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.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

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

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

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

And that's a little bit, you know, a little bit of a shame.

I think he's a more interesting vector for the American left.

Well, I mean, I don't know if you've seen him in the gym.

He's quite fit.

But he does seem to cut a bit of a different figure, which I don't think we know as easily what to do with.

I mean, Plattner looked this part.

He wasn't exactly, as you were saying, Michelle, a white working class figure from generations, you know, left behind by globalization.

That wasn't his actual background.

But he looked like that.

And that meant that to voters, he scanned very easily as a familiar archetype.

One that they could dump a lot of rage and political enthusiasm into.

Abdul El-Sayed looks like a less familiar archetype, which is one reason why I think it's possible that he does crack open American politics in a pretty interesting way going forward.

I'm not going to say I think it's a safe bet that he wins the primary, or if he does, that he'll win the general election.

But it's a very consequential race, not just for who controls the Senate starting in 2027, but in terms of where the country and the Democratic Party goes going forward.

But, you know, one thing that I think is important to note in this context is, you know, who we're talking about when we're talking about making this decision.

Like, in a previous era, the party might have exerted a stronger control over the race, either in candidate selection or in funneling money.

And these days...

you know, the Republican Party is weak because of Trump, but the Democratic Party is weak as well.

And one thing that we're seeing is simply voters' choice.

Now, it may be that Democratic primary voters are doing themselves a disservice, as Republican primary voters have done in the past, by choosing people that align with a, you know, a harder ideological line than the median general election voter would be.

Showing 621–640 of 678 · page 32 of 34