David Wallace-Wells

speaker

678 appearances 5 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 16 Sep

David Wallace-Wells’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

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The Opinions · ‘Platner Is Vile.’ McConnell Is Missing. Welcome to American Politics. · 11 Jul 2026 podcast

And that's not to say that a large share of Democratic main voters wanted someone who may have raped an ex-girlfriend or wanted someone with a Nazi tattoo, but they were able to make sense of the narrative in a way that made Plattner look

like an outsider, like a fighter, like someone who is angry, and that those elements excited them about his candidacy.

Not just...

things that they could excuse, but things that actually drew them to Plattner as against Janet Mills or any of the other candidates.

And I do think that that is one thing, again, as David was saying, that applies across the country here, not just within one party, not just within one wing of one party, which is to the extent that the country is surly, as you said earlier, Michelle, to the extent that the country is angry, there are going to be some number of voters who want to see their politicians expressing the same sentiments.

Now, that doesn't mean

that you have to turn to a monster.

I think of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

He's selling much the same politics that Plattner is, but I think is a much more honorable figure.

We'll see how that campaign goes, but he seems like a kind of contrasting figure.

Or Mamdani in New York, who, you know, has his enemies, but is also, I think, in an interpersonal way, kind of an obviously good person who is interested in trying to improve the world.

Platner was cut from a different cloth.

But I think that as we go forward, failing to address the latent anger of many millions of people around this country, we are likely to see more politicians whose main qualification for higher office is rage.

Okay.

But I just want to underline something that you said about the people who found him and halfway vetted him.

They didn't fail to do their due diligence.

They wanted someone who broke the mold.

I mean, that was the language they used.

We didn't want someone who has grown in a vat.

We wanted someone who has lived experience.

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