00:02:45.460So yes, Tuesday is about Trump, but it's also about whether the Democratic Party still belongs to the Democrats or whether the socialists are taking the keys.
00:02:55.700Joining me today are two stellar writers who cover American politics, both for National Post.
00:03:01.480J.D. Ciccille is a journalist, author, and avowed libertarian hiding out in the Arizona desert.
00:03:07.000Besides National Post, he's written for the New York Daily News, Zednet, and is a frequent TV and radio contributor.
00:03:15.460David Christopher Kaufman is a former New York Post editor and columnist and founder of the Octagon Project.
00:03:23.420Gentlemen, welcome to a very interesting discussion about an interesting race that isn't really getting the coverage I think it should.
00:03:31.540Well, except maybe on Fox News where they're obsessed with the DSA.
00:03:57.340There's nothing particularly new about them.
00:03:58.880What is new is their rapid infiltration into almost every single element of the U.S. government.
00:04:06.320It's been sort of a lightning speed process.0.98
00:04:08.680You know, we had Mamdani. He's been in office as mayor of New York for barely a year. And in that time, we've seen DSA members find their place basically to almost throughout the entire government, Congress folks, possibly Senate, the mayor of Seattle's DSA, and quite likely the mayor of Los Angeles could be DSA as well.
00:04:34.680So there's nothing necessarily new about the DSA. What is new is the incredible rapid fire pace that they've been able to secure spots in almost every element of the government. And of course, you know, they have their eyes all the way all the way to the top.
00:04:50.640jd what about the difference between them and the traditional democrats i mean for a long time
00:04:58.540republicans like to just throw the socialist card at democrats now you're just a bunch of
00:05:04.120socialists these guys actually are they're not going to deny it it's in their name um
00:05:09.980what's the big difference between the dsa and your traditional democrat you know in middle america
00:05:17.180The traditional Democratic Party has been a market-oriented party, but with heavy regulation, kind of harnessing it on behalf of the state, more of a kind of a capitalist but welfare status party.
00:05:31.000So they believed in private enterprise. They believed in private property. The DSA is a party within a party that is hardcore socialist. These aren't social Democrats. These aren't welfare statists. They talk about seizing the means of production.
00:05:45.500They send missions to Cuba. They sympathize with the old Venezuelan regime. They are not believers in a modified capitalism or regulated capitalism. They don't believe in capitalism at all. They want state control of the economy, and they attach that to also an awful lot of bigotry, anti-Semitism, a real authoritarian streak.
00:06:09.660The board of directors of the DSA is actually dominated by overt communists, not just socialists at this point. So the DSA is definitely a step beyond whatever slinging of the term socialism we've seen in the past at the Democratic Party. And it's quite a change of direction should its momentum continue for the Democratic Party overall.
00:06:34.380Well, here in Canada, we've got the NDP, the New Democratic Party, and it says right in their constitution that they are socialists. But for the most part, they have been democratic socialists. They believe in, you know, publicly funded health care, things like that. But they're not trying to seize the means of production and radically change it.
00:06:53.500There's always a few people within it that want to do that, but they are now looking.
00:06:58.020We just had a mayoral election here in Toronto, and the mayor of Toronto that was re-elected,
00:07:03.620she's a former member of parliament in the NDP, her late husband was the leader of the NDP.
00:07:09.420And Olivia Chow openly looked to Mamdani as the template.
00:07:16.040I mean, he is being looked at by the left all over the place.
00:07:22.880And a lot of this has to do with momentum. There have been socialists in the Democratic Party in the past. Some of them may have changed their ideas over the years. Some of them may have realized that they just were never going to enact that.
00:07:35.200And so they're stuck with the Democratic Party's more traditional, regulated economy perspective. But once you get actual advocates of seizing the means production and abolition of private property into office, it normalizes socialist beliefs.
00:07:53.620So it becomes easier for those to sympathize with them to then to openly embrace them.
00:07:58.000And then you build up even more of a head of steam for an overtly socialist movement and a socialist takeover of one political party, the Democratic Party.
00:08:06.320But before we move on to the rest of the country, David, you live in New York.
00:08:41.000So I guess in the main, the answer would be no.
00:08:44.760He did try to introduce this sort of what they call a pita-terra tax, a millionaire tax, on folks who own second homes in New York valued at over a million dollars.
00:08:56.320And he announced that tax in a big, splashy sort of takedown of Ken Griffith in front of his $250 million apartment in Central Park South.
00:09:06.400The problem, that tax got a lot of attention, got a lot of energy.
00:09:10.980It really rattled the real estate community and the finance community who threatened to move their headquarters to Florida and other states.
00:09:25.960It got a lot of support from Albany, from Kathy Hochul, but in the end, it hasn't been able to muster the legislative support that it needed to pass.
00:09:36.420What is interesting about that tax, though, is that it was intended or it was framed as levying a wealth tax on folks who had second homes.
00:09:48.220But in the end, the City Hall released a list of all the potential folks who could be taxed, who have homes valued over a million dollars, and didn't differentiate between whether those apartments were second homes or primary homes.
00:10:05.560So, for instance, we were on that list and, you know, owning a home valued at a million dollars in New York City in no way makes you wealthy.
00:10:13.660So it exposed, actually, it's the cost of admission.
00:10:18.220So suddenly you had every single person in New York who owns a home over a million dollars exposed on a list to the public, which is, you know, quite an invasion of privacy.0.54
00:10:27.460And also, considering Momdani's views on Jews, Israel, his relationship with anti-Semitism, the idea that he's releasing a list of wealthy property owners in New York City who need to have additional taxes levied upon them in order to support the unwashed masses, you know, that's a complete dog whistle.0.51
00:11:21.260um how this was successful um you know fox news is obsessed if you watch them they are obsessed
00:11:29.240with the dsa cnn and ms now not so much i mean what's wrong with these guys and besides they're
00:11:37.020not that big a deal uh i found it fascinating that steve bannon who is central to the maga movement
00:11:44.220was doing an interview with Ted Koppel and was incredibly complimentary to the DSA.
00:11:51.500Steve has obviously followed their tactics and knows what they're doing. And he talked about
00:11:57.380what Mom Donnie did in New York and how it's going to spread out of there.
00:12:01.840And I just kept telling people, I said, you guys are missing it. This guy with the Working Family0.96
00:12:07.700Party and DSA, they're out in the boroughs every day with thousands of people. And what are they
00:12:14.040doing? Canvassing. They kind of took, I think, the lessons of the MAGA movement from 16 to 20,
00:12:20.120which is always grassroots base. At the end of the day, it always becomes, and you saw this in 24,
00:12:25.680and what Elon got so excited about the race and what Charlie Kirk helped to perfect is that it's0.82
00:12:31.100door-to-door, it's canvassing, it is getting people out to vote, it is getting lower propensity
00:12:36.360voters out to vote. And the DSA has done an extraordinary job at this, not just in New York.
00:12:42.880He went on to talk about Texas and why he was in Texas trying to help Paxton beat back against
00:12:49.380Tallarico. So do you feel either if you feel that his is a valid assessment that this is a
00:12:58.540very different style of campaigning? J.D., you're nodding your head.
00:13:01.280Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Democratic Socialists of America started off back when Michael Harrington and company helped launch it as basically kind of an elite intellectual movement represented a lot of academics, that sort of thing. It's transformed into, like MAGA, a grassroots populist movement. And I can see why Steve Bannon's attracted by it.
00:13:22.660It's a counterpart to what he does, and it's probably a better organized, more ship-shaped version of MAGA. They exercise significant control over the members who have to basically vow not to break from doctrine. They have to endorse a laundry list of ideological belief points. Otherwise, they get expelled and they lose access to what the DSA has to offer.
00:13:48.700So the DSA has transformed dramatically from what it originally was, and it represents, yes, another populist movement, much like the MAGA movement that Bannon started.
00:14:00.340I'm reminded of Oster Wilde's line, David. The trouble with socialism is it takes up too many evenings. They're really good at organizing and holding meetings and getting people out.
00:14:10.900Yeah, I mean, what's very impressive about the DSA, particularly here in New York, is that they've tapped into what I would call sort of a cultural or social Inuit amongst their mostly young followers in New York City.
00:14:25.380So what you have in New York is this vast population of young people who show up here, probably don't have family, are overeducated, predominantly white, but also a racial minority, have gone through very expensive education institutions that have indoctrinated them with identity politics, DEI, racial ideology.
00:14:46.760They suddenly find themselves in an extremely expensive city and metropolitan area, perhaps not advancing in the careers in which they would like, and often, as is the condition of New York, quite lonely.
00:14:59.840The DSA has been able to tap into this sort of Inui, in a way, and provide these folks almost like, you know, the way 12-step programs offer something to do for alcoholics who are no longer drinking.
00:15:13.640The DSA has been able to tap into this need for community by these young people who have not yet established their own communities and their own sense of belonging and connectedness in New York City.
00:15:25.680And they've done this at the same time that we've had Trumpism, vast outrage of Trumpism, the pernicious effect of identity politics, and of course, tapping into the resentment of Israel's war in Gaza and the Palestinian movement, which in New York is directly, directly connected to the rise of Mamdani.
00:15:49.380I often say that Momdani is the bastard child of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
00:15:54.520There would be no Momdani had there not been October 7th.0.99
00:16:14.680So I know what it's like here in Toronto with the rise of anti-Semitism and a mayor that has done nothing to push it back. In fact, there was one council meeting, people were complaining about some of the hate-filled marches in the streets, literally saying things like, we don't want no two-state, take us back to 48, from the river to the sea, all of that.
00:16:35.880And she said, well, you might think those are crazies, but they're my crazies. She knows they vote for her. So did nothing. I know what that hateful feeling is like in Toronto. What's it been like in New York, especially for a Jewish person?
00:16:53.620What I think to me is actually, Bannon didn't talk about this, but what was actually the most clever about Mamdani is the way in which he's been able to weaponize Jews against Jews.
00:17:08.000I think this is very, very important to note, because in this atmosphere of rising anti-Semitism, we are now at record levels of anti-Semitism in New York City. Jews in New York represent maybe 11% of the population and over 50% of the population.0.68
00:17:23.180It's one of the largest Jewish centers in the world.
00:17:26.060Right. But Jews in New York represent 11% of the population of New York, but over 50% of the population, 50% of the number of hate crimes.
00:17:34.360But in that context, in this sort of fear, what Mamdani has been able to do is take groups of Jews who say, you know, we actively believe that he's anti-Semitic.
00:17:47.140We actively believe that he's anti-Zionistic.
00:17:49.420We actively believe that he is anti-Israel.0.78
00:17:51.320And he's marshaled other Jews to speak on his behalf to convince the Jews that don't like him that he's actually a good guy. So it's sort of wild to think. And as also a black person, I'm thinking to myself, there's no parallel of this in sort of the black community.0.62
00:18:08.360Trump isn't marshalling pro-Trump Blacks in order to convince the anti-Trump Blacks that he's a good guy. But Mamdani has been incredibly clever in weaponizing Jew against Jew in order to legitimize him. And this is a tactic now you're seeing throughout all of the DSA.0.85
00:18:27.900So right now with Abdul al-Sayed, this past week you had Mandy Patinkin, you know, a big sort of progressive, you know, liberal Jew, you know, issuing videos saying, please vote for Abdul, he'll keep us safe because he's the best weapon against anti-Semitism.0.73
00:18:43.800That is a direct play, that's directly out of the playbook of Mamdani who did the same thing. And what he also did was create an atmosphere where basically Jews were forced to sort of prove that he was anti-Semitic, which again, in the world of identity politics in America, you know, as a black person or as a gay person, if I were to say I've experienced racism or anti-Semitism, nobody would question that. They would rally around me to support me. I wouldn't be forced to prove it.0.66
00:19:12.480But what Jews have had to do now is they've had to prove that they're experiencing antisemitism, or they've had to prove that they believe a leader like Mamdani is antisemitic. And this has been one of the most sort of clever yet craven tricks in the sleeve of the DSA and their playbook.0.84
00:19:29.580This is a classic populist move is that you have to find an enemy, somebody who you can point your movement towards as the villains who victimize them. And for the DSA and socialists in general, it's wealthy people, but it's also, and they frame it not as Jews, but as Zionists.0.69
00:19:46.740And this is an effective means that gives some Jews, those who value, say, progressive political identity more than they value, say, their Jewish identity, gives them permission to turn against Israel and other Jews because then they're not self-hating Jews.
00:20:01.880They're anti-Zionists, even though I think there's a very strong case to be made that anti-Zionism is simply a rebranding of hatred of Jews, just as anti-Semitism was itself a term invented by those that hated Jews to kind of add a pseudoscientific gloss to that hatred back in the 19th century.0.54
00:20:20.100Yeah, well, there's no doubt in my mind that anti-Zionism is just a repackaging. Let me take a quick break here. And when we come back, David, you wrote recently about how this is playing out in Michigan with Abdul El-Sayed and his obsession with Gaza. Is it actually hurting them with black voters in Detroit who don't want to hear about that all the time?
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00:23:53.400I was born in 1984 down the street in Rochester Hills.
00:23:56.560I was raised here in Michigan, went to the University of Michigan, rebuilt the health
00:24:00.140department in the city, led the health department in this county. And you want to ask me about what
00:24:03.900was happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious? I get it. But you were asked a question.
00:24:07.480This is kind of like the same. Yeah, I'm telling you, like, we I have no ties. We have no ties.
00:24:12.400So your mother had no ties. I have never had these conversations with my mother.
00:24:16.260I wasn't raised by my mother. You were unaware. But but but I'm just telling you that, like,
00:24:19.920you're using hearsay evidence from a tweet. It's just not serious.
00:24:22.920And that was Abdul El-Sayed talking about why he will not answer questions regarding whether his family has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:24:34.800Actually, before we go to your article, David, I'd like to ask both of you about that.
00:24:39.900This is a guy who, El-Sayed, there have been a couple of questions about him that have gotten national attention.
00:24:46.940And he just says, I don't want to talk about that.
00:24:48.700Hassan Piker, who is a an influencer who said America got what it deserved on 9-11, who's had some pretty horrific views on all kinds of things, but is now a darling of the far left of the Democrats.
00:25:03.640He's campaigned with El Saeed and he says, I don't want to talk about that.
00:25:35.300The first issue is that, you know, Al-Sayed is associating with—the reason why these questions are legitimate is that he is associating with folks, political parties like the Islamic Brotherhood or, you know, leftist streamer darlings like Hassan Piker, who advocate for extremely violent ideologies.
00:25:56.460This, to me, is the main issue. The ideologies that they advocate for, that they align themselves with, preach extreme levels of violence. And if, say, a white Christian candidate had aligned himself, say, with the Ku Klux Klan or with the neo-Nazi party or, say, even a black politician had aligned themselves with Louis Farrakhan and the black Muslims, then those questions would, of course, be legitimate and they would be asked.
00:26:23.680The other thing is that al-Sayed is sort of hiding or cloaking himself in the banner of Islamophobia. He's basically saying that these questions are Islamophobic, which, of course, is a dog whistle, which is, of course, a weaponizing of the identity politics that fuels the left and fuels America.
00:26:43.900And calling things Islamophobic is basically a tool of silencing. Once you deploy that phrase, it is used to silence questions, silence dissent. We're seeing it with Ilhan Omar, who's calling the very, very legitimate claims of immigration fraud as racist or Islamophobic witch hunts.
00:27:04.540So this is the issue with with al-Sayed. And the real question is, you know, why don't you just answer the questions, bro?
00:27:12.200J.D., do you think finding out if your Senate candidate has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood is something voters should want to know?
00:27:20.500Oh, of course, especially since El-Sayed himself corresponded with the old Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, Morsi, and urged him to purge dissenters from the ranks of the Egyptian government. So El-Sayed's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are not peripheral. They're not second, you know, removed through a half-sister. They're kind of direct. He corresponded with the old president.
00:27:43.360So, yes, this is a matter of concern, but it's also classic to turn around on accusations of totalitarianism or bigotry and just say, no, you're the bigot, you're the authoritarian.
00:27:53.680And the fact is, El-Sayed has associated with Hassan Piker, who is not only openly anti-Semitic, but has praised the Chinese government and has embraced totalitarianism.
00:28:05.300These are close and very troubling associations.
00:28:07.680association. So his bigotry, his sympathy for totalitarian systems, his embrace of economic
00:28:14.600authoritarianism. There are a lot of questions that El-Sayed, just like every other political
00:28:19.720candidate, ought to be asking when very unsavory connections come up. And he has turned them away,
00:28:28.240and I give him credit, very effectively so far. It's dangerous he's been able to turn them away,
00:28:33.220but he has gotten away with it so far. David, you were writing the other day about how this
00:28:39.160is playing out in Michigan. And since the New Deal, Black voters have been a solid part of
00:28:44.500the Democrat coalition. And Michigan has a substantial Black population, especially
00:28:51.500in and around Detroit, Wayne County, all of those areas. And you were saying that as if it's all
00:29:01.500about Gaza, if it's more about Gaza than Detroit, then voters notice. Yeah, I kind of termed this
00:29:10.380phrase Gaza-maxing. What you're seeing is, you know, Al-Sayed over-focusing on issues of
00:29:17.200violence and, you know, the genocide and the Israeli apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank,
00:29:22.740but Black voters in Michigan, particularly in Detroit, where Al-Sayed did not perform
00:29:27.860very well against his Democratic challenger during the primary, they're saying, well,
00:29:33.640And one of the issues is that al-Sayed has been quite unique in Democratic candidates
00:29:39.500in not really targeting Black voters as Black voters.
00:29:44.440He's creating sort of a platform that's a sort of Big Ten platform.
00:29:47.780I'm going to tackle, you know, Big Ten progressive issues that will trickle down and benefit
00:29:52.420all constituents, including Black constituents.
00:29:55.680But I'm not going to really talk about black issues per se. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it might not have been the best thing in this particular campaign where black voters could actually be the kingmakers in this election because they represent upwards of 12 percent of Michigan's voter base.
00:30:17.060And we're also seeing perhaps a big abandonment of Jewish voters from the Democratic Party because of Al-Sayed's ties to fundamentalism.0.54
00:30:45.560We saw Kamala Harris parachute in a couple weeks ago to sort of campaign with al-Sayed. They had a word salad festival, as you might say, making a lot of godly cook. But then we had Obama come in last weekend in an act that was felt like very much like a betrayal to many Jewish voters.
00:31:04.020In fact, when he announced that he was going to come to Michigan and campaign with Al-Sayed, his office released a statement basically reaffirming his commitment to Jewish voters and to Israel.
00:31:17.220So he knew what he was doing, and he basically said that Al-Sayed is sort of carrying the torch of his political and philosophical legacy.
00:31:25.880So he's in some ways almost anointed Al-Sayed as, I don't want to say his successor, but somebody who is succeeding his spiritual political values.
00:31:37.520And that's a very, very strong statement.
00:31:39.980So I think that it's going to be a big night on Tuesday for black voters, and they could very well determine whether or not Al-Sayed wins and, more importantly, whether he loses.
00:31:50.140what's fascinating to me is i i get all the michigan ads my cable package if it's an abc
00:31:57.020channel or a cbs channel comes from detroit so if i'm watching something local on there
00:32:01.920yeah i'm seeing ads for these guys i'm seeing ads from mike rogers who after being for trump's
00:32:07.640tariffs on canada and campaigning on it for a while recently put out an ad where he's sitting
00:32:12.980at a bar, uh, watching a Red Wings game. And he says, watching our Wings game while drinking a
00:32:19.580Labatt, how much better can it be? So he's drinking a Canadian beer, uh, and calling for the trade war
00:32:25.380to end, which, you know, they've softened bits of it to help out him and Susan Collins and Maine.
00:32:31.840JD, it's been quite a long time since a Republican won a Senate race in Michigan.
00:32:38.220As much as we're, you know, so many people are talking about a blue wave, this could
00:32:42.560end up going in the other direction with Mike Rogers flipping Michigan red.
00:32:54.640And that means that they're leaving behind not just ideological positions.
00:32:58.420I mean, the Republicans used to support free trade, relatively unfettered markets.
00:33:04.100That's definitely not the case anymore.
00:33:05.540The Democrats, too, though, are changing their ideological positions. And both parties, as they change where they stand on the issues, are leaving behind certain voters that used to be part of their bases. For the Republicans, obviously, we saw an exodus of a lot of free market types, a lot of people who were Republicans forever and said the party left them. And they were right. The party did leave them.
00:33:28.100Democrats are seeing the same phenomenon. They're left behind first white working class voters, but they're leaving behind the working class overall. That includes blacks and Hispanics, too. And the question is, I mean, can you replace them? And they are replacing them.
00:33:41.900They've become, the Democrats, the party of educated urban and suburbanites, kind of upper middle class to wealthy types. Can they do that fast enough to replace the people they're losing at the same time?
00:33:56.000So that's where the test comes when you're watching a race like a El Syed Rogers race in Michigan, where Rogers is now pretending. Well, not necessarily pretending. I mean, I think that a lot of politicians don't necessarily have core beliefs, but he's becoming somebody you wouldn't have expected him to be five or 10 years ago. So we don't know which way these races are going to shake out because a lot's up in the air as the parties become something that they weren't in the past.
00:34:22.640It's important to note that Donald Trump scored record numbers of Black votes in 2024. I mean, he had upwards of 25% of Black men voted for Donald Trump in 2024. And that's a remarkable number considering that he was running against a Black woman. And so the question is, will he retain that edge with Black voters this time? It's hard to tell.
00:34:45.380And I will say that, you know, speaking of Democrats, I'm a lifelong registered independent. I've never been a registered Democrat or Republican, but I've always voted Democrat. And this year, I voted Republican for the first time ever. The party lost me in my local campaigns because of their affiliation with anti-Semitism and support for far-left extremism.
00:35:11.980Well, what J.D. said there is maybe one of the most important parts of this conversation is that both parties are undergoing fundamental transformation. It's whether they stay on these paths.
00:35:24.200you know, after Trump, does the Republican Party stay as a nationalist populist party
00:35:31.580as opposed to a free market, free enterprise party? Did the Democrats move from being the
00:35:38.780working class party to the DSA party, a somewhat nationalist but very much socialist party?
00:38:13.200Tuesday will decide what is the pathway forward for 2028.
00:38:16.720And I think that, of course, for someone like me,0.55
00:38:18.840the issue around Israel, Gaza, anti-Zionism is very important.
00:38:22.800We're going to see whether or not these DSA tenants
00:38:29.180become actual Democratic Party platform litmus tests.
00:38:33.120You know, will any candidate who runs for president as a Democrat in 2028 be forced to denounce Israel? Will they have to say that there's been a genocide in Gaza? Will they have to agree to BDS? Will they have to agree to stopping arms shipments to Israel?
00:38:51.100We're already seeing shadows of that. Kamala Harris was on record a few weeks ago in Seoul sort of saying that, you know, perhaps Biden didn't prosecute the war. Perhaps Biden should have had a much heavier hand with Netanyahu in Gaza during the early part of the war.
00:39:10.480Obama was in Ireland talking about Israel overstepping in its founding. So I think what's
00:39:17.260interesting is that Tuesday will really establish whether or not Israel will become a major issue
00:39:23.180for the Democrats in 2028 and whether these sort of litmus tests will become a doctrine.
00:39:29.940Well, if we're the canary in the coal mine, J.D., that's going to be where it goes. I know in
00:39:34.940California, they're picking up on our land acknowledgement frenzy that we've got going
00:39:40.120here. And it started on our West Coast and spread across the country. It'll start on your West Coast
00:39:45.380and spread. And as far as what David was talking about, do you have to denounce Israel, call it a0.90
00:39:53.040genocide and support BDS to get the nomination? That's what you had to do to win in Toronto area
00:40:01.080mayoral races this week. So if we're the canary in the coal mine, you're headed in that direction.
00:40:05.780Is America ready for that? Well, no. And I also this country is very fragmented. So we may not
00:40:14.280end up with a unified verdict across the board as to what happens. But look right now at what
00:40:19.780leading figures in the Democratic Party and in the Republican Party are saying those leading
00:40:25.100figures who think that they still have careers ahead of them, because what they're comfortable
00:40:29.340saying in public shows where they think their parties are going in the future. And you're not
00:40:34.040seeing a few Democrats, people like Jared Polis and Josh Shapiro, pushing back against the socialist
00:40:40.780push and also pushing back against the anti-Semitism. But you're not seeing a huge
00:40:45.900number. A lot more are embracing the term genocide, accusing Israel of that. They're
00:40:51.820embracing denunciations of Zionism. It's not overt anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews as such.
00:40:59.340But it's that one-step-removed, rebranded take on it to the point where, you know, you're watching Charles Schumer obviously do a two-step as he waits out what's left of his career.
00:41:10.020And he's not coming out and firmly denouncing this movement.
00:41:13.360So you can tell where he thinks his party is going.
00:41:16.000What happens next Tuesday might determine where the parties go and what those politicians say in the future.
00:41:22.880But where they think it's going right now is pretty clear.
00:41:25.940Not all of the DSA candidates have to win.
00:41:29.120We've mostly been talking about Senate races, but there's a number of congressional ones in New York and Denver and elsewhere where DSA candidates could win.
00:41:38.360And, you know, assuming I think it's wise to assume that the Democrats are going to take the House at the least.
00:47:14.500So I think that one of the things they both have in common is they've been very canny in their ability to deploy aesthetics and a very uniform look for each of their sites.
00:47:26.020Hassan Piker, for example, fits this perfectly.
00:47:28.740J.D., they both seem to like or distrust the elites.
00:47:34.040They both seem to distrust corporate America.
00:47:36.980Is that kind of, you know, that's where I'm getting at with are they both two sides of the same coin?
00:47:42.580Yeah, absolutely. They're both populist movements. I mean, the progressives on the left, MAGA on the right. There has been a kind of a worldwide free-floating dissatisfaction with the way things are with liberal democracy, with elites over the last 15, 20 years.
00:48:00.560And we've seen the elites lose their gatekeeper status over media and over communications, which has helped kind of accelerate this dissatisfaction, even as people, for whatever reason, because we're living in probably the most prosperous time in human history, but for whatever reason, have become very, very unhappy with the state of the world, with the state of their lives, and certainly with the state of the politics.
00:48:25.340MAGA stepped up and had an answer to that and villains to point to.
00:48:30.100And progressives have stepped up, have their own answer to that, also have villains to
00:48:35.100And yes, they represent something that is very similar.
00:48:39.060They represent an answer to this free-floating dissatisfaction with the status quo.
00:48:44.000I happen to think they also both offer terrible, terrible so-called solutions and that there's
00:48:49.720an awful lot of bigotry and hate to be had in these populist movements.
00:48:53.180But they resemble each other more than they're different.
00:48:57.200All right. Last question is, give me a race or two that you're going to be watching on Tuesday night as results roll in in the midterms.
00:49:05.960I'll be watching Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan.
00:49:09.260Of course, if he wins, it will sort of solidify this DSA sweep and I think will radically change the party, the Democratic Party forever.
00:49:18.920And, of course, the mayoral election of Anita Rahman in Los Angeles. If she wins, then we will have DSA-aligned, heavily anti-Zionistic, anti-Israel mayors in the two largest cities in America in less than a year.
00:49:34.020jd i'll be watching two senate races in particular the michigan race because el sayed i think is
00:49:41.200extremely dangerous i also think he's very smart and he's going to uh indicate to democrats if he
00:49:47.000wins that uh something like him is the future of their party uh talarico versus paxton in texas
00:49:53.720i'll also be watching because talarico is a couple of points ahead of most polls and if he can pull
00:49:58.760out in texas even given his wildly uh progressive past then that also that that means that this
00:50:06.080reshaped democratic party um can put down roots and and win races almost any place in the country
00:50:12.640yeah we didn't even really get into texas versus talarico not exactly dsa but um if if the
00:50:20.400democrats take a seat the republicans have held since 1961 what a night of course uh you could