Central Air - MeanToo (with Dave Weigel)

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: with another “MeanToo” scandal in the news — that’s when a politician gets in trouble, not for sexual harassment but because someone thinks they were mean — we thought it was a good opportunity to ask Dave Weigel, Semafor’s intrepid politics reporter, whether anyone in Alaska is likely to care that Mary Peltola, Alaska’s Democratic candidate for Senate, called someone a “retard.”Plus: other developments across the Senate map and what kinds of candidate oddities matter these days, and in cocktail hour (for paying subscribers), we talk about the revealing conversation Nikole Hannah-Jones had with her daughter on “This American Life” over the weekend, and we close with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s likely ambitions to run for Senate or president.Upgrade your subscription at www.centralairpodcast.com.

Welcome to Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. This is Josh Barrow. I'm here with Megan McArdle, columnist for the Washington Post, and Ben Dreyfus, who writes the Substack newsletter, Calm Down. I was amused by something that I saw on X today, Monday morning. There's a guy named Organizer Memes, who's a Democratic operative posts under a pseudonym. And he has these emails from the list serve for alumni of the Harris Wall's 2024 campaign, And apparently there's thousands of people on this email list serve.

And it's supposed to be mainly for like, you know, I'm trying to hire someone for this job. I'm looking for a job, et cetera. But there's some guy who likes to send out like bizarre, trivial personal requests. There's one where he's like, you know, I'm in this grad school class on leadership. And I'm supposed to write about a leader that I admire. Do any of you know how I get in touch with Tim Walls or Kamala Harris to see if I can interview them for this? And then there's another one that says, Howdy Team Miss You All?

This is super obnoxious and entirely self-serving, but you're a well-connected group of individuals, and I had to put it out there in the ether. He writes, My 33rd birthday is this July, and it's been a bucket list dream to spend that birthday at Club 33 in Disneyland for like an embarrassingly long time.

If anyone happens to have a connection, you're invited, and I'll love you forever. When I was first getting started in journalism over a decade ago, there was this group for like people who were social media managers and that type of thing, audience development, all across the industry.

Had 3,000 people in it, and I started to, like, spam it with this thing that was about my wife leaving me. So every post would start about being about, you know, how do we make Facebook work and how do we optimize? And then it would turn into a saga of my wife just doesn't love me. And people came up to me for years and were like, oh, it's so funny, you're that guy, you're the guy from the thing.

And then years later, I started to, like, apply for jobs. And they were like, yeah, you're that, weirdo from that list. And it turned out it was a really bad career move to have told all those people. Megan, do you spam anyone like this? You know, just like my intestinal complaints, pest control problems I have. All staff at wp.com. The embarrassing things I do tend to be one-on-one. I have more than once at the end of a phone call as I was hanging up said, I love you. Bye. You're just very effusive, Megan. It's understandable.

Yes, I am. We speak on the phone so rarely these days that, like, I, especially when my parents were, you know, older and I was taking care of them. Like, the people I talked to on the phone the most were my parents or my husband. And so I actually did this to one guy, and I was in the car. It was in a rental car. And I don't know the console that well. and so I hang up and then I realize what I've done and I am frantically like attempting to get the call back

while also driving. I know this was very unsafe behavior. You called him back to say just to be clear. To be clear, I don't love you. I called him back. He was like before you say anything else, he's a lawyer. He was like the last person I did that to was a judge and her husband was my law school professor. So don't worry about it.

Did you guys start having an affair? I never actually met him in person. It was just an interview. Aw. Yeah. Unrequited love. My favorite thing, though, about organizer memes putting this on Twitter is that, you know, a lot of people were laughing at it. But one person wrote back and said, you know, it's possible that the person who's been sending these to the email list is neurodivergent and doesn't understand the social norms that surround the list.

And perhaps you should reach out to them directly and explain those norms to them. I mean, I think it is very probable that. This person does not understand social norms. Yes, but as organizer meets pointed out, he notes in his own emails that he's being annoying, which points to him being aware of the social norms and that he is breaking them in real time. Can you imagine a more annoying list serve than the Kamala Tim Wall's volunteer list serve? You know, I think actually that's a good question for our guests this week. Dave Weigel, who covers national politics for Semaphore, is with us this week.

Hey, Dave. Hello. You've had your own list service adventures back in the day with journalist, right? Oh, that's why you invited me. I wasn't sure where my expertise was in this episode. I mean, I assume your view at this point is like never send anything to a list that you don't have to talk about in a deposition. In general, which is I think the advice that gets handed down proverbially is don't write anything in an email you don't want to see on the front page of the newspaper. I think sometimes it's on the front page of New York Times because that's the last newspaper.

No offense to anyone. Ah! The journalists they were discussing. There was a list of liberal people in media and academics, if I recall. They were not the straight news reporter. I was not straight news reporter, but I was a very dishy, bitchy conversant on that email list. Yeah. And then you can, I think this story has been well told a few times now.

Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to open up a wound for you. Oh, no, no, no. I'm just trying to recapitulate in a way that's, that's, good for a podcast. Dave got fired for certain things that he said on a list serve. When it was Tucker Carlson, like, bought, bought his way into journalists? He imitated somebody who he knew was already on it and said, hey, I lost my email and he was let back in because liberals are very trusting. This is the root of a lot of problems he discussed on the show.

Computer fraud. Yeah, isn't that, isn't, I guess this is a question for my other podcast, but like, isn't that a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, fraudulently obtaining access to a computer system? Oh, and not to the system. It was just to a list serve. I feel like, I feel like on list if you're allowed to game your way into that because the reporters do it all the time. But that's what happened. And so you kind of searched for what was the most annoying stuff on there. And it was mine, I think to extend, Spencer Ackerman had some stuff that got that got hit. But the point for this discussion is, yes, I learned that lesson that I should be quite careful. And I've re-learned it just from people accidentally adding me to things that I shouldn't see,

which happens every once in a while. You get, I think a reporter reaches a level they get like BCC'd on something very stupid that will not end. Sometimes from a crazy person, sometimes not from a crazy person. Sometimes from the Secretary of Defense. Yeah, sometimes the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of War. Oh, yeah, we wouldn't be precise. Especially young people are bad at this.

And I've often thought that the journalist thing couldn't play out the same way today because people just talk like that on Twitter all the time. It's the old rule that if something is secret, it's much more interesting. the same information in public. And you do think that of young people who have lived online for their entire lives don't understand until you're supposed to control

yourself in some forms. You don't need to just spill your brain everywhere. Because also, I don't know, their topic that's been discussed here, that there is a bad mindset of leading with your weakness, leading with the thing that you need, the thing that

makes you pathetic, ensuring that with the biggest number of people, that's going to lead to a good result. That's not wrong on a lot of the campuses and stuff where they live. Right. But I feel that attitude of, if I put this in print, it should be used against me a deposition or a newspaper. That, I think, does get lost, people who are not reported, including I think in the current administration, the Trump administration, like, that clearly is, has already been happening. And they get around it often by some trainings that delete their messages. But it can be very intoxicating to this riff. And I always wonder, just to just,

I think it must have been much harder to be a police officer before DNA testing. I know it was. You know, as you had yourself a crime. Like, being an attorney before everyone just emailed and slack their stupid shit to each other must have been so much harder. Like, oh, there's this phone call this one day. And for all we know, they could have discussed this. Instead, you have an email. It's like, these guys suck, loll. And reply, yes, and don't hire them because they're black. People just send this stuff without any compunction all the time. Blogging was that for me that I didn't think of it as like, I am writing these things in a place where they will be reproduced. And so I've been explaining dumb shit, I said, in like 2002 for the last 24 years.

But if I recall correctly, the journalist thing got wrapped up in my wedding. Wait, really? Oh. Yeah. We had our wedding at a very nice private club in Washington, D.C., but the air conditioning was not quite up to. to the very hot June day when we got married. And everyone is sweating. And someone got a picture of Dave being very sweaty.

And it was on, what was it? Like, Fishbowl? Oh, God. I don't remember which one of the media sites. I think this is a different gossip website. Yeah. So, but this ran like three days before the journalist thing broke. Oh, it was the examiner.

I just looked it up again. It just ended up getting packaged. as part of the journalist story. Luckily, I was in Hawaii and not following it. Well, I think we can stop rehashing these past professional incidents, although actually we are going to talk later in the show about things that resurface, which this actually is a good introduction for. But I want to start with a story that we touched on a little bit in a substack live that Ben and I did last Friday with cartoons,

hate her, where we mostly talked about Last Ditch, the lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, that everyone is obsessed with because of that viral Boston Globe story. If you miss that conversation, you want to hear it, by the way, there is a playback for paying subscribers, which you can find at centralairpodcast.com. It was quite a fun conversation about the commonalities between three seemingly completely separate stories about iced coffee and lesbians and the Alaska Senate race. And so in Alaska, Mary Peltola, the former Democratic Congresswoman, is the Democratic nominee for Senate, maybe slightly favored to win in this race over the Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan.

And there was one of these stories in the New York Times that, Dave, I believe you like to refer to these as mean-to stories. Yes, although I'm taking that from my boss, Ben Smith. But yes, I like that. Yeah, so it's like it's me too, but what it is is that the boss is mean. Ladies don't like mean bosses, Josh. No, nor men. I mean, like, so the allegation is that Mary Peltola that she called some people retards in text messages. including a commercial fisherman who caused her a political problem by like sharing a photo of them together, even though she opposes the specific kind of fishing that he does. She had some disputes with the local Planned Parenthood chapter and in something that feels like it's out of a VEEP script.

She said that she hoped that a board member of Planned Parenthood Alaska would die of a botched abortion. They say she called some staff member a faggot. She denies that. My guess is she probably did that, but she probably had a good reason. And then also her staffers were mad that they had to feed her. pet lizard sometimes when she was away from the office. And that involves feeding the lizard live grasshoppers. And also, once when they were doing some, like, media practice, she shoved a water bottle

toward a staffer's face like it was a microphone. And some people thought that was too aggressive. The widespread reaction to this story was basically like, what the fuck, who cares? But I think this is an interesting shift from like six years ago when these sorts of stories got taken really seriously. And I think now just like everyone feels like all these young staffers are a a bunch of whiny idiots. And I don't know, do you, do you have a sense of how voters are digesting the Mary Hiltola is mean story? So I spent more than average person time in Alaska.

There certainly is a tolerance for, because what do you want from in Alaska federal politician? It's the same thing you wanted to hear a main federal politician. It is somebody who will be a squeaky wheel and bring as much money home as possible and also defend the state's right to explore for its resources. I mean, I don't, I don't think, uh, don't, I don't think, uh, the state has had a Democratic senator who's not pro-pipeline, pro-oil exploration, et cetera. And so I think you're right that people are still tired of staff complaining about stuff. Going back a little bit toward to what we open with, though, I've always, one thing that having my emails read may be sympathetic to is that, yeah, emails do look, or statements look

weird or out of context, context gets lost. This happened to me that I would quote somebody and somebody would chop off the fact I was quoting somebody and they'd go after me for it. that would happen me. So the thing that she said about the touched abortion, one is clearly the meanest and harder to explain line in there. But was it in the context of Planned Parenthood, Alaska having a board member who she knew and thought was being ridiculous? And I'm like spinning for her, which I shouldn't be doing. And undermining the abortion rights cause. Yeah. She was basically saying like if you care about abortion rights, you have to try to get me reelected instead of fighting me on some picky you and

Right, and that's just how politicians talk. There's not a book for the language franker they use, but everyone who's spent time in politics to tell you the show Vee is unusually realistic. This is actually the kind of insult comedy that people do behind the scenes. Very common. Shit talking to each other, should talk to the candidates to run against, et cetera, and anything that if you just put a wire on them for a day,

you'd come out and hear a lot of them. That's correct. This line felt like something that she would just say as a hard-ass, legislator who is not going to be led around by an activist. It's a good line. There's a scene in Veep where Selena Meyer is like having it out with some member of her own party in Congress. And when she threatens her and she goes, I'm going to send the IRS so far up your husband's colon, you're going to hope the only thing they find is more cancer. Yeah, that's a great one. Because I think that's one where even even her assistant is sort of like wincing and how

it means she's being. But not unrealistic. I can't. The mindset of a young person, and who doesn't like being pushed around is the problem here, not what voters are thinking. And you hear that just all the time, several industries that just the willingness to put up with a lot of crap because one day, you know,

that hard work will pay off and maybe you'll treat your employee a little bit better. That does seem to be, there's a frustration of this is lost on Gen Z. The Gen Z have a lot of, a lot of resistance to doing stuff

and I've got getting paid for it, being made to feel that they're inferior. even if they were literally in the inferior position. I think she lucked out by this happening now. If it happened in 2019, absolutely. There were multiple stories about Amy Klobuchar are doing much less.

Premised on she's mean to her staff. And what kind of person is mean to the young staff or work with them? It's like, oh, many bosses are. Many bosses throughout history of then. That's the thing that I always love so weird. In Hollywood, if you have an entry-level job, you're sent to go, like, pick up 11 prescriptions

from different pharmacies, get some Narcan just in case, and then, like, set up a bouncy house. for an 11-year-old's birthday party. Like, that's your Tuesday. And then you have to write that into your sitcom years later because it's funny. Like, that's what happens. And so these people, I just think that, like, this whole thing that Josh said about, like,

they took a water bottle and pointed it at her. Oh, no. Like, are we going to take them to the hague? Like, who gives to shit? Yeah, I have a theory about what's part of what's going on here, at least, right? Which is, like, kids don't have summer jobs anymore. And so they get out of. of college, and this is their actual first job where they have to show up every day,

and they're not going back to school at the end of the summer, right? Like, did you guys have crappy summer jobs in high school? Not that crappy. Or was that just me? I didn't have crappy ones. I had jobs, though. I worked as a hotel maid. I worked as a clerk.

I worked at a drug store. These were terrible jobs. Why do you keep getting fired? Well, no, I mean, this is over. My first job was that I'm not shitting you. was at the Love Pharmacy? I don't know what genius name. Actually, I'd do.

The guy's name was Love. But so, like, as you can imagine, 14-year-old girl, guys love to come in and make remarks about the Love Pharmacy to see you blush as I am checking out, like, your antacids. That was hideous. The worst was the hotel. It was literally like the dirty dancing Catskills Hotel, where they did not feed us enough. And it was like something kind of a Victorian novel.

I was sharing a bed with my friend. It had, the mattress was sagging so badly that every night we would end up in the hole together and spend the entire night, like, trying to crawl out of it. So, like, when I got a real job and I was getting real pay and I did not have to sleep in the doom cut. Megan, you went to Riverdale High School. Couldn't some, like, rich parents of a friend of yours set you up with something better than that? I don't know. It wasn't a thing.

It wasn't, like, first of all, we were not rich. But second of all, I don't know, you were just expected to do crappy jobs. Anyway, like, it was really bad. They, like, they would get, we would get what the old people were eating, but we were much younger in doing hard labor. And also, they were allowed to have seconds, and we were literally not. You got one serving, and that was it. Anyway, it was scarring. But, like, when I got a job that paid me and my boss would say things, I literally had a boss who started his feedback for everyone, not just me, with McCartle, you're an asshole.

And I was so pleased to not be in the doom cot. Look, you should not, like, you should not call people retards and so forth. But these are, like, very minor. And I think part of it is very few of these kids, because to be one of these staffers, you're usually going to have been an affluent kid, did not have an after-school job. Like, they don't have any experience popping the chicken tenders into the deep fry at Popeyes. And so these comparatively minor sufferings, seem to them like a really big deal.

And also they are coming because they have not had jobs where, like, they are doing crappy service work. When they get their first job out of college, it's really the first time. And, you know, like, they just got done climbing the educational hierarchy. They were at its apex. And now they are starting at the very bottom and being treated like they're at the very bottom and don't know very much, which they don't. And, like, they don't like it. And that combined with the ability to get New York Times reporters to actually tell people this, which I do not think would have happened 20 years ago.

You sort of get what you get. Can I ask you, Dave, like, what do you think the general tolerance of is for, let's forget that this is who she is. Let's say forget it to the New York Times. Let's forget everything. Let's just say that the simple facts are the facts of the case are this person was pretty, said some mean half and half slurs, maybe through a water bottle toward someone. And that's it.

These are misdemeanors. Do you think that, like, there's a tolerance in America outside of the places where we all live and stuff for this? Or is it really just like, even my woke mom is like, shut the fuck up. I think people are no longer siding with the, especially since they're anonymous, siding with the people who were saying this, this job too is too hard. Because part of the overall boomer argument we have in America is, yes, it used to be possible to buy your starter home for 20, but also you had you know you'd be spanked and uh you could be you can be hit with a broom at catholic school etc etc it's understood that things used to be harder for younger kids before before the war on bullying uh right certainly when i was growing up i have things that i remember from school that were

harsher than what happened now and anyone my age or older which is most people still is is going to say i'd suck it up i feel that's pretty common but i also think they're going to think democrats are downstream of being very, very sensitive for years to the complaints of everybody in their coalition, realizing that's a terrible idea and not having the tolerance for it anymore. Now, some of this is enforced on Twitter or people just kind of one-oping each other and saying suck it up, but it's really widespread. I mean, the organizer means thing that you were saying in the beginning. That's the kind of thing that people might have just walked past and not in comment on, but now they think this is endemic to the Democratic Party, that we have all these wimps who cannot do

the hard work. Meanwhile, Republicans, whatever we probably have with them, they have all these young men who seem to actually want to do their jobs and knock on doors and not complain and work for Donald Trump, who is not, who is personally, by all reports, you know, buys people nice shoes and things, but is not identified with being super nice and polite. That don't necessarily fit, unfortunately, for Marco Rubio. So I sort of saw two different lines from Republican operatives about this Peltola story. Like one was like clearly like the talking point like, oh, she sounds like a crazy person. God, this is awful.

But then the other thing I saw some of them saying was like, did she plant this story herself? Like, oh no, the Democratic candidate in Alaska has complaints about Planned Parenthood and is a tough lady. Like, and I realized like she didn't plant the story. Like you can't conjure up a New York Times story like this. Maybe if it was in some other, you know, lower quality outlet. it. But, like, some of them, like, didn't even have their heart in it to act like this was going to cost her any votes. And in fact, like, arguably makes her more relatable. Yeah, and I didn't see Dan Sullivan, the incumbent, make a big deal out of it, because this,

this is, this was done earlier in the cycle. Troy Jackson gets swapped in for Graham Platner and everything going to bring a bitch they at all of. And some of the opposition about him research had been he once in an argument with a colleague through a water bottle. Now, the Count of tax to Platter being out of the race made everything Jackson did or had done look less bad. But you saw in that discourse, people said... I mean, another one was Troy Jackson was in like a bar fight when he was 19. That was one, too, but I was like, the interpersonal, what does he like at work? He's such a hothead that he got angry at somebody and threw a water about that.

And Republicans put this in an ad, which has the old school America's most wanted recreation of a bottle flying in the air. And it's just not that threatening. It definitely felt like people in 2026 understood, sometimes you're going to be a hard ass and you're going to do some mean things and apologize. And ideally, you should never do that because HR gets involved, et cetera. But we're out of the business of saying, you're forbidden to be part of society

if you got angry at a colleague or an employee, which is good. I think that's overall healthy that we are no longer shaming people for days because of Halloween party, the costume they wore, things like that. this is this was even more discreet about his job he got angry and threw a bottle not even at somebody but in their direction on a table like and i think people now instead of saying pretending they're such a good person they can never imagine doing that say eh it was it was a funny day for the new york times because it was like they published that story about alaska and the headline was like you know staffers say loves fishing hunting and is a real person um then like if you went a little bit further down in the new york times It was like, focus group says Ken Paxton thought by independence to be creep, thief. Like, awful, awful devil man.

You were like, ooh, this cycle isn't going great for them. Actually, that's a good opportunity. I wanted to talk with Dave about some other Senate races as we're like six, about six weeks out from the election. Let's talk about Texas where, and that focus group in the New York Times was interesting. This was with Trump voters who were swayable in the Texas Senate election. And it was just all they think Ken Paxson is disgusting. Corrupt. And Ken Paxson has had so many different kinds of scandals.

The financial scandals, he got indicted for securities fraud. And then also he like, his wife is divorcing him for quote unquote biblical reasons. He went on vacation over July 4th to Iceland and London with his mistress in the midst of the campaign. And so he looks like a real liability. I was critical of James Tala Rico, the Democratic candidate, back during the primary, because Tala Rico has a record of, like, weird, woke statements in his past that seem like they're an ill fit for Texas. But my sense from afar is that, like, the attacks on him for that are just not landing. And he continues to lead Paxton in the polls despite, you know, the various reasons why he would seem like a tough sell in Texas. Yes.

I'm surprised, too, a little bit because this was a very well-known vulnerability. around Tala Rico. And I think this also tells a larger story about how Democrats are finessing the stuff they said in 2020. They are not going to have a press conference and say, here's a list of the stupid things we said. We no longer believe these things. There are, big questions they're not resolving. But in general, you're finding that if they say the very, very tolerant thing I said, which is cringy and looks bad on TV, I don't believe that anymore. You're not going to get piled on by the HRC. You might have, you might, you might, it because reporters can assemble a story. This happens all the time with very stupid stories that say

outrage over Sabrina Carpenter dress at event and there were five tweets that people hold for that. You can find outrage, but you do not have the same democratic unwillingness to say something that would be interpreted as throwing this group under the bus. That's the serious part of the Tala, the Tala RICO thing. Certainly Republicans in Texas, I think, got lazy because in 2022, they, well, so the law that Chal Rico was on video saying God is non-binary about, that was the omnibus trans legislation they passed.

It's on the 252, good year for Republicans, 224, better year for Republicans. They were running the attack again, and you are getting the sense in Texas, the thing the Democrats kept hoping would happen, which is that people care more about their material needs than a cultural issue, that started to happen, but it's happened

because Republicans have been so incredibly successful in getting everything they want in Texas, on gender, basically, that when they see, when you see, Stalry, I say that, it's like, well, he said that before losing the fight, and it's over. So he seems to be getting much more forgiveness from the electorate than Republicans thought. I mean, you just talk to Republicans in February, that was the plan. We nuke the guy, let's check what his numbers were like in October after he, after everybody finds out, he said God's not binary. And he just is like, yeah, it was stupid. I shouldn't said that. It seems like Republicans, they just keep wanting to run.

this playbook. And like, look, I think it worked against Kamala Harris. But it worked because it was like an active irritant, right? I think Woke kind of peaked around 2023. But there was still some question over whether it had peaked. There was still a lot actually happening at the national level. And people really didn't like it. They really didn't like hearing about pregnant people and people with cervixes. They really didn't like trans girls in sports. But as that's moved back, Republicans do not seem to have gotten the message that, like, they need actual issues to run on that are not screaming about a tiny handful of trans girls in sports. Whatever your opinion on that is, it is not the most important issue facing the nation today. And like, pair that with the Republican

habit. And I think this is asymmetrical. And I'm not sure why. And I would actually be interested in your thoughts, Dave. Why are Republicans so much more likely to nominate lunatics? I mean, I think you've seen a little of this recently from Democrats, but Republicans really like to nominate lunatics. Or in the case of Ken Paxton, not a lunatic, but someone who's just fantastically corrupt and unlikable on every other measure. And Texas primary voters were determined to have him rather than Senator John Cornyn, who is extremely conservative, who voted with Donald Trump over and over and over again. But no, they wanted the lunatic. And I'm not sure why that is. What is it, what is the love affair between the Republican Party and people who are like severe

handicaps in winning a general election? Well, keep in mind that when their ideas are called lunatic, they think, yeah, the media calls everything, I believe, crazy. So they've got, they've created this really vast and powerful permission structure for gaffs at one level, scandal at the other level. And Republicans would look, Mayor Republicans would look at 2022 and say, we can't have candidates like Herschel Walker anymore. Hershawakers currently are ambassadors behind us because he's stayed loyal to Trump. That's a pretty good fake to have if you were a candidate.

And the other part of that is that in what turned out to be a decent Democratic year in Georgia, they lost some of the big race, but Warneka win again. It was a low, single-digit race. The penalty was not enormous. Just in 14 years, we have moved from Todd Aiken discrediting himself and being unable to be a serious candidate in Missouri for an apportioning comment. To certainly a kind of like that is confident he is a good shot in a Trumpy enough state. So they've learned, like the candidate in the drug ad. They learned from watching you.

They learned from watching Trump that you can get away with a lot. And the problem, a lot of them get into, Lerone's getting into. where everyone's get into is that they do not have decades of ballast as public figures, but stupid big, big personas where people are willing to forgive a lot of what they've done because they think they know them already. Candidates introduce themselves and then being crazy sounding, that's a problem. But the voters, the electorate has voted for Donald Trump three times, believes that he won three times.

And just, I'm not trying to be too banal about this point. I just think it informs all of Republican politics currently that they, like, until there is some definitive Trump defeat from people who would have had successful career, had they not supported him, until that happens. And it keeps not happening. I feel like that's going to be the Republican bet. Oh, if Ken Paxton loses, do you think they'll say, well, that was a fair. That was a fair. By the day, I mean Trump and, well, start with Trump. Do you think if Jada Talarico wins that race by half a point, Trump will say, dang, tough one, but maybe Ken don't try next time. Or will he say, okay.

won by 10 points that was stolen. They'll probably say it was stolen. No, I think that's right. But like, look, the primary voters have a popular Republican senator who is the incumbent. What is the logic of replacing him with the guy who's so bad that the Republican State House voted to censure him? Don't they think John Cornyn betrayed them on that gun control bill? Yes, he betrayed them on the gun control. At the same time, he was losing that. Dan Crenshaw lost his primary. the gun activist in West Texas forced Tony Gonzalez into a runoff. And he's somebody, Brandon Herrera, you see, just for saying really outrageous things on his various gun shows.

And voters said, yeah, okay. That's a bit like, the Tony Gonzalez voted after Rivalde for this redfly gun law, which means he hates the Second Amendment, which means we can replace him. But the first court in sin was, I think it was 2023, because I know the first he was on the call and asked. He was just doing a media call and asked about DeSantis getting into the race. And Cornyn was saying, well, I think, like, maybe Trump shouldn't run again. DeSantis is a good candidate. And Trump never forgave him. And the base, which also thought for five seconds, then DeSatis was interesting. They never forgave him either. It was, um, again, this story plays out

in race after race. The president is very successful this year in ending the careers, people who wronged him and just redefining conservatism was in a belief. So why did they get John Corny, in their view, he had to betray the Second Amendment and Trump, so he was not a conservative senator. He was like a rat. And if Democrats got into power, let's imagine President Josh Shapiro in 29, who would he rather work with in the Senate? John Cornyn or Ken Patton, he'd rather work with John Cornyn, because John Cornyn already had voted with Democrats on a priority. I want to take a quick break and then come back and talk with Dave about a place where Democrats may be the party with the candidate quality problem. This is central error. So Dave, I want to ask

about Michigan because, you know, we've talked about Republicans fall for this temptation over and over to pick candidates who run worse than generic Republican. I think where the party establishment on the Democratic side really failed to insist upon candidate quality this year is Michigan, Abdul al-Sayed pulled out that primary victory in the Senate race. There's a House district with this guy Will Lawrence, who was one of the founders of the Sunrise Movement, who said a bunch of crazy shit about the nuclear family being, I don't know what it was, fascist or whatever. But so a lot of establishment Democrats were looking very nervously in August at that Michigan Senate race. But like, am I right to look at this is that, you know, it's a strong enough

Democratic year and Abdul al-Sayed seems to be doing enough to mend fences on the Democratic side that basically he's not going to manage to lose that race? Yeah, he gets lumped in as a problem candidate, despite not having a scandal, really. It is just things he has said. And Abdul, who is, I met him when he's running for governor in 2017. He starts running for governor at age 33, which tells you how confident he is.

He's a very, very confident politician, very confident that he can win any argument with anybody. And one result of that over the years when he had this podcast, he just, if there was a issue that was kind of woke adjacent, he would get on there and make the best case he could for the woke position. So there's a lot

of that. It is different than a Ken Paxton situation. I don't think he wins the nomination if he has a messy, messy situation with, he married his college sweetheart and had kids right away. If he had a Ken Paxton situation, I don't think he wins what ends up being a one point, a one point race. So what he did, what he did in Michigan, the first time I went up for the Senate race, picnic that he and Malmickmore were both at, they both had their pitch. One thing he says is, I know, my name is Abdul, and that's, that's not ideal. name for a candidate, but there were a lot of guys named Abdul who didn't vote for Kamala Harris last year. And that was pretty compelling to some Democrats. Okay, if we add back 40,000 votes from

Dearborn, Dearborn Hyde, Sam Tramick, then maybe he's more electable. But a lot of it was that that idea, and this is very, what's the meta argument for every progressive, basically, is that the country is progressive. The only reason that voters or politicians do not adopt our views is because they're being bought off or in the voters case, they're being like hoarswagled by negative ads paid for by rich people. And so he is a very confident, smart person who really believes that. Just to get me in the room with people, I convince them that Medicare for All is the way to go. And Democrats in polls say they like the idea of Medicare for All. He convinced Democratic voters that he was just going to win the argument, that he was going to get back some of the voters they

lost and was able to win the argument. Final thing I'd say is that Israel was the point of attack for Haley Stevens, most Democrats were going after and trying to stop to win the primary. They learned again. That is just not an issue where the substance of the Israel question, it boiled down to should America still be funding Israel's war right now. That is not one where the substance is a winner with Democratic voters. So they just kept attacking him on something that Democratic primary voters did not see as an electability

issue. They thought the opposite. Oh, no. We nominally Hillie Stevens, who is very pro-Israel, they're going to use the fact that she's super pro-Israel against her. And, oh, she had an example of this, I guess, what we're talking about resurfacing. She's a classic example of how things she said about Israel would never go away. They just

kept coming up again and again, in the way people get news now. It made Abdul look like the electable guy, because he could explain his way out of him. You mentioned that Will Lawrence guy. Like, I didn't know who was, and then I was watching his, he did an interview with Vox. last week and I was watching it and like I take away was that I was like this guy this guy is a

moron and then I was looking at it and I was like oh he found it sunrise when whoever gives a shit what the dumbest group in the world he's a really bad messenger for his policies but then I was reading this one profile of him from something in Michigan and they were like overlapped exactly with el taid and I watched him talk about the same subject and I was like huh he's like a much better communicator of the same idiotic policy that I was like, I'm still against it, but I'm not having this triggering thing that's making me go, who did you fuck to get on this ballot? Which is what I had with that will guy. He's not a dweeb. But there's something I found really odd about this race between him and Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, because like one of the things that,

like one of the woke things that people were giving Abdul al-Saiad shit for was talking about how football was bad because of CTE. And, you know, maybe we shouldn't. let people play football. And so they were attacking him as like this weak Democrat doesn't like football. There was also the thing where he made the, and we talked about this last week with Jonathan Chate, he made the reference to Ohio State as Ohio, which a lot of people took to mean that he was unfamiliar with what university Michigan had a rivalry with, but actually that was just like a mocking way of talking about Ohio State. But anyway, Al-Saiad's response is like, you know, like I was the captain of my high school football team, challenged Mike

Rogers to one-on-one, which I don't know how you play football one-on-one. But it's like the two of them, like, doing this back and forth about their high school shit. And there are ways that Abdul-Al-Side can talk where he just seems like he's, like, performatively macho, like, called Mike Rogers a beta, which I just think is tacky. And it seems like maybe that's his ego getting the best of him, where his, like, his reaction is just to sort of, like, escalate and taunt. And I think, you know, people took that as, or some of the Democratic opponents tried to, like, like paint this as like a sexist thing in the primary because of the way that he would sometimes talk about his opponents. But it seems to me like he talks that way about anyone he's up against, including Mike Rogers, but I still find it like childish and off-putting.

That is how he talks about everybody. And you have the right where you know it. And during the primary, that was something that the other Democrats, Haley Stevens Malamorow, the campaigns were trying to draw out of him. The JD Vance is a bit like this. The J.D. Vance, one-on-one personally, extremely nice. And if you piss him off, like, he can go off script. He can use part of a speech to go after something that doesn't make, he can get annoyed with people. He's written about how he has a temper problem. Yeah. And it's not a temper thing. It's just, it's just

a know-it-all thing. And he is, like, I am not, I was not a road scholar. But he was, one thing that a colleague was covering the race coin out to me is there's a profile of him, because he and his wife were dating in college, and like he mentions the profile that, or the profiler mentions

with his MCAT score, he might be heading to medical school in Cambridge. So this is a very confident guy participating in a story about which Ivy League school he's going to go to after Michigan when he's an undergrad. In a way, this is refreshing because I get tired of people knowing what it takes to get involved in a real political campaign. You're in a machine and you're the next person up in the machines who I have to work for. He's not like that.

I am running. I left medicine because I think I am so good at the game of politics and so knowledgeable about the health care system that I can be the guy who forwards us over into Medicare for all. That is the premise of Abdul. and it is very haughty in some ways, but it's less, for a better cause

than, like, I can build the biggest mansion. It certainly is a little more salutary to say, I would like me, I am the best at this, and I want to pass universal health care and be America's beverage plan

in one man. That is what he's trying to do. The way they handle with Talarico is by saying he's a win. He's probably gay. He might be a pedophile. With Abdul, it's that he, no,

really. Again, I know. says this. But it's like, But that's like so over the top that it just feels to be like they, like, it feels so unsurious that it seems like, you know, they, if they, if they were a little more deft about how they talked about Tala Rico, it might actually be more effective the attacks rather than just

like, but that's the risk that they just watch Trump do this and think any attack is going to work. And it just, in any, in any sort of combat, politics being one of them, you do not make every attack. It's like you, you're trying to be strategic and say, this one could backfire. Now, Democrats end up being kind of wimpy and doing nothing. But you do see a lot of Republicans just punching themselves out in a way that opens themselves up to get counterpunched because they saw Trump do it and said, well, I can pull that off too. And I don't think Mike Rogers is as adept at that. I think I'm amazed that Trump has not gotten more involved because just the Republican consultant class hates Abdul and thinks he's obnoxious and love pointing out that he's,

I think, five foot eight. I don't know why they can't draft Trumpton to do that because it's not as convincing when it comes from them. Is he five foot eight? He's like five foot. That's too small. That's my height. He's like 5'8.8 and change, maybe. Change, that's the bull. Now, I use that. He compares himself to Obama sort of jokingly. He's like, he has a funny name and I have a funny name.

He is this and I have that. He's tall and thin. I'm short and thick. But every night, we have a lot in common. Like, he kind of will lean into it, but that, like, anyone who has like a thing they don't like about themselves, they can joke about it. Yeah. But if you joke about it, it becomes a problem. Yeah.

Dave Weigel from Semphor. I want to thank you for joining us. Thank you. I'm going to grab a drink. Hang on. Yeah, same. I intended to have a whiskey sour. There might be a bottle of Knop Creek somewhere in the apartment, but I couldn't find it.

And I had this nice bottle of El Dorado 8 dark rum. Basically any drink that you make with bourbon you can make with dark rum, and it will work well. That's an interesting fact. I didn't know that. And so, I mean, it's funny. I was going to call this a rum sour, although, like, a dacery is rum sour and is made with lime. and is made with lime juice. Actually, the summer occasionally would be like,

I don't have any limes and what, like, a lot of the summer sour drinks, it feels like you're not, like, they're all lime drinks, they're not lemon drinks. But so here I, here I've invented another lemon sour drink that maybe I can even do in the summer next year. And I put an egg white in it for the foam,

but I was absent-minded and I accidentally dropped the entire egg into the cocktail shaker, which is why I took a little while in the break because I was having to fish the egg yolk out before I shook it. I love the egg trick. It makes so many things better. What else are we drinking today? I am drinking the exceptionally girly flavored cider from Austin East Ciders.

It's tropical punch. So it's basically like, you know, there's like these fruity ciders now for girls. And I am a girl. Punch flavored cider. This hasn't reached the Fire Island Pines. It will. They're fruity. They're like, I don't think.

You know, boys wouldn't like it. They have real, real ones. The cider has lots of cards. I'll live through the trauma. Ben, what are you drinking? I have a Moscow mule with fever trees, premium ginger beer, and solely. I recently have been learning a bit more about these fruity cans you can buy. Because as we've probably discussed on this show, Topo Chico, normal, is in remission

because the farm, not the farm, but like the mill in Mexico where they get the water. The mill? The spring. The spring is close. closed for a year. The water mill? The water meal. They were like, oh, this, this water is no good.

You can't have it for a year. We need to fix it. But they have been making these knockoffs because it's done by Coca-Cola now. And so they all come in these things that are like, they're not natural, but they're called Sabores. And this one is raspberry with lemon. And it is so good. I've, I'm not, I've never had raspberries before. And I am just, I've been reading all about raspberries.

Apparently they come in different types. And... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up here, but you... You've never had raspberries? No, I'm not... I'm like... Not in a, like, a fruit bowl at a hotel?

I wouldn't even know what they look like. The next time we're live, Ben, I am going to make you eat a raspberry pie. I do not believe for a second that Ben does not know what a raspberry looks like. Like, there's even... There's even a whole Hollywood award named after them. Well, I'm looking at it right now. Yeah. That's a red, little red thing.

with bumps? I don't know what the fuck. Yes. But this isn't plausible. I don't know what that is. You have come up with better lies. I can't help you with that one, sir. So is it like, you have been, you have been to conferences.

There is a zero percent chance that you have not encountered a fruit plate with raspberries on it at a conference. Well, maybe he's not going to very good conferences. Like, you need a fairly high budget conference for there to be berries on the fruit plate. I'm not grabbing the things. from the communal fruit plate at the conference. What am I? What is this?

But have you not like... I don't want to get my dirty, dirty germs from all these dirty coffers at the... I'm sorry, anyway. Well, we're talking about implausible things that Ben is above a buffet is another implausible thing. Even if it were true, Ben, surely strolling by your eye might light casually

upon the fruit, arrayed for the consumption of others. Are you saying that they make raspberry pies? Yeah, I make them. It's my favorite. pie. It's a non-standard pie. It is the best pie. All right, well, that sounds like a good mix. Maybe we'll do that next time. Well, I love this, this top bunch you go. Okay. We have an update on a story from last week. The Nicole Hannah-Jones, New York Times essay that we talked about about regretting

her choice to send her daughter to the low-performing, heavily black neighborhood school. And, you know, her daughter now in 10th grade saying this was a mistake, I didn't get a good education. Nicole Hannah Jones and her daughter, Naja, appeared together on this American life. And so, you know, it's again, you know, I think interesting and admirable openness on the part of Nicole Hannah Jones to go on national radio and have her daughter tell her that she made mistakes and how she set up for her to be educated. But there's also still some interesting stuff in the interview about like, you know, what connections Nicole Hannah Jones continues to do. That's it for this week's free episode of Central Air. You just heard the beginning.

of our cocktail hour segment, which is at the end of the show every week. And in the full version of the show for paying subscribers, there's approximately another 45 minutes of that, actually, this week. We talk about some updates on that Nicole Hannah-Jones' education story. There was a very interesting, This American Life interview that Hannah Jones did alongside her daughter,

including Hannah Jones's shock and dismay when her daughter said she wanted to go to Harvard, despite the fact that they do not discuss the idea of going to PWIs or predominantly white institutions in that household. Megan actually has some interesting backstory herself about her father, who was offered by his grandmother to pay college tuition, but only if he went to a Catholic institution. And so this is in some ways a very old American story that you see in lots of communities about, you know, staying within versus going out.

As Megan notes, there are reasons to come down on either side of those questions. Also this week, we talk about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's been, in upstate New York, campaigning in the very down-to-earth town of Ethica, apparently preparing for a Senate run or maybe a presidential run, and we talk about her prospects in either of those races. If you want to hear all of that, go to centralairpodcast.com, become a paying subscriber. You can listen to that full show in every full episode, and you'll be part of our community. We have some very lively responses that we get in the comments,

and you'll also be able to see playbacks of any substack lives we do, like the one we did on Friday with cartoons, hate her. So anyway, centralairpodcast.com, where you can go to upgrade. Thank you.