Bulwark Takes - LIVE REACTION: Bill and Tim on the New York Mayoral Primary and ZOHRAN-MENTUM

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Bill Kristol and Tim Miller break down the NYC mayoral race as Cuomo concedes to Mamdani. 

Hey everybody, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with Bill Crystal. We're doing an impromptu live stream as we have some pretty remarkable numbers coming in out of New York and New York Mayor's race. Before I get to the details on that, I'm going to let people get on in here, make sure. If you've been interested in getting more of your YouTube subscriber to the Bulwark, you want to get ad free. If you want to get some of the bonus content that we offer here on YouTube, you can become a YouTube plus member, which is for the YouTube sickos. And you know, we're out here grinding in the content minds. I mean, Bill Crystal is 87 years old. He's putting out more content than most of the competitors in the space.

These little 21 year olds can't even compete with his stamina. So anyway, if you want to see all of that, you can go on YouTube plus. Bill, that sounded about right. Do you have any other? You're a big YouTube plus person. I'm a big, I'm a new to 24 seven, you know, barely even sleep. You know what I mean? You're streaming. All right. Hopefully folks have gotten in. I want to, I wanted to get to the results here. We don't have an official result yet, but all signs point to Zoram Mondani, the Democratic socialist candidate winning the Democratic nomination for mayor in New York.

As of the latest numbers I saw, he's winning in this first ballot of this ranked choice voting by a couple percent. He might end up winning this first round by somewhere in the ballpark of 3% to 5%. I don't know, maybe a little more than that. And then you'll go through the ranked choice. We thought this might be something that would take days.

But given that Andrew Cuomo's chief competition was in second, third, and third right now is Brad Lander, who had co-endorsed with Mamdani. So logic would indicate that most of the Lander support will end up going to Mamdani and that he'll end up winning this one. We have Michael Lang,

so I know both of us have been following, has already called it himself, saying that Zoran's gonna win. So that's like the top takeaway. If you look at the map, Bill, I want to get your thoughts. And the map tells the story. I'm cribbing this from our friends at Decision Desk HQ, but Cuomo's strong areas are essentially

limited to the Orthodox Jewish areas like Borough Park. He also did well in some of the blackest precincts and the precincts that has the highest percentage of black residents. And then a few ultra wealthy neighborhoods around Fifth Avenue. So some of your some bill some of your old folks you went to high school with. So that's not a that's not a majority making map there. For Cuomo's aren't that surprisingly well out in Queens out in Staten Island like winning half the precincts in some of these areas Doing kind of surprisingly and obviously is gonna do well in Brooklyn, you know

And maybe the hipster neighborhoods in Queens, but it seems like he did surprisingly well even outside of that So that's that's kind of the initial observation on the map bill What would you what do you make of what we've seen so far? I mean we should just step back for a minute and whatever one thinks of the result and there's a policy or implications. It's pretty amazing. I mean, he was literally 2% in the polls, not like with Buttigieg, not to minimize Pete's achievement at the president in 2019-20, but not at 2%, you know, a year and a half out.

He was at 2% this year in what, February, I believe. He started to move up. But three weeks ago still, it was, well, gee, he might make a little more of a race than we thought. He could be within 10 or 12. Maybe with the Rack-Choice voting then and Lander being in third place and being endorsing Mamdani, it could be very, very close at the end. It looks to me like he's going to lead by six, seven points, maybe.

Then the early vote just in the last hour and a half, the early vote came in and it was about eight points for Mamdani. People thought, okay, that's kind of what they expected if it was going to be very, very close because Cuomo would do better on the same day on the election day vote. The election day vote. The election day vote has barely changed the numbers actually. I mean and the other thing is as you said the breadth, I mean you exaggerate a little, but Cuomo he is gonna end up with you know 400,000 votes or something so it's not like only 12

Orthodox Jews voted for him. I mean the precincts he was winning. 15 people at you know 1025th Avenue or something like that across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But still, it is pretty striking the breadth of...you can't get the number of votes Montgomery is going to get, which is going to be in the low 40%, 40% plus range in a 1.15 maybe, 1.2 maybe million voter primary. New York City is a big city. People are just one city primary.

It's like the size of many states. So it's a lot of people voted. And you can't get that number of votes. I'm getting votes from everyone, including lots of middle-class whites, actually, honestly. Yeah, right. I mean, look at Staten Island. It's just hipsters and ethnic groups and youth. I mean, obviously, the rest have done overwhelmingly well with young voters. I don't know the city well enough. I haven ahead of that time to look at many reds. I mean, results by borough. Let me just give you the results by borough right now as it stands.

So Cuomo plus nine in Staten Island. Some of the folks I was seeing this morning looking at projections were like, you'd win by 40. Yeah. So you are obviously doing well with working class voters in Staten Island. In the Bronx, Cuomo is plus 18. Mom Donnie is winning in Queens with 90% in that was and then and then I think that was kind of expected that he

would win narrowly in Manhattan which he has and then and then roll up in Brooklyn so you know it is I think the surprising result does come you know kind of in those outer boroughs where it was thought that Cuomo would do much better yeah it must mean he's he won those outer boroughs have a lot of different diverse groups and a lot of hipsters in Brooklyn. They had this one part that I guess some of the New York political pros dubbed the commie corridor,

which is the hipster areas through Brooklyn. And so it's not like Manhattan is, it's not like Greenwich Village, the only hip place in New York anymore, anything like that. So it doesn't look complicated to look burlap. But basically Cuomo had to win Queens. His father was from Queens.

The Cuomo family has won a lot of elections in Queens over 40, 50 years. And in that respect, Mamdani looks like he's going to actually defeat Cuomo in Queens. The more conservative people would usually say of the big four boroughs, Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, is pretty astonishing. It shows the degree of revulsion that obviously, it shows the Maldonado ran an extremely effective campaign. I want to hear you since you interviewed him, I want to hear from you about that. Yeah, I have some thoughts on that. But it also shows that people wanted change and they did not want a 67- old three term, almost three term

governor of New York who left he had to resign in disgrace and he decided to come back to the city in which he didn't like much and and you know bestow upon the city the gift of his mayority which he didn't seem to, mayorship which he didn't seem to work, want to work very hard for. I mean it is a kind of in that respect this is a novelistic situation. Don't you think, I mean if you you were, this is one of the, of all the races you've seen, I've seen, I feel like this one fits the most that have a kind of well-written political novel, you know, where you begin to... Oh yeah.

And the characters, like how would you even have written it? I'm on Donnie just in a lot of ways. And I think JVL wrote this as kind of a caricature of what like a national review Republican would think of a left person. Right? So he is a fictional character. And then Cuomo is such a character. He's a professor.

He's Muslim. He was born, I think he was born in Uganda. His mom is from India, I believe. I mean, he went to Bowdoin. And Cuomo is such a caricature. I mean, obviously the sex pest element, but he's a Nepo baby. I like the whole thing all the way down. You kept talking about the hipster neighborhoods, Bill.

And I think that we might have a new, we might be able to kind of create a hipster index based on the percent victory above Mondani. I'm looking at his biggest neighborhoods. He's winning Ridgewoods plus 69. Nice. Bushwick plus 66. East Williamsburg plus 61.

Green Pointing plus 57. Up in Astoria, the Green Point plus 57 up in Astoria. The hipsters are moving up to Astoria now plus 52 Bed-Stuy plus 43. I mean, I think that sort of tells the story. East Village plus 37. If you look at the Cuomo side, I mean, he's running up the score up in like far Rockaway, you know, places like that. So I looked at where I grew up and, you know, Cuomo's winning the Upper West Side, which is actually a little riskier than what I live there. But he's not slaughtering Mondavi there.

When you add the Lander vote, and he's the cause endorsed with Mondavi, the controller, Jewish has that appeal to the Upper West Side. It's even where they're a little bit ahead of. So on ranked stories voting, let's put it this way, if it gets the final round, Mamdani will be close to even in places with Cuomo. Yeah, might win. Like the Upper West Side.

Cuomo is only plus four. You still lose the Upper East Side. So you still write about the Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue folks. They're not, I don't know. There must be, I mean, I've been texting with a few of my friends. My friends in New York are, didn't like Cuomo, but basically did not vote for Bob Donahue. So they went with Cuomo voters, or at least put Cuomo on their rank and didn't put Bob

Donahue. A conscientious objector is Zell and their Myri voters. They seem to be taking it okay so far. I mean, they're all looking at property in the I want to say. Property in the suburbs. Well, their tax rate is going to go up. But we'll see. I don't love that. The free grocery store that they'll be able to go to. I want to say that.

Well, one other thing just about how astonishing it is. The one was over on overcame is in addition to all things you said, but the Quomo name that how low he was in the polls. Cuomo had just burned a ton of money and there was a ton of cash on TV, swamped Momdami on the financial side. And this is kind of a little pet issue of mine. The TV ad campaign just ain't working like it used to. And you saw this in the GOP primary, I was always banging the drum about DeSantis. Especially in these high impact races where people are paying attention, they're getting

their information from these things, not from the TV ads. A lot of rich New Yorkers blew a lot of cash on Cuomo's TV ads, so sucks to be you. They probably should have circled the wagon around a better person. Yeah, go ahead. One point to that, they ran up massively. The Super PACs Bloomberg put in $8 million and so in the last three, four, five weeks, it's very, a lot of evidence after the polling that Donny gained in the last three, four, five weeks. And the best proof of that is that his election

date vote was as good, almost as good as his early vote, which is, you know, those are late, the late break must have been, you know been when they asked that question on the presidential exit polls, when did you decide? When did you decide? I bet. So you're absolutely right. The TV ads did no good. And if anything, we're a contrarian indicator. Yeah.

Tough break. So here's what I want to say about Zoran. Because Zoran's gotten the business around here from some of our colleagues in particular. And I, when I interviewed him, I had a chance to ask him about all the things I was concerned about with him from a policy standpoint. Some of the stuff that didn't get attention is stuff I cared more about, which was particularly the track record of mayors such as him, of progressive mayors. Look at Brandon Johnson in Chicago is doing a horrible job. And even most Democrats think he's doing a horrible job.

And so I was concerned, is he going to be able to kind of to go against the grain in a way that some others haven't? Well, we might have a chance to see. It turns out, though, he'll have a general election against probably Eric Adams, maybe Andrew Cuomo again. But if Andrew Cuomo gets embarrassed tonight, I'm kind of I'll be kind of surprised if he ran again. But we'll see. But here's what I here here's what I was impressed with was Zoran.

And I, I have been out here saying to any Democrat that will listen, the, like they're all running old playbooks and that a big time races, maybe it's different in house races and you know, they're different, you know, Abigail Spanberger, I think has has a different calculus in Virginia because, you know, there are a lot of things happening in Virginia, but in these competitive high-profile races, they need to start running more modern campaigns, both tactically, which means going on podcasts, freewheeling podcasts and showing your personality, being authentic, taking hard questions, not being scared of talking to my ass and having

Kamsky be your fanboy on the side right like doing it letting her up showing people that you're a real person for all of the Little controversy that surrounded it afterwards. I heard from a lot of people Who are who are not your prototypical? Zoran voter who listened to it like oh he was better than I was better than I expected. Right? Like that stuff matter. People care about that stuff. Now you should have the, have the balls to go out and make a case and, and be yourself and go into hostile territories, go everywhere. As my friend Liz Smith says, who was Pete's advisor, Zoran did that. Like he went everywhere. He did Derek Thompson in my podcast.

He did come down like he did. He did all of the things. He was out there. Number two, put it at the center of the campaign, not the identity stuff, but, but, you know, fine, working class concerns. He did that. You know, he, he campaigned like he was a man of the people. He was Andrew Cuomo, literally, this stuff is kind of stupid when it comes to actual governance, but this stuff matters in campaigns. Andrew Cuomo took a car, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, kind of stupid when it comes to actual governance, but this stuff matters in campaigns.

Andrew Cuomo took a car five blocks from the house that he's staying in, although he even lives in Manhattan right now, to his voting place today. He had a driver and got out of the back seat of the car. Zoran, I think it was last night, maybe two nights ago, walked the length of Manhattan, was fist bumping guys They're taking videos some people were shouting bullshit at him. He was shouting bullshit back That is real like that shows that you're willing to humble yourself to like to be a Democratic politician That's among the people that cares about working-class people

He is also able to break through the kind of political chattering class to folks who are outside of that. Like any Democrat can do this. I got into a little argument with one of like a DSA type advisor on Twitter last night who was like you can only do that if you're if you're a Democratic Socialist. Like you have to be the whole package. I disagree with that. I was like any Democrat could do this. Maybe it wouldn't resonate quite as much as he did with certain demos for sure., any Democrat could do this. Maybe it wouldn't resonate quite as much as he did with certain demos for sure, but any Democrat could, you know, focus on working class issues, could get outside the bubble, could stop campaigning so cautiously, you know, could let it rip a little

more, could learn a little bit from Trump's tactics. Not that Zorn and Trump are anything alike, but like just with that, like being yourself and not like caring about not being cautious about your words. And that's what people want now. And for him, it resonated. And I think that despite my disagreements with them and my deep skepticism that he'll actually be a good mayor, we will see if he gets that chance. Like people got excited. And the Democrats have had a long period of not exciting anybody. And I think that if they thought

they were going to put up Andrew Cuomo's corpse and jack him through with TV ads, sorry, that doesn't work anymore. And I hope that Zoran's campaign is a lesson to people of all ideologies on the left about how to run a campaign in the year 2025, not in 2003. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think as a person, I didn't follow, I haven't seen him that much. I saw him on your interview. I'm not inclined to think that a lot of the standard lefty socialist policies that he is...I don't quite know how much he cares about a lot of those, but I guess they're

sort of close to his heart. Those aren't going to work for any right control and the public supermarket just because the regular supermarket is gouging everyone. I don't know. I bet the margins for supermarkets in New York City are not very high. So I don't know. I think a lot of this work, I'm not happy about the bringing the Intifada home or what's the right word?

Yeah, globalizing the Intifada. You don't think we should have an Intifada in New York and Queens? And that's a very sensitive thing in New York where there was a problem. Yeah, no, totally. It was a terrible answer. A terrible answer. And he believes it, which is kind of good or bad, that he believes it as opposed to just sort of saying it

because some of his audiences want to hear it. But I don't know, is that going to affect what he actually does as mayor? I mean, he's going to have to get along with the big institutions in New York. He seems like a very interesting person, though, I've got to say. I mean, I was struck also by the... He walked 10 miles to Manhattan on Friday afternoon and evening.

Manhattan's a very long, actual island, and so it's a long walk. It's very diverse. There's some very poor, a lot of Hispanic aborers up north, and then Harlem, parts of Harlem, and then Columbia, and then the West Coast side of it. And he just dead. The interactions when you, I watched some clips after you were curious and he's very good. I mean, some of this is just being a good politician. You know, some of this is Bill Clinton and, and AOC and other people who are just talented

calls, right? And he, and he is, and he's been in politics for a while, right? I mean, he's already been in the state assembly for four years. Part of being a good politician is just being uncomfortable in your own skin. And part of being comfortable in your own skin is just being let to be comfortable in your own skin. And I think that that is something that, you know, you can't teach it to some people. Jeb just naturally wasn't that comfortable in his own skin. George W was, right? So some of it is innate, but some of it is like, I don't know their example

I think that there are examples of folks who have been made and I think Kamala's example So he was more cautious than she needed to be and being a huge underdog helped in a way This what was here to lose for sure. I not just true Do I also work for John Huntsman is a huge underdog who was very uncomfortable on his own skin? So, you know, it's not it's not a guarantee What about the interview so I saw the interview, but what struck you as you dealt with them a little before and after and just kind of the whole process of it? You've done so many of these now. What struck you just as a kind of in that respect in the 45 minutes?

I'm going to answer that question. But we do have some breaking news. Andrew Quinn was conceded to Zoran Mandami. So he is going to, I mean, there was some discussion. He's not waiting for the, that's amazing. It was, there's all this press, it's going to be a week till we get the, all the, some old, you know, late mail ballots in. And that's when the rank, they don't even announce the rank choice calculations, you know, that the computers do until a week from now. So he's, he's conceding the actual final vote a week before people even expected to know

the result. Yeah, wild. So, and I think that also signals to me that he's not going to try to run on one of these goofy lines in the general, but who knows? I don't know, egomaniacs will do what egomaniacs want to do. My answer to your question about what's striking about Zoran is I want to put the globalized intoiphotic answer to the side here because the way in which it was different I think is telling. On all of the other answers, you know, we did, I did the thing with Cam when it was good twink, bad twink where I was asking the hard questions, you know, he was asking these two ones on all of the hard questions, you could tell that he had actually thought about what the critique was of the left and had come up with a smart answer to it.

Was it an answer? Like, again, if he wins the mayor, she ever, he wins the general, we'll see whether he actually follows up. But on the question of how too much red tape and too much regulation and how, I asked him about how Mayor Johnson in Chicago, it's like when you bill to get new affordable housing units, he had a point system where it was like, if you were a BIPOC, you got 11 points,

but if you were able to save money, you only got three points. And so like all this stuff that just makes everything cost more than it needs to and makes it right, increases the price price everybody. He had a lot of very good thoughts about that. Thoughts about you know how they're overpaying consultants. You can tell he's trying to get me you know like appeal to me about how he was like yeah

as a progressive I want this to be more efficient government. We shouldn't let the Elon own Doge like we should want to be efficient because we want government to go. You know, and that sort of stuff. He was like, I think more malleable than you see sometimes from folks, DSA type folks. I thought that was interesting. He also is extremely affable and extremely easy to get along with is the other thing just to extent that this matters. Like you know, I have politicians, I learned the most from them

in the two minutes before we go on, two minutes after, right? Because a lot of them are dicks, are like very cold. He was like, he was chilling. He was hanging. He was very comfortable. And, and I think that was impressive. The inability to do to offer the malleable answer on globalized antifada to me was less a sign that like He's an anti-semite or he hates jews. I'll let other people out and that's that's not my fight To me. It was a sign that that was an area where he didn't want to pick a fight with His core base which was a lot of the folks have been out there protesting what he'd been out there at the protests And to me that would worry me a little bit about him as a mayor, if he's not gonna pick a fight

with like the activist groups when it's called for, I mean, sometimes it's not called for, sometimes they'll be aligned with them. That doesn't particularly augur well, right? Cause just, if you're gonna be a fucking mayor of New York, it's a shit job, you know? There'd be people complaining from your left, from your right, from your center, from your up.

And it just, he did seem, he seemed reluctant to just say something that he thought might upset the core base. And to me, that was like the red flag of that interview more than, even though I really dislike the phrase globalized entafada, but the substance of it I also disagreed with. But like projecting out to being a mayor, that was the one part of the interview I thought was kind of a red flag. I suppose one test, an interesting thing,

will be, what will he do in the next few days? I mean, he'll obviously celebrate with his supporters as he should and praise them and thank them for the hard work. Will he, this would be in a way both conventional, but I think in this case the right thing to do, which would be, will he go meet with Jewish leaders? Will he call together a meeting of the Jewish kind of establishments in New York and rabbis, but also business types and all this, and the Jewish Federation and so to say, look,

we're going to differ on some things and maybe on foreign policy on mayor, so I'm not going to have really much to do with it. But I don't agree with you guys who are so pro-Israel, frankly, and fine. But I'm going to be diligent in protecting equal rights for everyone. Synagogues deserve the same protection as everyone else does. The police, if Jews are being harassed, they shouldn't be harassed. I think it would be important, he could get a lot of credit for saying pretty mild things that are basically everyone should believe, you know, equal protection for Jewish

students and Jewish Jews and neighborhoods and so forth. He doesn't have to go cater to the most extreme people on the Jewish right, so to speak. I think that would help him. I think it would also take the edge off the globalized theater tooto thing. And actually, honestly, would suggest that maybe could be a good mayor. I was thinking about the mayor thing. I mean, he's so young, it's just hard to know. I mean, I think a lot of these very progressive mayors,

I'll make a weird suggestion. These progressive mayors have not done well, basically. And partly it's because being progressive these days, it's a combination of, it might be slightly wacky economic policies and so forth and criminal justice policies, but also the identity politics stuff which you alluded to in the University of Chicago. In a funny way, being a socialist could, I mean, real quote socialist, but he is a quote

socialist, he's like literally a member of the Democratic Socialists, could free him from some of that. I mean, in a way, they should, look, so being a socialist means you sort of believe in more equality and you believe in government should do a fair amount to make certain things happen and housing and other areas, but it also doesn't necessarily imply quite the 2020-ish, you know, progress.

You can free yourself from the shackles of the identity politics. Yes, and also some of the other progressive, just kind of silly, that, you know, all that massive regulatory bullshit that Mitochlorozy is never one correctly complain about yeah wasn't created really by that's not left That was created by liberals who were your environmentalists. We can't build anything for eight years here I'm also we have to be very careful about knocking over one, you know, I don't know whatever it is

You're zoning all that he could be much more In a funny way and he has sort of reached out, my impression is you follow the campaign more than I, to the abundance, you know, of theorists, which is the centrist democratic position really, which is anti-red tape, anti-excessive regulation. Let's, you know, we built the Empire State Building back in 19, whatever that was, 31,

where the mayor of New York was pretty left-wing, kind of called himself maybe even occasionally a socialist, LaGuardia, I think it was LaGuardia. They built the building in a year and two months or something, because they didn't have all these regulations. I mean, there's a kind of way in which you, I don't know, could he turn that into a forward looking, not genuinely progressive kind of liberalism as opposed to just catering to a ton of groups and putting even more of a foot on the pedal for doing anything, a lot of things for the city. I don't know.

I don't know. I wouldn't bet on it, but maybe. I've got Derek Thompson, who wrote the Abundance book on the pod tomorrow, and someone should talk to him about it. He also interviewed Jaron, and they had talked about this concept called sewer socialism, which is kind of like a socialist that's focused more on like, you know, fixing the sewer. Like making things work.

The term, I know this, but I looked this up at Harvard and said, you know what, when we started to win, I thought, I wonder who's the last socialist mayor of a big city in New York? I had this vague memory of Milwaukee was the last one to have had one. They had had several couples in the 20th century, interestingly, German socialists. And Frank Zeidler, I think it's Z-E-I-D, I think it's Zeidler, maybe Zeidler, 1948 to 1960, was a successful free-term Socialist mayor of Milwaukee. That's not like ancient times, right? 48 to 60. And that's for you, but not for me. I remember a lot of it differently. And the Milwaukee Braves were there.

Another was born in 1959. Eddie Matthews, Warren Spahn, Spahn in Spain. I mean, it was great. It was a great moment. Anyway, Milwaukee had a pretty good three decades, three, 12 years there as I understand it. A lot of modernization and the term sewer socialism, I believe comes from his mayoralty, actually, this last socialist mayor, who was a kind of get things done sort of socialist.

And so anyway, just started. Yeah. Yes. No, no, no. That so anyway, just sort of, yes. No, no, no, that's what I wrote. That's interesting. This is what you're here for, Bill, to bring this historic. What I, my is more of the political history, which is a lot of, I know we have a lot of Zoran fans who've come in to watch this. And some of them, I think, wanted us to cry or something. I'm not, I'm not that sad. So I'm happy. Welcome to the Zoran fans. Except for I saw one person with a free Luigi comments down there. This is not the safe space for that.

OK, we do not support murder here at the bulwark. If you're a free Luigi man, I don't know, the Hassanabi or the breaking points feed are available for you. But we can ask about the... But before everybody gets dancing too hard, the example that I came up with was in Buffalo, just up from New York, they had the Democrats that elected, I don't, I think it might have been a DSA person, I can't remember if it was a valid socialist or not, but a DSA style,

a Zoran style candidate. And then everybody kind of circled the wagons around a more centrist kind of independent candidate who ended up winning in the general election. And that could very well happen with Eric Adams. As crazy as that sounds, it could happen with Eric Adams. And I think at this point, you'd have to beg Zora on the favorite, but the fight's still there. Dan Pfeiffer, 100% concurs with me.

So I get nervous when I'm on the same page as Dan Pfeiffer, former Obama Communications Director, but he wrote this. This results a blaringly loud message to those in the Dem establishment who still cling to old politics, recite focus group talking points, and are too afraid to say what needs to be said. We have a lot to learn from Zoran Mondami and his campaign. To that point, one of the things we wanted to get to check off on this, Pod, is I want you to rant about how fucking weak the Democratic establishment was that they ended up choosing Andrew Cuomo as their horse and that they've been totally incapable of doing a lot of things.

And this is just kind of the latest example of it. But why don't you cook on that for a second? Yeah. So just to be clear to all these people who are thought, hey, I guess to this podcast, and high excitement, I wouldn't have voted, would not have voted from undone. I think they know. I think that's why they're here. No, they can be surprised.

I'm woke these days. You are woke. You have that great comment that transgender folks- I do think, Adam, on this question of the general election and stuff, one way to stop that from happening, I do think, would be to reassure people, not by selling out any of his principles or changing who he is, but by reassuring people that he does believe in, obviously, in public safety and equal justice, that he's not going to be on some kind of vendetta against Jewish organizations or Jewish student groups or

anything like that, and showing just what any mayor would do, reach out to all the constituencies, including those that didn't support him. He needs to sound a little like George H.W. Bush did after the election, whenever I'm going to be mayor of all the people. So I still don't do that. That baby is doing it right now or in a few minutes. But having said, so you can blame the voters of New York. You can blame all those, I guess, Gen Z, Millennial types and all this for voting from the hipsters

and down the comedy corridor there and the parts of Brooklyn. When I hear the names, I still think of them. Just for a laugh, Andrew Cuomo during his concession speech said of Zoran, he touched young people. See, this is why, this is why you should, this is why the establishment's sitting in circle there, wagging around at sex pest. That's not a great quote, Andrew. Anyway, I'm sorry about the video.

That's good. Yeah, that's, that Yeah, that's that'll, yeah, that'll confirm, I think, the 44% or whatever, but if it's wrong, and the 63% who didn't vote for Cuomo that they maybe they made the right decision today. Yeah, that's kind of amazing. So he yeah, so I think, I think he can avert the fate that that happened to that fellow in Buffalo. I mean, if Zoran sounds like a real lunatic, it isn't inconceivable that you could get, I mean, you got 44% of the vote the first round,

you didn't get 50, it was the Democratic primary, there are still 20, 25, it's a small Republican party in New York, but there's some 20%, 25% of the votes just out there. It's gonna be available to an anti-Zoran candidate to start with, and it could be Adams, it could be the Republican candidate, this guy Sliwa. They'll have to-

With the hats? It's not going to be the Republican guy with the hats. The other problem Adams is having is that he cuts the deal with Trump. Well, I mean, just as a practical problem, like, he cut a deal with Trump to help him on immigration deportations. And so in New York City, you know, might have moved a little bit more towards Trump this time than it did last time, but you can't run, you can't win as mayor of New York running as a pro-Trump person.

So I think that's going to be a big issue. You can totally demonize the opposite of the opponent, which they'll try to do it sadly. But anyway, it's a lot depends on assuming Zoran is, he seems like a very competent politician. So I'm going to assume he handles this fine and most likely wins. Democrat, but so you can blame the voters or you can blame, or the democratic establishment types can blame themselves. And I guess I am just astonished

that they let the alternative become Cuomo. There were other people running who were sort of serious people. They could have all banded behind one of those people. They could have recruited someone in, a business type, a Bloomberg type or something, if they wanted or any young man, Richie Torres, they could have made him run, right?

I mean, as the kind of more moderate, young, hip candidate, there are plenty of people around and they sort of, I dealt with them a little bit and they were kind of, it's got us more to it, it's very expensive. And yeah, I was with someone, I should even say, who would have, interesting, not a well known person, but an interesting 45-year-old business person. It would have been never run, but the kind of person you could imagine really taking off if a guy got some airtime and so forth. This person talked to people about doing it, but no one was really willing to step up.

It looks like Cuomo's going to run. I go, it's too expensive to try to be Cuomo, and the name is so strong, and he's got some of the old guys behind him from the old days. I mean, there was this pathetic passivity. This is New York, right? I mean, how much money is there in New York?

How many people are there who should care about the future of New York, who are now gonna lament the future of New York? And they give a little money at the end to the Cuomo SuperPAC so they could place $25 million on ads, as you said earlier. And that's what they did. And incidentally, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, they're both from New York City.

It's the first time, I don't know, maybe in American history, where the speaker, not the speaker, the majority leader, the majority leader, sorry, the majority leader of the House, the majority leader, you know what I mean, and the majority leader of the Senate are both from New York City, maybe not the first time, certainly rare. And they couldn't get themselves and 20 donors together and say, hey, we can't have Cuomo. This 33-year-old is a nice kid, but he can't become mayor this time. And so we have to do something else.

I don't know. If a political party can't, that's what parties do. I mean, what is the case for political parties? It's not that they're full of policy geniuses. It's not that they're, you know, the most upstanding, wonderful civic organizations in the world. It's that in the crunch, they can make some tough decisions and do some, stop the bad things from happening and get some serious people into these races and support them. The DNC is running a YouTube competitive of ours right now, which is like a Potemkin North Korean style fake news effort.

So I think that's what the DNC was up to. Look, here's the, if you just combine all these things, it just, as this race is a microcosm of the broader problem for the Democratic establishment, they put up a guy way past his prime and everybody circled the wagons around him. They ran a campaign straight out of 1998 with Andrew Clabo Where it's like literally like he ran a fucking Rose Garden campaign for mayor of New York when he hasn't even lived in New York for a while Yeah, they they did not I Refused to have any kind of creative thinking about what the potential options are. And they let a populist upstart

candidate just run circles around them. And he absolutely deserved to win, just purely based on the campaign mechanics of it. He just totally did. And it just shows how feckless and weak the democratic establishment is and uncreative. To your point know, to your point about the Cuomo, it's like, Oh, we're just going to, we'll settle for it. You know, if you're just, if you put yourself in the head of like the big donors and the big strategists in New York and it's like, Oh, well, what are we going to do with that? Cuomo could have got, could have been beaten. You know, they put up a dynamic center left candidate with name ID with money behind them.

They could have run Cuomo into the, Zoran ran Cuomo on the ground doing TikToks and doing podcasts and walking down the street. They could have run Cuomo into the ground earlier. He was a horrible candidate. It was a moral abomination that they got behind him. And I don't know, hopefully it's a wake up call for them because man, they got their butt whooped by Zoran tonight and it's gonna be interesting these elections It's very unpredictable often an election is an election. It happens. Sure. The city gets a mayor for four years It has no great national significance, but it's sort of interesting wasn't the San Francisco election

I think was interesting in a slightly different way because they have a more moderate mayor now is sort of tough on crime, but also An interesting person right around it somewhat fresh, I think, campaign, which I think fits into your point. Maybe it wasn't entirely the ideology. It was the kind of, it was a new face, a fresh face for a city. The irony is the city's been badly governed, in my opinion, for 12 years by lefties after being pretty well governed by Bloomberg and actually having the mass economy. Bloomberg's last term was pretty shaky, but okay.

Fair enough. His first two were pretty good. Yeah, and Giuliani, for all his problems, his first one was pretty good. So you had a pretty big recovery of New York, is all I'm saying, from the 90s and 2000s. We had a pretty crummy last 10, 15 years. The bears were, Adam's a little complicated, but certainly de Blasio left. Right for, I think, a modernized new version of Bloomberg-ish type stuff, which is what abundance is.

All the abundance stuff, which is new and fresh, which I like, don't get me wrong, is kind of Bloombergian. Bloomberg is a little less nanny state. Bloomberg had his nanny state. Bloomberg had the nanny state. Yes. Bloomberg had the nanny state stuff with the big, the dikes, the cokes, the giant cokes. What was that about again? Big gulps.

Big gulps laws. We also built a ton of stuff. To your point about the fact that there could be, and I made this point earlier, I just want to put a finer point in it. And for all of the happy Zoran people in comments, who are like a moth to a flame to wanting to see the Denver Trumpers react to their Democratic Socialist victory. Again, an unbelievable victory for a total upstart against all this money and name, power and establishment.

He's going to end up with like 43%, 44%, 42% or something on the first ballot in New York fucking city. And so like the takeaway here needs to be the like, that energy that Zoran brought has to be translated into other parts of the country. Because the voting electorate makeup, where were his best precincts? Bed-Stuy. The type of people that live in Ridgewood and Bushwick and East Williamsburg and Green Point. Some of my pals live in all these places. That's probably where you hang out.

Where do you, don't you? Last time we were up in New York, you were staying in some hipster place. Yeah, I was staying at Life in Williamsburg. I love Williamsburg. I love all these places. Stanislaus in Williamsburg, I love Williamsburg. I love all these places. This is where all my pals are. The voter makeup is going to be different in Grand Rapids and Green Bay and whatever, like Phoenix and the other swing areas. And so the Democrats are going to need to find a way to channel the type of campaigns Oran won and his focus on working class concerns, also with some policy views different that are gonna be able to appeal

to the middle of the country. And so I just think that's the takeaway. Whether people will learn that lesson or not, I don't know. I think probably the establishment Democrats will take away that it was Andrew Cuomo's fault and there's nothing they could do. And they just took their 20% cut on the ads and move on to the next race. And the Democratic Socialists will be like, see, if only we ran Democratic Socialists everywhere, we would win in Nebraska. So I'm worried that people will take away the wrong message.

But I think the right message is, is that Zoran did something right on his campaign tactics and his economic message, and maybe he can crib from that for something a little bit different than the rest of the country. I mean, it's a big 10 party, you've got to say, the two gubernatorial nominees this year and states there. I was looking at probably that are slightly bigger than New York City, but only slightly bigger in states. So there are three almost equivalent electorates, you might say, or Spanberger and Abigail Spada

here in Virginia. So I'm luckily not a New Yorker, I'm born in New York. I love New York, but I get to vote for Spanberger and I don't have to grapple with these problems of democratic socialist, oh my God. And, and, and. And G Fata. Spanberger's not for globalized, I think.

And Mikey Sherrill. And I don't think that Mikey Sherrill and and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, them was a career politician in the sense of 20 years, I mean, she's too young to have been. And the other two came out of the intelligence agency in Spanberger's Place in the military, in the military in Ike Cheryl's. So three, I'm going to say citizen politicians, that's a little pretentious, but you know what I mean, running pretty authentically. Those two began in 2018, but they couldn't say what Trump was doing to the country. I think Zoran's a little more always been thinking about politics, it seems like, for several years, but still he saw the moment and went for it.

So I think that's not a bad model, you know, let's not nominate. Then we're going to be better off not nominating the guy who served for 27 years in the state legislature, worked his way up and has met, not offended anyone, the donors think he's good because he already has high name ID because he's run two or three times, maybe he's run statewide and lost once, but it's always good, once you've lost once,

you got the name ID so you can run again. I think my friend Michael Wood, whom I've been in touch with, is thinking of running, and I think it's likely to actually, for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Texas, having lost a congressional race, he's never a Trump Republican four or five years ago. I have to ask him, he's not anything close to a Democratic Socialist. He's an ever Trump ex-Republican.

He would consider himself a Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson Democrat. I'm curious to ask him, and I'm going to text him when we get off and he may be watching us, is he appalled by this because, oh my God, now if he were, the Democratic party has a Democratic socialist, there might be a Democratic socialist Democrat as the mayor of the nation's largest city, a city he went to college in actually at NYU, or is he sort of thinking, you know what, I'm of course going to write us an ex-military, ex-Republican, Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson Democrat, but in a way this cheers me, Harry Truman, scoop Jackson Democrat. But in a way, this cheers me up, right, that he won.

I'm very curious to see what people like Michael make of the vote. It is going to take different types of candidates. It's something I keep saying. The Democrats have a very different coalition. Republicans can run homogeneous candidates. If the Democrats have any fucking hope of getting the Senate back, they're going to have to win in places like Iowa and Ohio and Texas. That's not going to be people like Zoran.

But also, if the Democrats want to not continue to lose ground with young people, like they're going to come up with candidates like Zoran, who's able to, who does, you know, resonate and who is more natural and native to, you know, kind of the modes of communication. So that'll be interesting. It's been a good chat. What a night. Who the fuck knows, huh?

Zoran Mamdani looks like he's probably the favorite to be the next mayor of New York. I'll have an interesting general election with Eric Adams. Everybody, thanks for hanging out. Went longer than I thought we could. There's just so much to chew over here. Cam's in the comments. Obviously, I was not going to let him on. Okay, there were some people that wanted him to be on. Obviously, we're not going to let him on in

this evening, but I appreciate him monitoring us. If you want to be a YouTube plus subscriber, you should do that because I don't know who knows Bill Crystal after dark might be the next thing for YouTube plus subscribers only. So please join us for that. I'll be back for a pod tomorrow with Derek Thompson. We'll have much more analysis on this. Appreciate you all for tuning that. I'll be back for a pod tomorrow with Derek Thompson. We'll have much more analysis on this. Appreciate you all for tuning in. We'll see you soon.