Is the Progressive Takeover Real?

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You can access reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, and AI insights to help you better understand your cash flow and make informed decisions about your business. Learn more at Xero.com. I'm Alex Wagner. On today's show, MSNOW's Chris Hayes stopped by to talk about recent progressive wins, how Democrats find their path to victory in 2026 and beyond, and who is winning the war for American attention. Chris and I dug into candidate strategies as the midterms draw ever closer, as well as how the Democratic Party can rally around its new Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. We also talked 2028 and how these midterms this November might influence the party in the wild ride ahead. It was a great conversation, and we're going to get to it in just a minute. But first, a little housekeeping. If you have not gotten tickets for CrookedCon yet, what are you doing? Here's another reason why you should. At Crooked, we believe the answer to, right-wing authoritarianism is a big, welcoming, fun, pro-democracy movement. So we have invited some of the biggest, funniest voices online to all-day CrookedCon. At CrookedCon, you will have the chance to meet creators and new media personalities who make sense of the news with humor and hot takes. They'll be popping around the Washington Convention Center, hosting happy hours, Q&As, and workshops for attendees. They will also be, of course, making content. Because what happens at CrookedCon ends up online, for every political nerd to see. Check out which creators are joining us so far at CrookedCon.com and grab your tickets today. Post haste. See ya in D.C. Here's my conversation with MS Now's Chris Hayes. Joining me now in a tank top, for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, you should be. Please hit subscribe while you're at it. Is the one. Oh my, look at those guns season. What does it say? Suns out, guns out, guns season. Suns out, guns out. Suns out, guns out. It's the great Chris Hayes. Buddy, it's. Always great to see you, especially in the summer. It's pure August right now, so I'm not even. It's giving real. It's Friday. It's also recording this on a Friday in August. We sure are. So, you know, if you didn't think he was wearing a hot pink tank top and a gold chain drinking Celsius like there's no Sunday. Got my tubbo Chico. Okay, I was hoping it was Celsius. That would have just been a little bit more on brand. There's a show tonight and that's a hard rule. Got it. There's a hard rule one has had to enforce. Learn the hard way. I was really excited when we had a big primary on Tuesday and we thought, who can help us unpack what the fuck happens now? Who is wise, but also just ballsy enough to say what they really think? And Chris Hayes, you're up. I won. You won. Let's start with kind of where we sit, as you say, on Friday after the Michigan primary, ahead of the Wisconsin primary. Are progressives having a moment, yes or no? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a huge, you know, one of the weird things that happens in elections is we interpret the results against the benchmark of polls as opposed to the benchmark of, like, fundamentals. So, like, you know, I remember 2020, people, that was a disappointing election night for Democrats in 2020 because it was all much closer than the polls had predicted. Sarah Gideon was going to beat Susan Collins and she lost by 12 points. And, you know, there's a bunch of races. So, but you got to take a step back and say, what happened here was that the polling was wrong, right? The polling was a miss. So, just look at the results. And the fact of the matter is you had an unabashed progressive candidate who has run statewide in primaries before and lost by 20 points. He ran against Gresham-Whitney. Win a narrow victory over a candidate who I think is not a great candidate as, like, politicians go, not a great candidate. But did. Did have the backing of the state party essentially behind her, both the incumbent Senator Gary Peters and the incumbent Governor Whitmer. You had $60 million in outside spending on her side against Abdu'l-Sayed. And he emerged victorious in a swing state in which, look, there's a theory of the case here why a progressive, outspoken progressive candidate can win a statewide swing state race. They have a theory of the case. And I think it's actually a relatively persuasive one. But it's also, like, there's reason to be worried about it. And just, like, there is. I mean, there just is. And despite all that, he did emerge victorious. And I just think there's no universe in which he would have emerged victorious two, four, six years ago. Like, something is obviously happening among, and let's be clear here, the Democratic primary electorate, which is a different electorate than the general electorate, right? And a different electorate than the general electorate. And a different electorate than the presidential general electorate. We're talking about concentric circles. But, yes, it was a huge win for progressives, for sure. At the risk of sounding like I'm glazing, this is the first time I've used that term, Abdu'l-Sayed, I do think there's really something to be said. Like, the redefinition of what electable means is changing. And the issues that he's talking about, it's the first time I've seen a glimmer of an authentic answer to what it means to be a populist and to be on the left. And take, rightfully, the mantle of economic populism and, like, really appeal to working class voters in an authentically progressive way that, like, really steals it from MAGA, convincingly. Like, I felt like he was very, like, you know, Abdu'l-Sayed, we'll talk about Israel in a second, but just on the economic issues, on health care, on jobs, like, he was relentless on beating this drum in a way that felt utterly authentic. And very much in line with what Democrats maybe should have been talking about for decades, for years now, if not a decade. Yeah, and I think that points to what the theory of the case for the progressive left is about how to win cross-pressured swing state elections, right? Is that people are pissed off at the status quo, they don't like foreign wars and money going abroad. Again, these are, like, the cross-pressured voters you can win. They're pissed off with the economic status quo, things are too expensive, and they are enraged at the billionaires and the corporations, and the tech lords that want to put data centers in their backyards. And that this is a cluster of issues that are both squarely in the kind of progressive populist wheelhouse and also can win people who aren't just down-the-line progressives, right? Right. And if you focus, that's the theory here. And they, I mean, again, it's going to get tested. Oh, it sure is. It sure is. Both, and not just in Michigan. I mean, I think also it's, this is, we're talking, these are precursors to national debates that we're going to be having for the next two years. And what happens here is going to have a huge impact on those national debates, particularly the presidential primary, about who and what is electable. So when you hear, when we talk about Abdul Sayyed, and to some degree when we talk about, like, Zoran Mamdani, how do you square that with Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill and Cori Bush being beaten in Missouri by Wesley Bell, who was backed by AIPAC in the state, and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez, who handily wins her primary and is one of the most central, centrist, moderate Democrats in the House. Like, how, do you just kind of say, I mean, all politics is local, and if that's the case, then what does that portend for the national reckoning that's afoot come next year? Yeah, I think one is, yes, I mean, it's sort of a boring and deflating thing to say all politics is local, but that is a big part of it. Like, we're talking about very different constituencies and very different places with different electorates and different issue profiles. That's one. Two, none of this stuff is linear, right? So it's like in the, it's like the stock market goes, and it goes up, and it goes down, and it goes up, and it goes down. Over a 30-year period, it's gone up, right? So it's like, it's. If you sort of take a step back, it's like, is the progressive left growing in strength inside the Democratic Party in the aggregate over the last 10 years? Yes. Like, pretty clearly, yes, right? Like, since 2016, I think the answer is, since the Bernie primary, you know, defeat, I think the answer is very clearly yes. Now, in individual cases, that doesn't mean, like, they're winning everything. And no, there's a lot of variation. The last thing I would say here about Abdul El-Sayed and Mamdani, and this was true of Plattner, too, before he dropped out. So think about what are the gates that you go to go through to become a candidate through the traditional, what people call it, establishment, let's say traditional channels, right? It's like constituency relationships, relationships with mentors and other elected officials, endorsements from local groups, right? Being good at navigating the politics of the coalition, right? These are all things that you have to be good at. Being a really, really great communicator is nice to have, but not necessary to ascend up the ranks in the traditional politics. So like Troy Jackson, right? Yes, exactly. Who was who got pretty high in Maine politics? Yeah, even Abigail Spanberger is a perfectly good communicator, but she's not like electric, electric, right? If you are not going that route and you are going to have success, you have to be a really dazzling communicator. So you've got a different set of features that are being selected for. So the reason that you get Plattner lighting up Maine on fire and the reason Mamdani is able to win that primary coming out of nowhere, and the reason I think Abdul El-Sayed ends up winning a very hard fought split vote win is that they're just extremely gifted communicators. Yeah. Now, that's not all that matters in politics, because another thing that happens through the gate checking that happens through the normal ascent in politics is some vetting is some like, is this person got some stuff in their past? It's going to blow up. Yeah. And we saw like a rocket ascendancy via tremendous charisma and political talent in Grant Plattner completely blowing up. Right. So but but I think that distills down a little bit when you point to Mamdani and Abdul, I said. It's it's it's both. And right. The ideological ferment has to be there, but you have to be really good to capture it because they well, OK, so where does that leave you on? We're saying this. You're going to be hearing this episode on the eve of the Wisconsin primary where Francesca Hong, well, who is not a dazzling communicator. No. And who Bernie Sanders, who's been kind of like a mini kingmaker in this primary season on Pod Save America with my colleague, Jon Favreau, did not specifically endorse her. Do you have a theory of the case on that? Is that because there's a sense that she's going to lose and she's not actually one of the future stars of the of the party, of the of the left of the party? There's a few things going on. One is the sort of there has been a sort of comedy of errors among the sort of establishment or the Democratic Party that has led to this moment in terms of Mandela Barnes drops out Sarah Rodriguez, who is going to be who is kind of the the sort of consensus pick, but had an enormous kind of basically her finance director. Did a whole bunch of stuff she shouldn't have. It's unclear, like the extent of it, but she drops out. So one is just like one of these kind of, you know, the kind of car crash that happens that you're sort of around for. The other thing is, yes, there is a desire for there is the primary base, the primary voting Democratic base is to the left of both the median voter and the median like Democratic politician in a lot of cases. Hong is taking advantage of that. The other thing that's really important here is no one in that primary has gone up with TV ads, but for the Republican super PAC that spent $5 million boosting home, right? This is part of the thing that people have not talked about, but is a big part of the story there. No one else is spending the state party in Wisconsin has a lot of money, partly because of how good a job Ben Wickler has done through the years. They won't spend until the general they're not spending the primary, the primary candidates haven't spending there has been 5 million of them. And so they're not going to be spending that much money, and they're not going to be spending that much money. They're not going to be spending that much money. And so they're not going to be spending that much money. But there is kind of a bell curve of political views. And you don't want to be too far from the center. And everyone gets that. And everyone loves a winner. No one wants to be associated with a loser. So this sort of ascendant movement doesn't want to feel like Hong disproves their theory if and when she loses, because I don't think she's. Yes, exactly. Bet on people who like fireworks. 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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. The feedback from real people who have actually used the service speaks for itself. More than 6 million people have used BetterHelp globally. BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. They also hold all required education, training, and certifications across a range of mental health specialties, meaning the perfect therapist for you could be just a few clicks away. BetterHelp makes it easy to get started, answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and switch therapists at any time if it's not the right fit. Listen, you guys have a lot going on in your lives. Yeah. Family stuff, work stuff, just the news. Country stuff. Country stuff. The worst person in our country happens to be the president of our country. You should probably talk to somebody. It would benefit you to talk to somebody. Check out BetterHelp. See the reviews. See what stands out and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit BetterHelp.com slash PSA. That's BetterHelp.com slash PSA. I bet I know where you sit on this. But like Rahm Emanuel, who's probably running from president in 2028, is very worried about the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, and writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, when the DSA attempts to turn safe Democratic states and districts a darker shade of blue, Democratic candidates in swing districts are put at a distinct disadvantage. Should 2028ers just shut the fuck up about the DSA for right now? Like, what is the answer there? How would you like to see them grapple with this dynamic? Well, part of the thing I would say is, that I think there's a, like, there is a kernel of truth to it, but also, are you helping by putting more attention on it? That's what I'm saying. Like, if the whole point is that- And also, if you're wrong, you've alienated a crucial part of the base that you're going to actually need to try and win over. This is a real, and this is a real paradox, I think, of what we might call, like, this term that got used as popularism, right? Which is a broad term that Democrats had to sort of move back to center, align themselves with views that had majority power. And there's a certain weak version of that argument that's almost tautologically true. Like, yeah, when you run for office, you want to be nearish the center of the voters that you're appealing to. Now, the question of, like, what is the center and what's the issue space and what's salient and how you get it is a whole complicated thing. And it's harder than it looks. But one of the things that we saw happen with the Labour Party in the UK, which tested this theory, they came into office and they're like, we're going to engage in a bunch of high salience, high profile fights with the left flank of our party, which meant we're going to put immigration and trans issues in the paper all the time. There are worst issues. We know that from the polling. But we're going to pick a bunch of high profile fights. So everyone's constantly talking about it all the time. And guess what? It didn't work. No. Because why would you want to talk about the things, even if you're trying to get to the center on it, you end up raising the salient. So it's like, don't workshop. If Rom thinks that Josh Turek is being hurt At the margin by Daria Lisa Chevalier winning her primary in Washington Heights, which is not a crazy idea. Why does talking about that in The Wall Street Journal help it? She already won. She won. In The Wall Street Journal. At this point, how are you helping him by being like, boy, these people are really a problem and they're going to be a problem for the Josh Tureks of the world. Right. Just talk about something else. That's not helping Josh Turek. Right. And it's nor is it dissuading people in the DSA from mounting like making their case. Right. Because the other thing is she won that election. Like, right. The voters are the voters. Now, can I argue against myself for a second, too? Sure. I mean, that's why we thought you would do both of these things. That's why we only need one booking today. Because I do think there's a little bit of this. I want to say to my my friends on the progressive left, let's all just concede the fundamental idea that a primary election. Electorate can select a candidate who is poorly optimized for a general election. Yes. Which we've seen for literally many, many years now under Donald Trump. Of course. So it's like the idea of like, well, who's electable now? We just won the primary. It's like, no, no, no. That's a different electorate. That doesn't mean anything. Like and I again, I think most people think in more sophisticated fashion, clearly the folks in Michigan do like like we said earlier, I'll say it has a theory of the case. But I do think there's a little bit of this. Like the way I think about it. Is in order to get to the NBA, a basketball player has to have a completely delusional sense of their own ability or they won't make it right. That is an adaptive quality in the player. But the scouts can't have that. And the other people have to be clear eyed to win as a candidate to be Zora Mamdani. You have to have a kind of delusion of your own ability. But everyone else should be pretty clear eyed that like, yeah, you're there's a trade off about about where you are on the ideal. You're there's a trade off about where you are on the ideological spectrum that that and it is possible that you engineer a very motivated, disproportionately highly educated Democratic primary electorate that selects for candidates who are too ideologically extreme to win generals. This is just obviously a true thing. Right. So just because you're winning the primary doesn't mean you're the TLDR is primaries aren't generals. Yeah. Blake Master won the primary. It's like Mark Robinson won the primary down in North Carolina. Christine, I'm a witch O'Donnell. I wonder I am. I'm always like galled by this. And I kind of wonder where you sit because Donald Trump's making hay as are as every single Republican in the party about the fact that Democratic socialists are in the vanguard and they're all commies and they're going to be coming for your money and your children should they win in 2026 and 2028 at the same time that Donald Trump is like nationalizing private enterprise and has these like federally run gas stations up and down the East Coast. Like he's. Practicing socialism and like I'm not going to like maybe it's time for the federal government to like gas subsidies. I mean, there's a case to be made for a lot of this intervention. And I'm not saying we should be nationalizing private enterprise, but should Democrats point out the sort of socialist tendencies of this administration as hypocrisy or is it just too fraught to be aligning yourself in any way with the most questionable parts of the Trump agenda? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's a really important intellectual point, which is that I. I've never seen a president in my lifetime who was more antagonistic to free markets to the fundamental sort of like he's like gas is too high. Chevron and Exxon are making too much profit. He does. He truly does not believe in free markets. And he truly is illiberal on that sense in the old classical like sense of the word. Like, remember, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is written as a polemic against what tariffs and mercantilism like Donald Trump. He is fundamentally authoritarian, illiberal and believes in a personalist controlled economy in which he makes all the choices and also believes like as a fund, as one of his core ideological commitments, bizarrely, along with like women and people of color inferior, is that like tariffs are how everything works, like truly believes to his heart, like in his like the deepest part of him. So he's a mess ideologically. He is totally hostile to free markets. One of the things you've seen that's interesting in actually in the polling is that if you ask people about socialism and capitalism, socialism is gaining over capitalism, but people like the notion of free markets and they also increasingly like the notion of free trade, including people who consider themselves the most sympathetic DSA, which is fascinating. I don't think the hypocrisy thing matters as much as just being like everything's expensive and he doesn't care about you. He's corrupt. No, I'm serious. Like, yeah, it's like there's no point in making an ideological argument against. I just mean, is it? We're joined or two. They're all commies and socialists. It's like, well, actually, you're the fucking socialist. But then that's sort of painting Donald Trump with a socialist brush, which is a turnoff to every it's like a boner killer for everybody. That's right. He's something totally different. Like he's in his own category. He's like a he's like a pre Adam Smith monarch. OK, well, then that settles that. No more mention of Donald Trump's socialist policies. I do. We have to get to the thing that is actually like that. Not that it's not the third rail. I know it's like it is the thing that I think this. This week has taught us and maybe this season is teaching us, which is Israel is. And I want to I want to get at something that Ryan Broderick over at Garbage Day writes. The Democratic 2026 Democratic Civil War is a rat's nest of different schisms. It's young versus old labor versus capital. Maybe progressivism versus the status quo, populism versus elitism. Perhaps more than anything, though, it is a conflict between the Democrats that are willing to accept money from pro-Israel organizations and those who aren't. Is that fair, Chris? I think it's been one of the biggest fissures. And I. Do you think that there's something about. There's there's a few things. One is that I think. AIPAC has made and they don't care what I think. Enormous. Tactical error. I know. I agree. And here's in service of their goals. Yes. In service of their goals. And here's the argument I'm going to make. They have relied on a strategy of attempting to trick voters as opposed to making their case. So what they have done in all these cases, and it happened in Michigan. And the New York Times ran a analysis of this is they have spent enormous amounts of money. Some of the most expensive primaries in history are all AIPAC primaries. Jamal Bowman, you know, before that, the Cori Bush one was very expensive. The Cori Bush, Wellesley Bell won this time was spent five million in a relatively small, you know, house race. They spent 30 here. There's another 30 that we still don't know what it was because we don't have the disclosures yet. So, like, maybe it was that, maybe not. And in all the cases. In all the cases, the vast majority of the ads they ran were not about Israel. They were attempts to paint the person that they were attacking as often insufficiently loyal to the Democratic Party. Yeah. That's not what they actually believe. And it's not the case they're trying to make to the public. I think it is both toxic for the discourse and also self-defeating. To spend tons of money in the attempt to essentially trick the voters. I think it would have been better to spend the money being like, we think Israel is a good ally. What Hamas did was horrible. They're defending themselves or whatever you want to say. Right, right. Here's why Iron Dome is important. And in fact, having Iron Dome leads to less Israeli fatalities, which also does lead to better outcomes in the region. Whatever argument you want to make. They're not making that argument. And there is something insidious about the combination of all of this money where you're trying to trick the voters. And then when people call the money out, you're like, that's out of line. That's anti-Semitic. It's like if there's this old expression I love, which is like throwing rocks and hiding hands. It is a lot of throwing rocks and hiding hands for me back at this point. And I sort of feel like, look, it's a free country and you've got a view. And that view is shared. There's a lot of Democrats that share that view. There's a lot of. Particularly Jewish Democrats in my life who share that view, who are defensive of the state of Israel and they think it's under siege and under threat and they don't like the direction the Democratic Party is going on it. You have to make that argument and have the argument on its terms and not attempt to use the catastrophic Citizens United decision to pour a ton of money into races in the hopes of tricking voters into electing a person allied with you, but not on the terms of the. And I think that has been an absolutely poisonous, toxic and it's not. I want to be clear. It's not just them. Crypto has been doing the same thing. A.I. is doing the same thing. This idea that you're going to come in on primaries with this agenda and try to get voters to vote for your candidate, not by making an argument that crypto is good or A.I. shouldn't be regulated, but rather that like that person is not didn't vote for Kamala Harris or whatever, whatever you think is going to get the primary voter. I just think it's a really toxic way. Of doing politics. It's been incredibly destructive. It really pushes the debate off into completely different territory. Well, and it also it also ends up it. It is ended up connecting in the minds of people. The Israel lob, the Israel interest and big money. Yes. And big dark money, which is not a connection that you want to create. No, it's not a good connection for what you want to say is like, look, there's actually a lot of people in the Democratic Party who agree with us. Like we're. representing them, again, that's fine. I have different views than AIPAC does on the conduct of the war in Gaza and a bunch of other stuff. But it's true that there's a lot of Democrats who agree with that. Right. Totally. You've got to make the case. Yes. No one's making that case. And instead, AIPAC is aligned with like nefarious outside spending and no trick trickery effectively. And so I guess so the inversion of that is Abdul El-Sayed, you know, to great effect, talked about all the AIPAC money that was flooding his race. They overwhelmingly supported Haley Stevens. AIPAC is now considering pouring millions of dollars into the general election race between Mike Rogers and Abdul El-Sayed. Do you think that for a general election, campaigning against AIPAC's outside spending is a useful tool for Abdul El-Sayed? Or like where? Where is the benefit? Who gets the upper hand? I think it probably is, actually. And again, I want to express some sympathy with the critique that there is something oogie about the like constant invocation of the dark, like the manipulative dark Jewish money. Yeah, totally. There is a latent anti-Semitism or exclusionism. People getting uncomfortable with that, I don't think is crazy. The problem is that it is a fact of the matter that like, and the other thing is, if you're going to have $60 million or $30 million dropped on your head, the only thing that you could do is call it out. So it's like, do you think it meaningfully? Do you think El-Sayed's ability to use AIPAC's sort of weaponization against him is more useful to him in the general than the. Money that Mike Rogers could actually get from AIPAC? Well, I think because there's going to be an enormous amount of money dropped on his head in that race, that's going to be across the board. It's not like AIPAC will be a small fraction of it because it's going to be a ton of that Senate majority PAC stuff like the, you know, I think calling out that is actually very useful, like just as a general thing. And in the general, most of the money won't be, you know, by and large is going to be outside money from corporate interests. Yeah. That have all given. Money to Donald Trump or to Mitch McConnell's PAC or whatever. And in that case, I think just taking the same line, which is like these people want to like jack up your oil prices and they want to put data centers in your backyard and close down your hospitals so they can get tax cuts. And they're spending one hundred and fifty two hundred million dollars to beat me. And I think that's, you know, you use the same line there because, again, what else can you do other than, you know, he's not he's he's probably going to be outspent from the outside in this race. Because Republicans are going to put, you know, a lot of money into that race. Well, it could be the right. I mean, that in Maine, God forbid, you are a television viewer in either one of those states in the coming months. Pod Save America is brought to you by Blinds.com. There's a version of your home you haven't lived in yet where the light behaves, where the rooms feel finished, where you sleep until you decide to wake up. Blinds.com has spent 30 years making it easy to find the perfect fit. With over 25 million windows covered and 50,000 Firestar reviews, you can feel confident you are in good hands. Whether you want to go full DIY, bring in licensed and vetted pros to handle the measure and install or land somewhere in between, you're always in control. They make it simple to choose the level of support that works best for you with flexibility every step of the way. No pushy salespeople, no awkward in-home visits, just real advice on your schedule. 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Xero is a financial management platform that loves giving small business owners the clarity to have the confidence in their numbers. It puts accounting payments, payroll, and analytics all in one place. So you always? Have one clear picture of your business with visual dashboards. Xero makes it easy to understand your cash flow. You know exactly what's coming in and what's going out so you can make smarter decisions that can help grow your business. Xero's AI can even offer insights to help you make your best move. It's powerful enough for an accountant and simple enough for you. Xero is the all in one to get business done. I want to ask about the flip side of all this, which is, let's talk about it, Hasan Piker. This is what Hasan Piker had to say after Abdul Al-Sayed won Michigan and people began talking about what he needed to do next. Here's that clip. Like everyone being like, Abdul has a fuck ton of work to do mending bridges. Here's the fucking take nuke for you. Okay. You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces. This shit. Okay. You literally called the dude a fucking terrorist for months on end and like called him a sexist, misogynist, terrorist, bad candidate, doesn't fake doctor when he has like two fucking degrees. And now you're going to sit there and be like, well, you know, you've really got to come to me now. Like, what are you talking about? Do you want to fucking win or not? Lock the fuck in. Okay. Lock the fuck in. Okay. And I do worry that there are some out there who, in an effort to make sure that. That this narrative that a progressive can win in a state like Michigan doesn't take root will literally either subtly or, you know, not so secretively endorse Mike Rogers. Okay. It is some deep paranoia that people, Democrats, so threatened by the rise of Democratic socialists and hardcore progressives on the left wing would support Mike Rogers over Abdul Al-Sayed. We can unpack that in a second. Which is more broadly, like, what the fuck should happen here with Hassan Piker? Like, what should Democrats do? I mean, is this the case where it's like, don't talk about him? Should Abdul Al-Sayed continue to campaign with him? We're going to get to, like, his reach in a second. But just as a specific political actor, like, should other Democrats be talking about him? I was on Deadline White House with Nicole Wallace and she wanted to ask Mallory McMorrow about Hassan Piker. And I was just like, this just is not good for anybody. Like, what should happen here? Chris? I don't really know. I mean, at one level, like, I think there's a little irony in, like, the whole discourse being, like, the left needs a Joe Rogan and then, like, getting the closest thing to it and being like, not like that, not like that, not like that. No, no, no. Not anyone who says incendiary things. It's like, do you ever watch Joe Rogan's show and he says crazy stuff all the time? Like, it's like, and I do think, I mean, the difference in this case, I think there's a difference between going on someone's show and campaigning with them hugely, right? So, like, I think you can go. I've been on lots of people's shows. I've been on Bill Maher's show. Bill Maher says all sorts of things. I know, I know. Not only do I disagree with it, he says some things I really, like, find pretty wrong. And more often with greater frequency. Yeah. So, but, you know, again, it's a free, like, it's a free country. So, the big question is campaigning with. I don't think it makes a ton of sense in a general election, frankly, to campaign with Hassan Piker. I think you also can't control what a 35-year-old streamer is going to say. I don't think it makes a ton of sense. I also think that he is learning the lesson that, like, with great power comes great responsibility. And, like, no, seriously, I mean, it's one thing, it's one thing to be, like, look, this is a dude who streams, like, seven days a week for years. Do you know the amount of words he said? Like, you're going to say some stuff. And part of the, part of the genre of what he's doing is saying stuff. I'm reminded a lot of Marcos Milica, who was, who played a somewhat similar. A similar role a generation ago. Yeah. Who was the founder of Daily Kos. And was, would say pretty, like, you know, provocative things and would, would curse and be like, F these people. And there was also an attempt to sort of tie him. I also sort of feel like I don't know how much the guilt by association works in the era of Donald Trump. Like, the man had dinner with Nick Fuentes. Yeah. Like, not even for any purpose other than, like, let's break bread. I just think. Let's hang out. Let's hang. Listen, I want to hear what you. He wasn't trying to get his camp. What are you thinking about these days, Nick? I'm interested in your point of view, Nick. So I do think there's a little bit of, like, the associational politics have, have lost a little bit of their sting. But the other thing is, like, if Hassan Piker wants to contribute to the success of the movement, like, he's probably going to have to. Watch what he says a lot more, and, like, that that's not that fun for him, and I get that, like, he's been in a different lane, but one of the things that all of us. I think with public platforms start to learn is that like your words have consequences and it doesn't mean that you like say things you don't believe. It doesn't mean you don't say things you do believe, but it does mean that like how you select your words and the way that you communicate really does matter. And I think that's going to be true across the board. The other thing I'll just say on the substance of what he was saying was the democratic party is not dumb. They need him to win so they could have power. Like they're all going to, they've all consolidated behind him. They're not so anti DSA that they would literally cede control of this. They want to control the United States Senate. Believe me, like very badly. Believe him. They truly do want that. So, so probably not. But the other thing I'll say too, in the same way that I said, it's like a little bit of buy the ticket, take the ride where it's like APAC spent that money. And the cost of that is that you're going to get called out. Yeah. Like Abdul Al-Assad made a choice to, a campaign with Hassan Piker. I think it probably helped in the, in the primary. And the cost of that is people are going to criticize that. And you got to like, that's buy the ticket, take the ride. And you got to come up with a way that you're going to talk about it. I thought that, I thought the two best responses to this was Debbie. Did you see Debbie Dingle talking to Greta Van Susteren? Yes. Where she's just like, he's a way to reach a lot of young people who we have a hard time reaching. And he looks good when he works out. This is, this is the Debbie Dingle take. And I was like, you know what? This, this is a person who is a conduit to reach people who are outside the system that I want to reach. And that's, and that's important to me. And that doesn't mean that I agree with everything he says, nor does it mean the things I think are really gross and wrong. Right. You do not have to endorse in turn, the values of every person that interviews you. That's right. Or endorses you or even works. Like, and I also thought that the AOC's response to the TMZ's reporter, I can't believe I just said that, that sentence who said the AOC's response to the TMZ, the reporter who was like, aren't you worried about like, it's not just socialists and there's going to be communists. And she's like, I'm not the belief police. People can believe whatever they want to believe. I believe what I believe. I'm going to try to do what I'm going to do. Like, and I do think that like, that's another way of, of sort of threading the needle here. I think it's also just, I mean, I would think what I'm hearing in your response is it's like about frankness. It's about honesty. It's about not apologizing, but also not glossing over the, the rougher parts. And don't get, defensive. The other thing though, too, is, and this is the thing Mondani is good about is like, you got to pivot to what you want the election to be about. Yeah. And right now there's like both the, both the sort of mainstream media and the right wing media are like, this is an election about what Hassan Piker said about nine 11, seven years ago. By the way, can I just say this Ron Johnson, the sitting Senator from Wisconsin is a fully avowed nine 11 truther. And somehow this is like not a story I'm going to do. I think I'm going to do it either day or, soon because I've got a whole thing about this. It's the craziest thing. His, he has gone to conferences. He has said, basically he thinks building seven was a controlled demon, like the full like control demolition. Yeah. Jet fuel doesn't melt steel. Like all the stuff that you and I 20 years ago, we're hearing from like kooky people outside, like an anti-war rally. Like, and I mean, certainly legit, like straight down the line, like, and people have been run out of public life. They have been hounded. Van Jones had to leave his job, his job in the white house. Cause he signed something that was like very tangentially related to nine 11 truth about, we need an investigation, yada, yada. And Ron Johnson's like sitting center, just being like, yeah, we think probably, I don't know, but it looks like it might've been an inside job. It's like, and, and they want to like have these crazy nine 11 discussions. Anyway, it just, I can't get over that. Good note. Good note. Just, I mean, as a reminder, the depravity and delusion on the right far outweighs literally anything. Ron, this is a nine 11 truth or someone talked to him about that. Like Mike Rogers was talking about this. I'm like, go call up Ron Johnson and get his takes on nine 11. It totally. What do you think about that? Speaking of alternative facts? No, not alternative facts, but alternative egos. We were talking about Hassan Piker, um, largely because of his fear of influence. And there is a real kind of gut check happening inside democratic politics right now about what kind of media matters, what kind of messaging is resonant. Um, Ryan Broderick, I quoted before from garbage day is like lays out the two axes as he sees them. One is the institutional axis, which includes cable news podcasts hosted by former Obama and Biden bros. So we are guilty as charged. The New York times, Axios politico, the Washington post, blah, blah, blah. The related sub stacks and X accounts with those folks. And then new media, which is leftist streamers like Hassan Piker, YouTube essayists. He calls them dark, woke podcasters, Ryan Grim, and drop site. News, blue sky users short form form video content from the DSA, um, random shit posters. You are an expert in the attention economy. Where do you see, like if you're mapping out your 20, 28 presidential campaign or even your next three months in your midterm election campaign, like where, who matters? Where is the, like, what is most relevant in terms of, you know, speaking to the voter? I do think one frustration that I had that, that I expressed in one of the chapters in the sirens called my book about the attention economy that that had a chapter of politics and that I said a lot when I was doing the book tour when it came out is the risk aversion of democratic political class consultant class around interviews had to go away like Haley Stevens. She never came and got her interview. Thank you very much. Well, she was a good example, right? Like it was a great example. So like repeated entreaties. Begging what can we make work? Nothing, nothing can ever work. Go talk to people. I think that is actually a big thing. You got to go talk to people. And I think actually that's it actually connects to one of the things we're seeing in the Democratic primary electorate, which is that people want good talkers because they felt like they didn't get them and I like Joe Biden who in his prime was a great I mean a truly Fidel Castro level talker. Right? I mean the man the man could talk truly the gift of gab that was not the case of the Joe Biden that was you know in in the White House basement or basement Joe the campaigner and like Kamala Harris is I would say a perfectly proficient communicator as a politician but she is not a particularly great I would I would go one step further I think she's remarkably risk averse and that she wants very very controlled environments and that's and that's not politics that's just not politics very risk averse and very wary in extemporaneous. Settings and so I think there is a desire Dave Weigel has made this point I think I even I sort of thought of this but he's kind of articulated of like we want a really good talker and it's like Barack Obama was great talker really good at talking and again talking is not I talk for a living so I read it I sort of both read it highly and I also look for it because I'm you know literally this phrase good talkers I think I think I'm a good talker. Is that and so the reason this all relates back to your question about where you go is I think you got to be willing to go everywhere and I think you got to get your reps in and you got to be good at talking and I think you got to be good at talking I mean this is one of the things that got us you know Vance Vance will go goes everywhere he went everywhere getting his reps and he liked and he liked he likes to mix it up with like goes on the view he got like all of that I think is actually really important. And again the other thing about volume is the more of it there is the less people obsess over a single gap like yeah you just go do another interview is like remember when he said the dumb thing about you know cat ladies like and that was you know he's still talking about the cat ladies and for sure that hurt him but also it kind of ended up being swallowed by the sheer volume I mean Trump is the sheer volume of shit that's coming out of his mouth. Well true but I also think that like that's kind of partly the way it works so I do think that I don't know like how you rank but the other thing I would say is I talked to him the other day he said of an electorate that you're dealing with the sort of operative rule of thumb these days is about 50% you can reach through TV and 50% are just like completely off TV and that to me is like the fundamental structural thing that people have to reckon with. And part of what I wrote about in my book is that in the kind of TV dominant era that sort of starts really in the 60s and sort of extends I think all the way through for like the next 40 or 50 years of American politics it's like you raise money and the money is used to buy TV ads yeah and that is most of what a campaign is raising money running the ads. part of the reason those numbers, there's a bunch of reasons that her numbers in rural areas were not as bad as they should have been well no they were they were higher than than anticipated partly because that was the place that was getting tv yeah like no and those are the people that are watching tv too i mean both i think like you're not you're not doing a lot of there's not like a bunch of local press there you're not doing a bunch of events there and so it's like there's huge swaths of your electorate that like the way they're going to learn about this race is like they're watching tv and they're getting that so you can't give up on that but you gotta have a theory of the case the other 50 i'm you know i'm gonna interpret what you're saying slightly differently because what i'm hearing is and i would probably put it more like 60 40 like 40 of the people are getting it on tv just because if you look at those numbers which i'm i'm sure you don't actually in order to survive your day like the demographic numbers are it's just an increasingly old audience yeah right um but that social media and shit posting and shit posters and those accounts are now equally as important as broadcast television and that is actually a sea change from even like eight years ago or four years ago and that that it actually really does matter and and and and that doing more media is in some ways less impactful but also is a little bit of an insurance policy against the mistakes that you're inevitably going to make by doing long form interviews which is i think the real essential yes fear it's not that i'm going to do an interview that doesn't matter it's like i'm going to fucking how do i fill an hour and a half with alex cooper without having to talk about whatever willie brown i don't fucking know you know something that's like uncomfortable for me yes yeah um but also learning how to talk about uncomfortable things is kind of an important skill well and if anybody's shown you i mean if there's one lesson for democrats to take away from the trump years it's like you can do some crazy shit and as long as you are authentic about it and i'm not saying anybody should try and model donald trump's fucking behavior it's like how many bad interviews did that guy give that like we're like these i mean the moment where you know heilman and halpern ask him for his favorite passage in the bible of them kim telling chris matthews that you got to punish the woman on a board i mean you know there's a million and they don't even like those aren't even at my fingertips in terms of his worst moments like there's so many no i'm reaching back to the archives of course they're like i like people that weren't captured like which was the original one or i don't really care about americans financial situations that wasn't podcast interview but anyway that's just him fucking talking pod save america is brought to you by mint mobile summer means a well-deserved break some extra time to stretch out and relax mint mobile thinks you deserve a break too which is why they created the mint mobile summer sale right now all of mint's plans are 15 per month even unlimited so free yourself from big wireless and their gimmicks and gotchas and switch to mint for high speed data and coverage on the t-mobile 5g network mint mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for 15 bucks a month on america's largest 5g network you can even bring your current phone and your number choose from three six or 12 month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill ditch overpriced wireless with mint mobile it's so easy sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month to get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month go to mint mobile.com slash crooked that's mint mobile.com slash crooked cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com slash crooked that's it there's no catch upfront payment of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 months plan required 15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability speed and coverage vary see mint mobile.com this is lavar errington from two pros and a cup of joe running a small business means keeping track of a lot but your finances shouldn't feel complicated let me tell you about zero that's x e r o zero brings accounting payments payroll and analytics together giving you one clear view of your business with easy to read dashboards you can see your cash flow and understand exactly what's coming in and what's going out zero's ai can save you time and provide insights to help you make smarter decisions while keeping everything simple and accessible it's powerful enough for an accountant but simple enough for you zero is the all-in-one to get business done learn more at zero.com all right i have two more for you one is you know we began this conversation talking about expectation setting and how if you're trying to understand where the sort of zeitgeist is at in terms of democratic politics like maybe leave the polling out of it because polling distorts expectations and then you're not going to be able to do it right and so i'm going to talk about the polling that led up to primary day in michigan that that showed abdul al-sayed with like a very very healthy lead he of course goes on to win by like a point and i think everybody had flashbacks to the ann seltzer poll which was off in 2024 by a whopping 16 points and had showed kamala harris winning the state um abdul is now saying he's going to beat mike rogers by seven points his campaign has a history of releasing the most internal polling all of this seems like highly sus maybe something you don't want to do if you're you know as a as someone who follows this all this stuff closely should everybody just shut the fuck up about polling should we stop looking at polling numbers entirely like what do we do about polling well i think that primary i think primary polling is always hard and particularly michigan where people don't register for a party um we've seen a bunch of these cases and we've seen a bunch of these cases where people don't register for a party and we've seen a bunch of these cases where people don't register for a party the the both the obama clinton one was a surprise and then the bernie hillary one was a big surprise so there was there's been a real history of specifically michigan democratic primary polling misses yeah um so i think there's there's partly that again i think it's like the thing about polling is it's best in just the general aggregate as like a directional point is it though i mean like 16 points abdul was up by a 17 point it's it's not wasn't good for his support like it just what is the utility of it that's a lot off yeah i mean i think when right when something's off by that much there's no utility but i don't think that's usually the standard miss you know i mean like even like if you look at what the you know what was the uh 2024 presidential like a close race decided by a few points in either direction yeah right fine it was like i mean you know what i mean like part of the problem is here's my general thing about polling and this doesn't really respond to michigan this is more about broader stuff from presidential polling in a country as polarized as ours it we want a level of specificity that it can't deliver because in our country a point or two matters a ton in in frontline swing races in in the state senate in in the statewide senate races a point or two is probably determinative polling's not going to be great at telling you right a point so like my general takeaway is that like the paxton talarico race right now is close in anyone's race my general takeaway of the polling that we've seen is that michigan's going to be close very close you know that maine is going to be really close nothing more than that so so like like ignore the numbers take the vibe like yeah like generalized general yes and like yes now again if it's off by 13 there's nothing more than that so like ignore the numbers take the vibe like yeah like generalized yes and like yes now again if it's off by 13 there's nothing more than that so like ignore the numbers take the vibe like yeah like generalized yes and like yes now again if it's off by 13 there's nothing more than that so like like ignore the numbers take the vibe like yeah like generalized nothing you can do with it but it is rare that is a pretty rare polling this okay fine so whoever commissions that poll does not need to leave their job like the poor and seltzer let me just say that there were multiple internals they released which i think was like a weird psyop that i think blew back and was yeah not a good but there were also public independent polls including emerson which is a highly rated pollster that had that double digits um and i still haven't seen the pollster that went wrong there the the seltzer one is that she just completely modeled the elect here here's a big problem too something that pollsters have been dealing with since 2016 is that the kinds of people who are highly involved and highly educated are the most likely to respond to polls and those people are also the most liberal right and this is a this is a fact about the world that every pollster has been trying to model and and methodologically get their way out of but there's a fact about the world that wasn't true in the past it was not true in the past that your likelihood to respond to a poll correlated with your ideology in any way it is increasingly the case it is and so now you have to model your way out of that and that leads to a lot of modeling assumptions that introduce a lot of uncertainty that was very judicious that assessment chris now we're going to return to the man who sits before me in a gold chain and a pink tank top for this last one which is we're sitting at this moment i feel like so much of the this season of democratic politics has been defined by um the questions around masculinity and power right there's platner yep there's swalwell in california gubernatorial race obviously main senate race max miller is currently in a house race refuses to drop out despite like very serious allegations of abuse and otherwise representative chuck edwards is out with some ridiculous um reporting about what he's been doing we went to brown university which we're prone to bring up all the time and i think i sound like a brown graduate when i start talking about the essence of sort of like the fall of the patriarchy defining the kind of chaos in the political landscape. But I do think it has a lot to do with why we had Barack Obama and then Donald Trump and then Donald Trump again, and this sort of crisis of like how to be a man. And like Donald Trump has come up with one modality of masculinity, which is real fucking vile, if you ask me, but is intoxicating to both men and women, especially if they're white. And Democrats have had a really hard time figuring out like, what is what is manhood look like coming from the left? And like, you see these attempts at finding new models, whether it's Hassan Piker, or I guess, to some degree, Gavin Newsom, or Graham Plattner. And like, it hasn't really, they haven't found the shoe that fits, I don't think. Yeah, I'm not saying that Gavin Newsom's chances aren't significant. But like, do you have a theory about how the Democrats should begin to try and answer like, what is our what is the rejoinder to like, the vile masculinity of the right? Because that's going to be, I think, essential and figuring out who should lead the party or be part of the leadership of the party in the coming years. I don't have a good answer to that. But it's something that I puzzle over a lot. I do think Abdullah Syed is kind of interesting. Because he is he has been charged with being a misogynist, though, and talking the way that he did about Haley. Oh, he's rolls his eyes in his pink tank top. Well, well, but I think that there are women that don't agree with you, even on the left, that like the way he talked about Haley Stevens was misogynistic. And, you know, some of his attitudes, the listen, listen, I'm just a vessel for Yes, I mean, I think that charge, I guess what I would say is, I think it's probably useful to separate out charges that happen in the context of a heated primary. Yeah. With with broader things about the person's like lifestyle, you know what I mean? Like, sure, this is a different thing than like, platinum, you know, like, Oh, yes. I'm just saying that, like, there's just different categories of what people say against each other when they're running against each other in a primary, there was a lot of allegations that, you know, Barack Obama was being sexist towards Hillary Clinton or Hillary Clinton. And I don't think it was true to Sarah Palin. I don't really think it was true to Hillary Clinton. Some people maybe felt that it was but I think those those exist in a different space than people that are attesting to your character who have been with you outside the campaign. You know, the whole like he can bench 315 and he's but he's also like a doctor and he also seems like a person who you know that I don't know you said the interview he did with his mother that I thought was really interesting. Who is an engineer came here from Egypt was often the only woman in a room sort of talking to her about what that felt like, which I thought was interesting. And also, I think speaks to them recognizing they have some work to do on that front. The way that I solve for this is the same way that I think about how to think about patriotism, and how to talk about patriotism from a center left progressive standpoint, which is like my version. I think Barack Obama is the best example of this. But I also felt this way about the World War Two Museum in New Orleans, which is a great museum if anyone ever goes. Which is a sort of like progressive pluralistic patriotism. Like we are a great country because we are this place that is built out of all these different people from all these different experiences. And we've screwed it up a million different ways in a million times. But we have also kept trying to figure out how to make all these people together work. And I think that the version of masculinity is to be a man is to be a person who is strong in a sort of inner and deep sense. And who like bench 350. And looks out for people and does the right thing. And people can look towards and depend on. And to me, it's like in the same way that like you take this Venn diagram of some of the attributes that we learn in our civic culture about America with the attributes that we as progressives cherish. And you're like, that's the thing I'm going for. I think you take the aspects of masculinity that I do think have a root in the culture, which is like strength or leadership or dependability or, you know, looking out for people, even protecting people that like, that you cultivate those in a broader sense of like looking out for people, looking out for people that are being bullied or being marginalized, like being the one that stands up for them. That to me is like the vision of what of where you kind of find the sweet spot into the this answer. And I don't know how you communicate that. But that's the way my own conception of it is. I think one of the things that Democrats could really do is kind of wrap their arms around like someone who's loving, like and has shown that they're not alone. And I think that's one of the themselves capable of great love, whether for children or their mother or their spouse or their partner, because that's something that Trump doesn't have at all. And that is, I think, really aspirational, especially to see if we're talking about a guy like men being comfortable showing the fact that they can be lovers. And I don't mean that like a sexy way. No, no. But it's a real important reminder that like that's what most people are looking for in life is to be loved and to feel loved and to belong. And Trump's found the inverse of that, like he's found unity through hate and like like love and affection is always in season. Sometimes it might come arrive at your doorstep and a hot pink tank top and a gold chain. Kate Shaw, sometimes not. You are one of my favorite people. On the planet. We have known each other for 30 fucking years. I know it's wild. And every conversation is better than the last. Oh, that's sweet. That was really fun. I'm so glad we did it. You're the best, Chris Hayes. Everybody watch Chris Hayes on MS Now. Always listen to his podcast. Why is this happening? And consume all books he writes because they're really good. Working on the next one. I'm very excited about this next one. Oh, my God. Of course you are. Oh, my Jesus. Okay. Well, thank you for doing this in between writing drafts. And thanks to everybody for listening.