Incorruptible Mass

Mamdani and Democracy

• Anna Callahan • Season 6 • Episode 12

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Following his momentous win in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, we have a Fourth of July conversation about Zohran Mamdani. We take a look at what Mamdani's win means, the state of our democracy both in New York City and nationwide, and what folks who are inspired by Mamdani's success can do to make things better.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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ANNA

Okay, here we go. Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics, because we know that we could have a state that truly represents the needs of the 7 million fabulous people who live here, and that is our goal.


So today we are gonna talk about Zohran Mamdani, who won as a Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, and how that intersects with the state of democracy today, including the “Big Beautiful Bill,” whatever we're calling that thing that Trump is passing this week, the Democrats and how they are reacting to the entire second wind of Trump. We'll talk about Zohran and Brad Lander and the dynamics of that race and basically where we think the state of democracy is going here in America.


So before we do, I will have my two illustrious co-hosts introduce themselves, and I will start with Jordan.


JORDAN

Jordan Brooke Powers, he/him. And we are, I'm here in Worcester, Massachusetts, and we are talking on July 4th. And I always think about what my grandfather would say about the history of America, which is that we learn the history of America as a bunch of rich white men who like, you know, like the history of that. But he's like, that's not the history of America. The history of America is our history, what we did. He's like, we did all the things, regular people did all the things. And he's like, the story of America is a bunch of white old men being in the way of America and a bunch of the rest of us fixing.


And so that is my, that's what I want to bring in the energy into today is, you know, welcome, congratulations to all the people who spent generations of people who did all the hard work.


ANNA

Right on. Love it. And Jonathan.


JONATHAN

Jonathan Cohn, he/him/his, been active in progressive issue and electoral campaigns for over a decade. Now here in Massachusetts, joining from the South End. For doing July 4th riffs, I'll begin: I will just add one piece that I particularly liked the other day, which was in WBUR about Catherine Lee Bates, who is the author of the song “America the Beautiful,” because she was an anti-imperialist social reformer from the era who wrote the song as largely being that type of, like, “you're not living up to what you're supposed to,” dimension, along kind of line of, let's say Left criticism in US history, and that would have probably been— would have probably have sued by Trump using it as a dimension. If you're alive today.


ANNA

Amazing. I am Anna Callahan, she/her coming at you from Medford, where I'm a city councilor, and love looking at local politics and how that can be a powerful way to change things in national politics and of course state politics. And wow, what can I say about July 4th? I'm sad, I'm not gonna see any fireworks this year. I love fireworks. They're so beautiful.


JORDAN

Me too. The technology is amazing.


ANNA

Yeah, it's beautiful. They came before guns, you know. That's what that stuff is supposed to be used for, is beauty.


JORDAN

Oh, amen.


ANNA

So I am excited to talk about what we're talking about today. I'm always excited to talk about democracy, always excited to talk about a progressive win. And so I am gonna mostly kick this off to Jonathan to tell us a little bit about Zohran Mamdani and his win, his surprise, like amazingly strong win in the Democratic primary for New York mayor.


JONATHAN

Awesome. So as folks who listen to this podcast probably well know, New York City recently held its Democratic primary for the mayoral election, which I feel like a lot of people had approached that race viewing it as a depressing, foregone conclusion that Andrew Cuomo — sex pest, former governor of New York State, who probably murdered—


ANNA

Like, many, many seniors—


JONATHAN

Exactly.


ANNA

Putting them into COVID-infested nursing homes.


JONATHAN

Exactly, who covered up the deaths of people in nursing homes, constantly like tried to work to keep Republicans in power in Albany.


ANNA

Great choice, great choice for Democrats.


JONATHAN

Exactly, somebody who sued to get like the gynecological records of the witness female accusers in court — like just a terrible human being and bad policy. But because of the money and a disgusting amount of outside money and universal name recognition, was expected to be an odds-on favorite.


So what was particularly exciting to me with Zohran and Zohran’s win is I love it when good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. And it was a great merger of those two. Because like, I was happy to see Andrew Cuomo lose. We can relish in the defeat of him and the defeat of enemies in politics. And then also inspiring to see a campaign that was like, had a lot of positive campaigning, did a lot of work to turn out young voters.


ANNA

It was amazing, that young voter turnout.


JONATHAN

Yeah, because you had like the data from the Times that showed like how much higher rates kind of Millennials — and I'll shout out from Millennials — the original version of the graph showed this like giant surge of like the 18-year-olds, which was actually like revised to be like not quite accurate, but it was really the like upper-20s to 30s that shout out, the Millennial generation. I was like, millennials stay winning.


But something that was really exciting to see because of how often— how rare it is where like a surge in turnout really is coming from young voters and how often when that does happen, it helps to elect more progressive candidates running for office. For him to really have a successful effort of doing really well in a lot of New York's immigrant communities and then doing well with the base of young voters in the city, as well as running a campaign, trying to highlight kind of like big but workable ideas focused on improving the experience of living in the city for voters.


One thing that I had noted during our pre-show chatter that I thought, was particularly kind of interesting. See, it's always fascinating when you're — if you're phone banking for a campaign or canvassing — to see what is the script that they're using, because that's the distillation of the message they want to get across for people. In his campaign's messaging for their phone bank script was very clearly combining that kind of basic economic message around kind of affordability of talking about freezing the rent, of building more affordable housing, of free childcare, and combining that of like, “we will kind of make sure that New York City is more affordable for you by investment and cracking down on bad actors. Well, and we will make sure that we're fighting, we're fighting against Donald Trump to protect New York, New York City.”


And because I think that there's often a tension that can exist in, in like Democratic discourse of like, to what extent that the way forward is just this like very narrow focus on economic messaging, or whether there should be a lot of Trump— let's say, positioning against Trump and everything that he stands for.


ANNA

But not strong economic messaging, right? Like, exactly.


JONATHAN

It's typically like smallbore economic messaging.


ANNA

Boring.


JONATHAN

Where are everybody who always says that we should stop focusing on identity issues and start focusing on economic issues? And their response is always a set of tax incentives for small businesses.


ANNA

Right.


JONATHAN

It's always somehow, and they're always somehow the people who oppose any good policy. And this was, in fact, seeing strong progressive economic policy that really gets that sense of people being gouged in so many ways in that kind of clear messaging against the Trump administration, which I think really is what Democrats need. And that although you—


ANNA

I would say different from the normal Democrat thing, which is like, “Look how bad he is. I'm not.” Which is very different from, like, “I will fight against what he is doing to you.”


JONATHAN

Exactly. Where like people want to see, want to see people willing to fight for things and against things.


ANNA

Right, right.


JORDAN

Yeah. Not just, I'm not that.


JONATHAN

But I'm actually— remember the time years ago where the DCCC actually had a bumper sticker that said, “not a Republican.”


JORDAN

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a good distillation of their platform.


ANNA

And Jordan, I know you were a little disappointed that it wasn't Brad Lander.


JORDAN

'Cause you've— yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll say, I'm excited about the Mamdani for all the reasons that we're gonna discuss. But I tell people, “I was personally a little sad that Brad Lander isn't gonna be the next mayor, because I happen to know that he's a progressive in good standing.” I know him from the before times. He didn't just come, when people are like, “oh, he got arrested, he did these things.” He's been doing these things for years— years and years.


ANNA

And expound on that for people who don't know. He was defending, trying to defend some people— where exactly was it? It was in a court.


JORDAN

An immigration court. And he was escorting them out so that they could leave because ICE is detaining people, I would say illegally, but certainly within the supervisors of law who are going through the immigration process.


ANNA

They're doing what they're supposed to do.


JORDAN

And so he was walking them out as a person of the court, right? Lawyers can be in the thing representing people. And he was arrested for doing that. But he doesn't come to that activism just because he was running for office or because he was in office. He's been there for a long time. He has been somebody who's dedicated to progressive change. And so I tell people, “I know him before, in the before times, as a great progressive activist.” And then I also know him as a really good Jewish progressive activist.


You know, he's the comptroller, which is like the treasurer for the city of New York. And I tell people like, “oh, listen, we went through a process.” I supported the reform movement in decarbonizing their— or at least pushing to decarbonize their assets, the money that they have invested for their— as a movement. And we had people come and they were like, you know, hemming and hawing. And Brad Lander was like, we did that for the city of— he was unapologetic, like voters voted to have our pensions be decarbonized. And we actually enacted it.


And then he spent an hour getting into the weeds, like a total technocrat, about how they actually did that, what they could do, what they couldn't do, what were the limits, and how there's their fiscal— they're legally required to make money, so they got sued, and how he was just unapologetically like, “we won that fight because it's better for your pocketbooks,” right? Just unapologetically progressive in every way. and willing to fight, also willing to fight, but a technocrat, like he's just an old, you know, old technocrat. So anyway, so I'm of course excited, like I don't want people to be like, “oh, Jordan was excited.” I just happen to know Brad Lander in the before times.


JONATHAN

Well, and I think because of his progressive work.


JORDAN

And I think so, that's what I was— yeah, with local progress too. Yep, local progress, right.


ANNA

He's just one of those guys who's been around doing good work. And you know, as a Bernie person— yeah, I can here, now it's summer, I could show off my Bernie tattoo again. As a Bernie person, having received— I mean, this is, I think, Jordan, you were saying this beforehand. This is what people loved about Bernie. He's a guy who had like 35 years of receipts.


ANNA

You know, being somebody who stands for these things. And like the difference between Zohran, who is relatively new — not that he's new, but he's relatively new — and Brad Lander, who has been around for longer and has more receipts. So I totally, totally get that. And I was just gonna comment that the thing that's like, I'm excited about Zohran. I've heard him now. We all are. We all are very excited about him. And I've heard him speak a number of times. I think he is truly incredibly, incredibly well-spoken and able to answer unbelievably difficult gotcha questions in a way that really reframes things. He's amazing.


But to me, what was most exciting is not actually Zohran. We'll see on Zohran. What was most exciting was that the voters of New York chose someone who basically was unrelenting about economic policy and how he was going to make it more affordable. He was going to freeze the rent. He is going to have free buses. He's going to provide things. He's going to use the public dollars. He's going to tax the rich and use the public dollars to provide services for people who are not wealthy. God forbid. And I was just proud of the people in New York for choosing that over the giant name recognition and multi-tens of millions of dollars of outside funding. So I was like, “this is a really good sign.”


JONATHAN

And it was a pleasant surprise to see him also win on the first ballot. One of the things that was particularly heartening about the Brad Lander and Mamdani kind of cross-endorsement was of how—


ANNA
And by the way, let's take a step back. New York City has ranked choice voting, which means in the Democratic Party— sorry, which means, and probably most of our listeners know, but I just want to back up a little bit.


Ranked choice voting, you vote for your first choice, your second choice, your third choice. And if your first choice doesn't win, then their votes go to your, you know, your next, or sorry, if your first choice doesn't win, then those votes go to your second choice.


And so it was expected that either Cuomo would win on the first ballot, the first choice, right? The first run of ballots, or that like slowly over time, Mamdani might catch up to him through people not winning and then there's votes going to Mamdani and people not winning and those what's going to Mamdani. So sorry to interrupt you, Jonathan, but like—


JONATHAN

Yeah, no, no, it's a good point. And it was nice to see the way in which the ranked choice system — one, did what people say that it does in terms of creating that kind of constructive, collegial aspect between candidates. Where, because I thought that their cross-endorsement led to a lot of- what led to a lot of great digital content.


ANNA

Did we say that out loud? Mamdani and Brad Lander, they introduced each other.


JONATHAN

Exactly.


ANNA

They spoke together. They went on Colbert and sat together.


ANNA

No, I think he's wonderful. They introduced each other as like the most amazing.


JONATHAN

Yeah.


JORDAN

And the other candidates down the Working Families Party had others ranked. So if you were like, “I don't like either of them, but this other candidate speaks to me, they were saying, that's fine, because that's what rank does. Then make them your third and fourth choice.” Like make them like, “Hey, if you have other preferences, because there was a bunch of people ranked.” It was just, “don't rank Cuomo.”


JONATHAN

Exactly. Yeah, because they had the— and it was really nice to see that, and to their own point that there is the— I know the American Prospect noted that there's kind of chatter that Brad Lander would become like one of the deputy— like a deputy mayor in a Mamdani administration, which I think is a great pairing for the two.


But one thing that I thought would also note that I thought was really interesting when it comes to some of that expectation that Cuomo would win, they came out of a lot of polling in general public perception, is that it was interesting to read the kind of like the, I guess, memo from Public Policy Polling, which was the only firm that actually had, let's say, Mamdani beating Cuomo in their poll.


And what they had noted because they had actually been polling for a candidate in the comptroller race, not even the mayoral, but that they had made a point of, “if people say that they are voting, believe them that they say that they are voting” rather than the typical, like, “if people say that they're voting and they don't have a history of it, we don't believe you,” because they believe people because that there were a lot of young people, like a lot of younger voters, like in less than 18-to-35 crowd, which I've unfortunately aged out of a few years ago. A couple of years ago. Now that we have young voters, if they haven't— actually don't have that great of a voting history, but they say that they're voting, believe them. And the results did show that that was what happened.


ANNA

Nice. Amazing. Anything else, Jordan or Jonathan, that you want to say about—


JORDAN

Yeah, just that I think it's potentially— the system, you know, ranked choice voting worked. That's the way it should work. It works. You know, it doesn't mean that there won't, you know— they always make these promises that people, they won't fight. And that's democracy. Democracy should be calling each other out and saying that this other person's not gonna be good. And then people get to decide.


But the great thing is that this gives people the ability to both have their first choice, so be heard on who they want, but allow the system to work itself out so that ultimately their choice that they're okay with still becomes the elected official. And so this is, you know, that cross thing. And then what you have then is you have the “so if you like myself, love the fact that Brad Lander is this like technocratic progressive who understands that expertise is going to go in,” whereas if they were at each other, maybe it doesn't go into.


JONATHAN

Yeah.


JORDAN

So you're going to get— the way in which Mamdani is inspires people, his intelligence, the way that he's able to sort of cross ethnic groups and speak to people on their core. He's really a gift in the thing that that's what you want a mayor to do. And get some of those technocratic things that I also love, right? So you get both of those in the administration.


JONATHAN

It's also one thing that's also, I think is really nice is how it changes the way that you're campaigning. Because if you know that what you could tell from polling— that you could tell that at the end of the day, every poll showed that it'd be coming down to Cuomo and Mamdani. And if you're talking to a voter who just, like, their top choice is one of the other candidates, you don't need to suddenly start being like, “actually, like, you don't need to be like, you're candidate doesn't have a chance of winning from mine.” Instead, you could be like, “you know what, there are many great things about that candidate.” Get it? Like, “I would like you to rank my candidate above the other person who I think might win.”


So like, we were talking to people, we're like, I remember when I was phone banking and had somebody who had been supporting Zohran was thinking of voting, but I'm like, “Hey, I wasn't sure which ranking he would put the two of them.” And I was like, “You know what? I'm happy, considering that all of the rounds I've seen of voting put it as Zohran and Cuomo at the final ballot. For the other one, that's still helping you beat Cuomo. My goal is for you to not have Cuomo on your ballot, to have Zohran appear on your ballot.” And, so it felt nice to be in that conversation when you didn't need to be antagonistic to somebody apart from that because you know that the vote still helps the outcome.


ANNA

Amazing. So I want to pivot us a little bit. because this is, we're, you know, we're talking about Zohran to talk, get to the state of democracy. And I want us to juxtapose a little positive pocket in one city in America with what is happening probably today, July 4th, and has been happening all week at the national level where Trump's— I don't know what to call this thing because I cannot use the word “beautiful” about it. It's just like so horrible, like belligerent.


JONATHAN

“The Big Belligerent Bill,” I've seen.


ANNA

Horrible. Oh my God. So his bill, which they're going to pass and it's like, wow—


JORDAN

It already passed.


JONATHAN

Yeah.


JORDAN

It passed. So it's— so he just has won.


JONATHAN

Sorry to Lisa Murkowski that the House didn't make the changes, as they never were going to.


JORDAN

I think it's— I just want to say the bill itself is atrocious and we should talk about it in a second, but I want to talk a little bit about the democracy as a whole. And I just want to say that America is a failing state. Like, I just think we need to get this in our kishkes that, like, we're in a really bad place. And it's not— Trump is a big part of that. But our Supreme Court is also a big part of it. Like, the things that they're ruling is atrocious. And, you know, with all due respect to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown, where she warns, like, “more of these will be—” I was like, “We're there. We're there.”


Like, these decisions are like, you know— I think she's trying to warn her colleagues, like she's speaking to them to be like, “stop going down this path.” So I'm not actually criticizing her, to be clear, but like, we're there. Like, it is, and, you know, people keep talking like, “oh, like, this is like, if this thing happens, it will be bad.” But like, all those things have— like, we're crossing Rubicon after Rubicon after Rubicon. Like, it wasn't even, you know— Trump was impeached for withholding aid that was appropriated by Congress to Zelenskyy in a phone call. He straight-up just did that the other day out in the open to Israel. It said, “if you don't drop charges against me, then Israel's not going to aid.” And like, that wasn't even news. That's the reason he was impeached.


It's like, he's so— it's like we're so lulled. That he's just straight-up doing things that are just bonkers, like, you know, like it's barely a blip that he's saying “we're good, Americans are going to get sent to concentrat— that we built concentration camps.” Yes, America has had a history but, you know, people are like, whoa, America's done before, but never for good. It's never good.


ANNA

That has not been a good step at any point. I mean, we also had slavery. That wasn't good.


JORDAN

They're all sides that were fake. Those are bad things. Those are not— those are really bad. It doesn't go backwards. It's not like, “oh, America's going back. That's just who we are.” No, no, no. We have fought those battles and we've moved on. And the fact that we're going back is, that's bad.


JONATHAN

As well as the fact that I would even underscore that one of the things that stands out a lot with the Trump administration is that if you take all of the terrible parts of the US history that often people can try to hide about US history. And he's like, “actually, these are great and we're doing them again.” So that there's like, there's, there is a kind of a pride in doing them. There's a bragging about doing them. So that it's not like the terrible thing that you try to hide under the rug. They're like, “we're doing it. We're gonna blast it everywhere that we're gonna do it. And we're gonna say try and stop us.”


JORDAN

But I think the other thing that is new, that this— the thing that's new, that the reason I would say we're now in a failing state. We're now polarized. We've never had all three branches create a dictatorship. And that is actually new. Like, yes, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, but that also took— but the Supreme Court was like, “that’s not— you can't do that.” There were other branches pushing back on those executive— on overreaches by the executive. There were moments where we had a strong executive where Congress was like, “no, you cannot do that.” We're gonna do things to rein you in, right?


Like, it doesn't— it's not that it's ever been perfect or it's ever been like, we're just like a functioning full— but those push and pulls were happening. We're having no push and pull. Like, there is the thing, we are in a state where there is one party acting like the early part of the Hitler, Weimar or any other— or Hungary or, yeah, or Erdoğan and Turkey— like these are all uni-parties where one person is the person and the courts, the judiciary and the media, which is the—


ANNA

Oh, thank you. I was hoping you would bring that up.


JORDAN

The New York Times wanted— because they were worried about their failing numbers, they wanted Trump elected, and they got what they wanted. And their coverage reflects somebody who believes that they need Trump to survive.


ANNA

And also, let's not forget that Trump is actively suing NBC, CBS— like he's actively suing a bunch of them, and they are gonna lose crap tons of money in these lawsuits. And so now they cannot speak out against him for financial purposes. Like they won't be able to. And how is the media so silent?


JORDAN

We have all of these lawsuits. And I think because, you know, we said this before on a different podcast that, like, because it's not like dark out and like there's not like fit, there's not like water coming down and hearing music playing outside all the time, that we can't grasp where we are. But I want to, this 4th of July, like we need to grasp where we are. This is like, we're in a new territory that's real bad.


ANNA

And I feel real bad.


JONATHAN

One thing about that kind of the moment that I think like it has continued— something that's continued to get worse is I remember there's one analysis of one of the things that will always be a critical part of democracy collapsing is when the center right abandons the concept of democracy itself, which I think is very clear in a lot of throughout the Republican Party.


And that's— really if you go through a number of the historical examples that typically ends up happening is once that kind of representation of your kind of the avatar of your conservative elites realize that they don't actually care anymore about it. I feel like all of like the Big Tech titans being with Trump and his inauguration is a great visual representation of it. That's very hard because of what that says about the institutions themselves.


ANNA

I would actually make an argument that, and I often talk about this, that I think that people who don't vote, right — people like those non-voters who voted for Trump — it is my suspicion that they actually are people who get it more than the voters because what they understand is that we do not live— we already did not live in a democracy before Trump.


And so they, again, also— and when you say the conservative sort of middle of the Republican Party and you're talking about the elites, I wanna talk about the more, you know, lower class, the working-class people who they are voting for Trump, not because they think that it's democratic and they get to choose or whatever, but like they have a fundamental belief that we're not in democracy anyway. So, like, “let's just have a bully and a strong man who's gonna squash those other guys because at least then maybe I'll get something.”


And this deep belief, underlying not just the elites who have shit tons of money and wanna rule everything, but the underlying belief of people that, as Michael Moore said, really what they wanted was a Molotov cocktail. They don't think that it's gonna fix democracy. They think they'll just blow shit up. And that to me is again, our deeply failing, failing democracy when people don't believe that it functions anymore.


JORDAN

I mean, I think, I guess I'll say yes. And also white people have always proven to vote to hurt people of color if they believe that it will, like— you know, one of the things I say all the time is we know from a lot of studies that when white people find out that black people get access to something, their support for that government agency falls down. But like, do we understand that that's actually how they then vote? Like, do we get that really in our core that like, the ways in which we've institutionalized racism is so deep into the roots of America that Trump isn't just promising to blow things up? He's also promising to recreate a racial hierarchy.


That fails them, but fails them less than it fails people of color. And that's a trade-off that too many people are willing to make. I would argue because we don't actually just talk about it. I don't think that people are inherently destined to make that trade off. I think the abandonment of delivering for regular people, so people don't believe that my person works. And then never talking about that open.


I think you actually need to say to people, “racism is persisting because people want to steal from you.” And it works better than— you just need to say that to people. It's okay to say race out loud and to say that racism is happening and to say that Republicans are racist because they are, that's their policy. The inability to just save out in the open enables all of this to continue and enables rich people to continue to rip people off. And then you get this thing where it's like the frustration, all that stuff comes into play with all these things.


ANNA

I would also just throw in a little bit about unions. I knew the late, great Jane McAlevey and read a bunch of her books and spoke to her and worked with her on some things. And she talked about how, you know, unions— once they began openly talking about how the bosses would purposefully, purposefully pit different races against each other, like absolutely purposefully— like that conversation, opening up that conversation and talking about it openly really helped those unions to move forward and to be able to, you know, finally get big wins against the bosses.


JORDAN

That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, I'm totally inspired by her too. I was thinking the same thing. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's not scary. It's okay to just say that out loud to people because people need to hear it. They need to know that because it also signals to regular people that you actually understand what's happening in America, that you're not gonna bullshit them, and that you're willing to fight. And those are really good signals to people. Like, if you just pretend that what you don't see isn't happening, people are just like, “well, they're just full of shit.”


JONATHAN

And I go and then I'll go.


ANNA

Oh, I was just gonna take us to the next point because I think this really leads us to the failing of the Democratic leadership because they are unwilling — if the way to talk about race in a union is to say the reality of the fact that the bosses are pitting the different races against each other and that that is real — and if you're unwilling to mention that there are bosses, if you cannot say that there are bosses, then how can you get that message across?


And when you are unwilling to ever, ever say anything that might make the donor class uncomfortable, then how can you ever make the case that this kind of pushing — what Trump is doing to get people to hate each other and to get people to want to push the next person underwater just so they can stand on their head — then you'll never be able to succeed and they won't feel like you're gonna fight for them. Who are they fighting, right? So that I think with the— oh, go ahead, Jonathan. I'm gonna talk about the— just gonna say, I wanna talk next about like the Democratic Party and its leadership and how they are failing us in that sense.


JONATHAN

No, like what's perfect is that you're saying that was exactly what I was about to comment on, is the way in which so much of the problem in a lot of Democratic politics is having a villainless politics.


ANNA

Yes.


JONATHAN

Where that things are happening and they're caused by nobody. And so if all of these problems are caused by nobody, people will not typically believe that you're fighting for them if you're not talking about whom you're fighting against. And so obviously you need to be careful in picking your villains, but if you're not fighting against anybody, they don't think that you're actually fighting or fighting for them because that's how we understand things.


And I think that there's a way— something that I was musing on recently is I think that there's a tendency among certain Democrats to try to take the fact that there's like a amongst a lot of liberals, there's a philosophical attraction to a philosophical belief in positive-sum social relations. And the idea of positive-sum social relations of the different like win-win arrangements is an important thing to believe in.


But that doesn't mean that every single relate— like thing in the economy is a positive-sum relation, as opposed to there being clear examples of somebody exploiting somebody else. And if you can't, there's a way of trying to just like use the language of positive-sum win-win to hide the fact that you also wanna keep some of the people doing the exploiting in your coalition.


JORDAN

So I wanna talk about the bill to talk about the Democrats. So, you know, so the Republicans are just flat out like— they're just, like, straight into 1930s Mount Vernon.


ANNA

Yeah, I think we forgot to say what the heck is in the bill.


JORDAN

So let's talk about this bill. Cause I think it's really important that people get how bad this bill is and how the devastation it's gonna wreak. So like, you know, Medicaid, so people don't, you know, don't quite understand, but it's like they call it Medicaid cuts or people are gonna lose their insurance, but really it's just paper. They're going to paperwork people. It's a full-time job to be poor in America. And it's a full-time job to be poor in America because of Republicans and the fact that they're evil. And they do evil stuff like this, like not allowing people who deserve healthcare to live, who need food to live.


The whole thing is to make it so that they can't access those things. And that's how they quote-unquote “save money” is people who should get access so they can live won't get access. So they'll die. That's the policy. That's how they quote, that's how they, that's how they quote-unquote, “save money.” That's the quote-unquote, “cuts” is, is death by paperwork and, you know, administrative burden.


And so, you know, so there is, so there is tax on Social Security, which they said they want to do. There are cuts to Medicaid. There are also cuts to Medicare. And people don't understand that piece. Pharmaceuticals now get huge exemptions for Medicare about what? So the prices will go up for you, the regular person. The cost of drugs will go up, and the amount of money that Medicare has is not going up. So that's a cut because you are giving the things that were going to care for you are now going to corporations. So that's a huge win again.


So you have cuts to Medicare, you have cuts to Medicaid, you have taxation of Social Security. And then you have massive death by paperwork to poor people trying to get food, which is also a huge cut to rural farmers who pay into those processes. That's why it's in the Department of Agriculture, that’s all these things, because that's who pays for those things. USAID, who was one of the per who “where do they buy their food?” American farmers. That's a huge cut to those people.


And then the money is, you know, like everybody's talking about is to hospitals, especially rural hospitals, especially in red parts of America are all going to close because they can't afford it because you have Medicare and Medicaid cuts. So people and then people are going to have less money, so they're not going to get care. So you're just going to cut all of those things. You know, they cut cancer research in half. Cancer research. We have had amazing breakthroughs in cancer and vaccines, and they have both banned us from using vaccines. And now they're also cutting the amount of money to those institutions.


You're getting cuts to everything that you— you know, if you care about science, if you care about fighting cancer, if you care about feeding poor people, If you care about making sure that the world doesn't die, if you just care about the world being somewhat calm so that we can like, so that we don't all go into World War III because they're not like, you know, I don't know, some sort of system is existing, like all of those things got cut in this bill.


But the thing is, they're concentration camps, money for concentration camps, money for unaccountable— literally you cannot hold them accountable according to this bill— ICE agents, right? Like we're spending more on that than anything in history. It's just what we are, that to me is, and then you have the fact that you have the failing pieces of democracy to hold any of this accountable. That to me is the, like, soup of a failing democracy. You have large camps of people who are literally only police force that's literally only available to the president and you have destitution of people's economic future.


JONATHAN

Let me just add in terms of other damages from the bills and the way in which they take an axe to a lot of clean energy spending: thus both, that's damaging both to the chance of ever possibly meeting goals for climate mitigation, but also just economically very damaging to say this is where you have seen the ability, because of a lot of the transition of renewable energy bringing in a lot of jobs, offer places, and that just goes if you take that away. As well as just various ways of propping up the coal industry too, which is just dying on its own that Republicans want to keep alive, even when other energy industries offer far more.


And the thing I would also just tag in on, that's what's been particularly scary to me with a lot of the new investment in detention capacity. I thought this was well-said in a piece by Bolts Magazine recently. It’s about how whenever a new prison gets built, that prison creates a whole economy around it, making it much more difficult to ever take it down. Because that prison means jobs for various people and politicians hate your jobs.


And the two things that just always tend to be the case in politics is any increase to police and prisons is always very difficult to undo and any cut to taxes is very difficult to undo because of the way it establishes the new baseline and because of a certain levels of cowardice amongst Democratic politicians and actually challenging under the challenging, sometimes flat-out wrong information people have in their minds about those are actually just addressing things structurally.


ANNA

So I want to jump in because I love how you're talking about the Democrats having a reluctance to challenge. And I want to talk about Chuck Schumer's basic approach has been, “We're gonna do nothing. We're gonna not bother to try and stop him at all.” He made sure that their budget passed. Just let the Republicans do horrible, horrible things to the American people and keep letting that happen until Trump's poll numbers go down enough. And then Democrats will win.


And what he hasn't realized is that the Democrats’ poll numbers — because they're doing nothing to protect us — the Democratic elites’ poll numbers are going down even farther. Then Trump's— and what's amazing, and if one of you wants to pull up some numbers here, is the poll numbers among Democratic voters of their own leadership are just abysmal. And I've never seen it like this. It's truly remarkable. Jordan, you got some numbers for us?


JORDAN

Yeah, so just, I don't have a— I'll try to pull it up for what Democrats think of Democrats, but just generally speaking across the board, Democrat, Democrat, people's favorability of the Democratic Party is somewhere between 32 and 43 in the last month or so, or last two months. So you have like 43, 32, 43, 37, but the negatives are 57, 63, 53, 59, 60. Those are high negatives for somebody who's trying to win an election. and the only thing I guess that they have as a solace is that the Republicans are slightly higher with 62% disapproval, but that's not— they're like, you don't want to be in there, you know, if the goal is to like, try to win out. It's not great to have like, you know, Republicans and Democrats in the similar terrible place. So yeah, so it's just, you know, it's, it's, it's, people want, people are gonna fight for that. And it's just ridiculous.


I'll just say, you know, there's a playbook that Democrats could do that to lean the other way: you could actually make Medicare real. You could stop— you know, Bush cut Medicare. He just pushed it off to after he was in office. But there was a huge dent he created. You could fill it with a robust Medicare. You could raise the tax exemption on Social Security and then raise the amount of money that people on Social Security get. It should be twice, three times as much as it is. You could do that as a policy.


That's a good policy for Democrats to run. More Medicare, more Medicaid, more Social Security. You could run on— it was really popular when Biden said we're gonna have a Space Race for cancer. People love the idea that we're spending money on cancer research. That it was popular that when Biden did that, that was popular. You can do that again, right? Those subsidies for the Biden Build Back Better bill was a super popular bill and it got more popular as people realized it was creating jobs for them and their communities. Those are all things that Democrats could do and do loudly and more clearly.


And to me, the answer is, yes, it's making stuff affordable. But things aren't unaffordable just by chance. They're unaffordable because corporations are finding new ways to rip people off in every possible way, right? Everything from, I saw like hotels.com and Expedia charges people who are searching for hotels in San Francisco more than if they're in a poor part of the country to, you know, pricing, like literally raising prices at supermarkets. If you're looking at food, right? Like all of these things are ways in which corporations are just consistently trying to rip people off.


And if you say to people, “no, we're going to fight that, we're going to stop that, we're going to invest in you and tax those people,” that's really easy things to do. Yes, the media will be upset. The New York Times won't write about it. Ezra Klein will be on his podcast telling you how bad policy that actually is. Yes, all the people who you think are your friends, who aren't actually your friends, are going to tell you it's bad policy, but you know who's going to reward you? Voters.


ANNA

Yes. And guess what? You're talking about a playbook, just look at New York City. And I will say, to end on a positive note, I think when we're talking about the state of democracy, I actually think that the low rating for the Democratic elite politicians is a positive step in the right direction, because I think we have to get Democratic voters to stop just being willing to do whatever the Democratic elites ask them to do, when it generally tends to be whatever their donors want them to do. And so once it takes the voters, the voters have to be unhappy enough with that style of leadership to be able to vote for someone like Zohran.


And I think someone like Zohran actually providing for working class people in an economic way, putting money in their pockets and making their lives better, that is how we get out of this and how we fix the state of democracy as well. Other notes before, 'cause I know we were running a little late. Other notes on like democracy and I could go on, but that's a lovely note to end on.


JORDAN

I'll just say really quickly, sorry, I was trying to find what Democrats think of Democrats. Yeah, their own party's favorability, only 66% of Democrats say their party's representatives favorably with 27% saying that they're unfavorable. So the base is moving.


I'll just say really quickly, to me, the problem is also the media. People need to get that a lot of the corporate, rich people own the Boston Globe. Rich investors own the New York Times as a billion-dollar investment, publicly traded company with with loads and loads of money and like selling you things, selling you goods, selling you games and occasionally, you know, occasionally good— really terrible journalism to get you outrage clicks and then very, very, very occasionally some good reporting from some good journalists— occasional, right?


So these are the people framing. I think for those of us who care a lot or are probably listening to this, we need to get that these are the people framing it for you. Like, because no one else is— you know, conservatives are not engaging with legacy media. They are often la la land in their own place. The people control, you know, the Matthew Yglesiases, the Ezra Kleins, the men, men, men, these are all the people telling Democrats what to think. And we need to understand that. And we need to be encouraging, again, people to engage with more local media, more independent media— put your money in those things, stop putting your money into big conglomerates, support those places, lift them up, retweet them.


ANNA

If you have a Jordan, do our plug.


JORDAN

Well, yeah, if you have an opportunity, promote other types of media. Don't just promote that, you know, every time somebody reposts a New York Times article, like a little of me dies, because I'm just like, “please stop helping them.” They don't need it. You know, like help other independent media.


And if you, now that they're saying it, if you have a chance, please do support us. Like again, the three of us do not take any money, but there are really wonderful people who we hire to help support through this work. So please consider giving to them. They're fantastic. They do really great work. We really appreciate all the people behind the scenes who make this possible.


Somebody asked me like, “How do you guys do this podcast?” And I was like, “Here's the secret. We hire people to do a lot of the stuff that's really difficult, and we pay them.” And so that's, we can only do that because you donate. and please repost us. Please, like, we, like, we only grow if you help us grow. Like, there's only so many times that people would listen to me talk about it. They need you to talk about it.


If you're listening, tell somebody new, encourage somebody who's complaining online. Like, “Actually, I learned this thing.” If you see somebody complaining about more Healey or about the fact that our legislature isn't transparent or isn't doing the right thing, but tell them, “Hey, there's somebody who explains this.” You should go to that podcast. Please do share us as well. Like that's also fun.


ANNA

Amazing. Thanks so much, Jordan. Thanks so much, Jonathan. And thanks so much to our listeners and our donors and our lovely team that does a lot of behind the scenes work. Hope you've enjoyed this. Forward it to your friends and we look forward to talking to you all next week. And happy Fourth of July.