Central Air - The Talent Show (feat. Matt Yglesias)

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: Matt Yglesias joins us to recap WelcomeFest and discuss “dog-whistle moderation," and why the factional forces seeking to drag the Democratic Party to the center need to advocate specific moderation on specific issues. Then: why Maine Democratic voters are attached to Graham Platner despite his manifest defects, a mistake Washington D.C. voters appear poised to make, the city's failures to stop “teen takeovers,” California’s vote-count malaise, and Matt somewhat walks back his anti-dog-park position.To hear the whole episode, upgrade your subscription.

Welcome to Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. This is Josh Barrow. I'm here with Megan McArdle, columnist for The Washington Post, and Ben Dreyfus, who writes the substack newsletter, Calm Down. We're all back in our respective homes after a great week in Washington, D.C. And there's one little bit of business that I wanted to finish up about last week, which is that listener meetup that we did. And Megan had some great notes for us on all the interesting professions and expertise of the people that we met there. We neglected to know, Ben, apparently you stayed out until two in the morning with some of the listeners. 1.45. And what did you learn about them and their interests and knowledge and occupations?

I learned that they were fans of mine. And to a lesser extent, fans of you do. Which fair. But I was stunned when Megan recounted all of these details that she had learned in her relatively brief, period with these people. As I was listening to Megan rattle these things off, I realized that like I was with these people for like six hours longer and learned nothing about them. It never would have occurred to me to ask them any details. And because like the thing is, you know, this was a one-way street, right? They came to Zheed the talent. I was here to spew

out my sermons, my jokes. That was the deal. The promise was I'm going to entertain you. I made no problem. I didn't ask for their life story. You know, Ben, I think one good rule of thumb is never to refer to yourself as the talent. Like, even though that is, like, in fact, the correct technical term, like, I said this to my therapist the other day and I still felt awkward about referring to myself as the talent. It bends from a showbiz family, though. He knows about the talent. Also, wait, in what context were you telling your therapist you were the talent? Well, that's private in between me and my therapist.

I would feel more awkward about being in therapy than about referring to myself as the talent. talent. Okay, that's toxic mega. My therapist in New York once was listening to all this boring nonsense. I would talk about, you know, about journalism and he couldn't care less, and you could tell. And then one day I mentioned like going to your wedding, I think Josh. I was like, yeah, I was my friend Josh Wedding, worse than New York Times. And he said, Josh Barrow? And he was like all Upper West Side therapists, you know, a dedicated New York Times reader. And I've never seen him light up as though, you know, he was obsessed. And then, you know, he was, he was obsessed and then from then on for for years he would say well how's Josh doing what's he up to

well I hope he decided you were more interesting and paid more attention to you now that he knew that you knew me like I hope you were getting some benefit for that by the way there was a little interjection there from Matt Iglesias Matt is our guest this week he of course writes the slow boring newsletter hello Matt are you in therapy uh no not not currently I was cured I'm now 100% sane. I did have a therapist who, it was a similar thing. I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, my friend Ezra, and she suddenly was like paying attention to me.

He was like, Ezra Klein? Now I don't want to go to therapy just so I can name drop all the famous people I've met and like just make it about that. This is why as the talent, it's hard to get therapy. Or easy, as the case may be. All depends. So a form of therapy, we were all at Welcome Fest last week, trying to reassert some control over the Democratic Party. The whole idea here is that this is a center-left organizing conference, but broader movement trying to replicate the Democratic Leadership Council from the late 80s, early 90s.

Matt, what's your sense of how that's going? Are we getting productive work done? I think that there is some productive work that is happening. There is also a fair amount of therapy. You know, like, I mean, I think quite literally, right? Right. And there's something constructive about that, but, you know, you have different people who, you know, they want to talk about their problems, they want to see friendly faces, they want to complain, et cetera, et cetera. And there's also, you know, there's various different things in the works, right, that are like meant to be a center left revival and a Democratic Party reinvigoration.

So Liam Kerr and Lauren Harper Pope, who are like the leaders of Welcome Fats. You know, they're trying to, I think, lead the elected officials and you see some dissonance from the stage at Welcome Fest where Liam will be like, we're going to burn everything down. And then he'll get some, like, smart, good electeds to come up who like want to affiliate with this project. And that's good. But then they're a little more milk toast than he was because, you know, like everybody's trying to operate in the universe. Jared Golden is leaving Congress because he wasn't going to be able to win a primary being Jared Golden. Yeah.

I want to ask specifically about something that you were talking about on stage at Welcome Fest, which is this promise to America coming from two centrist Democrats in the House of Representatives, Adam Gray from the Central Valley of California and Tom Swazzy, who represents Nassau County on Long Island. And this, I think, is intended to be responsive to something that I've seen you complain about, which is what you call dog whistle moderation, where we have this factional fighting Democratic Party, but we talk about whether you should say oligarchy or not, which is something that Alyssa Slotkin and Bernie Sanders have argued over, rather than actually arguing about the

issues where the Democratic Party has gotten crosswise with the broader electorate, crime, immigration, et cetera. And so you've been looking for more specificity, and this is this pledge that they're looking for centrist candidates to sign. I read the pledge. It's not very specific, in my view. Am I not giving it enough credit? It's sort of of, you know, like, we are capitalist and we believe in patriotism. Well, you know what? What I will say on behalf of the pledge is I think that if you gave this to AOC, she would say, I don't agree with this.

Okay. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, like, it does actually say things that have enough content that a meaningful number of people will say, I don't agree with this. I don't want to sign your pledge, right? So that's productive. I think relative to just kind of like, we need to meet voters where they are, right? Or this kind of, you know, or Slotkin again, you know, I like Alyssa Slotkin.

But she really has this tendency. When she's doing her national communication, she'll say, well, we can't be so woke and so weak. And it's like, what does that mean? Now, what she actually did was when there was like intense pressure from environmentalists on Democrats to all vote to support California banning internal combustion engine cars. she said, no, I won't do that. Right? And like, but she doesn't talk about that, sort of on the national stage.

Anyway, you know, I also, my understanding of the pledge is that this is like a step in a process and that there is meant to be a like further fleshing out of what these planks, you know, mean, right, some kind of more specific policy agenda. And I think that that's where you have to get to because, you know, something leftists say that I think is true, is that most people are not that interested in, like, the ideological abstractions, right? They're, like, interested in the concrete things. Donald Trump, for example, never said, I need the Republican Party to move to the center on economic issues. He just said he didn't agree with Paul Ryan about privatizing Medicare. And ultimately, I think that would be a lot more

productive for Democrats to take some positions that are more centrist, rather than to have a dialogue about their desire to be more centrist. And this pledge is like halfway there, I think. Megan, what do you make of how this project is going? I think it is bold and innovative and awesome, and I support it. No, uh, you're a capitalist, aren't you? I am a capitalist. I don't really identify as a Democrat. I mean, technically I'm registered as a Democrat. Do you believe that government should solve problems, not create them? Because that's one of the items on the pledge. They're in favor of solutions and they're opposed to the creation of new problems. Oh, man, really forcing me out on a limb here, Josh. Look, I am more center-right than center-left, but I am broadly in alignment with the

idea that government should do things that make sense and not things that make ferocious radicals in the party happy. We can argue about what those things are, but I think, like, we're all broadly agreed that, for example, the government should be good at its job and it should treat providing services, whatever services we've decided we need, as the purpose of government programs rather than employing people at above market wages and making them feel validated. And so, like, I think it's a good project. I think the fleshing out is really important. And I thought this, I think we've talked about this with abundance, where I am 100% on board

with it. And also, like, if you're going to do it, you're going to have to take you on unions. You've made this point, Josh, other people have made this point, that you're going to have to say, we have a coalition member, and this coalition member is getting thrown off the bus. Now, you don't, like, you're not going to say it that way. Instead, you're going to say prevailing wage laws, no more. But they are going to understand that they're being thrown off the bus, and they're going to be unhappy about that. And the people leading the abundant stuff, the centrist stuff and so forth have tended to try to do the, like, we shouldn't be so weak and woke thing. We shouldn't, we got to meet the voters where they are. Things that, like, in principle, no one's going to disagree with.

And so the fact that lines are starting to be drawn strikes me as healthy, but I also think it's going to be a long fight, just as it's going to be a long fight for the center right, if it ever hopes to reclaim the Republican Party, not in the form that it was pre-Trump, but in some form that we can live with, are going to have to do hard work of saying no, as well as just expressing a generic desire to win elections rather than lose them,

which has been like a big problem with elites on both sides. The single most specific thing in this pledge is, I think, like a play for the Megan McGartle vote. And it's a promise to prioritize tackling the national debt over welfare state expansion. I mean, me and like the other five, it's me, Mark Goldwine, and Maya McGinnis of the Center Committee for Responsibility. federal budget. And I'm sure there's like four other people in the United States who are going to be really excited about that plank. And of course, there's a lot of specifics about like, what does that mean? What does that amount to, et cetera, et cetera. But I mean, that is, I think, the clearest, like, this is not where the mainstream of the Democratic Party's head is at right now. And Swazi and Gray are

saying that we should pivot to a Bill Clinton in 1993 kind of mindset. And, you know, And that is also, I mean, you know, are the voters clamoring for deficit reduction? Like, no. But the voters keep saying, like, we want the government to focus on the cost of living. This is, like, actually the thing in macroeconomic policy you can do that is in reality responsive to what voters are asking for rather than trying to trick them with, like, you know, fake price controls and stuff like that. So I actually think this is like a pretty important substantive conversation. Yeah, I sort of tried to get into that with Mark Cuban in my interview with him on the main stage there, which, you know, I mean, Cuban's not a politician. And so the the depth of his views on policy, I think, are proportionally related to what industries he has direct familiarity with. He has a lot of relatively sophisticated thoughts on drug pricing. But he was basically talking about that, you know, well, you need a president who can get business leaders in so he can like, like ask them what can be done to get prices lower and what they need and that sort of thing. And then sort of at the end, sort of at the end of the end of the end. end of the interview was basically like, well, you know, because of AI, we can cut taxes. And it's like, no, we have a 6% of GDP budget deficit. And if we want to get inflation under control, we need to start telling people that we need to raise taxes and not spend the money on everything. And I realized that's a hideously unpopular idea. Or cut spending. Let me just shine in from the center right to point out that cutting spending is an option. I will say that the part of the pledge, as I read it,

really sent me back, was the part where it says, we are capital. as though, and I think like you guys are somewhat joking about that. But it did remind me of 2015 when I started going to these parties and somebody once pointed their finger at me at like a loft in Brooklyn and said, I bet you're a capitalist. And I said, of course I'm a capitalist. This is America. We're all capitalists. What are you talking about? And they said, no, I'm a socialist.

I'm a communist. Well, whatever it was. And, you know, then they all like, they all did. little thing, you know, where they went around and were like snapping their fingers like jets and sharks and laughed at the absurdity of being a capitalist. And I thought they were all just a bunch of cocaine addicts who were insane. But then over the next few years, you saw it happen quite a lot. Like they were, they were the vanguard and I was wrong. And you, there was that thing where like Nancy Pelosi said like, I am a capitalist. And they all went, oh, what a dumb bitch. And so I do

think that putting it in that thing and absolutely like as silly and like simple as it sounds, it's actually pushing back against a decade of this ascendant part of the party that really does treat it like a dirty word. And the extent that they're doing that is good. Does socialism leave enough money for cocaine? I mean, in practice, apparently. I actually, I am vaguely curious because I am out of these circles. I'm not hanging out with the DSA folks. And the only DSA people I know are like journalists or DSA politicians or DSA political staffers.

So, like, what do the DSA people do for jobs? How do they support themselves? I mean, I think in New York, it's a lot of the sort of, you know, striving professional class, people who, you know, they live in Astoria or Greenpoint. And they have, you know, they work in PR or fashion or advertising or any of the industries in New York that are not finance. Do they imagine that there will be PR in advertising? Yes. In the bright socialist future? It depends exactly what people mean by socialism, but I mean, you know, Mamdani's New York certainly still has PR and advertising. And, you know, and Mamdani actually, you know, seems sort of admirably, you know, aware that people care about the quality of government services and that's going to affect their willingness to support candidates who call themselves socialist in the future. And they are indeed filling potholes in the streets. And so I think that, you know, the just as we are like eye on the center left and the people around me are doing. this project of trying to improve our appeal to the broader electorate in the future. I think there are at least some people on the far left who are doing the same thing with varying degrees

of success at that. But I think that that's better than a left that doesn't care about governing. But I think that's one of the pluses of the Mamdani mayoralty is that he does seem to care about, you know, strong economy and, you know, a strong public sector in New York City. That I think gives us a good opportunity to turn because I want to talk about this mayoral election that's happening in Washington, D.C. We've talked about, you know, we had the San Francisco DA on the show just a few days ago. We've talked a lot about Mamdani in New York. Washington, D.C. is having another one of these, you know, center-left versus far-left Democratic primaries. And I'm seeing a lot of garment rending on Twitter from sort of establishment Democrats in the,

in the center-left, about the likelihood that this city counselor, Janice Lewis-George, is about to be the Democratic nominee for mayor. And the idea seems to be that she's in the Mamdani lane, but without the positive attributes of Zoran Mamdani. Is that a fair read on the race, Matt? I mean, that's what I think. You know, there are plenty of people who tell me, like, Matt, you're crazy. We heard all these warnings about Mamdani. It's working out fine in New York, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, a few points that I make in response to this. One, New York City's economic situation is just fundamentally different from Washington D.C. and the basic concept that, like, you need a redistributive mentality makes more sense in New York than in D.C.

Second, mayor of Washington, D.C. is just statutorily a much stronger office, dramatically stronger, because you're, like, the mayor and also the governor. Right. Third, Mamdani is to the left of the New York City Council. So beyond the sort of limited authorities of city government, he's substantially checked. by the other branches of political government there. The council in D.C. is very left-wing. You know, they've overridden the current mayor's vetoes on a number of occasions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So there's just much more, like, realistic shot of D.C. going off the rails in a left-wing direction. And then last, while I have heard from supporters of George that Mamdani has governed in this pragmatic way that he's done a lot to improve city services, et cetera, I haven't heard that from Janice Lewis, George. You know what I mean? Like she's not here saying, look, you know, Mamdani understood that like he needs to keep crime low.

He went with the status quo policing. The biggest thing he's done is, you know, this pot-colle initiative, et cetera, et cetera. She's out here talking about like how we need to raise taxes, have to spend more money on various things. She's very unapologetically opposed to the current mayor's anti-crime initiatives, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So while I, as someone who doesn't live in New York, was kind of like, I'm going to be interested to see what this Zorhan guy can do. I'm glad to see a socialist actually taking on responsibility for governing because it's easy from a backbench to like say whatever. But he's going to have to try to do a good job. As someone who lives in D.C., I am not that fascinated by how this is going to turn out.

I just want the better candidate to win. Yeah, I would also add that D.C. is a very small city. It is very easy to move to Maryland or to Virginia and not even really lengthen your commute. There are already a lot of reasons to leave. Our crime is higher. Our city is smaller and it's physically easier to leave it. And the idea of Janice Lewis-George seems to be to give people more reasons to leave. And similarly on housing where the Yimbys got super excited that she said she was going to build 72,000 units.

her idea is just to make life a living hell for landlords, and somehow they will overlook that and build housing anyway. And I was reading her interview with Martin Auster Mule of notice. And it's just like she's just, everything's hand-waving. So you ask her how she's going to pay for things, and she's like, we're going to leverage our federal dollars. What does that mean? I have no idea. And it's not clear to me that she knows either.

What do you say to the business community who says that you're kind of saying that you're going after them and, talking about them as if they are like a detriment to the city. She's like, you know, I think that our business developers are going to overlook that and understand we need to work in partnership. You understand that why they will understand this because what you like, you're going to Jedi mind trick them into thinking that you are not going to make life miserable for landlords. Like it's it's kind of a not serious campaign and we don't have, we don't have a big financial industry anchoring us like New York or the tech industry like

San Francisco. We have a lot of upper middle class professionals who can move to Virginia and or to Maryland, get out of D.C., get more space, lower taxes, and arguably, at least in some areas, better public services, certainly less crime. And she has no realistic plan to deal with that reality. She is still living in the world of 2018 where the city was just an endless boom and it didn't matter what you did because people will keep moving in. And that really frightens me in a way that's not true of Mondani in part because if you're in New York to move out of New York City is actually a huge pain in your butt and your property taxes are going to be really high offsetting any gains from leaving. So it's not just, you know, people leaving, right? But New York City right now is the

place where the richest people in the greater New York City area live, right? Like presently. And that's not the case for D.C. Potomac, Maryland, in Loudoun County and Virginia, those are the high-income jurisdictions in this area. It's just already normal for wealthy people to not be here. There's some people, a relatively small minority of people who live in the Washington, D.C. metro area, live in the city because we like urban living, and, you know, we like the walkable streets and are somewhat averse to leaving town for that reason. But we're just, like, not current. winning the battle for affluent people's desire to live here. And we should be working on that, right?

I'm constantly trying to improve the competitiveness of the city as a, you know, desirable destination for sort of the typical person to want to come live in. And, you know, she's going in the opposite direction. And this is kind of very lazy analogistic reasoning based on stuff that didn't work in San Francisco, but at least wasn't catastrophic to the city. And, you know, you worry could put us on a kind of, you know, Detroit or Baltimore-type trajectory where you can have a very poor dysfunctional city, even if it's surrounded by, like, reasonably thriving suburbs.

Because, you know, people will commute to their jobs or not. Can I tell you what worries me about this as someone who doesn't live in Washington, D.C., sort of in the same way that you get to watch the Mamdani mayor-aulty as a spectator? the mayor of Washington, D.C. is not hemmed in by a governor, wouldn't be hemmed in by this city council. The branch of government that has control here is the Congress. The local government in Washington, D.C. is a creation of federal law. There wasn't even a mayor of D.C. until about 50, 60 years ago. And Congress, in theory, can overturn local laws in Washington, D.C. And as we saw in the early Trump part of this Trump administration, there's also significant authority that the executive can exercise. by virtue of the fact that Washington is the federal district, powers that the president has with regard to Washington that he doesn't have with regard to New York or Los Angeles. And Muriel Bowser, the current mayor of Washington, D.C., has done a fairly good job of managing that very difficult relationship with Donald Trump. It's clear that Janice Lewis George has no interest in doing that. And also has a bunch of policy ideas that Trump would hate and that would be broadly unpopular with, you know, national voters to the extent that they are aware of what's happening in Washington, D.C.,

and care, and would even be unpopular with a lot of Democrats in Congress and, you know, the Democratic staffer class, particularly the, you know, the sort of stuff around crime that is happening. And so my expectation is that if George wins, she's going to set up a lot of public fights with Donald Trump that will be bad politically for the Democratic Party and will put Democrats in Congress in a difficult position where they have to decide between the party's longstanding support for home rule in Washington, D.C. and the fact that home rule is being used for a bunch of irresponsible stuff that damages the brand of Democratic Party. And I don't know exactly how we're going to manage that. But it's not a situation that I am eager to be in as a Democrat who doesn't live

in Washington. Yes. I mean, this is a very valid concern because Trump is going to want to, you know, and to be clear, like, George has done this deliberately, right? So like a lot of her campaigning, and I think a lot of her strength as a candidate, is that she has kind of argued that Bowser should have been doing more to fight Donald Trump and that Kenya McDuffie, who's her main opponent, that he is like soft on Trumpism by following in Bowser's footsteps here. And the kind of argument that like is clearly correct, but it's hard to make in a political campaign is that this is just a relationship in which you can't really fight Donald Trump. You can give Donald Trump opportunities to fight you, right? Like if that's what you want to do, if you want to create positive

politics for Donald Trump in trampling on home rule, the mayor can do that. But like, the smart thing to do is what Bowser has done, which is try to bend with the wind, try to take advantage some of the upside of Trump's interest in the District of Columbia. He's like fixing the fountains in the parks. Right. Exactly. And like, but George's politics are that she wants to fight Trump. So then Trump is going to be thrilled to have her be his like opposition, rather than Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer or something like that. And then he's going to constantly try to squeeze frontline House Democrats. There's going to be a lot of intrademocratic infighting about, you know, various resolutions of disapproval, things like that.

And, you know, it's bad national politics. And we would be much better served by continuity with a sort of, you know, I'm not going to endorse what Trump is doing with ICE. But if federal agents, like, want to be present on the street. you know, it's their city to that kind of attitude, which I get is, you know, emotionally unsatisfying to people who live in D.C. and really hate Donald Trump. But there's no, this is not a winnable fight. You know, it's like there's no constitutional authority to fight the federal government on these questions. Can I ask a question about the situation on the ground there? Because one, when we talk about crime in D.C. in this campaign, a lot of it has been this sort of like marauding teenagers stuff, including there was this Chapoelé and Navy Yard. that, you know, these teenagers are in there throwing the furniture at each other. And this has been an ongoing problem that the city has addressed with these teen curfews.

And, you know, it doesn't seem to me that a teen curfew should be plan A about how to fight crime in a city. You know, in general, people should be allowed to be on the streets if they wish. I have a really radical idea for dealing with these teen takeovers, which is that they should try to identify the specific individuals doing crimes and punish them. But that seems to be outside of the Overton window here. But that could say my question here, because like, this is a problem in Washington and it's a problem in Chicago. It does not appear to be a problem in New York as far as I can tell. And it's like, why? Why does this happen in Washington?

And why can't the government just like prevented in the manner that you described there in a way that they seem to do in other large cities run by liberal Democrats? I do not know if this hinges on the technical details of. our Youth Rehabilitation Act versus, you know, what may or may not have been done in New York in the name of criminal justice reform. I do know that the D.C. Council took measures several years ago to sort of go much softer on young offenders than we had been previously. And this, you know, was backed by a certain amount of research. But as is, I think, often the case with these criminal justice reform issues, there's kind of an equilibrium. problem where, you know, when very few people are shoplifting, it's like not that big of a deal

and no huge gains from severe punishments on shoplifters. But like when word gets out, that you can do this without consequence, it becomes a really, really big problem. I don't know what your law is in New York or what's going on there. It's possible. I mean, listen, there's a universe in which, so this has been an issue in D.C., the mayor supports curfews, McDuffie supports curfews. George in the left block and the council are opposed to them. Nothing would make my heart sing more than for George to say, I don't think we should be engaged in collective punishment of every teenager in the district.

I want to double efforts to punish specific wrongdoers. But like, she's not saying that. She's just saying curfews don't work. So it's like, we're going to do nothing. We have to address root causes. I think that it's nice that the kids are getting out of the house. You know, too many of these kids. They're just watching porn and playing the TikTok.

They don't get out. So if the cost is a couple of Chipotle's, what are you going to do? Well, I don't know, Ben, you say that, and yet you made it one year in Washington, D.C., and you moved away. Was it the disorder? I hated the heat, the humidity. Oh, yes. It was a killer. I don't have a problem with the teens.

I didn't run into the marauding teens. Megan and Matt, you're both originally from Manhattan. Have you thought about maybe moving back? Up north here, if things go too far south in Washington, D.C.? No, because I don't actually want to, like, sell a kidney in order to buy house in New York. It is expensive. Very affordable housing here. Well, it might get even more affordable.

Yeah. When Peter and I were first moving in together, we were looking at a house on, I believe, 12th in V, 12th and W somewhere around there. It was a tiny little house. Just to give listeners a little context, this is an area of Washington, D.C., that is now quite desirable. But when you were looking at this house 15, 20 years ago, it would have been more up and coming. More up and coming, but still, the U Street neighborhood was even then, like, pretty hip. I live there. Yeah.

Insofar as D.C. can ever be said to be hip, this was like the hot neighborhood in D.C. for the youngs to live in. And so we are looking at this house. And Peter says it was like 800 square feet. I don't know. I don't know from square feet. had a little yard. It was adorable. It was $2,600 a month. And I was like, this place is great. We should get it. And Peter says, Megan, can I, can I talk to you into the porch for a minute? And I was like, okay. So we go out on the little porch. And he's like, we're not doing this. And I am freaking out. I'm like, I just broke my lease. What do you mean we're not doing this? He's like, you're crazy New York ideas about what constitutes affordable real estate. We are not getting something that would be a good deal in New York. And then like, In fact, we ended up living in another tiny house on Nantin V that cost roughly the same amount of money because there was a long story. Anyway, but it was slightly bigger.

It was like a thousand square feet rather than 800. But like you move here and you're just like, wow, apartments have windows that didn't make light. All right. All right. Let's not say things we can't take back. The first thing that I noticed when I got to D.C., when I drove across the country, where I went and looked at every apartment in the whole city. And the light thing, bullshit, it's a lie. There is no light.

They also don't have bathubs in these fucking places for some reason, because it's fucking Chechnya. And- I have a bathtub and light. All right. You might, but, Megan, your house, your house doesn't have any light. I've been to that house. She's got a curtain right behind her to prevent the light from pouring into the room and blacking out the camera. Also, Ben, when I was living in Manhattan,

before I moved to D.C. My apartment was half underground, and I had to have blinds over the windows so that the people walking by were not literally just staring at me as I, you know, lay in bed watching television. And so the idea that one would have an entire full-length window that was above the ground and had above-the-ground level light for less than $1,500 a month was revolutionary.

Now, prices have gone up in D.C. since I moved. in 2007. But nonetheless, it was like, it was just a very exciting discovery for me. But the crime is a serious disemnity in Washington, D.C. Like, you know, when I, when I moved down there in 2008, I was moving from New York. I lived down there for a couple of years. You know, in New York, I don't worry about where I'm going or like, is this a safe neighborhood, that sort of thing. In D.C., you know, I come down there, I get a temporary sublet and foggy bottom for a few months. And it just seemed like everyone that I was then following. I don't think I knew any of you yet at this point. But like everyone seemed to be victims of crimes. Like, you know, Dave Weigel was, you know,

I forget exactly what happened to him. Your co-host on politics got shot that summer at the corner of 15th in Euclid, which is not a, not generally considered a bad neighborhood. And that literally, as those things were happening, that summer, I'm looking for, and then I'm, I'm just, eventually just like, screw it. I'm going to live west of the park. And so I moved to Woodley Park, which is a lovely, leafy neighborhood. You can, you can definitely get an apartment with good light in Woodley Park. You're right near the zoo. And, you know, west of the park is, you know, like, that's like the Upper East Side of Washington, D.C. It's kind of boring. There's no, but there's much lower crime over there. But I don't like that. See, I think this is why Megan and I live here.

We're real ones from 20th century New York when the crime was sky high. So I come here and like it balances off the me. I mean, the first thing that happened when I got to D.C. was I went to Megan's, um, Pete and Peter's home. And as I was leaving that night, they were telling me out. Oh, you're going to love the city. You'll see you all about it. And as I was leaving, Peter says, all right, Ben. Are you going to get an Uber? And I said, no, not some pussy.

I'm just going to walk, you know. And he said, all right, well, if you're going to walk, when you go out the door, go left or not go right. And I said, what's going to happen if I go right? And he said, right is where the acid attacks happen. That's not true. No, I didn't. Where would I make head up? There was an acid attack, I guess, like not long before.

We have not had an acid attack in my neighborhood. We did, it is true, have a shooting across the street from me in which a number of, like a large number, like dozens of bullets were fired and multiple people were shot. However. However. That drug house is now being renovated. So it's a fancier, a nicer drug house? We'll find out. Neighborhoods gentrifying.

Okay, but I was going to say the only time I have been a victim of crime in D.C. was just also walking home from Megan's house because she lives on Crime Alley or something. Because we're Crime Lords. And I think it may have been a setup. You know, because I was more left wing then. And they were like, you know, it's not to get, I was in your backyard. I was talking to Ross Douthit. And clearly someone was like, we got to get this guy mugged by reality on his way home.

So here's a question for you, Matt. Would you, we've now known each other for just about 20 years. Would 20 years ago you have voted for Janice Lewis George? No, I don't think so because I have like opinions about education policy that she doesn't share. And like I always had those opinions. I was a big Adrian Fenty guy back in his day. But I was soft on crime back then. And now I'm not.

I believe in arresting criminals. So now that we're talking about degenerates, why don't we talk about Grant Platner for a little bit? I had a column about how Grant Platner is like an under-employed loser like John Federman before him and that leftists have for weird reasons fallen in love with this archetype of like low conscientiousness people, you know, for example, can't wear a business suit, has to wear hoodies everywhere, dithers for 17 years about getting his Nazi tattoo removed, calls himself an oyster farmer, but really just sells oysters to his mom's restaurant while his dad makes him alone so he can buy a house, all of this kind of stuff. And it didn't work out with John Fetterman,

who turned out to be like a hate figure for the left once he got into Congress. But it seems to me that the exact kind of unreliability that is telegraphed by these character traits is the sort of unreliability that makes it so that, you know, God knows what you're actually going to do when you get into office. And I find when I point this out, the reaction I tend to get from these leftists is basically, well, you know, John Federman had a stroke and it changed him and how could we have predicted that? But, you know, Federman was like this before he had a stroke. He, you know, I mean, for example, the reason he had a stroke is that he was diagnosed with atrial fibrelation,

which they need to put you on blood thinners and monitor you in various ways. And then he just never went back to the doctor until five years later he up and had a stroke, which is the, you know, main reason that a fib might kill you. And so I kind of can't believe that we are running this exact same playbook again in Maine, you know, with, you know, Platner might lose. And then even if he wins, I think he's a person of bad character who's likely to be a bad senator. But Matt, as a part-time resident of Maine, I was wondering if you could explain to us what it is that people see in this guy. So, I mean, one thing I'll say about, but he's just, he's really charismatic in the movie.

That's this week's free episode of Central Air. If you want to hear Madaglacius' on the ground takes from Maine about the Graham Platner situation and my rant about it, if you want to hear our takes on California, which may have counted its votes within, you know, three weeks or so after you hear this podcast, and why the state ends up with such mediocre politicians. And if you want to hear about dogs, Madaglacius had that controversial take that cities should not pay for dog parks. he has moderated a little bit on that, but he still has views about cities being more for children than for dogs when in fact they're treated as being more for dogs than for children. Anyway, if you want to hear all of that, go to centralairpodcast.com. You can upgrade and become a paying subscriber. You'll get every full episode and you'll be part of our community. We would love to have you there.

Thank you.