policy that becomes mimetic is policy that unlocks a lot of attention, usually through controversy, where Some people really like it and other people really hate it. And what you're hoping to do when you unleash that kind of attentional energy, that kind of conflict energy, is that there are more people who really like the thing than really hate it. And, and the trade that you often see some of these candidates make is they are unleashing energy in the primary that might hurt them in the general.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

So it is a often made observation about Donald Trump that he seems to underperform in the general. He's incredibly dominant at the primary level. But Trump and then candidates like him, who are less talented than him, MAGA candidates tend to underperform in the general. Right. The view is that another. I think a lot of people believe, and I'm one of them, that if Republicans had run Marco Rubio in 2016, they would have won by more. And I actually think that's true in 2024. Also they run Nikki Haley, if they run probably even Ron DeSantis, they would have won by more like the conditions were there for that. Trump creates a lot of negative attention on him in general elections. New York is weird in a lot of ways, but one is that the expectation is if you have won the Democratic primary, you have won. Right. The fact that that is not a complete expectation with Mamdani speaks to the way that there's at least a belief that he will generate counter mobilization against him at a higher rate than like a Bradlander would than some of these other candidates. But it'll probably be okay for him in New York City because again, it's so dominated by Democrats. But this sort of thing where there's this question of how do you stand out in a primary campaign in a non representative electorate that agrees with you much more than the general electorate will. But then if you've done that, then what do you do with these positions you've taken? Partly if you're dealing with a general electorate that is not all the way to your side. So I always think like just to finish this. One example nit is that in Ohio when J.D. vance ran for Senate, Mike DeWine, who's like an intentionally not very skilled, kind of more older school Republican, he was governor, he won his reelection campaign that year by like 20ish points. Vance underperformed in the Senate race. I mean he won, but it was by 6, 7, 8 points. It was not an amazing performance in part because he had taken very, very MAGA positions. Now, has it worked out for J.D. vance? Yeah, but not in the sense that J.D. vance overperforms with general election audiences. Like this is where it's like it's an uncertain trade A lot of the.

[Unknown]

Time it's a really uncertain trade. And I think to add one wrinkle here that I think is interesting and slightly wheezy but worthwhile is that New York City has ranked choice voting. The ranked choice voting allows voters to rank five different candidates. That created some interesting incentives that are a little different in this race that I actually think worked against. Part of what you're saying there, which is like being the biggest bomb thrower is the most distinguishing. But the way ranked choice voting works is you don't want to alienate other people's supporters because you want them to rank you second or third or fourth. And one of the things I thought was very interesting about how Mamdani navigated this and I think huge props here to go to Brad Lander who came in third in the sort of first round of voting was that there was all these cross endorsements and this sort of coalition building. So it wasn't just bomb throwing. Like there's a kind of politics you see particularly in Republican primaries where it's like the rest of these people are sellouts and I'm the truest maga. You know, there kind of wasn't that Mamdani wasn't running against like the Democratic establishment. There wasn't this kind of like you see this amongst the sort of left flank of the Democratic Party of like these corporate sellouts, like they suck. There was not very much of that there was directed at Cuomo, but it was a pretty like he cross endorsed other candidates as well. And I think the reason that's salient for the general is that it's yes, it's in a primary, but it's also coalition building.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes.

[Unknown]

And I think that coalition building actually ends up being extremely important in general, which by the way, New York City had five straight terms of a Republican mayor, let's not forget. Yes, the idea that the expectation is the Democrat wins is like a fairly recent vintage. Like Giuliani won twice. Bloomberg was three terms that was 20 years in a row Republican mayor.

[F]

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[Chris Hayes]

I think some of his people will not like hearing me say this. I read Mamdani as a left pluralist, not a left populist.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I agree.

[Chris Hayes]

Which is to say that people, I think have very, very shifty definitions of populism. But in its classic definition, like what actually makes somebody a populist politician is not that they believe in redistribution or believe that the working man is getting screwed a bit, it's that they believe that the system is built around like true people and then the like small conspiratorial enemies of the people who are keeping everybody else down. And if you could just break through them and have your villains and destroy your villains, you can sort of hit the more utopic politics you're looking for. I have seen many like right populists and left populists. Mamdani's what struck me often about his affect, which I often thought was a bit of a TikTok affect, because TikTok, I mean, people Forget this, but TikTok was like its whole thing and it doesn't really work this way way anymore. But for a very long time they were really pushing it to be a positive platform, right? Like they positioned it algorithmically against what was happening on Twitter and Facebook and other things at that time. Mamdani always seemed much more motivated by his sympathies than his resentments. And Cuomo felt to me much more motivated by his resentments than his sympathies. And this also then played into the RCV dynamic you're discussing, which is, I think it would be natural to assume that these other more establishment, long serving New York politicians would be likelier to cross, endorse and work with the front runner former governor, who could both, in theory, give them more because he was likely to be elected for most of the campaign, but also somebody they would have known better because he's been in New York politics forever. And to me, this was both politically meaningful and substantively meaningful because it undercut the central argument of Cuomo's candidacy. And they all hated, not all. Jessica Ramos endorsed him, but they largely really, really disliked him. Brad Lander really clearly dislikes Cuomo and so do a lot of them. They did not want Cuomo ranked. So it created this interesting space where the dynamics were not what you would have thought in a left insurgent versus Democratic establishment race.

[Unknown]

And there's this validation role that ends up happening from that, which is like. Like, if you're hearing that the guy's this like terrifying, scary figure who's an extremist, but then the other candidates in the field are cross endorsing with him and appearing with him, like, it makes it much harder for that to land. And I think, again, to Mamdani's credit, I agree with you that he does not have a kind of like, I think it's well said that he's sort of animated by his synthesis as opposed to his resentments. His affect is welcoming and pluralistic and also not like they're out to get me. He really just does not portray that at all, which I think can be a real problem for a certain form of kind of left populist politics. Like, it's a reg system, it's all rigged. The fix is in which again, he got $25 million dropped on his head by super PAC money. Bloomberg wrote a $5 million check, like two weeks. There was a little bit of a rig against him, but he did not let that. That again, if you look at that walking the length of Manhattan video, the affect there is welcoming and inclusive at all times.

[Chris Hayes]

But this is where I don't want to over McLuhan, Marshall McLuhan everything and say the medium is always a message and everybody's shaped by their mediums. Because obviously a lot of people on TikTok are in vertical Video who are not like Joan Ramdani or don't even follow what I'm talking about. But I believe, I believe this strongly that the rise of populist right and to a lesser extent, populist left politics all across the world, all at the same time. I believe the single strongest force there was not just immigration. And it wasn't. I mean, you can really look at this in the data. It was not economics, right. I think it was the rise of these central communication platforms of politics being high conflict, high engagement, compressed text platforms. And I think those platforms, in a way that we do not have incredibly good even language for, are somewhat illiberal in their design. That they are. And by that I mean that they are structured in a way that makes the fundamental temperament of liberalism hard to do. They're not well suited for deliberation. They're not well suited for tolerance. Right. They're not well suited for. On the one hand, on the other hand, right. The things that make deliberative liberal democracy kind of function, those habits of mind, the way you Hear when like Barack Obama. Barack Obama's not good at Twitter. He's just not. His Twitter is bad.

[Unknown]

No, he's not.

[Chris Hayes]

It's terrible because they're about groups, they're about engagement, like within and then against other groups. They're about like drawing these lines very, very carefully. And I think they just create by nature a more populous format of politics, or at least they create a communicative structure of politics where it is easier for outside of populist polit. The thing coming after it, which I don't know if it will hold this way, but this kind of vertical, like when you look at TikTok, when you look at Instagram reels again, it's not that. No content is high conflict political content, but most of it just isn't. It's much more like day in the life stuff. It's very highly visual and you just kind of saw that a little bit in this campaign. I think there was something in the grammar of Mamdani that was so inflected by that era. I mean he's like really our first voice divine politician. Yeah, like people forget all this, but I think there was something there. His grammar was not Twitter's grammar.

[Unknown]

Kind of goofy, kind of.

[Chris Hayes]

His grammar was TikTok's grammar.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. I mean, I'm sort of thinking this through. So I, I think I agree that social media as constituted over the last decade is structurally illiberal. I think I agree with that. Relentlessly algorithmically competitive attention markets are going to drive towards the parts of us as ourselves that are the furthest from deliberation. Yes, right. So like I have a whole chapter in the book about Lincoln Douglas debates and like how different that is. Not that, you know, not that that should be the model for everything. So I agree with that. I think it's. I'm sort of thinking through this idea of the visual grammar and kind of like affect of the vertical video as being less conflict populist in its nature, which I think is really interesting idea. I mean one thought I had, and you just said that about Barack Obama's bad at Twitter is that it was funny. I watched the whole Mamdani speech and I was like, it's fine. He's not great at giving a speech. Like Barack Obama was great at giving a speech. That is not his metric.

[Chris Hayes]

There are great one minute clips into speeches though.

[Unknown]

There are great one minute clips in his speeches. But like his vertical video performance is a 10 of 10. His speech performance was not a 10 of 10 to me. And I think that speaks to something about the nature of that. And I think you're right that like, I guess here's the one counterpoint I would say it seems to me like there are ways in which those algorithms, over time, and partly this is, partly this has to do with the weird black box of the algorithm. Right. Is they do start to get more and more conflict embracing because the clapback video and the posting of the comment of someone said something and then you, you, you like respond to the comment and it's up there in a window and the stitching, like stitching became this thing that like really generates conflict. Like here's this like dumb clueless person saying this thing and I, I come in and I stitch and talk about how stupid they are. So I do think there is still that incentive. But I think you're, you're right that overall the vibes directionally in vertical video right now are more positive than the vibes of say, the cesspool that is X.

[Chris Hayes]

It's also the other thing here, just reality is, it's more capacious. I mean, the fundamental reality of the Twitter text box, I mean, this is a little less true now, but it still is basically true, is that it's a compression mechanism.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

And the move towards languid podcasting, where we're just like sitting here vibing for two hours or longer. Right. I was amazed. I knew this was out there. But on the abundance for I went and did some of these podcasts like Friedman, and you really do three to four hours. But even in this, what you can do, you can put up six minute videos. I mean, I have videos that go out on TikTok that are 6:12 minutes actually. A lot can be in there. Yeah, it is compressed compared to the Lincoln Douglas debates, but it is a lot less compressed than what the original Instagram box allowed you, than what the dominant, for a very long time Twitter box allowed you, than what a Facebook post offered. And then, I mean, what Mom Dime was doing a ton of was podcasting, right.

[Unknown]

And then getting clipped from that.

[Chris Hayes]

And then it gets clipped. But it does come in the context of these sort of much longer conversations that create a different vibe between people. You know, I actually find it very hard to maintain. I've had many people into this show because they are such harsh critics of me, and I find that they find it very hard to maintain the criticism when you're in a sort of extended social dynamic.

[Unknown]

It's devious of you.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, it's actually sometimes a Problem. Sometimes I have to like cue them. Remember, you hate. Right. Like we're here to talk about this. But these things you just really see when you do that, like how much mediums shape us all.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

It's much harder to be a jerk to somebody's face than it is on under these dynamics. And so it's not that it's all like all vertical video is gonna be sunny, but it just is going to be different in ways that I'm not even sure we're quite ready to understand in politics.

[Unknown]

Yes, I totally go with that. And I also think that like, you know, this is. I'm just sort of spitballing here so I can hear already in my head the academics who study this being like, you're totally wrong. But let me just throw this out. We've got the kind of like semi apocryphal story of the 1960 debate with Nixon and Kennedy and how people listened thought Nixon won and people that watched thought Kennedy won.

[Chris Hayes]

And if you go watch that debate, Nixon is just not look that bad to me. No, I've done this a few times and Nixon looks totally fine.

[Unknown]

The reason I say apocryphals and I'm not even sure it's true, it's sort of become this kind of mythos about how this works. And it's capturing the Central sort of McLuhan insight about like how much the medium structures this. There was this kind of. There's a sort of pre literate politics in America when you have very small percentage of voters who can actually read. Then you have like the beginnings of radio politics. And you know, people know about the fireside chat. Television is totally transformative to American politics. The first wave of Internet politics that lasts for a very long time is written politics. It's the politics of text. I mean, all the stuff that's happening with blogs when we came up and Facebook posts and all this stuff, we are now moving. We're going through this transformation where everything will be video. I mean, at least for the foreseeable future. Who knows? These trends change on a dime. I think it's interesting to consider what that does. The media strategy too. Okay, I'm recruiting candidates, people that can get attention. Those are going to be scarier propositions because part of attention is sometimes conflict, provocation, views that are not boring, that jump out at you and interviews and talking to a lot of people where you might say something that is a quote unquote gaffe or that people don't like or offend certain people. The institutional orientation of the Democratic Party is like, yeah, no. And I think there's a great example of this with Mamdani down the stretch. If talk about his media. He went everywhere. He said yes to everything. He gave an interview to a Pakistani news channel in Urdu. Have you seen this?

[Chris Hayes]

No.

[Unknown]

At some level, I was like, like, why are you doing this? Is down the stretch. It's like in the last week. But it's like, right. Maybe that gets back to Urdu speaking New Yorkers who share the clip. Like, you know, he then also goes on mainstream, he goes on alternative, he goes on subway takes, and then he does the bulwark. Now, the bulwark is like sort of a, you know, centrist, center right, anti.

[Chris Hayes]

Trump network, center left. I'm at this point, okay, fine, it's.

[Unknown]

Center left at this point. It's in the big.

[Chris Hayes]

I love the board. Tim Miller's great.

[Unknown]

But it's in the big Democratic.

[Chris Hayes]

It's in the anti Trump tense, in the anti Trump.

[Unknown]

It's strongly in the anti anti Trump tent. But it is founded by people who used to be Republicans and whose feelings about, say, Israel tend more towards the right of the Democratic coalition. And they ask him this question about this phrase globalizing intifada, which is a very popular phrase at protests on the left. And maybe some people say that phrase with good intent, but there are certainly some people who are saying that phrase with violent intent. So I wonder what you think about that. He gives an answer that starts off with, I thought a very long and good thing about Jewish safety and the Jewish folks that he's talked to in New York City.

And then just a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a Jewish man in Williamsburg who told me that he. The same door he would keep unlocked for decades is one that he now locks out of a fear of what could happen in his own neighborhood.

And then he basically says, look, intifada is Arabic for struggle. And that, in fact, word is used in the Holocaust Museum website to mean struggle.

The very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto uprising into Arabic, because it's a word that means struggle.

Sure.

And as a Muslim man who grew up post 9 11, I'm all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words, words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning. And I think that's. That's where it leaves me with a sense that what we need to do is, is focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe. And the question of the permissibility of Language is something that I. That I haven't.

I haven't ventured into the headline that comes out from it. I don't think it was a great answer, to be very clear. Is refuses to condemn global Asian Tifada. And so I thought to myself, I'm like, oh, okay, so now we're seeing the cost, right? Like, we've seen the benefit. He's been everywhere. But going everywhere means you might have a news cycle where you say something like that. And I think it's pretty striking that he won anyway, because I do think the old way of thinking is like, say no to 10 things. If it means that you never have the news cycle about globalizing. Intifada and him embracing the strategy he did meant that he had a news cycle in a city with a million Jewish voters where, like, people's views on this can be very strong. That was all about him refusing to contemplate globalizing in Nevada. A kind of nightmare scenario, if you're a political staffer on that campaign. A genuine nightmare scenario that didn't have the effect that I think a lot of people would have.

[Chris Hayes]

It implies the politics of that are not what people think they are. I will say I will only speak for myself on this. So my priors on Andrew Cuomo, I was not, like, an incredible fan of the governorship from afar back when he was being talked about as a presidential candidate. And then everything that happened that led to his resignation struck me as really kind of upsetting. But I was sort of. I'm open to people's redemption. I think you have to be open to redemption. Two things about that campaign. One was that the number of people, even people who endorsed Cuomo, who talked to me about his cruelty or his tendency for revenge.

[Unknown]

That's an amazing sentence.

[Chris Hayes]

I had somebody tell me he was a sociopath and then endorse him a couple of days later. And so that was one line that I just couldn't get over. Right. Somebody who. This is the way they have treated people in public life. That's a bar I want candidates to be above. But the other thing that actually closed it, that made for me that I would not rank him, was the way he used Israel in the campaign. Like, I'm a Jewish person. I have very, very deep feelings about what is happening in Israel and Gaza. And I found it so cynical, so repulsive, just such a vicious way to weaponize. I thought both sort of Mamdani's ethnicity, but also, I don't know. What's happening in Gaza is a horror. People should Be horror ified. Like, the whole thing just struck me as grotesque. And I knew a lot of people for whom it read that way. The thing in the debates where they got into a fight over, like, visiting Israel.

[Unknown]

What's the first country you're gonna visit? Mr. Mamdani?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on that. Mr. Mamdani, can I just jump in? Would you visit Israel as mayor? I've said in a UJA questionnaire that I believe that you need not travel to Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers. And that is what I will be doing as the mayor. I'll be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers, and I'll be meeting them wherever they are across the five boroughs, whether that's in their synagogues and temples or at their homes or at the subway platform. Because ultimately, we need to focus on delivering on their concerns. And as does. Yes or no, do you believe in a Jewish state of Israel? I believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, as a state with equal rights.

[Unknown]

He won't say it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. Be very clear. And his answer was no, he won't visit Israel.

[Zoran Mamdani]

I said that.

[Unknown]

That's what he was trying to say.

[Zoran Mamdani]

No, no, no.

[Chris Hayes]

I'm like. It was such an obvious political game.

[Unknown]

Yeah, it was cynical. Yeah, it was deathlessly cynical.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes.

[Unknown]

And I have to say, I mean, it was also comical at a certain level. Like, my formative years were spent at, like, Shabbat dinner at my friend's houses and going to bar mitzvahs and being in this milieu of Jewish New York. And it's incredibly precious to me. And I feel, like, incredible, like, profound gratitude and affection for that. And, you know, my wife's half Jewish. Like, I'm not, like, doing the bona fides, but it's close to me. Like, I'm not Jewish, but it's a culture that I like, love deeply and feel bound to. And so, yeah, I found it deathlessly cynical. The other thing that complicated this, and this is an interesting angle of this whole thing, is that Andrew Cuomo, like me, is a paisan from New York. The guy's not Jewish.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah. Brad Lander, who cross endorsed Mamdani, is Jewish and very devoted to questions around Israel.

[Unknown]

And he's also the highest ranking Jewish official in New York City.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes, A lot of the things that happen in this campaign happen on, like, a literal level and a metaphorical or symbolic level. At the same time. And one thing that I thought about that moment when Mamdani didn't condemn globalizing Nevada was it had this quality of this is what he believes. He is not going to sell out a politics and a community who he either belongs to or has very, very deep sympathy for why they feel the way they do. And with Cuomo, I'm not saying he does not have beliefs about Israel, but it felt like the oppo researchers had come to him with a packet and he was now going to use what was in the packet. And a lot of things are not. I mean, we can talk about the popularity of different ideas, but some things are also just communicating what kind of person you are. But also I've been very interested by the way that Israel and Gaza have become highly kind of symbolic, like attentional in both directions. Right. There is the Gaza's genocide, you know, direction. And also the people who have made themselves aggressively into like moderates, anti leftist moderates. And you see this a bit with Cuomo, but you see it with Richie Torres. Right. You see it with John Fetterman.

[Unknown]

Yep.

[Chris Hayes]

Is like the strongest and most consistent fight they pick is on Israel.

[Unknown]

It's like now, weirdly, the ideological Israelite.

[Chris Hayes]

Israel has become the culture war, I think, within the Democratic Party. And if you want to really send a strong signal, I'm just struck by how many of the signals sent for people who do not have a lot of power over American policy towards Israel are sent on this issue.

[Unknown]

And I think there's also an added dimension to that which is that there's just enormous estrangement between the establishment of the party and the base of the party.

[Chris Hayes]

That's right.

[Unknown]

I saw the polling on the. The Iran strikes were like 85% of Democrats opposed and I think 13% approved. Now if you looked at Democratic legislators responses, you would not think that those were the numbers. Donald Trump really exploited a huge gap between the elites in the party and the establishment on immigration and trade and the base of the party to tremendous effect. There is something like that in the Democratic Party right now on the issue of Israel. There is just poll after poll after poll. And I think this has to do with a bunch of complicated factors, although I think the driving factor has been the war in Gaza since October 2023. And I think you really saw it play out in this race. I mean, New York City is the most Jewish city in the country and the most Jewish city in the world. One of the most Jewish cities in the world outside Tel Aviv. It's the Second highest number of Jewish. Jewish citizens. It's also like, that number fails to represent how Jewish the city is in terms of its cultural milieu and like the fabric of New York. Right. And I think it's shocking to a lot of people and even to me, I have to say that someone with his politics on this conflict just won.

[Chris Hayes]

A Democratic primary and did it without shifting from that. But like, no, he used to support defund the police and now I think both says he does it and actually doesn't. I think he does not want to defund the police as many he is. He held his line.

[Unknown]

He is an anti Zionist, I think, and is now.

[Chris Hayes]

Right. He said like, Israel should not be a Jewish state.

[Unknown]

Yeah. I mean, I think that I feel a little weird about this conversation because I really. It's thorny for a million reasons, but it's also like, I respect the views of people that are closest to it and I am not the closest to it. So I'm always kind of like trying to check that in me. So it's weird for me to be like, it's bad for the Jews. I'm not a Jew. I think the way this is developing within the Democratic Party is kind of dangerous.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

I think the idea of like this is a signifier of the rich elites who control everything behind closed doors, which is both an anti Semitic trope and something that touches on something close to being true about how money flows in Democratic politics is like a really combustible mix.

[Chris Hayes]

I think that's right. But I see two of things about it being a signifier. One is it's a signifier in two directions. Right. It's a signifier in one direction of being willing to stick to your beliefs. That I think a lot of people in the base feel that even Democrats who actually agree with them will not say on Gaza and how bad and horrifying that has been, will not quite say it or sugarcoat it or will not vote with it. And so there is something both. Again, I believe the belief is authentic to Mamdani, but also it's expressive showing that you will stand up to that kind of pressure Right. In the other direction. It's showing that you will not be cowed for your Richie Torres's, your Fettermans. It's showing you'll not be cowed by a different thing in the party, like the Woke mob. Right. So it's become a kind of declaration of independence from that. I will just say on the point you just made about how saying something true can veer close to saying something anti Semitic. One thing I have just appreciated about Mamdani and I appreciate about the most, Tom Donny Lander alliance. I'm a Jewish person. It is very important, it is very important that it is possible and understood to be possible that you can be anti Zionist without being anti Semitic. And I'm not anti Zionist in that way. I'm like a kind of two state solution person who doesn't really believe that that is possible. And I'm not sure what I think is plausible at this point. But putting my own politics aside, I very fundamentally believe like Mamdani is anti Zionist and not anti Semitic. And he did a very, very, very good job in my view, in answers of making that clear. Lander acted as a very important cross validator for him. But in a world where Israel is going to be as brutal as it has been in Gaza and is going to play much more of a role of like a regional hegemon militarily, which is what it has stepped into, and people are going to have very, very strong opinions, including very, very strong negative opinions on what it means for there to be roughly 7 million Palestinians who do not have equal rights and are under Israeli control. It is very, very, very important that you just have to be able to be against what the Israeli state has become and not anti Semitic. I think it is an incredibly dangerous game that pro Zionist people have played trying to conflate those things. Because if you tell people enough that to oppose Israel is to be anti Semitic, at some point they're going to.

[Unknown]

Say, well, then I guess I'm anti Semitic.

[Chris Hayes]

I guess I'm anti Semitic.

[Unknown]

Yeah, that's the fear. I think that the taboo around antisemitism, which is born of the worst atrocities in human history, is like a wildly important taboo that is breaking down everywhere we look. Let's be clear. Like that taboo is disintegrating and it's disintegrating for a lot of people and it's terrifying that it's disintegrating. And, and the one thing I'll say again, and this is me offering advice that no one asked for from the position of just the Catholic boy from the Bronx who now lives in Brooklyn. But I think there's tangible, concrete things that Mondani can do. He should be going to Borough park and he should be going to Ocean Parkway and he should be talking to folks there and being like, we're not going to agree on Israel. Let's just say it from the beginning. I want you to feel safe and heard I want your communities to thrive. I want the city to work for you. Let's talk about how we make that happen. And I think they're tangible. Like, there's huge security concerns. Huge.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah. If you heard him on Colbert, I thought he did a very beautiful job walking that line.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I agree.

[Zoran Mamdani]

You know, I remember the words of Mayor Koch, who said, if you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. 12 out of 12, see a psychiatrist. And I had an older Jewish woman come to me at B' Nai Jeshurun, a synagogue, many months ago, after a Democratic Club forum. And she whispered in my ear, I disagree with you on one issue. I'm pretty sure you know which one it is. And I agree with you on the others. And I'm gonna be ranking you on your. On my ballot. And I say this because I know there are many New Yorkers with whom I have a disagreement about the Israeli government's policies. And also there are many who understand that that's a disagreement still rooted in shared humanity. Because the conclusions I've come to, they are the conclusions of Israeli historians like Amos Goldberg. They are echoing the words of an Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmeir, who said just recently, what we are doing in Gaza is a war of devastation. It is cruel. It is indiscriminate. It is limitless. It is criminal killing of civilians. These are the conclusions I have come to, Stephen.

[Chris Hayes]

I mean, and by the way, I think that is a good place to end. Also, final question. What of three books you would recommend to the audience?

[Unknown]

This is an oldie, but a the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, which is the most recent novel I've read. It was one of these things that I started, put down for months and then took back up. And you know how you do that with novels where you're like, I sort of remember where we are. But the book is incredible. The second one is an incredible book that is not out yet that I am able to read an advanced reader copy of. It's by Rob Malley and Hussein Ag Saga. It's called Tomorrow's Yesterday.

[Chris Hayes]

Just got recommended in the last episode, too.

[Unknown]

It's really something else. Partly. It's beautifully written. It's two people that have genuinely, incredibly distinct perspectives on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and who have been in the room at a bunch of times. So that is a great book. And the last book is a history of the cultural revolution called Mao's Last Revolution by Michael Schoenhaus and Roderick mcfarquhar and. And I don't know why I suddenly was seized with an interest in reading about the Cultural Revolution, except that I was looking to escape to a political environment that was more dire and toxic than our own doom reading. So I for some reason scrambled to that and I read that book's amazing. Although I mean, my God, sort of suffocating in some ways to be inside that universe. And then there are a few whiffs of familiarity that are unnerving.

[Chris Hayes]

Chris Hayes, always such a pleasure man. Thank you. Loved it. This episode of the Ezra Klein show is produced by Roland hu and Jack McCordick. Fact checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary March Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Amin Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cassillon, Elias Isquiff, Marina King, Annie Galvin, Jan Cobel and Kristinlin. We Virginal Music by Pat McCusker, Audience Strategy by Christina Samielewski and Shannon Buck. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Andy Rose Strasser.

[Ezra Klein]

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