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Chapter 1: What recent political trends are emerging from the NYC primaries?
OP Henkivakuutus on hyvä valinta elämäsi tilanteisiin. Luo taloudellista turvaa läheisillesi ja hyödynnä Osuuspankin omistaja-asiakkaan 25% alennus. Lisäetu vahvistetaan vuosittain. Vakuutuksen myöntää OP Henkivakuutus Oy, jonka asiamiehinä Osuuspankit ja Pohjola Vakuutus toimivat. Mikä on parempaa kuin hyvä ABC-ruoka?
No, tietysti se, jos syömällä voi voittaa itselleen 500 euron arvoisen hotellifiikonlopun. Herkuttele itsesi hotelliin. Vilauta S-etukorttia, kun ostat aterian ABC-llä ja osallistut automaattisesti viikottaiseen hotelliarvontaan. Sitten ei muuta kuin syömään ja nukkumaan ABC-en.
Hello and welcome to the Bowler Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, my buddy, USA soccer superfan, football superfan. He's the former host of Good Luck America on Snapchat. He just announced on Monday that he's joining Puck full-time as chief national correspondent. He's also been the host of the Powers That Be podcast. It's Peter Hamby. What's up, bro?
Hey, man. How you doing? I'm doing well. I'm on the mend. So I've got my gator light here, rapid rehydration, and we're doing pretty good. Better than yesterday's podcast. We're going to really nerd out, as is our want, on campaign politics. We had a lot of results last night that are interesting. The takes are flying.
But before we get to kind of going around the map, I just want to pick out a couple of things from... The Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan book. We'll probably go deep on this next week, but some of the excerpts are leaking out there. I guess we should start with the J.D. Marko stuff.
They had this anecdote in the book about how Trump has redecorated the office famously to put a lot of gold flourishes in there. Many listeners are unhappy with my take about how – I just I think the more is more affect is a little bit better than what Biden had in the Oval Office. People don't like it. It's my least popular take, but I'm standing by it anyway.
I haven't heard this take from you. Sorry. You think that you should do sort of maximalist decorations in the Oval Office? I like the maximalist decorations. When you see the images of Biden, you see the side by side Biden's.
pallid skin with like the gray off-white walls it's just not good i feel like as millennials one of our big misses is everybody we tried to minimize every everything was being streamlined you know everybody's houses were more clean a lot more whites and off-whites you know it's like the cracker barrel redesign i hated the cracker barrel redesign yeah
It's like that coffee shop we went to in SLO those years ago. And by the way, I'm guilty. You can see behind me having hanging ivy. But yeah, exactly. The beige countertops and the sign where you put in the little letters to order the flat white or whatever. And they're playing a low Tame Impala beat behind you. By the way, Biden definitely wasn't doing that. But I do think, though...
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Chapter 2: How are DSA candidates reshaping the Democratic landscape?
is eating shit with the press and the foreign policy establishment, Republicans on Capitol Hill, especially Republican senators, and the median voter out there, independent voter, who doesn't like Trump, doesn't like J.D. Vance, doesn't like the war, but the whole ballgame is really the Republican primary at this point if they're looking around the bend.
And maybe this is a cynical political perspective to have for J.D. Vance, but if you're him – I think you'd rather just completely own being a Trump loyal soldier than try to do this dance where you're like half in and half out.
And completely own the America first thing, which is like, I mean, even though it's an embarrassing MOU and it's total surrender and it's humiliating, it does put him in the position of being like, I wanted us out of this as opposed to being the one that wanted us in. So I think that helps.
The only fun wrinkle in it is, who knows what the fuck 82-year-old dementia riddle Trump is going to want to do in two years. And we'll talk about his aging next. So will he try to do something crazy? Obviously, what exactly that will look like, who knows. But assuming he moves on to retired life at Mar-a-Lago or in the ADU bunker underneath the White House, he will not do what Bush did.
It's not like he's going to go away and paint, right? He's going to tweet and tweet.
He's going to want to play ball, yeah.
Yeah, and so could he drag Marco across the line if J.D. pissed him off? Like, sure. My reaction to that at first was, like, do Cubans like gold? Like, where did that come from? I mean, Cubans like baseball and coffee and Cubans are very patriotic. Cuban-Americans, at least. I just actually Googled this. Cigars. AI is so dumb and wrong sometimes.
They just make things up because they're scraping like a Reddit thread. This is Gemini. I asked, do Cubans love gold? Yes, Cubans generally have a strong cultural affinity for gold. In Cuban culture, bold gold jewelry, most notably the iconic interlocking Miami-Cuban link chain necklace, is deeply valued as a symbol of success, prosperity, and resilience. So if we see Marco in a...
Pitbull-style Cuban chain.
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Chapter 3: What challenges are Republicans facing in key states?
initiative includes like like you can buy direct from the pharmaceutical companies a variety of drugs at which he says is a negotiated discount and he talked about the fat shot a lot when they launched this a few months ago and he would poke fun at people like donors he's like i know a heavy set guy like a fat guy i won't say who he is but he takes the fat shot like he makes fun of other people for taking that shot but it seems pretty clear he has taken the fat shot
I think that it's very possible that the president of the United States has taken an experimental fat shot. But I don't know that we fully know for sure. It could be another 79-year-old well-connected fatty. It could be. But didn't they accelerate? I don't know. It could be. Didn't they accelerate during COVID? Remember when he got COVID? Didn't they accelerate?
He did take some experimental COVID medicine. Experimental drugs, yeah. They have access to it. And I would, too. I would, too. All right, you all know that I got bullied into getting a cat last year. Slinky and I have a complicated relationship, but he's growing on me. One thing I think I wasn't fully prepared for is the random trips to the vet, the bills, the pooping everywhere.
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Okay, moving on to the primaries last night in New York. Just a total rout for the DSA challengers in New York. The Mamdani slate won basically everything. They'd add, you might remember from during the NBA finals, like they're passing the basketball to each other. It's Brad Lander. It's Daria Lisa Chevalier. It's Valdez. It's these three DSA challengers to Democratic congressman.
All of them won handily. Well, I guess DIC's race was kind of close. You know, that is causing some consternation among the New York establishment. Tish James was offering this morning how she's a little bit concerned about this. You sent me some good analysis from the Yimbyland account on social media, which I follow religiously as a avowed Yimby.
And he kind of, I think, summed up the level of concern about these types of lefty challengers thusly. Mamdani seems like a cool dude who really knows how to vibe with all kinds of folks. The second wave of DSA people don't have the same vibe. They're going to say a bunch of shit that scares the hoes and will end up hurting progressives. This will open up a huge lane for ours in 2028.
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Chapter 4: How does charisma influence political success?
Yeah, but also like labor left. Yeah. Lander, we talked about the Goldman deal yesterday. Lander has played this very well. And one thing, it's funny, you mentioned that when Zoran came on my pod, the question that I... that caused the controversy about asking about like whether, you know, he can condemns like globalize the intifada.
One of the reasons why I was like, that was a totally fair question and he shouldn't have bungled it was that they had asked the same question at the debate a week before. And Lander gave this great, like nuanced answer to it as somebody who's like a Jew and wants Israelis to be safe. And like, he wouldn't say it for that reason, but he's also upset about the way that Israel's acting now.
Like Lander just said, like definitely navigated, uh,
the situation the kind of changing views on on israel's behavior and yeah he would have beaten anybody in a primary he was an extremely strong candidate i don't know should we call her daria lisa chevalier or dac i kind of like dac is an aoc i think dac is easier to say sure okay we're gonna call dac i want to read you some of her hits she attended a pro-palestinian rally in times square on october 8th
So the day after the October 7th terrorist attack, Brad Lander left the DSA over their promotion of that same rally. She had thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police prisons and borders as well as seizing private property.
She rejected, you know, how some of the lefties tried to spin that like abolish the police was more of just like, it's just kind of more of a saying. It didn't mean like literally defund the police. It was a budget procedure. Yeah, it was more of a bumper sticker thing. No, she rejected that and says, no, it means ending policing, full stop, period. No more police at all, ever.
Clap emoji, clap emoji, clap emoji, clap emoji. So there was a review on that. She was then asked about this in this campaign on this New York editorial board thing that Ben Smith is doing. She was asked four times about what to do about murderers. and whether they should go to jail. And she couldn't answer that question. She posted, fuck Kamala Harris. She called Joe Biden a rapist.
She said that all deportation is wrong. And as you mentioned, she said she was rooting for Senegal in the World Cup. I Googled this this morning. She does not appear to be Senegalese, so I don't know why. She has some Dominican and Venezuelan origin, maybe also some Senegalese. I don't know. But she said she was rooting for Senegal in the World Cup.
And she also said that when she couldn't find a napkin, she wiped her dirty hands on the American flag. So you're saying she's a bulwark candidate. I don't know, man. I mean, I'm open to creative ideas for ways that the Democrats are trying to do things differently, but I'm not vibing on that. She called white women ugly colonizer women.
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Chapter 5: What impact does Trump’s aging have on his political influence?
Jerry Nadler endorsed him. Bloomberg spent like five million, like a bunch of millions on him, yeah. He wins that in New York 12. And then AOC, interestingly... Has no tweets at the time we're recording this about any of these candidates. I don't know exactly what the plan is for AOC, but she's been very savvy, I think, lately on picking fights, picking battles.
Or maybe it turns out to be not savvy. I don't know. Who knows? But she has definitely not gone all in with this kind of DSA crowd to the same degree that you might have thought she would. Yeah, she's been, over the years, like, again, she had the prison abolition tweets and the intersectionality tweets. The lefty cultural stuff, you know, transgender surgeries for prisoners.
Yeah.
She has moved away from that. This is her backyard. She is supposedly deeply involved, and I think she is deeply involved. She was at the Knicks parade. She was with Donnie. But whether she wants to run statewide – and by the way, we're talking about the socialists. Kathy Hochul –
like has run a great campaign and quashed a potential challenger from the left who dropped out of the race many months ago, or whether AOC wants to run for president. I think she understands that the, you know, Chevalier, wipe your ass with the American flag thing, that's not going to play in Pennsylvania or North Carolina. She is still unpopular with the median voter, like AOC.
Like Democrats in the press are obsessed with AOC. She has work to do with independent voters if she wants to have a larger national campaign. profile. But also look at Bernie Sanders. He endorsed Claire Valdez. He endorsed Brad Lander. He did not endorse Chevalier. Well, Mamdani did. Neither did Roe, I noticed. Roe has been endorsing a lot of those candidates, also didn't endorse.
Exactly.
And maybe that's because like he personally or his team did a vet and they're like, she doesn't seem like she's going to keep her eye on the ball, which is, you know, we got to focus on the billionaire class. She's going to be a distraction. And even last night, Bernie, he congratulated after they won. Valdez and Brad Lander. He did not congratulate Chevalier.
And so I think if you are interested in building political power as a leftist in this country, you have to focus on affordability, access to housing and health care. and try to mitigate as much as possible the social issues that are going to drag you down.
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Chapter 6: How do local elections reflect broader political sentiments?
You've got county executive seats. in Maryland that DSA people lost in. And this is a larger thing I want to talk to you about is the limitations. The question is, is this a limited phenomenon to New York City, these dense urban strongholds with a lot of affluent college educated surplus elites, quite frankly, who see politics as a hobby and obviously have issues that they're passionate about.
But does it extend beyond New York? Because here in L.A., you've got DSA members on the city council who got reelected pretty handily in the primary or will win in November. You've got Nithya Raman, who, again, is not purebred DSA, but had some DSA support in the past. And you do have in Seattle, you know, a socialist affiliated mayor. You're you're we're about to have that in Washington, D.C.
And so in the blue urban cores, you do see it. But there's not really a vibrant DSA in Boston. There's certainly not in San Francisco right now. Daniel Lurie has swept most of them to the curb. And then you go bigger than just the cities where – sorry, we have a DSA mayor in Chicago who is a flop, that's for sure. You've got Abdullah Syed in Michigan.
If he wins, that would be the first real kind of statewide, I think – DSA success story, DSA affiliated, I think. Yeah, it depends if you count Platner, but yeah, Platner in this way. But look at California, like California 22 is a great example. So up in the Valley, right? There's, this is David Valadao's district.
Randy Villegas is a Bernie endorsed candidate, a young Latino guy who advanced to the general election. Beat back, you know, the Jeffries D trip person. And, you know, he's running on, Yes, he mentioned the APAC. He mentions APAC sometimes. But that district has more people on Medicaid than any district in the country.
Like if he's going door to door and talking about Palestine, you know, he gets waxed. But he's talking about affordability and health care. And yes, Bernie endorsed him. But that gets to Bernie's antenna. Like this guy is running on working class, middle class issues. And so I think a real test will be like that's a frontline battleground district with a Bernie endorsed district.
who is not in a blue urban core. And so California 22 will be like a great test case. And also in California, lots of other socialist wannabes ran and lost all over the state. And yes, it's expensive out here, but so is New York. And so, yeah, I mean, I think the candidate charisma thing can't be undercounted as a big factor in this race.
That Mamdani ad you mentioned during the Knicks playoff series was incredible. You had people looking for signal from him. Millions of people in New York, almost everybody tuned into the Knicks playoff games. Here's an ad, and Zoran Mamdani, who most people like, although less popular than Daniel Lurie, I should say. One of my Lurie friends told me to say that.
He's on camera saying, vote for Chevalier, vote for Valdez, vote for Lehner. Okay.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the recent GOP primary results?
We're going to rapid fire through it. Nobody is talking about the Georgia. I don't know if somebody people are, but are you saying the media is too focused on New York and doesn't understand red and purple states or leave their cultural and academic and elite bubbles? Maybe Peter. Or maybe these races are just kind of boring and so there's not as much to talk about.
But so I will try to make a dramatic statement right now about the races in Georgia and North Carolina that, you know, will hopefully drive attention to races that are boring. I think that the Republicans are going to stop spending money in either Georgia or North Carolina or both by the end of the year. I think they're going to give up on both of those races in the Senate.
Roy Cooper, here are the last five polls in the North Carolina Senate race. Roy Cooper plus 14, plus 11, plus 7, plus 9, plus 8. That feels non-real. Trump won North Carolina. In Georgia, here's the money disparity. Collins, a Republican, has just $1 million on hand as of May 27th. Ossoff has $32 million. He raised $60 million. Asaf is running a perfect race.
Collins, the Republican, is... I have to bring this up because of producer Ansley. Remember the Ole Miss kids doing the monkey noises? Oh, yeah. To the black woman? Mike Collins posted a video of that on Twitter saying, Ole Miss taking care of business.
and then the video of the monkey noises so i don't know how that's gonna play in atlanta but i think quite poorly and so like the republicans have somehow managed to like take two southern senate seats like basically off the board by summer that's pretty good incompetence No, absolutely.
I mean, Wally, the Republican nominee in North Carolina, is just a great example of the downsides of this late-stage Trumpism, where he just won the primary because he's a Trump functionary and is a lifeless political talent, despite being a former RNC chairman, is also not doing a great job raising money.
But the Georgia race also that interests me is the governor's race because – and this is also kind of a symptom of Trumpism. You have this – I think he's a car dealer, the Rick Jackson guy. The health care executive.
Oh, okay. Well, car dealer vibes.
Yeah, Trump endorsed Burt Jones, lieutenant governor who tried to help him steal the election in 2020. That's right. That's right. Then you have this rascally outsider spending all of his money promising outlandish things, and he wins the primary despite Trump endorsing Burt Jones. And I've been saying this recently a lot. If you look at Iowa – look at Ohio and also Georgia.
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Chapter 8: How do economic issues shape voter preferences in elections?
Like there's probably some, they probably like are miffed at each other that someone didn't like buy him a drink in five points in like 2007. And like that manifests itself to them. Somebody slept with somebody else's staff, or not Tim Scott, because we got to respect asexuals. It's Pride Month.
They're part of the LGBTQIA plus community, but it's one of the other two might have. Kaikkea kesän tarpeisiin Prismasta ja prisma.fi verkkokaupasta.
Speaking of Pride Month, any additional thoughts on the Iowa vibrating conquering magnate the Republicans have nominated? We spent a lot of time in Iowa. Firm Tech is a sexual health company, Tim. And I haven't had a chance to get mine charged yet. We appreciated the gift that the Firm Tech people sent me. And, you know, we'll see. We'll give a review at some point.
Eleanor would like your review on camera, please. Thanks. I don't know. It doesn't seem like a great nominee. Things still running apace for Rob Sand there in the Iowa governor's race. All right. Are we going to get to dessert? Oh, wait. Before dessert, no. I promised you if we're going to have you back on, you were smeared. Your reputation was smeared on the Bulldog podcast recently.
I guess it's not a smear. A smear would be saying something about someone that is untrue. You were attacked. No, I was scared. You were attacked on the Borg podcast by me and Jon Favreau. In love. It was a loving attack because, you know, your takes... We're all out here slinging takes all the time. And so we have some misses. We'll get into one of mine.
But you were a little bit more bullish on Spencer Pratt than maybe at Meredith. That's all. My point was... Maybe a little more bullish. Let me revisit. I had not a take. You didn't have to do this. A...
Deeply reported article examining whether Spencer Pratt can win in Los Angeles, both as an influencer candidate and as a crime and public safety Republican, and expand his appeal beyond just white people in Los Angeles. That was the premise. Turns out the answer was extremely no. No, not even close.
Which I, by the way, I was one of the few people, journalists, who wrote that he has no appeal with black and Latino voters, if anyone read below it. Anyway, I felt smeared because you lumped a factual statement, which is that Spencer Pratt went around Los Angeles and he never mentioned Donald Trump and talked about Daniel Lurie as his role model, whether that was phony or not. Right.
You had that in with a bunch of right-wing Tommy Lahren, Clay Travis takes about how Spencer Pratt was going to save LA. And then you were like, and here's Peter Hamby. And you were both laughing at your friend. I thought that was silly. And then John... Okay, sorry. you know, also a bud, but like, I'm sorry, guys. There was one poll showing Nithya Raman making the runoff.
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