Prof G Markets - Is Zohran Mamdani's Plan for New York Economically Possible? — ft. Bradley Tusk

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Ed Elson and Scott Galloway are joined by Bradley Tusk, venture capitalist, political strategist, and writer, to break down the economics of Zohran Mamdani’s policies. Bradley also shares his thoughts on the Mayor-elect means for New York and the future of the Democratic party. Subscribe to Bradley’s Substack Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter  Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from Upwork. If you're overextended and understaffed, Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top quality freelancers fast. You can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork and marketing design AI and more. Ready to jump in and take work off your plate. Upwork Business Plus, sources, vets, and shortlists proven experts so you can stop doing it all and delegate with confidence. Right now, when you spend $1,000 in Upwork Business Plus, you'll get $500 in credit.

Go to upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025. Again, that's upwork.com slash SAVE. Scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply. Defenders and cybersecurity are always there when we need them. They should get a parade every time they block a novel threat and have streets, sandwiches, and babies named in their honor. But most of all, they do.

deserve AI cybersecurity that can stop novel threats before they become breaches across email, clouds, networks, and more. DarkTrace is the cybersecurity defenders deserve and the one they need to defend beyond. Visit darktrace.com forward slash defenders for more information. Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two, ghosts in the machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.

Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequence, Wolf that leaves you asking, what are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The downloaded two Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Today is number two million. More than two million people voted in the New York City mayor election, the most in a half a century.

True story, reportedly, in every Asian household, the kids are freaking out, is now their parents are going to say, what, you're not mayor by the 80s? of 33. Also, Ed, let's be honest, this is a huge defeat for perverts all over the world, but I want the other perverts to know that we will rebuild, we will be back. Listen to me. Markets are bigger than I. What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it. How are you, Ed? I'm doing very well. How are you doing this call?

I'm less miserable than I usually in. am. I'm really excited about the election results. You know, I don't, I would not have voted for this mayor. I'm not a New York resident. I always have to feel like I have to do a land acknowledgement to my Jewish brothers and sisters. But the other races I'm especially excited about the governor's races, even down-ballot races. Probably the most important race was the referendum in California, and that passed overwhelmingly. But yeah, I'm feeling pretty good this morning. And how about you? How are you doing? You know, I have something for you. One second. Who's under the table? Is that why you're smiling? Boss, if it has anything to do with my birthday, it was two days ago. I know. But thank you. We got to celebrate it.

Yeah, no. No, actually, we don't. We don't. We do. We do. It's your birthday. This is Scott's favorite. I mean, it was your birthday a couple days ago. We didn't celebrate it. Your least favorite day of the year. But we have to celebrate it and acknowledge. it somehow. Otherwise, what are we doing here? Okay, box checked. Let's talk about my book and my media tour. Come on. It's a good day. It's good when you're 14 like fucking Ed Elson. When you're barreling towards death like Scott Galloway. All I have is like shingles and crones to look forward to. I ordered these last night. Come on. This was a lot of effort from me. You really brought it there.

You must be a fantastic boyfriend. It's like when my dad came home for Christmas on the 21st, four days before Christmas, and he brought home a Quiznard from Sears for my, his third wife. I could do a little more than a paper hat. Next time, next time I'll get you the second Ferrari. Talk about my book, bitch. That's my birthday present. Tell us about your book, amazing book launch. You're all over the place, number one on Amazon.

I'm number one on Amazon. It's funny. I don't really buy into the modern metrics of a capitalist society. And I have not refreshed my Amazon page every seven minutes, waiting it to fall to number two behind fucking let them Mel Robbins and Andrew Huberman telling me to eat, drink pineapple juice and creatine the rest of my life. I think the key is I, no joke, cried on The View, which felt very masculine in front of four women. It was nice, though. It was moving. That was a low light.

So you've been on The View, you've been on Morning Joe, you were on The Today Show, you were on Carost. Swish's podcast. What am I missing here? I'm not even keeping track. CBS, PBS, Salmanpur, Times of London, and today I go on, Fareed Zakar.

Anderson Cooper. Today I go on the Daily Show with Jordan Klepper, and then tonight I'm being interviewed by Ben Stiller. Who I'd be great friends with, but he doesn't drink. He's really getting in the way of our friendship.

What's going on in your life? I'm just grinding, Scott. I'm just working on this podcast. Yeah, but it's going, everything's going very well, and we're going to have our, I thought we were going to have our meeting last week. We didn't have that meeting. It's happening this week and we're going to review how the business is doing. I got to tell you, I get very excited for these meetings. That's because the business is doing well. Exactly. If we were doing badly, then I'd be a little terrified. It'll be good. I don't think anyone in your generation, maybe with a few of these kids are being laid off from these information edge companies, I think the majority of people with your kind of certification and your skills, And this worries me a little bit. Your life has pretty much been, and I'll say that having, I don't know what you face personally, but professionally. I don't know if there was a malicious clown at a little birthday event.

I don't know what happened. Without any real knowledge, I'm just going to go out of a whim and say, your life's been pretty good. Your life's been a fucking Easter parade. I know professionally, because your entire professional life has been with me, that your professional life has pretty much been up into the right. Yeah, that's, that's true. It's been, it's been a cakewalk. I, you know what, just for a learning experience, I promise to fix that to some points. I can't wait. Well, should we get into a conversation here with Bradley Tusk? We're going to talk about this election, what it means for New York. Let's do it. Here is our conversation with Bradley Tusk, Vech capitalist, political

strategist, and writer Brad. Thank you very much for joining us on Profi Markets. Yeah, thanks for having me. So we want to get into this election here. The reason why we wanted to speak with you, just to go over your background for our listeners here. So you ran Mike Bloomberg's mayoral campaign in 2009, which he won. You were the campaign manager. Before that, you served as deputy governor of Illinois.

Before that, you were Chuck Schumer's communications director. Before that, you actually worked for the New York City Parks Department. You're a senior advisor. So you are heavily involved in New York politics, but at the same time, you're also a leader in business. You worked on Wall Street for several years. You were an early advisor to Uber. You started your VC firm, Tusk Ventures. So you have pretty deep experience in the New York City political world and also the New York City business world.

And these are two worlds which may be colliding after this mayoral election. and many believe they're about to be at odds with one of that. So I just want to start with the context here. And then I'll throw it back to you and we'll start very broad. Zoroamandani is the next mayor of New York City. What does this mean for New York City? It's an open question. So I think part of the challenge over the last few months

is a misunderstanding of the role of city government and of the mayor. So while I did not vote for Mondani, a lot of the sort of rendering of garment to me is overstated. Yes, he's a socialist, but at the end of the day, the mayor doesn't really control the economy directly. The mayor does not set interest rates. The mayor does not control the supply chain. He can't even really raise taxes without Albany. And so, you know, the job of the mayor, of really any mayor, is to pick up the trash.

It's to make sure the lights turn from green to red. It's to make sure the clean water comes out of the tap. And if he governs pragmatically, then I think he might be just fine. If he governs totally dogmatically, then I think we've got a problem. So you mentioned that, you know, he is a Democratic socialist. This wouldn't have a real impact, you know, on markets, on the economy. He doesn't have that level of power. What does it mean, though, that he is a Democratic socialist?

Does that, is that important to you? Does that strike you? Is that something that we should care about? Well, it's important in the sense that if you were to take the DSA, that's the Democratic Socialist of America, their platform, and if he were to truly try to apply that to the minority, Then I think New York City variable might be a place where a lot of people wouldn't want to live. If you truly believe that the police are evil and should be fully defunded, if you truly believe that taxes should be as high as absolutely possible, if you truly believe that every business and every business person sort of is inherently rapacious and greedy and needs to be punished in some way, then, yeah, that is not a good look for the city that is the financial capital of the world, the media capital of the world. and a city that relies on its highest income taxpayers,

about 1% of New Yorkers pay about 50% of the city's income taxes, and New York City is a value proposition. At a certain point, if it is too expensive and too dangerous, people can and will choose to live somewhere else. And what that ultimately results in is a lot less money for poor people. It's the poorest among us who need maximum city revenue for Medicaid, for public housing, for public assistance,

and if Mondani's policies, do cause a flight of capital, the poor people are the ones who are going to pay the most. Do you think that that will happen? I mean, we've seen a lot of people saying, leading up to the election, a lot of wealthy people saying, I'm leaving if he gets in office. You think that's going to happen? No, I don't. The odds of anyone this morning picking up the phone, calling a real estate broker and leaving town just because Mondani won last night seemed pretty low to me. It will come down to how he governs. One very encouraging sign so far is that he said that he wants to keep Jesse Tish's police commissioner. She runs the NYPD.

She seems to be extremely good at it. If she chooses to stay and he lets her do her job, that's a pretty clear sign that he understands that the role of the mayor is to give people a clean, safe, well-run city. And if he can do that, he's going to be just fine. And if he can't, there will be a flight. There already has been. So in 2012, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, New York City had 12.7% of America's millionaires. And now it's down to 8.7%. And that's a resulting loss of about $13 billion a year in tax revenue.

And so people can move. City governments are the most vulnerable to that kind of thing. So we'll see. I think in my conversations with him, he gets that. But, you know, the proof will be in the pudding and who he hires will tell us all. You mentioned some of those things that, you know, you're saying, if he truly believes X, Y, Z, if he truly believes that we need to defund the police, I'm trying to remember some of the examples that you gave. But generally speaking, they seem to be slight caricatures, but I'm not totally sure. And I think one question a lot of people are asking is, like, what does he truly believe? We know that he tweeted in 2020, defund the police. So we know that that's where he stood on the issue. Now he's on TV saying that's not actually what I believe. And I think I don't have a problem with that personally saying I actually switch my view. But I guess my question, having talked with

him, what does he truly believe? And those concerns you raise, do you think that those are the kinds of policies that he will actually enact and try to enact as mayor? I don't think so by and large because I think he does study history really well. And I think he is quite smart. And when you look at where other mayors have failed, it is typically because they either went way too far of some sort of ideological bent or they ignored it. I mean, Eric Adams' minority effectively was derailed. Probably not by all the petty corruption,

but simply that when it came to quality of life, he didn't do a good job. You know, there was a point where New York City had over 5,000 illegal weed shops, which means stores that were openly selling narcotics without a license to do so. And Adam, for years and years, just ignored it, right? We have scaffolding everywhere.

We have such a shoplifting epidemic that if you want a tube of toothpaste, you have to get someone to open up a lock case for you. We have e-bikes roaring up and down the sidewalks. And so when the city feels out of control, people blame the mayor. I do think that Zoran gets that, and, you know, we'll see how that impacts his choices as governing. I can't help but out on. A lot of my Jewish friends asked me why it wasn't being more vocal against Mondami. And I'm like, he doesn't said policy on Israel. I mean, it's just, let's, we've got bigger battles to fight here than, then who's in charge of the MTA union negotiations.

Anyway, talk a little bit about some of the other races. This feels as a proud progressive, this feels like a good morning. Typically in off cycles, it goes against whoever the incumbent president is. So is this, was this a surprise to the upside for blue or just sort of an average part of the cycle. No, I think it was surprised to the upside for blue, in part because Democrats have been having a really rough go of it. Just quickly your point in Israel, look, I'm a fervent Zionist, but with that said, no member of the Israeli Knesset has ever said, wait, before I cast this critical vote, let me see what the mayor of New York. Let's see what it does. Yeah. What matters is whether and how he protects Jews in New York, I think he gets that. As long as he does that, it's fine. Nationally, look, where you can really contrast Zoran with the other candidates who succeeded last

night is whether you like Zoran or not, to his credit, he did have an affirmative agenda, right? He had a clear vision for New York City. He smiles. He laughs. He's likable. Whereas I think the stereotype right now, and largely it's been pretty true of the Democratic Party, is just incessant whining and complaining and no real vision, just being against everything. I don't know that Mikey Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger, who respectively won the governships of New Jersey and Virginia last night have a clear vision for their states. They have policy positions on their website, obviously, but I don't think it really mattered because voters were expressing their opinions about Trump and about the nation overall. The thing to me that was the most telling was

an ABC News Washington Post poll came out yesterday morning that said 71 percent of Americans feel that their grocery prices have gone up, and of independence, two-thirds of them blamed Trump for it directly based on tariffs and everything else. There are lots of issues that, that you or me or at or whoever might scream about on authoritarianism or rule of law or process. I'm not sure that most Americans care all that much about process, but they know what a cost to go to the grocery store. And when they start feeling like it's costing them a lot more money, they start blaming people. And so unless you think that Trump is going to totally revoke the terrorists and everything's going to change, you're in a position where this very well might be the same or even worse economic climate a year from now when the midterms head.

and you have to be encouraged if you're a Democrat at your chances of at least retaking the House. So now, with all of that said, Democrats retaking the House just gets us to a place where Trump can't get his agenda through Congress, but if you have a president that genuinely does not care about rule of law and just does things anyway and a Supreme Court that seems terrified of him,

that may not matter. So I want to come back to New York just for a second because what you said about, Democrats need to be more than just clutching their pearls. I need the party of ideas. So government-sponsored food grocery stores makes absolutely no sense to me. It's a low-margin business. 83% of bodega owners are immigrants.

That's like the last business we want to be in. Someone from the DMV picking our produce is not going to make prices go down unless you subsidize those stores. No, I love the DMV. A big part of the DMV trading is picking the right avocado. Listen to two of you. Rent stabilization and rent freezes, as far as I can tell, economics 101, they end up having the opposite effect. They end up actually increasing rent prices. But instead of just being the, you know, the podcaster of no, what, as someone who's been a deputy mayor of Chicago, focus on affordability.

What are the structural shifts a mayor could enact or even Congress to make a life more affordable for Americans? What are the ideas that would, in fact, bring down prices? Yeah, I mean, the first thing is so it wasn't paid much attention to, but there were ballot measures last night in New York City that dealt with the process for approving construction and housing, and they passed. And that's a really big deal because one of the reasons that New York City and so many cities around this country lack affordable housing is that the cost of creating new housing is so incredibly high that it doesn't pencil out for developers. like you just made the point on the rent-free. So about 28% of New York City apartments are rent-controlled or rent-stabilized. The mayor does have the power to basically disallow any rent increases for those apartments. Like you said, that just spreads the cost out to everybody else.

So if you were to meaningfully make affordable housing easier, and if you were to reduce the costs and reduce all of the political burden and nonsense, it typically goes on, that leads to more housing and just basic supply. demand. If there's a greater supply of housing, then prices will come down. So that's clearly one thing that we could do. And obviously, I'm sure you've had, you know, as for Colin and Derek Thompson on one of your shows at some points, talk about their whole abundance agenda, a lot of that would certainly make sense. The other thing, and this is much more on a national level than local, but it's an issue that you talk about a lot on your podcast, Scott, which is, you know,

what's the impact of AI going to be? And to me, at least, when I look at the job numbers, I think that AI is already having an impact. The companies that are laying off most people, which are the really big tech companies, are the earliest adopters of things like AI. Often they're the developers of it, too. And I think by 2026 and 2028, this will be a really meaningful issue to people. And how we go about regulating AI, how we go about making sure that we don't end up with 26 people who are trillionaires and 19% unemployment is going to be really important. I think Andrea Ann kind of kicked this whole conversation off 15 years ago or so with his book that proposed universal basic income as a solution for AI layoffs. That's going to be

an issue that the government has to deal with. And typically speaking, Congress has abdicated that role. If you look at kind of Internet 2.0, there's been no meaningful federal regulation of social media and it has had an absolute disastrous impact, especially on kind of young men, Scott, as you talk about quite a bit. So, yeah, I think those are at least two things that I would jump into definitely on a national level on someone on a local level. We'll be right back after the break,

and if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend, and please follow us if you haven't already. Support for the show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't speak to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

That's where Odu comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try O-D-for-free at O-D-O-O-O-D-com. Support for the show comes from Upwork. So you started a business, but you didn't expect to become the head of everything. Now you're doing marketing, customer service, and IT with no support staff. At some point, doing it all becomes the reason nothing gets done. Stop doing everything.

Instead of spending weeks sorting through random resumes, Upwork Business Plus sends a curated shortlist of expert talent to your inbox and hours. These are trusted, top-rated freelancers vetted for skills and reliability. And with Upwork Business Plus, you can get instant access to the top 1% of your inbox. of talent on Upwork and marketing design AI more. All ready to jump in and take work off your plate. Upwork Business Plus can take the hassle out of hiring and the pressure off your team. That way you can stop doing everything and instead focus on scaling while the pros on Upwork can handle the rest. Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you'll get $500 in credit. Go to Upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025.

Again, that's upwork.com slash S-A-V-E. Scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply. Support for this show comes from the audible original, the downloaded two, ghosts in the machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Roscoe Cadulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer,

but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? the downloaded two ghosts in the machine available now only from audible um we're back with proffty markets just going back to the to the rent freeze brad um i think

zoran is kind of a genius as the more i've gotten to know to learn about him and the way he handles himself in these debates, his social media strategy, his communications. I mean, he is like a superstar, like no doubt about it, generational talent. And then there are some policy proposals in here that have kind of become like the lynch pins of this guy doesn't know what he's doing. Freezing the rent is a great example. The city-owned grocery store, another great example. And it's very easy to sort of categorically take those down through simple economics 101, you know, freeze the rent, that sort of goes against, it disincentivizes construction and it sort of goes against the abundance agenda. My question, why do you think

he put those in there? I mean, I get the sense that he probably has heard why freezing the rent probably isn't a good idea. Of course, he knows. He wants, because he wanted to get elected. He's still a politician at the end of the day. Okay. So it's all, it's all election. It's all for campaign. Yeah, look, people who run for office, in my experience, and I've been at this now for over 30 years, are typically desperately insecure. They typically desperately need attention and validation, and they get that by everything that comes with holding office. I'm running. I'm running. There we go. So look, and keep in mind, when you talk about the rent freeze, even though it's only 28% of apartments, my guess is that a lot of people who voted

from yesterday assume that it implies to them, too. They just hear rent freeze and they're like, Great. I don't want to pay more rent. The city on grocery stores, yeah, look, you know, a couple of times in my career, I've had the opportunity or responsibility of trying to oversee what really are private sector businesses for government, whether it's golf courses at the New York City Parks Department or the lottery in the state of Illinois. It never works when the government is trying to run private businesses. With that said, it's a very minor thing. And while the city opening grocery stores is not going to work, if he said, All right, I'm going to do an initiative with Whole Foods or Kroger or H.E.B. or there in Texas, whoever, and we're going to provide city-owned land and grants and tax credits and whatever else. Could you do something? Sure. Do I think it would really matter? No. But ultimately, there are lots of ways to go about achieving his agenda if he's willing to be a little creative. So, for example, and I'm sure you guys notice this if you're in town and you're taking the subway, people just hop the turnstiles left and right pretty much everywhere. And because we don't do anything. about it. We have no enforcement. We have no real gates or anything like that. We'd lose over a billion dollars a year in revenue to fare evasion. His free bus idea, whether you like it or not, would cost around $630 million, I think. You could easily pay for it if you started enforcing the law and fair evasion. So there are ways to achieve a lot of things that he wants to achieve. It may not happen the way he wants to do it, which really just gets back to that question of,

are you going to govern pragmatically or dogmatically? A dogmatic mayor would say we must punish the 1% because that is the top priority of people on the 18th percent or the 12th percent or the 9th percent. And I don't really care what, you know, the mayor, this mayor would say, I don't really care what the economic impact of the city is. I want to achieve social justice for my voters. Or he could be a mayor that just said, I want to maximize tax revenue to spend on the best possible thing. Sometimes that might mean not raising taxes, actually.

You know, what made my, I'm biased, but what made Mike Bloomberg in many ways a really great mayor is Mike made every decision based on. what he truly believed was best for New York. You might disagree with them. I didn't always agree with him. But ultimately, he acted in the best interest of the city, of the people, and I think the voters understood that, and they were willing to give him a lot of leeway as a result. The voters don't expect to agree with you on everything, but if they know that you're

looking out for them, they will generally support you. Another reason why Eric Adams was such a failure is he seemed to constantly looking out for like minor grifting opportunities and for all. his buddies to do that, and the voters had no confidence that he cared about them. So, and by the way, that might be some of what we saw last night nationally as well. Just this divide between dogmatic versus pragmatic. I totally agree with you. I think that the campaign was dogmatic as it should be. I get the sense that he's going to be actually quite pragmatic. I think he's going to work with establishment Democrats, which is good

in a lot of ways, but also maybe bad for the people who voted him in, who thought he was going to completely shake up the system. If you run on a campaign and say, I'm going to freeze your rent, which is a big thing to say, and then you don't freeze the rent, it sounds like you think he actually will not go through with that.

Is he not losing the base? Well, I think he'll go through with it for that small segment. It's just not how most people's not how most people's rent works. Look, it's an excellent question. Because if you look at Bill de Blasio, who is mayor of New York City recently, de Blasio was very smart politically.

And de Blasio understood that as long as the base, which was, I think he got 282,000 votes in the primary when he won in 2013, as long as that roughly 300,000 people are happy, you're going to get reelected. If your only goal is re-election for the sake of re-election, then you just govern for the base and you don't care about the other 96% of New York City. A truly great mayor, a truly great president, truly great whatever, says, my goal is to create as much total good as possible,

and I'm not going to worry specifically about the political implications of any one decision. if you are the mayor of New York City and you say, I just want to do the best job I possibly can and that's what governs your choices. Odds are you will be successful. And keep in mind,

no New York City mayor has ever won an election after being mayor. Lots of them run for president. They want for governor, for Congress. This is both the best job in politics and a total dead end job. The last job.

And the way to go about it is to say, what can I do to have the greatest impact on this city for four or eight years? And if you do that well, your legacy will be incredible and people will love you. If all you're doing is endless political machinations and how do I kind of game this thing out and then triage that thing, you're going to fail. I just want to pass pause because you said something that was very insightful and obvious. And I think that two are inextricably linked when someone just connects something that seems obvious in the light of day. You said that the companies laying off the most people were the early adopters of AI.

And I hadn't even made that simple connection. You're absolutely right that the companies announcing 5,000, 10,000, 30,000 people are understandably. And actually, the ones who are figuring out this whole AI game. I thought that was very insightful. Anyways, very impressed with you, Bradley. When you look across the landscape, you've run campaigns, you ran a very successful campaign, you ran Bloomberg's campaign. When you look at candidates on either side of the aisle, who do you think is most disciplined and effective and has the most resonant messaging? If you had to pick nominees from either side of the aisle, and I realize we're kind of three years out, but who do you think, regardless of your own political beliefs, who do you think is just good at this?

If you look at modern political history, so let's just start with Reagan. The people who win the presidency are almost always not the best qualified people. It's people who really resonate with the voters. It's the rock stars. Reagan, Clinton, W., Obama, Trump, none of them were the most qualified people. The two who were most qualified, George H.W. Bush and Joe Biden, each only served one term. And so if you are either party, but especially the Democrats, stop worrying about who wins the Yale University primary or the think tank primary or whatever it is and just figure out who's the rock star.

I had this idea that I threw out there in SubSAC maybe a month or two ago that kind of said we should do a battle of the network stars for the presidential candidates. And instead of the normal DNC process or maybe a year before that, put them in real world situations, put them at a waffle house at midnight and see how they do with the truckers and the cops and the college students, have them call an inning of baseball. on the radio, have him go to a big mall and just see who shows up, who cares, and how it goes, you know, to bring this full circle, one of the reasons why Zaraamandami won, and he's the next mayor of New York City, is he is a rock star. He is incredibly good at people. And, you know, the more time you spend with him, the more you realize that, and I think that's true for the presidency, too. And so all of the normal checklist that everyone looks at, do you have this union? Do you have this much money in the account? You know, do you have this former elected official supporting you?

None of that shit really matters. What really matters is how you resonate with the people directly. And if the Democrats want and won in 2028, that's what they have to figure out. I like this. I think my first idea would be we charge Vance with making $10,000 in a week and only give him an only fans creator account. That's my idea. He might pull that off. You're taking a big risk there, man.

He might make $100. There's an outside shot. He comes back with a quarter of a million dollars. Maybe in that case, he's like, screw this. I'm just going to make money online. There you go. I think that's what a lot of people are saying, when you look at, when you think about the nation and income inequality and polarization and rage, are there sort of two, you've been a big advocate of voting by phone. I'll give you 60 seconds of running room for vote by phone, but then come up with another two or three ideas.

So on mobile voting, we live in a world where, in my experience, every politician makes every decision solely based on the next election, a handful of exceptions. their exceptions. And because of gerrymandering, the only election typically matters to the primary. Primary turnout is typically about 10 to 15 percent. So who are they? They're the far left or the far right or special interests. And as a result, they dictate not only who wins office, but then what happens once those people are in office, so either you get the absolute chaos and dysfunction of D.C., which is literally shut down, or you get totally one side of governments, whether it's the city of Portland on the left or the state of Texas on the right. And none of that reflects how most Americans feel. There is consensus among most people on most issues, but their voice is not

heard because they don't vote in primaries. I ran all the campaigns to legalize Uber around the U.S. and the way that we beat the taxi industry, because at the time, we were a tiny tech startup and taxi was a really, really powerful industry, is that we were able to mobilize our customers directly through the app to tell their elected officials, hey, I like this Uber thing, leave it alone. And when I realized that that was working, I created this thing called the mobile voting project and we ran pilot elections in seven states were deployed military people with disabilities were able to vote on their phones turnout went up we then built our own secure mobile voting technology that is free will all be posted on github by november 14th

and now we're about to start running campaigns in states around the country to allow people to start voting on their phones beginning with municipal elections and going from there to me if you can get turnout from 8% to 32% in a primary that's what moves everything towards the middle that's what ends all of extremism and polarization. That's what gets us results. So that's mobile voting. The next thing to me, Scott, would be universal basic income. I really do believe that in the richest country in the history of the world, the notion that some people don't have enough food, the notion that people who are not, let's say, mentally ill or addicts are sleeping on the streets, things like that, we just don't need to live in a world like that.

There's just too much money, and it's just a failure of sort of imagination and discipline and ability to, to not prevent that. And so, for example, out of my foundation, we fund and run a lot of the campaigns around the country to do universal school meals so that every kid gets breakfast and lunch. We should do that, but it should go beyond that.

There's nothing wrong with saying that a world, especially where you might have temporarily very high unemployment because of AI job displacement, that we're going to find ways to make sure that people are okay. And the third one is less economic, but it would be repealing Section 230.

So Section 230 is a provision in federal law that says that internet service providers cannot be sued for the content posted by their users, and that has led to an absolute cesspool. You guys talk about this a lot, especially in relation to young men. On the internet, it has led to epidemics of teenage suicide, self-harm, you know, all kinds of different things.

And when you have a dominant form of media that is totally unregulated, and when the, if human nature, because of our negativity bias, which we have so that we know how to, like, you know, walk the other way when we see a lion or leave the room when we smell gas, is such that we're going to always click on the negative headline first.

The platforms all know that. That's what they feed us. And in order for them to make more money, we continue to sort of destroy ourselves and our society. You can fix that by change in the liability provisions. Most even politicians in Washington agree with it, but they're just terrified of meta and all of the different companies, and so they don't actually go through with it.

But I think that if you could raise turnout meaningfully so that politicians are less incentivized to fight and more incentivized to work together and make sure that people have the basics, and take away the toxicity of the internet, you'd have a much better world. So just for the purposes of conversation, and you and I are,

we're allies, and even if you're holding the gun differently than me, we're still allies. One of the things I don't like about the Democratic Party is we have this sort of apostate philosophy where if you don't agree with me exactly, you're my enemy.

And both of us, so let's talk about UBI. My problem is with the UBI, and that is whenever I, both of us are friends with Andrew Yang, I think a lot, Andrew. And I agree with the narrative that there should be a base level, but it's the universal part that I think if you double-click on the actual economics of it, make it near impossible to implement and would just create inflationary pressure

that nets out any of the UBI payments. Why wouldn't we just move to what I'll call, you know, more kind of basic income through things like universal child care or free vocational programming? You absolutely could do that. And ultimately, you know, some of we talk about, about is a means test and that there's no reason for you or me to get $1,000 a month in the mail, right? Although, all I kind of disagree on the inflation or thing, and that I actually think that, and I'm sure you guys have said this at various points, you know, when we make more money,

it might get invested, it might get saved. If you're giving regular people more money, I think they're going to spend it, and I think that's actually going to juice the, it could arguably induce inflation, but it would also juice everything else in a good way. So why not minimum wage, federally mandated minimum wage at $25 a show? Yes, totally agree. Here's the distinction. So when I was deputy governor of Illinois, I ran the state's budget.

And the distinction is if when we got a dollar from UN taxes, by the time that some of that money went to all the different programs you just outlined, half of it got further away on nonsense. We had patronage. We had all kinds of, you know, pork projects we didn't need. So many different union contracts, so many different things that when the money goes through the government, in my experience, you lose a lot of it along the way, whereas if there were some mechanism where a dollar of your money then went to someone who's currently making $10 an hour, they get $100 on the dollar. So look, I am absolutely for a higher minimum wage. I am for child care.

There's a lot of things that we can and should do that would make people's lives a lot easier and better. I just know from having worked so much inside of government that the mechanism is so wildly and efficient that the people that want to help get a lot less help that way. And then on Section 230, and I never like to be someone who defends Big Tech, but if you did just remove 230 in a blanket way, it would probably, it would kneecap these companies, it would cripple them. They would probably have to shut down posting for a while. What about the idea, and there's just some nuance here, of removing Section 230 protection for content that's algorithmically elevated? That's a good start for sure, but human beings also have incredible capacity. on their own to post all kinds of terrible shit.

I think I might disagree with you a bit on that because Section 230's elimination would mean that social media companies are subject to the same types of liability issues as mainstream media. That aren't good businesses. Right. But ultimately what would happen is there'd be enough litigation around the country on various things that, you know, Facebook, whoever failed to moderate on content, and jurisprudence would emerge.

And it would become pretty clear, this is what violators. highlight section, you know, the new law, this is what does not. And especially with the use of AI as a content moderator, the companies would be able to adapt to it pretty quickly. So I just personally think that the risk to them is a lot less. And I think our addiction to internet and social media, our phones is so great that we're not going to stop using it just because people are saying kill the Jews less on, you know, TikTok or whatever. We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at Profitory Markets.com slash subscribe.

dynasty. Zoramam Dhani will be New York City's 111th mayor. He celebrated his win last night by thanking some of his constituents. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and

Ethiopian aunties. In other races, last night in New Jersey, in Virginia, the Democratic candidates weren't firebrands like Mom Donnie, but they won anyway. Reporters asked President Trump about the Little Blue Wave this morning. We had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot.

Have the Democrats learned how to stop losing? That's on Today Explained, every weekday afternoon. They say the best revenge is living well, But if you're a pop star going through a breakup, that's absolutely false. The best revenge is releasing a searing scorched earth revenge banger that calls out your ex and ideally rides your vengeance to the top of the Billboard charts. That's exactly what two stars Tate McCray and Lily Allen have done in the wake of their high-profile breakups. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan, and this week on Switched on Pop, we break down the art of the revenge banger.

Using Tate McCray's Tip for Tatt and Lily Allen's West End Girl. to ask what makes a great revenge song and why can't we stop listening. Tune in to Switch John Pop anywhere you get podcasts. We're back with Profi Markets. Just going back to your guys' discussion of UBI and what would work and what wouldn't work, it all goes back to wealth and income inequality, which is, is getting worse and worse and worse, and which AI is likely to make worse, and of course, this is what Andrew Yang talked about. And it seems as though different people are coming at the

inequality thing at different angles. So you've got people saying, let's raise the minimum wage, let's have universal free childcare, which, by the way, that's part of Mamdani's campaign. He wants to raise the minimum wage for $30 an hour. You've got people saying, let's go for UBI. You've also got a more socialist bent. Mammani would fit in that camp, which says, capitalism itself doesn't work. We need a completely new system. So it seems, I believe, at least, that the inequality problem is the problem. And the question is, how do you come at it? What is your angle? And based on the turnout in New York and Mamdani's win, and also just the energy and the heat that he's creating around the nation, it seems as though that is the angle

going forward, that there is a socialist bent, and that he could be the face and future of the Democratic Party. Seems scary to capitalists, but I just want to get your views on do you think that is the future? I think everything you said is right. And if you look at Mondami supporters, at least in the primary, we don't really have the general election data yet. They tend to not be the poorest people. They tend to be relatively young, pretty affluent people, but who are not in the 1% and are angry about that for a variety of reasons and in many ways are the most ardent about things like raising taxes on the wealthy and things defunding the police and things like that.

Look, ultimately, there are two different approaches to what you're talking about and they're not mutually exclusive. So the first is how do you substantively solve these problems? I think everything Scott outlined and Scott might disagree on some implementation stuff, but basically that kind of stuff could make a big difference. The other thing to me is really a question of cognitive dissonance. So where Madani is wrong, in my view, about capitalism is it has far in a way been the most effective force in history to help poor people, right? Since World War II, something like 3 billion people now have clean drinking water and electricity and much less infant mortality and a much higher standard of living, less people living extreme poverty, all of these different metrics because of capitalism, because jobs started moving all over the globe, sometimes for the detriment of country.

like the U.S., but nonetheless, capitalism has done more to lift poor people out of terrible situations than any economic or political system ever created. The problem with capitalism is when you take it to its final logical conclusion, which is what we do here in the U.S., which is to say the only thing that matters in life is the accumulation of status and money and prestige and Carrera, marble, and gold plating or whatever else, Trump effectively. And if you have a totally zero-sum approach to life, it's really almost. impossible to be truly happy because you're on this hamster wheel where all you're trying to do

is accumulate more and more and more and more and it's never enough and the dopamine hit from buying something kind of wears off faster and faster each time and as a result broadly speaking if you have a society where everyone is in that rat race and everyone just wants to be at the very very top where they're the ones on Instagram with a private plane and a yacht and whatever or else, 99 plus percent of those people aren't going to make it by basic math. And as a result, they're going to feel dissatisfied. They're going to feel discontent and they're going to be unhappy. When you look at the World Happenance Report, so the U.S. ranked 24th last year in it, despite

being, I would argue, the most successful country in history, I was in Finland this summer, and they're always number one or number two. They're number one right now, I think. And I was kind of walking around, I think people can be like dancing in the streets. They're so happy. they're so excited and obviously you know that's not the case and from what at least i was able to learn from reading and talking to people is it's not that the finish or lots of other countries people are inherently happier or wealthier or anything else it's that their view of what makes

them content is very different right and if you feel like you can only be content if you just keep accumulating and acquiring you can't be content and if you feel like hey these are the things in life that matter my relationships people who give me me unconditional love and support might give that to them, things that give me a sense of meaning and purpose, whether it's your work or your hobbies, your faith, or whatever it might be, those tend to be the happiest people, pretty much all of happiness science and behavior economics supports that conclusion. And in a lot of other countries, they're able to understand that, I think in part because

they don't take capitalism quite to its final logical conclusion like we do in the U.S. So to me, you know, there's the structural stuff that kind of Scott talked about, but there's also a perception thing, I think that has to change too. I mean, when you look at those countries, I think some people make the mistake of saying those are socialist countries. They're not socialist countries, but they have less intensely capitalist policies. You know, they do pay for universal childcare. There are more government-funded programs. So it's an interesting ideological debate, because on the one hand, what we're describing is, like, make capitalism less capitalistic.

or something, which when you say that, it's like, are you saying you want to be socialist? Are you saying you want to be communist? And now we have a guy who won on a platform that has the word socialist in it, which seems so important to me. Whether or not he actually believes in communism and socialism, I don't think he necessarily does. The point is, the word is there. So that's something that we all have to grapple with. So I guess there's the implementation. How does this all actually work in practice, but then there's the dogmatic stuff. There's the ideological side to this. What direction do you think the Democratic Party is going in? Are we in going into a direction that you think is constructive, where we're actually going to make ourselves a little more like

Finland, perhaps, or is this going in a negatively socialist direction that will actually be destructive? I think a lot of that is about the framing, right? So Trump, for example, won the presidency twice, in part because he was able to convince tens and tens of millions of people that he heard and saw their frustrations. He understood that they felt like they weren't getting a fair shake in life. And they felt like if they supported him, he would look out for them and he would get them their vengeance. And by the way, you know, Bernie Sanders and Trump in 2016 effectively ran the exact same

campaign. Trump just blamed it on brown people and Sanders blamed it on the 1%. But it was effective, I'm going to get you justice. Zoran, many ways, ran that campaign too. And so I think the first thing is you have to understand that a lot of people are incredibly frustrated. They don't feel like they have what they need. And they do have what they need. But they feel like somehow they're getting cheated by society.

Well, it's hard to feel satisfied if you're seeing Bezos deconstruct a bridge for a yacht and you're struggling to pay for groceries. I feel like that's exactly. So part of it is helping people understand. Like one of the things that Biden did that was such a disaster is he tried to convince everyone that inflation wasn't an actual problem. when every week people are going to the grocery store and they know it's a problem because they're spending more money and when you treat people like that they hate you for it and so part of his democratic party has to stop being so condescending stopping so intolerant stop being so self-righteous and like zoran did let people feel heard and understood and the second thing is what are the policies that could help bring that about and it's a lot of it's in the framing right so if you take child care if you frame it as you know we're now going to socialize child care and the guns government's going to be in charge of raising your children and all of that, that automatically becomes controversial. If it's, look, everyone needs to work to make a living and people want to have kids and you've got to do something with a kid all day. And here's the way to best help

people, you know, make that work for themselves in their lives. I think people will be really responsive to that message. And so I don't think it's a lack of policy ideas that exist that could work. I think it is treating people like idiots. It is condescending to people. And it is effectively living in this little world where, and by the way, if under the current political system, it makes sense. But if you are a democratic legislator somewhere and all you've got to do is when you're next primary because gerrymandering when you're a selection and turn out to 10%, then that 10% on the far left and what you read on blue sky and what you hear from your staffers and from the different kind of institutional players around you is what you believe in

how you act. And that might be what you need to do to stay in your job as a state senator or as a member Congress or whatever it is, it is not the way to win a national election. And that takes leadership. So part of it is who's that rock star? And then part of it also is who was able to go to the Democratic Party and say, listen, guys, your message might work for you for your next reelection. It does not work for the party or the country as a whole. Here's where we need to go. That leader has not emerged yet. I'm not sure who it is. But throughout time, those leaders have emerged. And my hope is we'll find one here, too. You wrote an open letter to Mamdani.

You have called for, you said he didn't vote for him, but you've called for the business community, especially to embrace him, figure out a way to work with him. And you get offered some advice. What would be your advice to Mamdani over his term now that he is the next mayor? I mean, the most important thing,

and I saw this from my time working at City Hall from Mike Bloomberg, is, you know, what I said before, which is just run the city as if this is your last, ever elected position. Don't worry about 29. He can't actually have a president ever because he wasn't born here. But don't worry about trying to be governor or senator one day. Just do what you think is right. Make people, you know, give them the time to explain their positions. Give the time to explain why you're doing what you're doing. And if you do that for the right reasons consistently, the people will understand it. They will generally accept it. They won't agree with you and everything,

but they don't need to. They need to believe that you are looking out for them. And I think of all the politicians we've had in recent years in New York City, he has more ability to do that than pretty much anyone, but it does mean tuning out a lot of the noise around him. It means not letting the DSA dictators positions. It means not letting the unions dictate his positions. It means not reading social media all day. One of the pieces of advice I have in that letter is stop looking at social media. I mean, keep making your short form videos. Yes, your comms team needs to look at it, but that is in no way representative. Even with the really big turnout we had yesterday of about 2 million voters, it's still only like 70, 23% of the city's population.

So like 77% of New Yorkers didn't actually vote. And yet all 8.5 million of us are impacted by the mayor every single day. And so if you want to govern for everyone to be a truly great mayor, you know, stop all the kind of narrow inputs that tend to limit politicians and just do what you think is right. Bradley, if you decided to get back in the game and you said, all right, you got to get Back in the day, you're going to run someone's campaign, but you have to pick now. Whose campaign would you want to work for for president in 28? To me, the only rock star is AOC, but I really don't share her kind of views.

And the thing actually even more than her views is just this notion of endlessly criticizing everyone forever deviating from her ideology or her dogmatism. To me, it's just a horrible way to live. Look, I would love to see someone who is maybe not a traditional candidate, someone who was built and run a really big company or a really big movement, something like that, as opposed to saying this governor or that governor, of the people who are currently in the mix, if you're talking about just sort of who politically makes the most sense, you know, it's probably kind of a Midwestern moderate type like a Shapiro or a Whitmer. But, you know, what makes sense on paper and what makes sense to voters in the booth are two different things. And so I don't know the two. Like Newsom, on one hand, may be the easiest to caricature and stereotype and everything else. On the other hand, he's got a lot of talent. He does not seem to be afraid of different points of view or big ideas.

And so someone like him, even though I could see all the reasons on paper why he doesn't make sense, I could still see how he could sort of have it in a way that. that a lot of the governors who are thinking of running probably do not. And by the way, California would be, what, like the fifth biggest economy in the world if it was its own country? So, I don't know, I guess I'm sort of landing on Newsom of the people. Is Newsom a rock star in your view? I think he could be.

You know, I think on one hand, he's really, really easy to character. But you know he's also his character? Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan. Yeah, I think he's a rock star. So just give me a quick reaction to some different candidates. Mark Cuban. On paper, I love Mark Cuban. He liked Trump as a reality star on TV. What theirs there, I'm not sure, and that Luca trade still kind of kills it for me.

I love that. What about a guy like Dwayne Johnson? You know, he is very charismatic, but I don't, like, so, okay, so Ronald Reagan was an actor, but he was also the governor of California. And Reagan had very clear, strong political and ideological views. whether you agree with them or not, he was not stupid, despite what his critics said, and he was not uninformed. So, you know, with The Rock, just being able to sort of, you know, pop into a movie and have the box office, you know, receipts go up, in and of itself, is not necessarily a great candidate.

So if I knew more about what he believed in, I could certainly consider it, but I just think what we know right now now. This year? You know, I get it again. You know, he's a Democratic governor in a red state. He's popular. He got reelected. it hasn't so far struck me that he has that sort of, you know, other thing.

You know, to me, there's something called a vote-getting gene, which is obviously intangible, but some people have it, and most do not. Take the Bush family. W., who was sort of the least impressive between his brother and his father and him, had it, and he became president, his brother very much did not, his father very much did not. The Clintons. Bill Clinton has the vote-getting gene. Hillary, for all for competence, did not.

And so I don't know if Bashir has it or not. It doesn't feel like he necessarily does. So competent, they feel boring, Senator Chris Murphy. By the way, I'm a big fan of it. I didn't mind it to send. Yeah, I mean, I like a lot of what Murphy's done on guns and other things like that. You know, lots of highly competent people with amazing resumes run for president all the time, and most of them never even make it to Iowa.

So, you know, if Chris Murphy has that kind of intangible quality, he's got to start showing. Vice President Harris? No. I mean, I think the country had every opportunity to choose her, and they've definitively chose not to. I think what we're learning is we don't really have rock stars. But I agree, AOC is a rock star. Nandani is a rock star. Bernie is flaming out butt rock star.

Yeah, he's very old, but he certainly was. But I think that's the reason why, Ed, to maybe consider an alternative process of some kind, which is let's find the rock star, even if it's among the dozen or so people who are. Only fans. I'm telling you. First person make 10 grand, president. There you go. All right. Only fans, it is. So we're adding Waffle House, calling in the Cardinals game, going to the Mall of America, and now you're only fans account. How much he didn't make it. I like that. I like that. I like that. The decline of America is coming. I see it. Scott is the one that put us over the edge. He moves to England and he's like, all right, now I'm going to like them. You guys have the only fans. Okay. I think it's been here for a while. You guys are just waiting. speaking up to it. Bradley Tusk is the founder of the political consulting firm Test Strategies

and the CEO and co-founder of Tuss Venture Partners, the world's first venture capital fund investing solely in highly regulated industries. Bradley is the author of The Fixer, My Adventures, Saving Startups from Death by Politics, writes a column for Fast Company and hosts a podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics. Previously, Bradley served as the deputy governor of Illinois, the campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg's 2009 mayoral race, the communications director for U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. There's a candidate. Let's find someone who brightens up a room by leaving it. Exactly. We didn't get into it, but, you know, Chuck would not endorse Zoron. And I think because effectively, if anyone needs Zoron to be a disaster, it's actually

Chuck Schumer, because if AOC primary's Chuck in 28 and Zoran is successful, I think Chuck's in big trouble. But if Zoron's a disaster, he's going to hang that around her next. The infighting that makes me depressed. Yeah. There we go. And also his last thing, he was Uber's first political advisor. Bradley, really appreciate your insight and your time today. Thanks, Brad. Yeah, guys, thanks for having me. This was really fun. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Shillan, Isabella Kinsel, Chris Nodonoghue, and Mia Silverio. Drew Burroughs is our technical director, and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.

Thank you for listening to Profty Markets from ProctU Media. If you liked what you heard, Give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday. and the dark flies in love, love, love, love.