Central Air - Neither Glee Nor Panic: Our Moderate Take on Zohran Mamdani

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Josh, Ben and Megan take stock of the lessons for Democrats from Tuesday’s strong election result — and a look at how Republicans failed to speak to voters’ concerns about the cost of living. Also this week: hopes and fears for Zohran Mamdani, the ongoing meltdown at the Heritage Foundation, the ongoing meltdown on Nancy Mace’s Twitter feed over her treatment by TSA and airport staff at the Charleston airport, and a couple of stories about Ben and Josh's less-than-finest hours at the airport.Feedback? Questions? Leave a comment at centralairpodcast.com or email us at [e-mail]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe

Welcome back to Central Air. I'm Josh Barrow here in my office where it's always a perfect 72 degrees. I'm here with Megan McArdle, columnist for the Washington Post. Megan, how was voting yesterday? For me, I didn't vote. You didn't vote. That's terrible. I live in the District of Columbia where nothing was happening. Oh, right. Yes. The Secretary of State of Kentucky, Michael Adams, he was tweeting about people are calling and asking why the polls are closed. The polls are closed because we do not have an election in Kentucky today. I would like to say, by the way, that everyone should follow Kentucky's example. Off-year elections are terrible and should be ended. Well, so the weird thing with Kentucky is Kentucky has elections three out of four years. They have odd year elections, but only every four years. They elect the legislature and even-numbered years and the governor two years from now. But today, you could stay home.

So, Ben, I assume you didn't vote either in Kentucky or in Washington, D.C. yesterday. I actually voted in both. Okay. Good. I found my way. Jimmy'd my way in. No, I've actually only voted a few times in my entire life, just because I live in, even when I lived in places that technically you could vote. They were always very blue or very red and, you know, you have to register in advance in a lot of them. Are you registered to vote right now, Ben?

I'm still registered in Idaho, probably. Did have elections in a few states and quite good for Democrats across the board, I have to say. The polls suggested that Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spanberger, the nominees for. governor of New Jersey and Virginia, respectively, were ahead by, you know, a decent margin. And they both beat their polls substantially. Spanberger's going to win by about 15 points in Virginia, Cheryl, by something like 12 points in New Jersey. And so, Megan, I'm wondering what you made of these results because, you know, four years ago, the polls were off by like six points in New Jersey, which I think is part of why Democrats were nervous, even though Cheryl had a clear lead.

And it looks like the polls were off maybe by even a little bit more this time, just in the opposite direction. So instead of, you know, a surprisingly close election, you've got a surprise blowout. Yeah, and I think that this goes to the fact that polls are getting harder and harder to use because people don't pick up their phones. Online polls don't work as well in some ways. And that leaves us all kind of going into the dark. It makes things more exciting in some way.

It's just like radical uncertainty. But I, like, what do I make of the broader election results? Look, I think this is a. a warning to Mom Donnie in particular. But a good lesson for everyone else, which is that campaigning is fine. It's nice that you're good at getting attention. It's nice that you look good on camera. But what actually matters is governing. And I think you are seeing, in addition to the fact that, you know, off-year elections now benefit Democrats because they have the higher propensity voting base. But like what you're really seeing is that people are reacting to the last 11, you know,

months of insanity, and that they just want things to be normal for five minutes. And the problem with this is that, like, there's two equilibrium that that could produce. And one is that someone is normal for five minutes and develops a commanding majority. And the other is that no one is normal for five minutes because it just flips back and forth between parties who are like, aha, people have rejected the other party's abnormality. Now it is my chance to be as abnormal. as I like. And that's kind of where we've been for the last 10 years. And it's really unhealthy. And I think for Mondani especially, his temptation is going to be within the somewhat limited

parameters that a New York City mayor can actually do anything is going to be to like let his freak flag fly. And that would be a mistake. Big, big, big mistake. Yeah, we'll, we'll have a good conversation about my my home city in New York in a little bit and what uh I think it's very interesting set of challenges that that faces momdani but in terms of the you know been the the Virginia and New Jersey results these were like very not momdani candidates you had these two sort of like you know women with these centrist profiles and military backgrounds very much in the mainstream of the Democratic Party both winning by double digits and I was amused by Ryan grim from drop site news the left wing outlet he had posted back in September about

you know, well, why aren't Democrats running better in these races? They nominated these, like, boring centrist candidates who don't inspire anyone, and they're only ahead by a little bit, even though in Virginia, the Republican candidate is kind of a dope. Like, how is this happening? And so, of course, then they both blow it out. And so this morning, Ryan Grimm was like, well, actually, Mikey Sherrill, the governor of New Jersey, is an economic populist champion. And she changed up in the last month of the race, because his tweet about this was on, like, September 28th. And, you know, she's, she's going to fight to freeze electricity prices and fight antitrust monopolies in the apartment rental industry and all this, like, like retconning her

into this economic populist champion, which, and you know, again, like she was very focused on the cost of living. I think candidates all over the political spectrum are talking about how things are too expensive right now. But this idea that sort of, you know, well, once they've won, well, then they must have been these populist champions. I mean, I think it's, obviously absurd that he's redconning it like this. But I will say like it's it's not a bad political choice, right, to just make the story about them whatever you want, you know, as opposed to what they often do, which is revolt and push away winners and say, oh, they're all bastards. This one is saying, actually he won because of my ideas and assuming people aren't

going to look. My main, my main takeaway from this election, though, is like, which is like a democratic romp now, right, is that, um, the Trump era is just ending quickly. And we're already at the point where, like, some of the benefits of Trump are gone for the GOP. Like, he sent that thing last night that was, like, on truth social where he was like, Trump not on ballot and shut down. Why GOP lost? And, like, the thing is, Trump is never going to be on a ballot again. You know, like, like, that's, there's never going to, he's not, that's never coming back for them.

So all they have are these highly motivated Democrats who just ate Trump so much. Like, that, that's the operative thing. thing for the resistance stem is just like I'll I'll vote for this guy this attorney general in Virginia who's got a lot of his own problems just because I hate Trump like I just that's the operative issue here yeah Ben is referring to Jay Jones the attorney general elect of the state of Virginia there were two big breaking negative stories about him in October one was these quite gross text messages that he had sent to a Republican colleague of his when he was a member of the House of delegates appearing to wish death on his opponent and maybe even his opponent's children

and saying that, you know, Republicans need to feel this pain so they will come around on gun control, basically. He also got arrested for driving 116 miles an hour in a 70 mile an hour zone, which is very dangerous. I mean, you can get sent to jail for that. He got a thousand hours of community service, and then there's this allegation that, in fact, he did the community service for his own political action committee. And as Ben notes, you know, there was a significant intellectual penalty for that. He's going to win by 10 points less than Abigail Spanberger at the top of the ticket. But, you know, Spanberger winning by 15, that means he wins by five. And so I guess this is, well, it's two things. One, that's actually a really large scandal penalty. One thing I've seen people

saying on Twitter that, like, bothers me as people being like, no one cares about scandals anymore, actually, like a lot of voters in Virginia cared about the scandal. Not enough to flip this election, but not every state's Virginia. And that's the other thing. I don't want Democrats to get too triumphalist about this election result overall because, you know, it's like Spanberger's going to get 57% of the vote in Virginia compared to 52% that Kamala Harris got last year, a five-point improvement. And that's great. But, you know, improving five points in Ohio or Iowa actually isn't enough for Democrats to win. And so, you know, you can have a great night for Democrats and the party still isn't appealing enough to voters in the center to compete in the sort of states where Democrats need

to compete in order to win a majority in the Senate. So like one thing that's, you know, that always worries me about good nights like this is that people can take away the message, like everything we're doing is great, we don't need to change. And this actually, this result still isn't quite good enough to have the Democratic Party where it needs to be.

I think the question is, it seems to me that it actually is different, though, because we've seen a few cycles of that, right? Where Democrats are like, maybe we should change, no, great off your election. Just keep on, keeping on. And I think at this point, they've been hammered enough

that they are. A lot. Probably. Yes, indeed. But I feel like there is a sense in a lot of people in the party, actually, that that just doesn't work. Did you see the Georgia results where there was quite significant swings? Yeah. Yes.

The Georgia Public Service Commission. Very exciting. District two. Yes. Anyway, this is the body that regulates utilities in Georgia. And there was this democratic blowout to win two of the five seats on this, the only two that were up on the ballot. And this gets at a couple of interesting phenomena about these off-year elections. One is the more obscure the election is, the better Democrats do because Democrats fucking love voting

and will, you know, come out any time you hold an election about any, you know, little thing. The other is the importance of electricity prices in our politics. People are, you know, there's been these, it varies regionally, but there have been these really significant increases in electricity prices over the last year or the last few years. And that's really motivating people. It's also a big issue in the New Jersey governor race where Mikey Cheryl, as Ryan Grimm likes to point out was saying, I'm going to freeze electrical rates. And, you know, people, that's one of the key areas where they're being squeezed. And I think it's a political vulnerability for Republicans,

first of all, because they're the incumbents, but then also because the president has been doing these very showy things, canceling electrical generation projects because he doesn't like the source of fuel for them. There's usually a problem for Democrats, where Democrats appear to hate certain kinds of energy. Now Republicans also hate certain kinds of energy. Yeah, I don't know why no one can just run on an all of the above strategy. everything that works, right? Just put it all out there. We need a ton more electricity to do AI. We need a ton more electricity even beyond that because electricity should be cheaper. I mean, Andy Bashir in Kentucky has kind of run on that all the above thing and, you know, saying like, it's good that we're putting

this new natural gas pipeline in Kentucky because we need more energy. Like it is possible and it's the sort of thing that helps you outperform in a state like that. Yeah, but even Megan is also truly right. I think that like the one thing about politics about electricity and energy in this country is that it just totally ignores the fact that we haven't really grown our actual electrical output in 20 years. And in the next 20 years, we're going to need to more than double it. And China, meanwhile, is adding, like, 300 gigawatts a year. It's, like, crazy. It's just like, even if you do, you know, I'm an all of the above type person and want, I love that Mom Dami was sort of open a little bit to nuclear, even though there's no governor, I mean, the mayor of New York

has nothing to do with that. But, um, but like, those things take 11 years. to build. You know, like once you start. So they need to start now just to get these things going at all by 2036. Well, and putting on my libertarian hat for a moment, the fact that utility commissions exist and voters elect them is one of the reasons that we don't add power generation capacity. Because doing that up front is expensive. And it can make rates rise in the short term. And people don't like that. And so, you know, there's a balance between profits, capital investment and rates. And what the utilities do is they hold down the rates, which reduces the future profits of an investment in electrical generation capacity. And we end up with too little of it.

And so we flatlined and just figured everything was fine because we had held that return down given that, like, you know, power demand is not increasing at the incredible pace. It was in like 1950. But we should have been adding more capacity. We especially should have obviously been adding more nuclear capacity, more renewable capacity. And we didn't because we have these bureaucrats who are in charge of deciding how much we're going to add. And they don't care about like actually making the future happen. They care about managing political incentives right now. What's the alternative to that? I mean, you know, you have a monopoly on electrical transmission. I mean, don't you need some sort of government regulation there? Because, I mean, you're not going

to run like four different sets of power lines to every house. Well, fair enough. But you could certainly try to make the commissions less focused on the immediate rate. You can, in the same way that the Fed has a dual mandate about employment and inflation, you could give them a more aggressive dual mandate. I'm not saying that, you know, you can't have any sort of regulation, although, right, you can split the grid and then just have people choose their power operators, which is how things have been moving recently. You can do that for generation.

Yeah. But we have way underinvested in the grid as well. And that has been, I mean, we've all talked about the abundance. We've all read abundance. We know, we know why that happened. But these utility commissions need massive reform in order to actually prep us for the coming decades. And I am, I am not confident that the Democratic Party has, has heard that call and that the new commissioners are going to be pointing Georgia towards the kind of infrastructure it needs. One of the things that I think is so interesting about this conversation, which I find fascinating, is that it highlights, you know, all of

the important, interesting policy levers that go into energy in this country that get completely ignored by the climate is the devil people and just reduce it all to screaming about nonsense so that you can't actually have a discussion about, you know, how can you de-risk thermal exploration, right? Like, how can you try to build these new sorts of things? And instead, you just get people screaming climate is the devil. And- Well, but I don't know. At the abundance conference in D.C. last month, there were a lot of, like, fairly technical conversations, or I guess it was two months ago, fairly technical conversations about this sort of stuff. I think that, you know, I don't think you're going to get voters focused on, you know, the NEPA review process and, you know, like, exactly which

level of government needs to approve interstate transmission lines and all this stuff. But it really is increasingly an area of focus of policy wonks and elected officials. This is one of those political issues where, you know, you need voters to focus on, like, we don't have enough energy, we need more energy and we vote for pro energy candidates. And then you need people on the inside focused on the details. I mean, some of this is stuff for secret Congress. But I don't, I think the shifts toward, you know, more energy is good, I think is enough among the electorate. And the details can be worked out in Washington. Well, I think the details, you do have to think about what the details are, though, right? Because like one way, for example, that you sell yourself as a more energy candidate is that you promise a bunch of jobs. And then it turns into a jobs program and not so much an energy program. And I think that you can see that in a a lot of what democratic infrastructure investment has looked like over the last 10 years is that the main idea is that it would be really nice if we employed a lot of people doing this thing. And, you know, if it produces some stuff as a side benefit, that's great. But the main point is, like, let me please all of my constituencies with my free child care

and my prevailing wage and all the rest of it. And if you really want to do energy abundance, and I think that this is a problem that the abundance people have not, or some of the, like, you know, that Derek and Ezra, a very fine book, loved it a lot, but you're going to have to really take on the unions, because if you want to do real energy abundance, the object is going to have to be the opposite of providing jobs. You want to do this as leanly as possible, so that you can do the most of it for a limited amount of money. And the way that Democrats have generally approached it is the opposite, not because they're just evil and wish, energy projects not to happen, but because they, that is how you get votes for these things.

It's funny because I think that is descriptive of the issue with housing where, you know, you have these, you know, housing reforms and then the problem is all the construction trades want set aside and stuff that make things excessively expensive. Is that actually the case with like, is there such a thing as a non-union pipeline project? Because sometimes the unions can be the good guys here helping you against the environmental groups. It's that, you know, you do more of this. It creates more jobs for the union members. And I just sort of like, The larger scale the construction project is, the more often it's like it's going to be union anyway in any case. So I'm wondering if the unions actually are a problem on the end.

I mean, they can be, but what they extract from that is that you feather bed, right? That's the New York story. Yeah, sure. The unions are absolutely going to help you lobby for your Second Avenue subway. My dad was doing a lot of that lobbying. But then you look at the end and you're like, well, how come there's a zillion sandhogs employed? And it's because that's where the votes for getting this thing done were. Yeah.

with the zillion sandhogs. What's a sandhog? Those are the people who dig the subway tunnels. There's an interesting thing with the politics nationally of this energy price stuff. Over the last year or so, the substantial increase in utility costs, mostly electricity, also some for gas, has been almost exactly offset by falling gasoline prices. And so, you know, voters are specifically annoyed about their electric bills and since states regulate the utilities, that can become a big issue in these state elections.

But in terms of the overall picture of like how dissatisfied are people with the economy, there's been this tailwind for the president in the form of these falling gasoline prices that has offset some of this other stuff. And I'm just wondering, you know, one of the things we've seen a down tick in the president's approval ratings in the last few weeks after them having been stable for several months. And a lot of us, you know, we talked about this on the show, I think last week or two weeks ago, that, you know, the tariffs all went in and they caused price increases on all these different categories of goods. and there doesn't appear to have been a significant market or electoral penalty for that yet. I'm wondering if we're starting to see that coming in. And that's, you know, some of what's the shutdown has had some real effects, especially in place like Virginia. The inflation picture is looking, you know, slightly less benign than it was a few months ago.

I don't know how much further gasoline prices could possibly fall. It feels like that, you know, if you want to tell an even more alarming story for Republicans, it's that the dissatisfaction with the economy is really starting to set in now. and there are various reasons to think that that's actually likely to get worse over the next year. I mean, yeah, but I do think you have to remember it's Virginia, which has a very specific grievance about the Doge stuff and the federal shutdown. Well, but then New Jersey sort of put up pretty similar results to Virginia. Right, but you shouldn't extrapolate that too far, right? Like, don't get too excited about how you did in Virginia because this is, you know, we are tied to federal employment in our economy and federal contracting as well.

it in a way that no one else in the country is and they are not going to react in the same way. So that's like a mild cautionary note that things might not translate much beyond. And, you know, honestly, New Jersey might have been affected by the fact that Trump's like threatening to do all of this stuff about the tunnel and so forth. Yeah, canceling the new Amtrak tunnel between New York and New Jersey. But then you have Georgia. There's always, there are other examples, right? There's eventually when you like take New Jersey and Virginia and then Georgia and then you throw in some of these other ones and you're like, all right, now this isn't just a one. I am not at all trying to downplay what happened last night.

Republicans should be curled into a fetal position, sobbing gently, preparing to uncurl themselves and figure out how they fix this mess. Just a normal Wednesday for them. Well, dude. I mean, and like the Vake Ramoswami, for example, was saying, you know, well, this, one of the lessons is that we need. to focus clearly on the cost of living and talk about how we're going to bring down energy costs and housing costs, et cetera. And this is, I think, actually a good way for us to turn and talk about New York City and our new Democratic socialist mayor here, which is everyone looks at Mom Dani and there's all these lessons. And one of them is like a relentless focus on the cost of living was effective for him.

And everyone else needs to find a way to do that too. But the problem is then you actually have to have an agenda. You can talk to people about why it's going to reduce their cost of living. And the thing that works well for Mamdani is that, you know, his biggest thing was freeze the rent. About half the rental apartments in New York City are subject to rent regulation. And the rent increases are approved by a board that is appointed by the mayor. And so that's a plausible thing that he may well be able to do, which is that, you know, he's going to put people on that board who are going to say your rent isn't going to go up. And it doesn't fix the long-term housing shortage in New York. But if you're a person who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment, that's like a real thing he can do to affect your real cost of living.

And one of the many problems for the political center in New York was that we didn't have a clear message about what the hell we were going to do about the cost of living. I think that's a problem for Republicans nationally. And it may be a problem for Mamdani once he is governing. But, you know, you can say, like, we need to focus on the cost of living. But then you actually, you have to have a story about why it is that what you're going to do is going to contain the cost of living. But why don't we, why don't we turn and talk about Mom Donnie, which, you know, he's going to get just a little bit over half the vote. like. And now he has to go and try to, you know, deliver on all the free shit that he promised. And that's going to be interesting to watch. Yeah, I saw a tweet last night that said he was the first

Democratic mayor to get a million votes since John Lindsay. And that comparison should scare the hell out of him. John Lindsay wasn't a Democrat, but yeah. He switched parties, though. He was never elected as a Democrat. He was elected as a Republican and then as like this fusion liberal party thing. He eventually became a Democrat. He did eventually become a Democrat. Yes. He He was the first New York City mayor to get a million votes in the election. And John Lindsay was like the great liberal white hope back in the day when the parties were not as ideologically sorted as they are now. He came in. He was going to fix everything.

And he left disgraced. He wrecked the city, left it like on route to a disastrous financial crisis. And by the end was hated by almost everyone except the limousine liberals who lived in dormant buildings. who still loved him. He tried to run for precedent, didn't go so well. And so I think that Mom Donny should think hard about that. In the end, what matters to, like, it's governing. I can't say this often enough. It's governing. You have to actually think through what you're doing, not have ideological pet projects, have good, competent people working for you, and not be so focused on some blue sky vision that you're not getting the trash collected and the streets, keeping the

street safe and making the schools work in a way that will keep your tax base in the city. Because that is actually Mamdani's fundamental challenge. He doesn't actually have that much scope to raise taxes. I think people are exaggerating this. I don't think Kathy O'Kle is going to let him start slapping like 80% wealth taxes on the bankers. But if you don't execute, if people don't like the schools, they will leave. If the people you need, the people who are paying all those taxes that you want to divert to social services, if their subway stations are filled with homeless people

and they don't like getting on the subway in the morning, some of them will move. If they're not safe, if their schools aren't great, if their trash is not picked up, anything you can, if their parks aren't nice, all of that stuff has to work.

Because that's how you keep the city healthy. Ben, you've been surprisingly bullish on Mondani. Yeah, I mean, Mondami is part of the left of me. But to be honest, he won, he can't raise any of those taxes. That's just like not going to happen. the best read in an Albany. And also, he's made some nice moves to the center that,

that I think, like, represent him having political acuity that most far-lefters don't have. You know, he agreed to keep on Jessica Tisch, the NYPD. That's the police commissioner in New York, who's very widely respected across the political spectrum. I have a friend in New York who, you know, is a lefty crank. And they, uh, they were telling me that, like, they have family members in New York who literally were like deal breaker for a mom tommy or not was whether he would reappoint Jessica Tisch. Like that was the sole issue for them, whether it would be him or Cuomo. But like one of the reasons I, you know, we've been pretty open to it is sometimes you lose

elections. Like he won the primary fair and square and he'll do what he wants to do. And I was somewhat backlashed into it by the absurd racism that I felt was on display by his attackers who kept calling him a terrorist Jew hitter. And like, I don't agree with his policies in lots of ways, but I've watched him and he seems like a nice guy and I simply don't believe that he's a terrorist jewater. You know, like, those attacks don't work when the person is a congenial, nice, happy guy. Yeah, there's been something kind of unhinged. I mean, for example, Andrew Cuomo was on WABC, this conservative talk radio station here in New York.

And they're talking about, you know, Cuomo's like, could you imagine 9-11 happening with him here? And Cuomo was talking about that in the sense of like, is he qualified to respond to an emergency? And the host is like, well, he'd probably celebrate it. And then they both laugh. And it's like, you just look at Zoran Mamdani and like the idea that he would celebrate a terror attack is just so, it's just so crazy. Partly it was just watching the people who were losing their minds about him here in New York. And so I didn't vote for him in the end. I wrote in for Jessica Tisch because I went into the booth.

And I just, I fucking hate Andrew. Cuomo. He's so obnoxious and he ran this awful entitled campaign and he wasn't a very good governor. And his version of centrism is one that like the unions are like the core bulwark of the so-called political center in in New York politics. So it's basically like you're going to do all these giveaways to all these, you know, these entrenched interest groups and that's how you build that coalition. And so I didn't want Coim to be mayor. And I also didn't want to be responsible for Cuomo. There's a sense where like if Mamdani wins, that's the other side one. And it's their problem if everything goes to. shit. If Cuomo wins, on some level, that's my team. And I'm going to have to, like, watch him screw up and be responsible for it. But the other thing is that between the primary and now, because I did vote for Cuomo and the primary, effectively I did. It was a ranked choice thing.

Mamdani has moved to the center on a number of issues. He apologized to the NYPD for calling them racist. He's done things like he's, you know, he's changed his positions that he's in favor of keeping the standardized test for specialized high schools in the city. There's this whole host of issues where people were afraid of him being this crazy leftist where he's really trying to send signals about that he's, you know, he's moderating somewhere. And he's had this campaign actually to reach out to the like the oligarchs of New York City, the business leaders who detested Bill de Blasio. And he's the New York Times had an interesting story about this. You know, he goes to meetings with these people and he listens respectfully and he's nice in a way that

Bill de Blasio never was and even finds common cause on certain regulatory issues where Mamdani seems to understand that sometimes the reason New York is too expensive is that it's over-regulated. And so it's not that I think he's going to be a good mayor, but he moderated enough that I no longer had a significant preference for Cuomo over him, which is why I felt comfortable like not casting a vote at all in the mayor's race by doing that right in. And so I have been impressed by that and we'll see, because that's going to be a lot harder when you're actually governing, because you have to make choices between different groups. There were also these ballot questions in New York, basically to take power away from the city council.

and give it to the mayor about new housing development. Good ballot questions. They all passed. And Mamdani didn't want to take a position on it because everyone on the city council hates it because the council would lose power. And then also like the construction trade unions don't like it because they want to lobby for set a size and that sort of thing. And he kept being like, I'm considering I haven't taken a position. But on election day, he goes, I voted for the ballot questions. And I take that again as a good sign that, you know, he wants those powers to use his mayor to try to get more housing built.

So I'm not a Mamdani fan yet. but he actually has significantly improved my view of him compared to how I felt on primary day. Well, look, I think that the unhinged, like he's a terrorist, is both bigoted and playing to bigotry that, like, anyone who's a Muslim loves terrorists, right? He's definitely trying to hit, like, some of that, those buttons. I will say, though, he, you know, he has said things. Globalized the Intifada. I'm sorry, you don't understand why Jewish people.

might feel a little nervous about an intifada where a lot of people died. To be clear, the controversy, there is not about him saying that. It's about him saying, you know, more or less that it's fine for other people to say that. Yeah. Which he then said, you know, he would discourage people from saying that. But in any case. Yeah, that was, there has been some tone deaf stuff where he is playing two elements of his base who are anti-Semitic. I don't think he's anti-Semitic.

But, you know, he said that when the, the NYPD's boot is on your neck. The IDF is lacing that boot. He said this two years ago on a Democratic Socialists of America panel. Yeah. Now, you can say, well, he's angry that the NYPD is getting some training from the IDF, right? You can point to that. But it is also true that, like, anti-Semites on the right can be like, wow, there sure are a lot of Jewish bankers.

And, like, yes, there are a lot of Jewish bankers. But when you say it in that way, not as like, hey, wow, look, there are a lot of, like, very successful Jewish people running banks because they're. They're smart and hardworking. When you say it that way, you are, even if you don't believe it, you can't, it's a cancer. And so I do understand why people are nervous about him, even though I think they went way over the top into like he loves terrorists. He celebrated 9-11, that sort of thing. That's like awful offensive thing to say unless you have actually hard direct evidence that someone celebrated 9-11.

And I similarly think like, yeah, he's moderated a little. on some of his dumber positions, but, like, he controls the rent stabilization board, and he can really screw up the New York City housing market. Now, maybe he'll offset that by getting a lot of housing built, but it's actually just quite complicated to build housing in New York City, especially in Manhattan, but also in the outer boroughs, like, assembling large enough plots to build a bigger building. It just takes time. And the stuff he has levers for, how fast is he going to move that, versus the landlords

he is trying to bankrupt by freezing rents when inflation. is quite high. Sorry to read back to Re, whether he is a Jew hater or not. Inevitably, as we always love to do, I just, when he said those things on those DSA panels, you know, the thing about the IDAS boots and he said various bullshit did they all say. If certain people on the left said that, I would immediately go, this person, this person is, you know, I would interpret it like they were anti-colonial, those psychopath anti-Jew haters. But because he's such a nice guy, when I hear that say that quote, I literally think,

oh, well, he's just talking in the same idiotic language that the left always talks before they have to be a real candidate. You know, that's just like the grammar that they use. I don't think it said much about his heart two years ago because two years ago, he was just some DSA moron. Two years ago is not very long ago. He was a state politician. This has driven me crazy in a number of these stories.

It's like with Jay Jones and in Virginia, the text messages like, oh, he was going through a difficult time. It was like, that was four years ago. And he had already been an elected official at the time he was doing that. A lot of the Graham Platner stuff in Maine is also four years ago. Like, you know, when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and he was, like, if we're talking about something that you did in college 15 years ago, 20 years ago, okay, fine. But there's like, and I, you know, I also like, when I look at that clip of Mondani saying

that thing about the NYPD boot on your neck, it's so discordant from the way that he has talked in this election. not just the IDF thing. He would never talk about the NYPD like that today because he understands what happened with Bill de Blasio and that the number one way to wreck your mayoralty is to end up in a, in a dumb war with the NYPD. So he's, you know, he has completely changed his public facing outlook on that sort of stuff. And, you know, yeah, it's concerning that he was saying things like this a couple of years ago. But I think also in part, like the reason you get this obsession over Gaza on the left is that they don't run anything. And so, like, they can spend all their time talking about the Gaza

conflict because they're on some level spectator's politics. But Mamdani is not going to be a spectator politics. He has to run New York City. And so my expectation, I don't think he will, in fact, have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if Netanyahu is here for the, for the UN General Assembly, even though he idiotically said in the campaign that he would do that under the, like, the international criminal court warrant. I think he's, going to be too busy running the city. But, you know, that's what I think. And I understand why people have reservations about that. The other thing we should say is he has never run anything. He has had a staff of what, like five people? And now he is running the biggest city in the country.

Well, he and a team will be running it. I mean, it's not just Jessica Tisch. There's been these signals that it's fairly likely that someone like Dan Garadnik or Maria Torres-Springer will be the first deputy mayor. Those aren't names I expect, you know, national audience on a podcast to be familiar with, but those are both very well-respected, longstanding, you know, top officials in New York City government. Eric Adams was actually grousing about this the other day saying that Mom Doni has to, you know, raid my staff because he doesn't have the DSA can't run anything. And it's like, yeah, but on the other hand, like, he understands the DSA can't run anything and that he needs to, you know, get these experienced old hands who I think are broadly

people who I do trust to run the city. Part of the problem, though, right? Like Trump did this in his first administration. He got a lot of old hands. And then he got frustrated with the old hands and fired them. And so the question is, does Mom Donnie, like, does he stick with governing and listen to those people and end up as in many ways kind of a figurehead in his own administration on a lot of issues? Or does he, when push comes to shove, I don't think he's going to be like Trump in terms of being like a childish crybaby who gets upset whenever anyone tells him something he doesn't want to hear. But it is very possible that he is a pig-headed person who, when someone disagrees with him, he overrides them and does dumb stuff. Sure, lots of things are possible, but we don't know yet.

That is the proof is in the pudding. You find that out when you see someone cover. Sure, but sometimes we don't know yet. And like, he does seem like a nice guy. And also a lot of this, like, oh, they haven't done it before. You know, sometimes people surprise you. You never know. But wait, I do have to say one point before we move on, which is the other thing about MomDami, that everyone on this podcast and certainly,

another podcast and many podcast listeners should be excited for is that, setting all the governance aside, every single time that Mundani does not go full communism, the far left is going to have a cry attack. Yes, I love this. And like, it's just delicious. They never win. So they never have to deal with like the compromises that come with being in government. But when they do have their, you know, internet boyfriend win and he actually does anything

practical at all, they have a little meltdown. And it's going to be just a fun four years of fun. Do you think that's right, though? Like, I have been watching the people who were calling anyone who was to the right of, like, Chairman Mao and Nazi. And then Graham Platner shows up with a friggin Nazi tattoo. And I'm watching all these far left people be like, wow, I mean. We've seen a couple of examples of this already with Mom Dany. One was when he was asked, you know, well, you apologize to the NYPD for calling the racist.

And he said, yes. And Nathan Robinson, the, like, Willie Wonka guy who runs that current affairs, that left-wing magazine. was all upset about it. And it's like, you know, you give this ground and it doesn't, it doesn't get you anything. And it's like that's, you know, that's why Nathan Robinson is not getting elected mayor and Mondani is. And then also when Mamdani endorsed those ballot questions at the last minute to speed

housing development approval, Kate Willett, that like communist NIMBY comedian got so upset about it on Twitter. And so I think that he does understand that he has to govern a city. And it's going to be hard. So I don't think he'll get this right every time. But there are places where he's being. practical and it's already annoying the left. And I agree with Ben that I find it delicious when they get upset because they feel betrayed. Oh, so now it's all just about those sweet, sweet, sweet,

lefty tears, huh? Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah. I am nourished by sweet, sweet, sweet lefty tears. You know, you and Donald Trump both. You know who else love sweet lefty tears? Who? Hitler? I was thinking Donald Trump, but okay. Speaking of Donald Trump, Donald Trump was not pleased with these election results. And as we noted earlier, he was saying that, you know, the problem is I wasn't on ballot, which, yeah, of course. And also the shutdown. And so he summoned Senate Republicans to the White House to say, you have to get rid of the filibusters.

You can end the shutdown. But it seems to be true that the shutdown has been more of a political problem for Republicans than it has been for Democrats. I thought Democrats were going to come out of Election Day and be like, okay, election day is over. now we can reopen the government. But I think since they did so well, I don't think they're going to have a strong appetite to end the government shutdown on anything other than the terms they've been trying to lay out here. So I've been wondering, you know, how much longer this is going to go on and, you know, Trump is not going to get Senate Republicans to get rid of the filibuster. Are they going to actually open up a negotiation and say, well, maybe we'll extend those subsidies on, you know, for health insurance through Obamacare exchanges or maybe we'll promise that we won't do any more budget rescissions. But I, you know, I feel like Democrats, are emboldened and are actually going to try to extract something in exchange for ending the shutdown now. I don't know. First of all, no one wants this to go to Thanksgiving. I had to fly up to Boston for a funeral this weekend. And what, Bastion. You're picking up the accent. Yeah, sorry, my family is from West Roxbury. Yeah, I actually, I said the word scallops and my aunt

looked at me and she said, Megan, scullops. Oh, God. That was like, That was like nails on a chalkboard. Is that how they talk? These are my people, Ben, have some respect. So, like, I ended up sitting on the tarmac for more than an hour because of the shutdown. And I don't think anyone wants to see that at Thanksgiving, Democrats or Republicans, because, again, maybe Republicans will be blamed. My bigger concern is that, yes, they'll manage to extract something and that something is bad

because no one has any appetite for finding the $35 billion a year they would need to pay for the extended subsidies. where is it coming from? We are already running a $2 trillion deficit. Our interest costs annually now exceed. What's another $35 billion? Well, yeah, no, actually, so that's a really common phenomenon among people who are in deep debt. Is at some point they're just like, I can't handle it, I'm just not going to open the bills, and I'm going to keep spending until I go bankrupt. That's a bad way of handling that problem. and I'm afraid that that's where we're headed.

I mean, like, the subsidies are themselves basically a symptom of the fact that Obamacare never worked quite right because the mandate wasn't big enough. And it worked less well after the Republicans repealed the mandate. But, like, honestly, the mandate didn't even have that big in effect. What you were just seeing was that insurers were pulling out. The idea here broadly is that you want everyone or most everyone to get in the insurance market so that the risk pool reflects. Yeah, sorry. That was deep wonky weed stuff. And so you can use a combination of carrots and six to do that.

You can either tell people like, we're going to penalize you if you don't buy insurance, or you can give them subsidies. It's also how the rest of the system works. I mean, the employer-based health care system is built around a very large tax subsidy. Very large tax subsidy. And so to make its point, like if you don't have the stick, both the mandate, you know, there were a lot of exceptions and it wasn't that large, and then it was repealed. And then on the flip side, you get the, you can say, well, you just hand out more subsidies.

and that does in fact get more people in the market, but it costs a lot of money, unlike the mandate, which actually raises some money. Yeah, the subsidies really, expanding the subsidies in 2021, which is what Biden did. They did it temporarily, and then they immediately extended it again. It really goosed the, I mean, the exchanges doubled their enrollment. So it worked in one sense. It got enrollment to not quite, but almost where it was supposed to be in the original project, congressional budget office projections from 2010. but at a very high cost.

And that cost is going to keep increasing, you know, even without the mandate, the average premium hikes this filed this year would have been very high, partly because of things like Ozempic and partly because of other stuff like hospital costs and so forth. And that, you know, the system isn't working super well. And for a long time, America's solution to any problem that wasn't working that well is we just throw money at it because we're really rich. And we've kind of run out to the end of that strategy. And by demanding that Republicans extend these subsidies more and effectively make them permanent without fixing any of the underlying problems that are driving costs in the system, Democrats are participating.

And of course, Republicans were already there. But in this mentality of nothing has to be fixed, we're just going to keep throwing money into the hole until, I don't know, everything blows up and hopefully we're not in charge when it happens. And that's really worrying to me. I mean, that all makes sense to me. Just out of that, I think, what underlying cost changes do you think that they should be brave enough to be saying about? You know, like, one of the arguments for ACA that people don't really talk about anymore is that it wasn't going to make health insurance cheaper. It was going to slow the curve of rise, right? So they were always acknowledging that it's getting more expensive somewhat.

Yeah, but it didn't do that. Cost growth started moderating in 2006. And Democrats have retroactively latched onto this as like, look how great Obamacare was. it's like, wow, it's so great. It went back in time four years before it was passed and started cost growth slowing down. No, like, if you're going to do the Obamacare design, they could have put the mandate back in 2021. You will notice they did not. The mandate was not popular, and they didn't want to do anything unpopular.

And it didn't really work the first time, right? Well, right, it was too weak. They would have had to make a much stronger mandate. Basically, in other countries that use this design, if you don't buy health insurance, the state goes, buys it for you and takes the money out of your account. And you don't have any, right? Like, they do not make it so that there is ever a cost beneficial tradeoff. And they couldn't bring themselves to do that. The mandate, so there was that. There just a bunch of problems with the design. Their cost control stuff didn't really work. And Democrats have no plan to fix that.

Republicans never had a plan for health care. And like, this is the dynamics of our politics now. And it makes me crazy. I mean, this is fair as like a big picture, like, entitlements thing. But like the small bore, you know, 35 billion a year Obamacare subsidies, I mean, there were, you know, several trillion in tax cuts over a decade in the, in the Republican, you know, fiscal bill that passed earlier this year. And Democrats want to repeal much of that. And I realize Democrats do this thing where they identify a tax increase and there's like five different programs that they all say, well, we're going to use that to pay for this and for child care and whatever. But reversing those tax increases would be more than enough to pay for

the Obamacare subsidies. So I think part of the, Yes, I was against that too. I'm against all of it. I was against the Trump tax cuts. I am against this. I am against things that drive up our budget deficit when our budget deficit is unsustainable. I am just against. Full stop. But in terms of ending the shutdown, I don't think that there's an unwillingness in this Congress to increase the budget deficit by a further $35 billion a year, given what they've already done. So what is the endgame then, you know, whether it's because we just can't afford it and we can't add more spending or it's because Republicans don't like Obamacare or it's because Republicans don't want to give a win to Democrats were in the minority. If they're not going to do this subsidy thing, then how does the shutdown end? I don't know. A lot of them were promising, you know, in the beginning, they were like, well, we'll have another vote on it and maybe that little pass because a lot of us support it. But then the Democrats were like, we need to, we need to tie it in together and we want it now. And that's the deal they offered again yesterday before the election results came in. And

I don't really know because it really does emboldened the Democrats right now. There's no other way to look at it. I mean, Trump can push the Republicans to somehow end it through fantasy worlds, but that either mean, they're not going to get rid of the filibuster, like you said. So they're either going to need to, they need to find some way an exit ramp that leaves them with some bit of pride and no one's feelings get too hurt. And then they can just move on for a month until they have to do this again at Christmas. There's been some news this week other than the elections and the aftermath for that in

Congress. I want to talk about this weirdness that's happened with the Heritage Foundation. Heritage Foundation, this, you know, maybe the most important think tank on the right, and a very conservative one, like more conservative than the American Enterprise Institute. There was this video put out by their president, Kevin Roberts, who is his reoriented heritage in this very, like, nationalist America first, Trumpy direction. And the video is about Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, who's no longer with Fox News, has his, independent show on the web that has a large audience. And he brought on Nick Fuentes, who I guess Nick Fuentes still needs an introduction. I'm like concerned that like Nick

Fentis is actually now a promised enough figure that I don't even have to explain who he is. But he's this, he's this young like, you know, overtly anti-Semitic right wing figure that has these followers on the right called the Groypers, who have these, you know, these very like fascistic kind of like sometimes neo-Nazi-type views and has been considered persona non-grata in normal, you know, conservative spaces and for the most part. But Tucker Carlson had him on his show and had this sort of softball conversation with him about, you know, the Jews and everything else, which a lot of people are very offended by. And Kevin Roberts got out there to say, you know, Tucker's our friend. And if you try to cancel him, you are part of a venomous group that is trying to undermine the

rights, basically saying that, you know, more or less, if you're a conservative, you can't can't do anything that causes us to try to cancel you. And furthermore, Kevin Roberts said, and don't try to cancel Nick Fuentes. You just, you know, if he says that, you know, we need to like, that we need to kill Jews, then you have to argue that point with him. I mean, that's the, not a direct quote, but it's the implication of what Kevin Roberts had to say. And this generated a lot of controversy on the right. Kevin Roberts has had to walk it back somewhat. Apparently, it is still considered offensive by a lot of conservatives to play footsie in this way with, with anti-Semites. But Megan, I'm wondering what you make of this.

and how we even got into this position that the head of a think tank like this would even think about putting out a statement like this because it seems what's underlying all of this is there's a sense that the Groypers or people like the Groyper's are an important part of the Republican electoral coalition now and there's an argument

about exactly what kind of accommodation should be reached with them. Yeah, and I think that's wrong and it's wrong in a number of levels. I mean... Sorry, it's wrong. I'm wrong that that's what's happening. No, no, no.

I think you are correct. or wrong. Okay. Yeah. That I think, like, first of all, the most obvious level, it's morally wrong. Second of all, though, I don't think it's correct. I mean, even if you think that Nick Fuente's followers are a huge number of people, right? They're mostly young and young people don't vote at a very high rate. So chasing those people is not a good use of your time. Second of all, they're not that many people. Right? You can say, well, Tucker Carlson has. all these followers and he platformed Nick Fuentes. But most of Tucker Carlson's followers, although maybe this is increasingly untrue, like some of Tucker Carlson's followers are hate follows. They are people who are monitoring him for things to get angry about.

Some of them are bots. Some of them are people who followed him like 80 years ago, you know, lost their account and haven't used it since. Tucker Carlson does not move that many voters. Nick Fuentes moves a fraction of the voters, and most of Tucker Carlson's followers were probably not like I have been waiting avidly for Nick Fuentes, and I believe everything that he believes. But the third problem is that coalition, it repels other people. It repels as Heritage found out. And I think Heritage looked around and Rod Dreher said on his sub-exam.

stack that subsequently printed the New York Times that like 40% of the staffers, these conservative groups are now grippers. I think that that's probably an exaggeration, but it is a significant element. And I think that... But aren't those two claims in tension? Like, if electorally the sorts of people who follow Nick Fuentes are close to irrelevant, how would it be the case that the staff of these offices would be so heavily... How did so many progressive campaigns decide that going to the Transform America event and talking about... your incredible commitment to getting transition surgeries for transgender prisoners. How did so many people decide that that was- Right, but those people are electorally relevant.

The left's over-indexed on a lot of this identity stuff and certain very left-wing ideas because they're unpopular with the masses. But there is a very electorally relevant slice of the country that wants those left-wing things. They're part of the Democratic Party coalition, and they're figuring out how to manage them. If you're saying they're no more relevant than the sort of people who wanted that ACLU questionnaire filled out? Well, the people who wanted the ACLU questionnaire filled out are very relevant in our politics. And that would be an alarming thing because that would be an essential part of the Republican Party coalition if they're that big. Okay. So look, of all of the people in the progressive coalition, how many people actually cared if Kamala Harris came out in favor of

transgender surgeries for federal prisoners? Like, of the 7% of the electorate who identify as extremely progressive, how many of them were actually moved by that particular issue? Well, it was a really tiny slice. And the Nick Fuentes people are that slice, that you are chasing this tiny slice of people who are anti-Semites. They are politically very active. They become staffers. You do not win elections and you do not win in politics by catering to those people. I mean, I agree that you don't win elections by catering to your staffers. problem, both these parties. I also don't think that seven percent of America is super into like Hitler. Right. I actually, maybe I am wrong about that in which case. But like the problem

the thing about the progressive version is that it's not just about, you know, that one clip, right, where she said she agreed with trans prisoners or whatever. It's just that the dynamics that bring the entire party to the left on a whole host of issues. And it's not just like the grapers who have just the one issue of burning Jews. It's that they have a whole other host of issues that are pushing and spitering throughout the entire party. They also don't like black people. Right. The grippers are not tariff people, right?

They have a bunch of hardliner coalition members of which the grippers are won. They're not the entire 7% of the hard line. You should expel them because they're bad. You should not cater to that coalition merely because it's bad. You should also not cater to it because catering to it grows it. And like I do think that this idea that the right had that they could not. And a little bit of this happens on the left as well, that you could just kind of not notice what Linda Sorcerer was saying and like just, you know, we're not really talking about that

now. We're doing women's rights and she's really good on that, right? When you ignore it, it gets bigger and then it becomes a bigger problem for you. And it becomes a bigger problem for America as well, but just politically it becomes a bitter, if you don't care about America and you don't care that anti-Semitism is bad, the political liability is a problem. And I think that Republicans have done this. They have absolutely said, well, if I, we don't want to cancel anyone. That's what the left does. And like the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And no, the enemy of your enemy is not your friend if it's Hitler. If that person likes Hitler, that's not your friend. Hitler is no one's friend. Fuentes also said that he was an admirer of Stalin. Yeah. Not a terribly nice guy either. But to look at the like Democrat or Republican thing here, I mean, I don't think that the progressive loser climate activist idiots who work in these staffers are actually

Nick Fuentes version as far to the left is that, you know? But like one of the things with these groups that get in here, right, is that you do end up catering to them and you do end up building these things and then empower them. But on the left, the thing about those people is they actually don't have numerical power. Like what they have is the ability to have power once normy liberals get a friend. and don't have an idea and then go, they get afraid of the right and then go, okay, I'll latch on to these very loud, extreme voices, which is why every time Trump is an office, Democrats run on the left, or they did the first time, you know? But then the second Biden wins, those Democrats don't give a shit about any of those things and immediately revert back to some sort of normie positions, and the left is constantly disempowered whenever that happens. And I imagine it's the same on the right, that like there's a fear of Nick Funtus that isn't necessarily rational, but is, is, is, is,

nevertheless, keeping pulling gravity towards them. I don't love this analogy because I don't think that the like lefty fringe in the Democratic Party is like morally similar to Nick Fuentes. But like, I'm not arguing that it's morally similar either to be extremely. No, no, I don't think I don't think either of you are. But I think, you know, it's just, you know, if we're going to talk about the social dynamics to which I think there are real parallels. I think I just want to be clear that I don't think it's like morally equivalent.

But, you know, when Biden came in, those people got lots of power in the Biden administration. That was a big problem with the Biden administration that like, the fringe that was there in your coalition ended up with lots of power once you were in office and led them in some, you know, politically unappealing directions. And the, I mean, it's been a little bit grim for me watching Republicans say, you know, the, well, you can't play with Nick Fuentes like this because that's what the left did and look how voters punished the left for like playing footsie with their extremists because, you know, like reason one to not play nice with Nick Fuentes is that he has a bunch of evil ideas. But I also, you know, I worry that there is that 40%

thing from Rod Dreher, this claim that, you know, and even if it's overstated that like 40% of the young staffers on the hill are groopers, I do keep seeing these types of comments from older operative types in the Republican Party who have been around a while. Like, they are unnerved by the ideas that have lots of currency among the young staffer class. And I think that, you know, one thing that we've seen in Democratic Party is that what the staffers think is an important driver of what you end up doing once you're in office. And it also has to be downstream of, you know, the pool out of which you're hiring these people. There has to be, you know, like the coming out of the colleges, you're getting these people who like, why they're identifying as Republicans, why they want to go work for $25,000 a year as a staff assistant on the Hill is because they, you know, care passionately about these insane, you know, offensive ideas.

That's very worrying, you know, about the future of the Republican Party coalition. And I think we also see with J.D. Vance in the way that he talks about some of this stuff, Republican politicians are, you know, are afraid of getting crossbys with these people. Yeah. And I think, you know, it is hard to tell how sincere all of it is. Some of the people are really sincere are really, really into, are like Nick Fuentes, right? A lot of people are doing a kind of ironic backlash to the woke cancellation culture, which really alienated a lot of young people and made them extremely angry. And so it is hard, it is often hard to tease out, right? So the Politico did a story about the young Republicans chat and this can be somewhat confusing. This is not college

Republicans. These are people in their 20s, 30s. Yes. This was a bunch of, one of them was a Vermont State Senator, but a lot of them were like staff or operative type people. They had this group chat in which they were saying all these really offensive things, and they were involved in the young Republicans organizations. It's all wrapped in irony to make it hard to know who's saying what. So, for example, one comment that got picked up a lot was like, I love Hitler. But in fact, it was a joke about being so right-wing that you would fit in with the most right-wing version of the young Republicans. And also, maybe it wasn't a joke. And that is, right.

So I don't think that everyone is in different. but you look at that and you look at people who will make that joke and you look at the context in which they're making that joke in which people, a lot of people are saying things that aren't jokes. And it is extremely concerning for anyone who cares about the future of the conservative movement and who is old enough to remember when those jokes weren't okay. Totally. And I actually think that, like, that specific one where he says,

Fiddler is pretty obviously a joke when you look at the context. Like the rest of that chat is sort of filled with some shit. But that guy specifically in that one joke, I think. they like got a little misdescribed. But like this same, you know, how do you parse the irony and the grammar of an in-group is exactly true on the left as well, right? Like, like a lot of the things on blue sky are ironic reactions to what they perceive as, like, misdescriptions of them, which is why, like, when people were calling for the death

of health care executives last year, like, there was a few people doing it. Or they were coming up to the line of it where I was seeing all my conservative friends, like, screenshot them and be like, oh, see proof. and knowing those people, I was certain that they were engaging in irony and with that talk to them and they would say like, of course I don't want people killed. I was just, da-da-da-da-da.

And it can be hard, but it's so bad. Like, that's a really bad thing affecting the Democratic party. To what you were said. This is not, and like, they were just joking. I'm agreeing with you. My argument is don't indulge in that kind of irony because it creates an environment that normalizes it. But the thing with the Luigi Mangione thing

is that you saw in polling, that like this isn't just, you know, like a staffer level phenomenon that like young people and not not even just on the left. Like young people give alarming answers to questions about the murder that he apparently committed and more broadly about the use of violence and politics. And similarly, there are alarmingly high levels of anti-Semitic responses given in polls by young respondents, especially conservative young respondents. That's why I'm, you know, I think more concerned than Megan that this really does represent a mass phenomenon. phenomenon in the sense of, you know, millions and millions of people. Not mass in terms of like these are majority positions, but this is not just some people on the hill.

I don't think we're actually disagreeing that much. I am just arguing that this, if it's a couple million people, you should not chase that couple of million. You should leave them lying on the ground. Do not go after them. Do not play footsie with them. Do not attempt to like manage them as part of your coalition. Try to persuade them that they're wrong.

Try to make it uncool. and lucrative to not be like that. But do not attempt to figure out how to fit those people into your coalition. It is like trying to figure out how to fit a cancer. It's like you have stage two cancer and you're like chemotherapy sounds really bad. Maybe I'll make friends with my tumors instead. Do not make friends with your tumors. Cut them out.

I want to end on a lighter note than that this week. So let's talk about Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace, Congresswoman from coastal South Carolina, who behaves like she's the messiest person on a Bravo show. She has been in a days-long dispute with the Charleston airport. So apparently she showed up to the airport and she ordinarily gets escorted through

like some sort of, she actually referred to herself as a dignitary in one tweet about this incident. Basically, she shows up to the airport, not at the time that she said she would and not in the same vehicle that she told them to look for and she was furious that they weren't there waiting for her to escort her. And she, according to an incident report, ended up berating various airport staff and

TSA and also ended up in a dispute with an American Airlines employee. And now she's outraged about this incident report and saying that she's been defamed. She's hired Larry Clayman to represent her in a defamation lawsuit. She says she's going to file against American and against the airport. And it's just like tweet after tweet after tweet about this as she runs for governor of South Carolina. And I'm just like, I kind of cherish Nancy Mace as a political figure because she is batshit insane in a way that is not especially political. Like, she just, she obviously has a cluster B personality disorder.

And she acts out in these ways that, like, I actually can't see being rewarded by the conservative base. The conservative base wants a bunch of crazy stuff, but not like, do you know who I am at the airport? These things just aren't political issues at all. And she's like putting these grievances front and center. and I'm just like, it's like a car wreck. I can't look away.

So why is she winning? Why is she doing well? Yeah, so she's like tied in the polls so far in this like five candidate field for governor of, I don't know. I mean, she's, did name ID? Or name recognition. I don't know. I mean, also like on both sides, like the bases of parties, they want fighters.

And there are certain ways that Nancy May styles herself as a fighter. She has like, she's very into like, you know, the claims about sex abuse and sort of like Epstein adjacent kind of like, I'm going to find the people who are who are committing these crimes. But again, sometimes the fighter spills over into, I'm mad at the TSA for how they treated me at the airport, which doesn't strike me as the kind of fighter that people at any place on the political spectrum are looking for. Yeah, I don't know why the Republican Party keeps ending up with these lunatics.

They're like, this person's personality seems like a political liability. I love it. Like, she's got my vote in the primary. Two years ago, she was part of the crew that, like, did the coup against Kevin McCarthy. And then she showed up in Congress with a scarlet A painted across her, like, low-cut white shirt to say that, you know, she's being shunned like Hester Prynne for her. And she said, I'm being punished for my vote in my voice. Just always histrionic and like, always, like, insane, like, attention-seeking behavior. But then she got reelected.

And my worry is that, in fact, this is just what a kind of social media politics. rewards. I had like a pretty high tolerance for nanteamase normally, or her shenanigans because they only come across and I'm like, you're just being wacky on the internet. But then she did think last week where she tweeted Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, which like, it's just a term I haven't heard in 25 years. And she also, she used to make a big thing about how she's for gay marriage, in part because, you know, she's been very critical of Democrats on trans issues and she was really trying to draw this distinction about, you know, gay marriage is different from the trans stuff. and I voted for the Respect for Marriage Act

and how dare you call me anti-gay? And then this week, she's like, Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. That was just the tweet. I don't even know what the context was supposed to be. No, I mean, it's also, I just think, like, I had like a very negative visceral reaction to it where I was like, why am I,

I was listened to her say all this crazy bullshit for all these years. And I think it's one because like, that term is so, like, pre-internat social media that it brought me back to a more intentional time where I was like, this is a hate the thing. You know? Yeah.

It's talking point back. An interesting thing about the airport is that, like, the way she treated the TSA and airline employees is coded in all of our brains accurately as a person who says, I want to talk to your manager in a restaurant, right? Like, like, the most annoying prick in the world. It is not being coded as a person who has frustrations with air travel. Because, like, you know, like, I think that if she thought it was going to play that. second way. She was wrong. And, but like that you can sort of see it sort of like, maybe if you squint,

she was like, I'm just going to voice the frustrations of the common man. You have to sprint really hard. Yeah, you do. You really do. And have one eye. Yeah, like, I travel a lot. So I have like, I have clear and I have all this things. It sort of pencils out in terms of

save time at the airport. But when you were complaining about travel on social media, you can complain about the fact that for example, my plane sat on the tarmac for an hour because the shutdown had made not enough TSA or other people at the airport to get it lifted off. On the other hand, I don't complain when people in the TSA pre line don't know how TSA pre works. I had an amusing thing where I saw there were actually like literally eight people in line, none of whom had TSA pre, and all of whom individually, despite the fact that there was someone

stationed there saying if you don't have TSA pre, you should not be in this line. And every single person brought their boarding pass up and got it checked. And I didn't care. I had plenty of time. And it was just funny. I was just looking. And I almost tweeted. Then I was like, no, this is going to look like me being a privileged person who has paid for my teeth.

And if you have cops and dignitaries with like, dignitary escorts waiting for you at the airport to whisk you through, you should never complain about that. Ever. Also, is that a normal thing for a member of the House of Representatives? Like one of the things that she apparently said. when she was not getting the treatment she felt she deserved. She goes, you wouldn't treat Tim Scott like this. It's like, well, get elected to Senate. Right.

Yeah, it's like, first of all, like, yeah, Tim Scott is actually more important than you. But don't members of Congress just show up to the airport and go through the line like a normal person? I didn't think that they get treated like in the way that a governor might when they go to the airport. I have no idea. I have been escorted through an airport once. And it was because I had checked a bag and my flight was late. and they had already loaded the bag onto the plane. And so they sent someone to, like, zoom me through the airport to make my connection.

But I have never participated in this dignitary economy, which apparently exists. Would you like to hear a funny story about how you should not take advantage of the TSA's loopholes? Yes, please. A few years ago, I was, like, at Newark, and I was really late for my flight. And I get, you know, I'm racing to the thing. And I see that the TSA line is an hour long. Like, I'm going to miss this flight if I have to wait in that. line. And as

listeners might already know, and I recently joked about seven seconds ago, I have a glass eye. And so I was like, well, Ben, you got no choice here. And so I took my sunglasses and I put them on and started to act quite blind. And I

went up to the Delta ticket agent and said, excuse me, ma'am, ma'am, I just need some help. I just need some help get into my gate. And she went, oh, my God, okay. And so she calls over this person and they like, run me right through, you know, and get me to the gate. And I get to the gate with a person who was like, all right, well, thanks for it.

See you later. And he says, don't know. I'll sit. I'll sit with you and make sure you get on the plane. And I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, we're going to have to keep pretending to be blind. So then they put me on the plane. And I sit down and I was like, well, it's finally over. You know, my national nightmare having to pretend to be blind.

Oh, no. And then the door slows. And the stewardess walks up and goes, Ben, Dreifels. And I was like, yes. And she says, hi, we heard that you're on. the plane and she starts to treat me like I have a mental disability. And she's like, I was like, oh, Jesus. And she was like, if you need any help, where are you going?

Oh, you're going to visit your family? Oh, they're going to love seeing you. And I was like, oh, my God. They've equating vision problems with some other mental problems. But then I spent five hours leaning into it. Perhaps they had just read your Twitter feed. Have you thought about that? I was literally like texting with people going, oh, my God.

And then these other people by age were sitting next to me on the plane and they were like, What's going on? And I was like, just leave it alone. I'm going to have to pretend to be a little daft. I was going to chide you, but I feel you have probably learned your lesson at this point. You know, I got rushed through Heathrow Airport in a wheelchair once. I was 20. I just graduated college.

And I was off Europe tour with my roommates. We ended up in Berlin. And I got so drunk. I like couldn't remember the end of the night. And my flight to London was like at 7 a.m. And so I end up, I get to the airport, like, basically still. drunk and then I sleep through takeoff, I wake up, and now I'm just like super thirsty and like have sobered up. And so I stand up and I walk to the back of the plane to ask for water and

I pass out in the middle of the aisle. And I come to and there's these two British Airways flight attendants like kneeling over me. One of them puts an oxygen mask on my face and they seat me in the flight attendant jump seat. And they asked like, well, what did you have for breakfast? And I was like, I didn't have breakfast. And she goes, oh, you must have low blood sugar. And they go and they get me strawberries and syrup from business. class and feed them to me. And then as we're about to land, she says, well, I've, you know, I've had, the pilot has told Heathrow, they're, they're letting your American Airlines flight onward to Boston to let no to watch for you. And she goes, and we've also ordered you a wheelchair. And I was like,

I don't really think I need a wheelchair. And she's like, well, why don't, just wait and see. And so we're deplaning. And I like, sort of resist getting in the wheelchair and the flight attendant looks at me and goes, oh, don't be doffed. And so then, so then I get back. pushed through Heathrow in this wheelchair. I spent all the time in the wheelchair trying to figure out, am I supposed to tip the wheelchair pushing person? What I ended up deciding was that if I were actually disabled, I would not be expected to be handing out tips on account that I was disabled. And so I ended up, I didn't tip the wheelchair person. But I did get to skip the whole immigration line and go straight to the front on account of my disability. So mine worked out

maybe better than yours did, Ben. I mean, I had a friend from New York to L.A. We had to catch a connecting flight from L.A. into somewhere else. And he, he, was really drunk, you know, the night before we'd all been out drinking. And he's having one of your reactions on that plane where he's, he's really hungover. And he starts to be like, I can't breathe. I can't breathe. And I was like, shut up, Alex. I'm like really not supportive.

But then he like says something to the stewardess like, oh, and I was like, shut the fuck up. And then they did what they like brought him some air, brought some water. Then we got to L.A. And they said, oh, Alex, we're really, we have some EMTs here to talk to you. And of course, you can't fly again on Delta for 24 more hours. So where you're going to have to stay in L.A. in a hotel. And I was like, this friendship is over, Alex. I'll never talk to you.

Our friendship did end. We stopped being friends the day we got back. I was like, you fucking idiot. Just kept your mouth shut. Wow. That's harsh, Ben. On that sad note, I think we can leave it there this week. Ben, Megan, thank you for shooting the breeze with me as always.

Thank you. Thanks, as always. Central Air is created by me, Josh Barrow, and Sarah Fay. We are a production of very serious media. Jennifer Sponick mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Joshua Mosier. Thanks for listening. Stay cool out there.