Central Air - Seeking the Tribune of the Downwardly Mobile (feat. Tyler Austin Harper)

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: Tyler Austin Harper returns to Central Air to discuss the ignominious end of Graham Platner’s campaign for U.S. Senate. Free subscribers hear part of that conversation, and paying subscribers hear the whole thing, plus our discussion about the legacy of Lindsey Graham — even the respectful remembrances treat him as a chameleon who was whatever he needed to be in order to further his foreign policy agenda — weird lawmaker absences on the Hill, and some lessons from Josh's trip to Yellowstone National Park for July 4, and the helpful ways that nature can put us in our place (ideally not by launching us into the air).Upgrade your subscription now at www.centralairpodcast.com to hear this and every full episode of the show.

Welcome to Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. This is Josh Barrow. I'm here with Ben Dreyfus, who writes the Substack Newsletter, Calm Down, and Megan McArdle, columnist for The Washington Post. Ben, Megan, did you see that video over the weekend of the gentleman who visited Yellowstone National Park and ended up being thrown eight feet in the air by a bison? I assiduously avoided seeing that video. Every time I saw a glimpse of it, I moved rapidly away from my phone. I saw it, but was immediately struck by that. that sick part of my brain that was like,

that looks great, because then I, of course, read that it didn't turn out great for the fellow. Yeah, no, he was significantly injured, which the thing about the video and I think why it connected with people and why people didn't see it with the appropriate gravity was that the way he was thrown in the air was almost acrobatic. It looked graceful. It was like he did this, like, perfect cartwheel,

which I realized was not his intention and he didn't stick the landing. But it was, in its way impressive. We can talk later. I was at Yellowstone. I did not have a... I had a close encounter with a bison. It walked like three feet from me

right by my car window, but didn't launch me in the air. So I had a better time at the park. I actually used to spend summers in high school in Wyoming at a kind of dude ranch camp, although we did get paid a really small amount of money. I think I made $85 at the end of the summer.

Was this like, like, hey dude on Nickelodeon? I don't know. No, because I'm old, Josh, and I didn't watch Nickelodeon. Sorry. I didn't, I didn't mean it that way, Megan. Was this like gun smoke, Megan? Yes, that's exactly what it was like. I mean, that was a little young for me.

I myself, of course, read the Penny Dreadful Westerns that were available in the late 19th century. Tyler got that joke. Yes, yes, I did. I did. I liked the Buffalo video, I will say. Yeah, we have a friend of the show, Tyler Austin Harper, is with us this week,

staff writer for the Atlantic. Tyler, you're an outdoorsman, as I was pointing out when making some comments about the main Senate race. Do you have advice on how to interact with the bison? Yeah, I mean, I would avoid interacting with the bison at all. You know, if you are out west in the wilderness, I do think you should be armed. That is my personal view, but I am a gun, nuts. What are you going to do? You probably can't kill the bison.

You'd probably get thrown in jail if you shot one that charged you. But, I mean, the big takeaway to me, for me, is there are funny ways to die, and I think that's something we don't, we don't, it's not polite to say, right? But like when I lived in New York, I thought a lot about air conditioners because they were always precariously perched, you know? And that's a funny way to go. And I was like, you know, if you get crushed by an air conditioner, do people at your funeral keep a straight face? I mean, it would be hard. It wouldn't be funny for you, but it would be one of those situations where other people would say, I have to admit.

Intellectually, honestly, this is quite funny way he died. That did happen occasionally when I was growing up there, a falling air conditioner. would kill someone. There's a few a year, I think. Yeah. Yeah. There was an article in the New York Times this May. The headline is,

woman dies after falling into open manhole in Manhattan. And then you get like 20 paragraphs into this story. This is a news story. This is not in the style section. This is like a breaking news story. There's a paragraph that says, falling into an open manhole is one of the many urban nightmares New Yorkers worry about,

along with falling through grates on the street, getting pushed onto subway tracks, and getting hit by a falling air conditioner. Last year, a woman died after a garbage truck caused scaffolding to collapse on her. In 2020, a 33-year-old man fell into an underground vault of rats when the sidewalk collapsed beneath him, though he survived. And he's got his superhero origin story. Right, right. So in New York, right, there's these steel traps on the basement, these steel lids on the basement that...

The bulkheads. The bulkheads. Yeah, so that you can do deliveries. Those have way too much give. that's like I'm afraid I'm going to fall in one of those and die. I saw someone do it. He was like 15 feet away from me. And ever since then, I will say like I am, I'm a fairly brave person.

I will like climb shift masks and shit. But man, I do not walk over those things. I will like, I will detour blocks away. I mean, I think I did as far as I know survive. I would on a date once in St. Mark's looking out out of the street with this girl that's the first date, you know, we're sort of like looking for conversation and we watched this woman looking at her phone. First date on St. Mark's, I hope you were 19.

I was literally going to say St. Mark's first date is a bold choice. I was like 22, you know. It was a different time, Obama's first term. And we watched this woman walk looking at her phone, like playing, you know, words with friends or something, and walking and immediately fall into one of those. And we both were like, well, that woman's dead. You know, like her entire visage disappeared into it.

And then a few seconds later, as we were sort of, you know, dealing with this trauma we'd seen, she popped out, jumped up, her hair was a little messy, she looked around embarrassed, and then went, and ran away. And we had gone through this whole arc in just a few seconds, and let me tell you, I got late that night. That's your advice, just wander around New York waiting for an urban accident. Having some tragedy to witness.

Yeah. Speaking of people inexplicably getting laid, why don't we start this week by talking about Grant Platner? We have Tyler back with us. He was with us on the show in March. And I was looking up, trying to figure out which Grant Platner scandals our conversation was before and which ones had not happened yet. And so, according to my notes, we spoke with you after the Reddit posts

and the controversy over the tattoo and when did he know that he had a Nazi tattoo. But this was before we learned about him sexting with women, not his wife, quite recently, like within the last couple of years. And then the various sexual allegations, including ultimately the allegation of sexual assault, that caused his campaign to, like, supernova implode. And so I just, you know, I just want to ask you again from your on-the-ground perspective in Maine. One of the things that, like, has struck me in the last couple of weeks is people being, like, you know, acting surprised when they finally got this sexual assault allegation against Grand Platner. Because it seemed like, you know, the warning flags were just waving like crazy.

And the efforts by national media, national Democrats to get Maine Democrats to reject him on these grounds were completely fruitless until they were suddenly successful. And I just, I don't get people like, I feel like we've seen this. personality type a lot, not just in politics, but in life. Like, we know guys like this who are charismatic in this way that is actually indicative of, like, menace underneath. And I don't understand why people were surprised to see that about this guy who seems kind of like an archetype to me. Yeah, I think it's useful to separate surprise, which I do think is unreasonable, from the,

like, nature and source of his appeal. I agree. I was not surprised. And I think even as at the policy level, he falls on my end of the spectrum, I think he's from the beginning described himself with varying degrees of honesty as somebody who had a lot of struggles in his past who seemed to struggle with alcohol, PTSD, etc. And who was kind of down on his luck at various points, or at least downwardly mobile, given that he comes from. He's a stalwart son of the professional class. And so that sort of reads as somebody who you can imagine, from the beginning what I've wondered is like, what does dark days in his past mean exactly?

Does that mean did some drinking and had some personal struggles or does that mean something a bit more than that? And it seemed like it was something a bit more than that. So I don't think there's any reason to be surprised this has come out. I think it's become increasingly clear over the last couple months that he had more baggage than folks had originally bargained for. But at the same time, it's not surprising to me either that voters stuck with him for so long.

I don't know. Megan, what do you make of that? You know, there was a Saturday Night Live skit ages ago when Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie-Presley split up. And it was Kevin Neelan, I believe, doing a deadpan like, if they can't make it, who among us can, right? Like, if they're a fairytale marriage,

It just is not, right? And this was a little bit how I felt about the Platner thing, where people who were taken aback by this, who did not see this coming, because I was like, dude, the oppo is not done. There's more. They don't drop the good stuff now. They drop the good stuff, like after he gets the nomination.

And indeed, that's exactly what happened. And so I think, like, that anyone did not foresee, that this was a very likely outcome that you were going to find out that there was worse to come is to me somewhat surprising. And I will also say this. And I'm repeating what I said on Twitter

a few days ago, which I think you retweeted, Josh, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself. But like, he is a, the whole narrative that they constructed for him, the Flinty Oysterman, the guy with PTSD who, you know, he had some rough times after he went to war, but now he's getting together. No, I'm sorry, he has been a screw-up forever. He got kicked

out of Hotchkiss. Now, it's not impossible to get kicked out of private school, but you actually, in some ways, have to work at it. Right? Like, it's easier than getting expelled from public school, which is, like, in some ways, functionally impossible, right? They have to educate you until you're 16. But, like, he has been like this his whole life. And as a recovering private school screw-up, I have actually some sympathy, but like, I was not the same kind of screw up as him. I was merely passive, aggressive, and refused to do what I was told and didn't go to class. Well, you didn't get thrown out of Riverdale. I did not get thrown out of Riverdale, but it was at times touch and go whether I was going to graduate because I didn't do my work.

Well, as somebody who was thrown out of a private school, I can just say that it also is, you know. You're lived experiencing us? Yeah, exactly. No, I would just like to say that, one, I want to credit. Tyler, because when we had, when you were on a few months ago about this, you did say exactly, you were like, you, I, I justify I was everyone else. I would be a little worried about what else was coming out. Like, that was your, you, you were making a really like good point about how that you just made. And you made it that. And boy, it turned out pressure. You know. And the other thing that I would just say is that it's interesting to me that this one,

the thing that took him down actually wasn't an opo dump, right? Like, it's fascinating to look at how this actually happened, right? There was the New York Times story that recounted these situations that he had with his ex-girlfriend who was a Republican, and it wasn't sexual assault, but it was not good. Yeah, it described some, some physicality with him where, like, you know, he grabbed her and shook her and various things. No, he bent her arm, she said, he bent her arm up back behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and then held her in there so she couldn't leave. And like, you know, the thing is so, like, I wrote a column. on this once. My college boyfriend hit me once and I stayed with him. And I still don't know if it was intentional. And I did the whole like, well, he didn't break my arm thing, which was exactly what Lindsay Feifeld said. And watching progressives like, Zaid Jilani went postal on me when I said like, this is abuse. And he was like, I understand the working class. And like, you rich bit do not. And I was like, my mom's family are working class guys. And none of them think that this is just like, normal behavior. Yeah, sure, you slap your woman around because that's like what guys do.

This is like cosplay. This is absolutely like people who like do have no idea what it is like to grow. I'm not saying like domestic violence is in fact more common in the working class because people with impulse control are less likely to get out of the working class. Right? People with impulse control problems. But like it's not normative. The idea that it is normative or it's fine and everyone just accepts this is nonsense. And, you know, the thing is, like, as I said, like, on Twitter, the joke in New York was that Donald Trump is a poor person's idea of a rich guy. And everyone thought that was a dunk. And in fact, that was the source of his political appeal. But Graham, so people who are, like, trying to find the democratic version of this go find a rich person's idea of a poor person. And it was embarrassing watching everyone defend all this nonsense.

But wait, wait. this is what did him in, okay? Jenny Roscoe saw the way people dismissed what Lindsay Fifeield had told the New York Times about how Platner had treated her. And that's why she decided she had to come forward with their sexual assault delegation. Right. And in time for Democrats to get Platner off the back. Yeah, I don't think it was entirely. If this was Republican opo operation, they would have waited. Yeah, they would have waited. It wasn't Republican.

I don't think it was entirely like she watched that. I think she understood this was going to come out one way or another that there were enough people who knew the story. and she timed it to get him off the ballot, right? Like, which is totally fair, right? Like, I am glad she came forward, no shade in any way. But I'm not sure it was entirely just that it was about the New York Times thing. And the reaction to that, it was also like, he needs to get off the ballot. Yeah.

That's quite clear. I mean, it was a week before the deadline. Tyler, why do you think that? I mean, why do you think it was more strategic, I guess, in the timing? Oh, well, I mean, I don't want to say strategic in a way that is unfair or unreasonable. I mean, if somebody had sexually assaulted me, I probably would. would also want to speak up before the deadline for them to become a candidate, especially if I thought, she's somebody who says she identifies with this politics, especially if I thought that this is

going to come out one way or the other, because the Republicans know, and the Republicans will start leaking this, even without my cooperation, after the deadline. And so this needs to happen now, right? Like, so I, I think it was strategic. Let's put it that way. I think, let's put it this way. I do not think it was an accident that this happened. She came forward a week before the deadline, rather than a week after the deadline. That doesn't legitimate her decision to come forward, though. I think it's perfectly reasonable. I do want to respond to something you said, Megan,

that I think are circulating not unreasonably in this discussion, which is that Platner is a downwardly mobile son of the professional classes. His grandfather was a famous architect. His dad was a wealthy local lawyer. He is a rich person's idea of a poor person, like this mere image of Trump. I don't think any of that is wrong, say, right? Like, they curated a very specific image of him as this salt of the earth marine

oyster farmer, right, like a made for TV movie kind of thing. I agree with all of that. But at the same time as somebody who's been on the ground here and covered a lot of his events and talked to a lot of people who voted for him and seen a lot of the yard signs and has been close to this or paying attention to it from the beginning, I think one thing I see happening in the national discourse right now, particularly from the sort of center and people who had always been skeptical of Platner, is to say, this whole thing was vibes, and they put him forward as this working class hero. It was all bunk and was all nonsense, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that is a way of not dealing with the uncomfortable reality.

I think uncomfortable for a lot of folks in the center that Graham Platner is a normal Democrat. And the reason he was popular is he advanced positions that are popular with the Democratic voter base, two thirds of whom believe Israel committed a genocide, who want universal health care, who want to say things like fuck ICE, et cetera, et cetera. And he was taking positions that were popular, including on issues like AI, where Janet Mills vetoed a data center moratorium that was extremely popular in the state, right? And so I don't disagree with you that Platner, his aesthetic, an aesthetic that was curated helped get him across the finish line. But I think over-indexing toward that as an explanation and a skeleton key just is a way of not dealing with the fact that Platner could read a poll. He noticed what issues were popular among the Democratic Party base that were not necessarily the issues that the establishment was putting forward and said, I'm going to say those things. And it worked. And if you go to one of his events, or in the past tense now, because he's done, people were not like, oh, I identify with him because he looks this way or I just think it's great that we have a candidate from the working class. They were like, I like that we have a candidate who talks about health care when Kamala Harris barely talked about health care for an entire presidential election. Or I like that we have a candidate who's speaking to my views on foreign policy in the Middle East.

etc. And so there was a strong policy component to his popularity that I think is being really overlooked at this point as we very fairly sort of retroactively are like, okay, this guy was always kind of a private school fuck up, which I think is true. But I think that doesn't explain at all. So the question I have about that is that at the same time that we had this bizarre Senate primary involving Platner and then Janet Mills, who as we discussed in March was a deeply flawed candidate for a number of reasons. And also, I think another thing we've learned since March, or maybe you were already aware this because you were on the ground, was how lazy the campaign was that she was running. Yes, yes. He had no policy platform until weeks before she dropped

out. She did basically no events with the public. She only did some private donor chardonnay drinking things. Yeah, yeah. Because she was not, I mean, she's an old lady who was, you know, sort of on the fence about whether she even wanted to run for Senate and got talked into it. But then at the same time, you had this governor primary that had a large number of credible candidates reflecting a sort of what seemed to me like a normal spectrum of democratic public opinion, you know, from moderate to progressive, but not like, not in a way that I think would have looked terribly unusual four years or eight years ago in the Democratic Party. The leftmost candidate, I would note, did not win that primary. Jackson. And I think that, you know, in terms of, you know, how important were the vibes for

Plattner. I think, you know, you had Troy Jackson running, and he's a lot more qualified than Grant Platner. He was a president of the state Senate in Maine, but is not a super charismatic guy and did not apparently connect in the same way. I mean, isn't that a sign that like, you know, I mean, I guess, you know, part of it is that he was up against other credible candidates and Platner was ultimately running sort of unopposed. But I think some of it reflects that, you know, people are looking for this fight vibe, some of which doesn't necessarily. have particular policy content, and it doesn't mean that they necessarily want whoever has Bernie Sanders' policy platform in a competitive primary. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. I think what I'm

trying to say is not that Platner's charisma had no impact here. I mean, I've said this before, something that one of the consultants, I forget which one, and I don't want to slander one of them, so I won't take a stab in a name, but it's kind of been roasted lately for telling folks that Grant Platner was an Obama kind of talent. And that is something I said many times. Like, I'm telling you, if you see this guy in person, he is electrifying. The way crowds respond to him is remarkable. He speaks very eloquently. It was, by the way, it was Dan Moraff who said that, who's the Toys R Us Air. Yes, Toys R Us Air. That's my favorite detail. I just have to, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who like, he and he and his, they keep calling her as partner. Is that his romantic

partner or does that mean it's his business partner, this woman, Leanne fan? Anyway, the straight people stole the term partner from us and then and then used, just using confusing ways. I think you're right. But so in any case, the Toys R Us guy. Toys R Us one. Yeah. But that, look, that Toys R Us guy, there's a lot of problems you can lay at his feet. But the take that he, Graham Platner was wildly talented and perhaps one of the most

raily talented politicians we've seen a very long time. I think it's just straightforwardly correct. And I think I've talked to so many folks. I mean, my favorite example of this, I was out of covering one of his rallies. And there was a woman in a homemade t-shirt that said, Chuck the oligarchy, right, with an oyster on it because, you know, Platner's an oyster farmer. So I walked up to her. I said, hey, I'm a journalist. I take a photo of your shirt. Like, it's a interesting shirt. And she said, sure. And I was like, did you make this yourself? And she said, yes. And it's like, are you a platinum fan of you? How did you come to have the level of platinum? And she said, well, embarrassingly, after the Reddit scandal came out, I showed up to one of his events with the attention to heckle him because I was really offended by some of the things he had said on Reddit. And I was. was waiting until the end of his speech to start leveling my complaints. And as I listened to him talk, she was like, I was just bowled over by him. And I went to another event. And then I went to another

event and I went to another event. Right. So I say this in the service of saying, yes, wildly talented. The Carrhart charisma certainly helps. But what I'm trying to push back against is, look, Troy Jackson, I've talked to Troy Jackson, very nice guy. He does not have the juice that Grant Platner has and does not have the charisma. I think that is just fair to say. And I think that is part of why. Why, look, that race was close. It was like three of the candidates were all getting about 20% of the vote. So it was not like, you know, it was not quite a toss up, but it was pretty close to a toss-up. So I'm not denying the aesthetics and the talent here are important.

But what I feel is happening right now is the national media is way over-indexing toward charisma and vibes as an explanation in a way that allows them to not take seriously the fact that Platner's worldviews represent the worldviews of, really the average Democrat. My friend Jay Kang said when Platner first came out, it's a mistake to identify Platner as a man of the left. Platner is a resistance liberal. Like that is the archetype he comes out of. And I think that's kind of right. So I think the question, is that something that we don't know? Is it that we don't know that Democratic primary voters and Republican primary voters are drawn to candidates who have really struggled to win general elections? I mean, I think that's kind of the vibe of the times for the last 10 years, is that every. Everyone's like, no, I don't want someone who will make normies feel like the country's in good hands.

I want someone who says extreme things that make me happy and to hell with the general election. Don't we all? Well, I mean, one of the things that has been bothering me about him all along, but then including in the exit, is that, you know, whenever he'll make statements, even sort of trying to apologize, he's always talking about, you know, the corporate media being against him. And even, you know, even when he was admitting to things, like that he'd been sexting with women, not his wife, he would go on about how it was so unfair for the corporate media to report on this. And, you know, it feels to me like basically, you know, this worldview that he runs with where it's, and this is the progressive say, you know, you have to name an enemy. And so you have to talk about the oligarchs and the corporations and whatever.

And there are aspects of a liberal policy agenda where that's, you know, that's sort of an obvious thing to talk about. The tax code has been made too skewed against taxing people. with high incomes, and you talk about that that's been done in the service of billionaires, and that's all fine and fair and appropriate. But there's a lot of stuff that happens that doesn't necessarily have anything in particular to do with the oligarchy or corporations, you know, when voters have concerns about crime or immigration or other things. It's kind of orthogonal to, you know, whatever rich people are up to. And focusing on that name and enemy thing basically gives you a way to avoid talking about those certain things. And it seemed like that

even extended into the scandal stuff where it's like, you know, well, if we're talking about how I'm, you know, like cheating on my wife, then we're not talking about the real enemy, which is corporations and the oligards. And I just thought it exposes this as a little bit shallow. I mean, it's even like, you know, they would ask him about trans participation in girls' sports. And, you know, the progressives, including Platner, love these sort of lines about, you know, like a trans girl in sports never took away anyone's health care. That's not clever. It's just a way of avoiding the issues that you don't feel like talking about. And it feels like it showed that this was a little bit shallow. And I're also going it's something that you were talking about in the last couple of weeks, which is that part of

what was attractive to the left about Platner, even if, you know, even if, as you argue, he's not a man of the left, what he did offer was a vision of how you would win back the working class without actually compromising on any of those left positions. And it's not clear from the polling that he was doing any of that. But that seemed to be their objective. And again, it looked like just a way to evade questions they didn't feel like talking about. Yeah. So I want to address two pieces of that because I think it's interesting. The first piece is that there There's a theory that the left has, which I think is incorrect, which is that if you give people economic populism, they will suck up the cultural issue stuff they don't agree with, right?

So, like, if you say, hey, I stand for health care, I stand for this, I stand for that, then they will tolerate the fact that you support, like, vaguely open borders, if not quite saying open borders policies on immigration and that you believe in stronger gun control and that you think trans women should be able to participate in sports or whatever. And I think that theory of the case is completely wrong, like wildly incorrect. I think, in fact, one of my frustrations as somebody who sees himself as a democratic socialist is that when we use terms like left and right now, we are almost exclusively talking about cultural issues, right? So like when you say somebody's left, you basically mean, oh, they think we should have more poorest borders or we should not criminalize immigration and that transports and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It doesn't, the first thing that comes to mind is not a redistributionist economic agenda.

or whatever. Look, can you do that in blue areas like New York City or Maine, which is a blueish state and win? Yeah, I think if Platner had now had all these scandals, could he have won, yes. And could he have won while holding the position on transports that he takes. I think he could. But nationally, that doesn't work. And I think a frustration I have is somebody who would like to see more left populist elected is that they, there is a real reticence, particularly among progressives to reckon with the fact that like you are going to need to stake out the immigration positions of a, a 1980s auto worker and you are going to need to, you know, there's something I think a lot about is what I think of as like proxy issues within politics. And those are issues where the issue does not, the superficial issue is not actually the issue. I think Israel has become one of these where it's, you know, people want to say, well, voters don't vote on foreign policy. And it's like, well, Israel has become in the minds of a lot of people, a question about corruption and the influence of lobbies like APEC and money in politics. It's become about kitchen table issues because why do we have money for bombs overseas, but we don't have money to, you know, bring prices down at home,

et cetera, et cetera. Another one of those issues is trans sports. And that gets to a point you were making, Josh, which is that there's these cute ways that they're like, well, actually, a trans person never took health care. And if you actually look at the numbers, there are only 100 trans athletes in the entire country. And that's a way of not understanding what the trans sports issue is actually about, which is not about the empirical number of trans women athletes in the country.

It is about, that is a proxy that voters use to decide, does this person believe in biological reality or not? Do they believe that there's a difference between men and women? Are they essentially tethered to the ground in terms of like how the world works, et cetera, right? So it's like a sorting mechanism. And I worry that this fantasy that I think a lot of progressives and people on the left have that you can just bowl forward with health care and popular economic stuff without being willing to moderate on some of those social issues. I think that's a fantasy. And I think it's one that's the source of a lot of our friction and discontent between the sort of like center and the left, as it were. You know, it's interesting. On the right, they're like one of the versions that you see with this we just saw with the birthright citizenship case. Yep. You know, which is actually about these two separate issues that were treated as one in the Trump E.O. that was then struck down.

Is that there's birth tourism. people come here and they are really just going to fly right back to Belgium. But they're going to have their baby quickly. This is an incredibly small number of people do this. We don't actually know, to be clear. Like, everyone says it's incredibly small. But a demographer pointed out to me that the number of births in the United States fell during the pandemic to a surprising extent.

And the theory was that that might be undetected birth tourism. Okay. But regardless, whether it's the 6,000, whether it's the 6,000 that you'll find people, say, or to multiplied by 10, I don't care. You know, like, let's say, let's just say it's not millions, right? It's not a significant amount. But then there's the other part of the EO, right, which is about illegal immigrants who are here

and, like, there's lots of those people and they've got lots of kids and we've got lots of it, and it's a big number. But that case, you know, these two things, one of them, you know, the birth tourism thing, maybe there's interesting angles about why that could be legislated, maybe it's da-da-da-da-da-da. But that's not what actually people on the right really. give a shit about, right? They're mad about this other much larger situation that there are, is basically no constitutional, like, argument that it's a complete mess. And so you'll end up with these fascinating

discussions when this case happened, even in the, in the arguments and the dissents and everything, where some of the conservatives are like, well, maybe a narrow one that just goes after the birth tourists. Well, that, that maybe could. And like, good luck. That is not what those primary conservative of voters care about. They are not worried about the 6,000 people from Belgium or whatever. I don't think they're from Belgium. I was going to say, I like you, I like you're like, uh, Belgium is a safe country that won't make me seem racist. So I'm going to, I'm going to get Belgium. No, I think it's because of the sports because of soccer. Belgium has been on my brain lately. Yeah. But they're mad about, they're mad about other people from Mexico who live

here and shit like that. They're mad about, they're mad about, think we all know they're mad about it. And I do think it's an interesting, like, when people are talking past each other, what are they actually talking about, right? And I don't know, I don't know that those, that you're going to get those right-wing people really terribly enthusiastic about getting rid of the 6,000 people from Belgium or Hungary or where. Although, actually, I'm going to push back a little

because I actually feel like you could hand those, I mean, I don't think we're going to, the court has spoken, and I, like, it's not an issue that certainly animates me. But like, although, honestly, I would be fine with making some narrow rule that was like, sorry, if you were in this country for like a month and then you went and lived somewhere else, then like, no, no, I'm sorry.

Your child does not get you as citizenship because you happen to have a baby on vacation. I'm more sympathetic to baby on vacation than I am the people who like strategically play. Like, that's a fun accident. Baby on vacation sounds really fine to me. If you came here pregnant at like month, four and a half and you couldn't get medevaced back

because you're pregnancy with, like, fine. You had an unexpected, like, fine, give the kid you a citizenship. But the people who were like buying, you know, deliberately coming. here. I would be fine with like finding some way to say nope. But that said, like, I actually think that you could hand conservatives a narrow win. And they would be like, Sean Davis would not. Sean Davis would like, you know, get all emotional. But if it went through Congress and Congress came back with

birthright citizenship, like doesn't apply to people who came here with the intent of securing their child, U.S. citizenship, and then going back to the country that is not Belgium that they tend to come from, that they would, conservatives would count that as a win. And I think one of the issues about the transports thing is that there's no compromise, right? There's no compromise position. And the other thing is that like conservatives on birthright citizenship are a lot closer to the country than like, Transports is so far from where the country is and also became the official institutional policy of many institutions until they realize.

that this was like suicidally unpopular, I think the closer parallel on the right is abortion. Where like you have a core group of voters who is pretty convinced that like it should just be illegal, no exceptions from conception. And that's like really, it's morally defensible, but it is really unpopular, really, really, really unpopular. But even there, I think there are compromises

because those people have been so, used to losing for so long. They're like, yeah, sure, let's go to first trimester. And then we're going to come back and we're going to go to, you know, and they're willing to slice the baby closer. I'm not sure there's any parallel issue that's really exactly like transports. It's such a weird issue. I don't know how the left gets off of this unless they are actually, because they're so morally committed to the Omnacost. There's an interesting phenomenon there, too, where President Trump is basically forced from the top down a, a halt to efforts to use federal policy to further restrict abortion. And you get complaining statements

every so often from the Susan B. Anthony League and the various other right-to-life groups on the right. But ultimately, he has all the political capital in the party and he's been able to stop them from trying to use DOJ and FDA to restrict abortion. I don't know how stable that equilibrium is and how it's going to change when the Republican Party is led by somebody else. And I think there will be political cost for Republicans trying to push harder on that. But one thing I'm wondering about is, you know, Tyler, what you were saying there about Democrats not finding their way toward this real working class populism that would have to make peace with where working class voters are to the party's right on certain social issues, I assume that's partly related to the fact that

these, you know, the so-called working-class populist candidates who often aren't actually working class and it might do the party well to try to recruit some more candidates who actually are. And I'm wondering about what the mechanics that would look like. Because there's one interesting race down in the Pennsylvania 7th district in the Lehigh Valley, where the Democratic nominee is this guy named Bob Brooks, who's been a leader of a firefighter union. He is quite unusual in a congressional candidate these days and that he does not have a college degree. And he's also unusual in that both these various center and left organizing groups within the party have been really enthusiastic about him and trying to take credit for him. And in some cases,

even sniping at each other about, no, he's our candidate. Like, you're just like, you're bandwagoning and saying that you like him, but really, we came up with him. And so, like, leading a firefighter union is one example of how someone could not have a college degree, but then have the sort of life experience that demonstrates the sort of, you know, leadership and organizational capacity that's an obvious resume item to then serve in Congress. But that's like kind of an unusual thing. And even a lot of like blue collar union leaders these days are people with college degrees. So who, like, how do you, how do you find more candidates like that? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the huge, I think there are a number of problems.

I think one of the huge problems is that there is no diversity within the Democratic Party machine and then the like affiliated consultants with various kinds of ideologies around that machine. I mean, I'm including sort of left wing consultants and that too. And the diversity I'm specifically talking about is class diversity, right? where these people have no fucking, they don't shake hands on a regular basis with somebody who has calluses, right? Or who showers at night because their job during the day makes them dirty, right? These are shower in the morning people. And I think until, like my wokenest opinion is that diversity in journalism is really important for that reason because we don't know what we don't know, right?

Like, a lot of people don't know that fucking the part of Maine plan, like he just sells oysters to his mom's shop or whatever, right? He just, he looks a certain way and sounds a certain way. And clearly some consultants were like, this guy is authentic. He has AR-15s and loves oysters, right? Again, it was literally a Toys R Us hair. Toys R Us hair. A Toys R Us hair who went to Yale Law School. Right, that's the most working class person that guy's ever met.

Exactly. I mean, like, Jenny Wine, flannel plaid shirts. Right, right, right, right. It's actually not true. This guy's probably summered in Maine. He must have had, like, you know, people coming to drive the boat to play. He is run into those people, but he can't tell them a problem. part. But so like what should those candidate resumes? That's it for this week's free episode of

Central Air. If you want to hear the rest of our conversation or look at what we would look like to recruit real working class candidates for the left and why we don't need a tribune of the downwardly mobile. This is not an especially hard time to be the kind of kid who goes to Hotchkis, even though that seems to be the way that the left is generating candidates some of the time these days. We also have a discussion of Lindsay Graham's legacy and the weird reactions to his death. a look at Tom Cain Jr. and Mitch McConnell and the weird cageness you see on Capitol Hill these days when there's something wrong with lawmakers. And finally, what I learned visiting Yellowstone National Park over our nation's 250th birthday. To get all of that, go to centralairpodcast.com. You can upgrade and become a paying subscriber.

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