Mamdani's Rise and Its Consequences - with Reihan Salam

Speaker 1 You are listening to an art media podcast.

Speaker 1 The irony of Mamdani's politics is that if you look at the left politics of the past 10 years, it was asking something of you. Do you remember 2020? You remember George Floyd?

Speaker 1 You remember I should apologize for my own racism. I should think about how I'm complicit in it.
Anti-Israel messaging is different.

Speaker 1 It's saying that if you're a a college-educated white guy, you don't have to apologize for yourself. You don't have to say sorry for anything.
It's Israel. They're the bad guys.

Speaker 1 The Mamdani agenda is the easiest agenda in the world, saying the buses are going to be free. We're going to give you an apartment.

Speaker 1 And then all you've got to do is vote for me and realize that actually, if the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF. It goes down easy.

Speaker 2 It's 11.22 a.m. on Sunday, November 2nd, here in New York City, where early voting for the mayoral election is well underway.
I voted this morning. It's 6.22 p.m.

Speaker 2 on Sunday, November 2nd in Israel, where Israelis are winding down their day.

Speaker 2 Over the weekend, the IDF's top lawyer, Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, admitted to having approved the leak of surveillance footage from the Steit Aman detention facility that showed Israeli soldiers abusing a Gazan detainee last year.

Speaker 2 At today's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly condemned Tomer Yerushalmi, saying, quote, it is perhaps the most serious public relations attack Israel has experienced since its founding, close quote.

Speaker 2 Also at Sunday's cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister disclosed that there are still two Hamas pockets in the Israeli-controlled side of the yellow line in Gaza and promised that they will be eliminated.

Speaker 2 The U.S.

Speaker 2 proposal for a quote new Gaza envisions the construction of several residential regions in the Israeli-controlled side of the Gaza Strip, which it estimates will hold roughly one million Gazans.

Speaker 2 However, the U.S.

Speaker 2 is facing pushback from officials from Arab governments who are hesitant to fund the reconstruction and skeptical that a significant portion of Gazans would be willing to live in an Israeli-controlled zone.

Speaker 2 Israel is also facing an uptick in tension on its northern border as the Lebanese government has yet to initiate its promised disarming of Hezbollah.

Speaker 2 Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz accused Lebanese President Joseph Aoun of, quote, dragging his feet and warned that Israel will act if Beirut does not.

Speaker 2 American officials are also reportedly becoming increasingly fed up with the Lebanese government's inaction.

Speaker 2 In other news, Iran's president told state media today that Tehran will rebuild its nuclear facilities with, quote, greater strength.

Speaker 2 This, of course, comes after this summer's 14-day war in which Israel inflicted severe blows to Iran's nuclear missile programs and the U.S. struck Iran's three key nuclear sites.

Speaker 2 President Trump has warned that he would order fresh attacks if Tehran attempts to revamp the nuclear facilities that the U.S. struck back in June.

Speaker 2 Now on to today's episode, the New York City mayoral election will formally take place. The actual election day is Tuesday, November 4th.

Speaker 2 As many of you know, the frontrunner is 34-year-old Zoran Mamdani, who is, among other things, a staunch anti-Zionist who has parroted a number of anti-Semitic tropes, and he is also a Democratic socialist, self-proclaimed.

Speaker 2 Among several anti-Israel positions and positions of great concern to the Jewish community, he has vowed to arrest Israel's prime minister if he steps foot in New York City.

Speaker 2 He has committed to disbanding the strategic response group of the NYPD, which has been so critical in dealing with anti-Semitic, anti-Israel protests, including on campuses like Columbia's.

Speaker 2 And he has said he would dismantle the Technion's joint campus with Cornell University, which sits on Roosevelt Island, because of the Technion's, quote, ties with Israel's defense establishment.

Speaker 2 While many have assumed Mamdani would have an easy win, he is the frontrunner, there are new polls coming out showing a tightening race between Mamdani and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Speaker 2 Now, while we don't know which way the election will go, either way, the rise of Mamdani is extremely significant.

Speaker 2 It's perhaps a symbol of where the Democratic Party is heading, not only in New York, but nationally.

Speaker 2 Joining us to discuss the New York City mayoral election and what it means for the country and the world, and also some increasing fissures on the right as it relates to the Jewish community in Israel.

Speaker 2 We are joined by Raihan Salam, who is the president of the Manhattan Institute, a prolific author of numerous books and a prolific writer, contributor to the Free Press, to the Wall Street Journal, to City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's Journal.

Speaker 2 He previously served as the executive editor of National Review and has written for the New York Times and NBC News. Raihan, thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 It's a great honor to be here with you, Dan.

Speaker 2 So to kind of set things up for our listeners, when Mamdani got into the race for mayor, he was something at like 2% in the polls, and then he surged to victory in the primary.

Speaker 2 What happened between when he got in when he was an obscure, no-name state assembly legislator, to now he's suddenly not only the Democratic nominee for mayor, but the likely, the frontrunner to be the next mayor and a national figure?

Speaker 1 What happened?

Speaker 1 There are a number of things that happened. One of the biggest is that the race just looked very different from what people had expected it would look like, let's say a year before.

Speaker 1 Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor of New York City, basically was in this huge political bind, and he decided he wasn't even going to run in the Democratic primary because he was such damaged goods.

Speaker 1 Then you had the New York State Attorney General, Tish James, who was considered someone who was going to be a really big player.

Speaker 1 She was the one who was going to unite the left with black voters, with the unions. She was going to be someone who would come in there as a prohibitive favorite were she to run.

Speaker 1 She decided she was not going to run in part because Tish James, who again is very much on the left, had this immense friction with Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Then you had Andrew Cuomo, the former New York state governor, who was someone who had a lot of baggage, which we could get into.

Speaker 1 He decided to come in, and Andrew Cuomo became the candidate who said, I'm going to take up that moderate establishment lane.

Speaker 1 And all of the kind of core interests that play a really big role in backing mainstream Democratic politics in New York State basically decided to get behind him rather than some other moderate alternative.

Speaker 1 So basically, Zoran Mamdani, he had a very clear lane because all of these other more mainstream progressives were not in the mix.

Speaker 1 And Andrew Cuomo was there to ensure, you know, effectively that, you know, there's not going to be oxygen there for another credible moderate candidate who could run a punchier, more dynamic campaign.

Speaker 2 But Ryan, you have written for the Free Press and the Wall Street Journal some excellent pieces, and we're going to link to them in our show notes.

Speaker 2 You've explained that the New York City electorate and specifically the Democratic primary electorate changed. Something changed.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 When we weren't paying attention. Massively.
And that, as much as anything, contributed to the rise of Mamdani.

Speaker 1 Dan, there's so many different pieces to this.

Speaker 1 So one piece is that when you're looking at the New York City electorate, it's very different now than it was even 15 years ago, let alone 20, 30 years ago.

Speaker 1 New York City is not much less white than it was 30 years ago, but the white population of New York City, which is, you know, call call it, you know, a little bit under a third, bigger share of the electorate.

Speaker 1 That population used to be white ethnics, you know, Jews, Italians, Irish, people who are third, fourth generation plus New Yorkers.

Speaker 1 Now there's this really big component of college-educated transplants who move to New York City from somewhere else. That's a really, really big key constituency.

Speaker 1 Another thing is that in national democratic politics, not just in New York City, post-October 7th, Israel and the role of the Jewish people in American life, this has become a really, really big contested issue.

Speaker 1 If you look at the Democratic Party right now and its views on Israel, it is just dramatically different than where it was even in 2021 when Eric Adams was first elected mayor of New York City.

Speaker 1 And that's been particularly potent in a city like New York, where the Democratic Party, Democratic politics, you know, you've got the unions, you've got that kind of working class, middle class constituency, but then you've also got the intelligentsia, you've got media, you've got that group that is highly organized, very visible, very influential.

Speaker 1 So the reason I started with Tish James and Andrew Cuomo and all this stuff is that in the absence of those big traditional power brokers who are there who could channel the left in a certain direction, you had a lot of this unformed energy.

Speaker 1 You had a lot of openness. And the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, this is a group that's relatively small.

Speaker 1 You know, you've got about 11,000 members of New York City right now, but it's a group of people who are articulate. They knock on doors.
It's kind of like a synagogue or a church.

Speaker 1 They meet every two weeks, and basically they form the colonel of an army of volunteers that supercharge the Mamdani campaign.

Speaker 2 So most of our international listeners, they know the Democratic Party, they know the Republican Party.

Speaker 2 And now there's this new thing in American politics called the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA.

Speaker 2 If Momdani wins, he's much more a product or architect of that movement than he is actually the conventional Democratic Party.

Speaker 2 It's almost like he hijacked the Democratic Party, you know, but he comes from something else. So the Democratic Socialists of America is an actual political party in the U.S.

Speaker 1 There's a huge amount of confusion about this. The DSA isn't a party as such, but it is a kind of political organization.
It originally started in a very different world.

Speaker 1 It was started by the socialist intellectual named Michael Harrington. And back then, when it first started, the DSA was a Zionist organization.

Speaker 1 The DSA was an organization that saw itself like the socialist parties of Western Europe and what have you. And the DSA was kind of a moribund, intellectual talking shop type organization.

Speaker 1 Then in the last few years, that organization changed a huge amount. Alexandrio Casio-Cortez was the first DSA superstar.

Speaker 1 And this became an organization that has a very different profile than it did before. It got a huge number of young socialists who became a part of it.

Speaker 1 People who, frankly, like Mom Dani himself, were very motivated by anti-Israel, anti-Zionist sentiment.

Speaker 1 It went from being kind of like a bunch of librarians, you know, who were kind of meeting in a talking shop, to being an organization of people who were door knockers, organizers, a lot of millennials who were radicalized by 2008.

Speaker 1 By the global financial crisis. The financial crisis.
If you talk to members of the DSA, a lot of these are folks who moved to New York City.

Speaker 1 You know, maybe they grew up in Arizona or they grew up wherever, and, you know, their folks lost their jobs. These are people who are scarred by the 2008 financial crisis.

Speaker 1 I'm not talking about everybody, but that's one kernel of it. And then you've got people who are, you know, these are folks who are apologists for, you know, Hugo Chavez.

Speaker 1 You know, these are people who are very invested in the Cuban Revolution. You know, there's a third worldist element to what the core DSA is about.

Speaker 1 Zoran Mamdani himself has said he came into politics because of Israel, because of anti-Zionism. That's the family that he grew up in.

Speaker 1 He started the chapter of Students for for Justice in Palestine when he was at Bowdoin. And I'm just saying that because that's a lot of the folks who came to the DSA.

Speaker 2 It's interesting because if you go back and look at Mamdani's earlier statements when he was much younger, long before October 7th, 2023, he was talking about Israel.

Speaker 2 He was talking about the apartheid state. He was talking about tying everything in New York City politics, all the grievances that the left has in New York City, tying it all back to Israel.

Speaker 2 If you take that mindset and then you pour in the kerosene of post-October 7th, then suddenly you have people not just attracted to politics because of Israel, but now they're building their whole careers and their rise in politics on Israel's back.

Speaker 1 So first, there is no question that the war in Gaza was absolutely something that's been totally galvanizing for the left of the Democratic Party and for Zoran Mandani's campaign himself.

Speaker 1 Public opinion on Israel among Democrats has just moved markedly during this time, and that it's been a a huge source of lift.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, what Zoran Mamdani and his allies have been saying is, well, wait a second, you know, we don't want to talk about foreign policy. We just want to talk about affordability.

Speaker 1 So there's this way in which they're trying to have it both ways. They're talking about Israel in a way that is galvanizing for their base.

Speaker 1 But when their critics talk about it, then they're saying, well, wait a second, that's not what we want to talk about. I don't want to litigate my past statements.

Speaker 1 I don't want to talk about things that I said six months ago or a year ago.

Speaker 1 And then you have a lot of people, you know, Democrats who have reconciled themselves to Momdani who are saying, hey, he's not running for mayor of Jerusalem. Why are you fixating on this?

Speaker 1 Why are you talking so much about it?

Speaker 1 So there's a bit of a bait and switch dynamic here where you talk about it when it's useful, when it's a dog whistle to your constituency, but you don't talk about it and say, hey, I just want to talk about affordability.

Speaker 1 Then, by the way, Dan, when you scrutinize those arguments about affordability, then you're not always getting very satisfying answers.

Speaker 1 But I do want your listeners to understand, both internationally and nationally, that the affordability crisis is real. It is absolutely given lift to Zoran Mamdani's campaign.

Speaker 1 His very simple slogans, freeze the rent, child care for all, fast, free buses. These are messages that do speak squarely in a straightforward way.

Speaker 1 He might not have the real answers, but to the fact that there's a huge constituency of folks in New York who are not the poorest of the poor, by the way.

Speaker 1 They're not actually the true working class, lower middle class folks, people who live in public housing, you know, or what have you.

Speaker 1 It's people who are middle class, college educated, and they feel very squeezed by where the city is right now.

Speaker 1 Now, we can get into why they actually feel squeezed, but that's been absolute rocket fuel for his campaign.

Speaker 1 The two things, both the anti-Israel messaging, absolutely galvanizing for the hard left, and also the affordability messaging. that's his offer to the mainstream.

Speaker 1 So I think that those two things together were very powerful.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. Howard Wolfson, who's Bloomberg's deputy mayor and very active in national democratic politics, worked for Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and very influential in New York politics.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 He said that absent the Gaza war, there would be no momdani for mayor.

Speaker 1 One thing on that point, which is, you know, when you think about 2024, wasn't that long ago, right?

Speaker 1 2024, there was a feeling that wokeness had peaked, that the left had jumped the shark, the left had gone way too far when it comes to the culture.

Speaker 1 And what's interesting about the DSA and the anti-Israel movement on the left is that in a way, what wokeness was asking of college-educated middle-class white people is it was telling them, you know, you're guilty.

Speaker 1 You know, you should apologize. You should step back.
Do you remember 2020? You remember George Floyd? You remember I should apologize for my own racism. I should think about how I'm complicit in it.

Speaker 1 Anti-Israel messaging is different. It's saying that if you're a college-educated white guy, you don't have to apologize for yourself.
You don't have to say sorry for anything. It's Israel.

Speaker 1 They're the bad guys. It's the shadowy forces that are pro-Israel.
They're the bad guys.

Speaker 1 The irony of Mom Dani's politics is that if you look at the left politics of the past 10 years, it was asking something of you.

Speaker 1 Obama literally said, if you make more than $250,000 a year, you got to pay higher taxes to pay for somebody else's healthcare. Mom Dani is saying, oh, oh, no, no, don't worry.

Speaker 1 If you make 400K, you don't have to pay higher taxes. It's only if you make over a million, you have to pay higher taxes.
And by the way, it's not to pay for, you know, benefits for somebody else.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give you free childcare for your six-week old. I'm going to give you a free apartment.
It's going to be a Viennese style social housing apartment for the upper middle class.

Speaker 1 For you, for you, the guy who is an intern at Harper's Magazine, or for you, who is a creative professional who feels a little bit squeezed and is kind of like, oh my God, I'm paying what for a two-bedroom?

Speaker 1 So it's kind of amazing because actually what a lot of critics of the left among Democrats have been saying is that, guys, we need to be more moderate.

Speaker 1 You know, we need to focus on popular issues rather than unpopular issues. We can't keep asking white people to apologize for their own existence.
Mom Dani is saying the same thing.

Speaker 1 The Mom Dani agenda is the easiest agenda in the world. You're not apologizing for yourself.
You're saying that it's actually, it's Israel that's to blame. You know, they're the bad guys.

Speaker 1 So that's actually part of what's so clever about this. This is saying the buses are going to be free.
We're going to give you an apartment, you know, for a song. We're going to give it to you.

Speaker 1 And then all you've got to do is vote for me and realize that actually if the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF.

Speaker 1 I don't even know what that means, Dan, but it goes down easy. It's a very smooth message that asks nothing of you other than to show up and vote and knock on doors.

Speaker 2 So I get the messaging in New York City, but the Mamdani candidacy is not just about New York City because he's become a national figure almost overnight in ways that there are some New York City mayors that have been national figures, but we haven't had one in a while.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 1 When you're looking at the Democratic coalition right now, you got to think about millennial voters, urban voters, college-educated voters.

Speaker 1 And when you look at that constituency, you've got a lot of millennials who own assets, they own homes, they've seen the stock market go up, they have kids, they're living in the suburbs, they're doing all right.

Speaker 1 But then you've got a big chunk of the millennial generation that did not own a house before 2022, before interest rates went up.

Speaker 1 These are people who, you know, they have a college degree, but they might have some college debt.

Speaker 1 These are people who thought that getting that degree was going to be enough for them to have a kind of middle-class, comfortable life. That didn't happen for them.

Speaker 1 You've got a lot of folks who don't have children, you know, or they're getting married late if they're getting married at all. These are people who feel very precarious.

Speaker 1 They're not the poorest people in the world, but they feel precarious. New York City is ground zero for this group.
You know, the big cities are ground zero, but it's not just limited to those places.

Speaker 1 And these are the folks who are educated enough to vote, to read. Many of them are people who make small dollar donations.
These are the people who fuel national politics on the Democratic side.

Speaker 1 And so when you're looking at city after city, you've got DSA candidates who are running, who are emerging.

Speaker 1 You've got folks who are rhyming with the DSA message, even if they're not fully paid up members, because they see that discontent. You know, remember the Tea Party among Republicans?

Speaker 2 Yeah, back in 2010.

Speaker 1 Exactly. The Tea Party movement, people hated the Republican establishment, saw it as totally discredited and weak.
On the Democratic side, that version of the Tea Party is rhyming.

Speaker 1 with the DSA message. They're saying the Democratic leadership is corrupt.
They are completely bankrupt. They are not fighting.
These people hate Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 1 Increasingly, they hate Hakeem Jeffries. They see these people as weak and compromising.
They want something with edge that's sharp.

Speaker 1 And the DSA, the thing that's interesting about it is that, yes, you know, they're anti-establishment, but the thing is that these guys are disciplined. They have a movement.
They have ideas.

Speaker 1 They're organizers. We're in the age of politics as a hobby.
Politics is people who tweet. You know, maybe you give a little money here and there.

Speaker 1 The DSA, they understand that politics is about knocking on doors. It's about persuading people.
It's about putting in the time. And these guys have time on their hands, right?

Speaker 1 That's the nature of their lives and how they live. So that's extremely potent, not just in New York City, but in a lot of places that really determine the shape of democratic politics.

Speaker 2 So let's fast forward to a world in which Momdani gets elected and try to imagine how he would be mayor.

Speaker 2 Because unlike some of these other politicians who are rhyming with Momdani in other parts of the country, none of them would be inheriting basically the equivalent of being the chief executive of a government that's like bigger than many national governments.

Speaker 1 It's huge.

Speaker 2 He will be running the equivalent of a country. He will be on the hook for serious operational responsibilities.
So that then begs the question, what is he going to try to do?

Speaker 2 Is he actually going to try to do the things that you talked about earlier in this conversation?

Speaker 2 Because as far as I'm concerned, and I think as far as you're concerned, that will send the city into a downward spiral and could make his mayoralty a complete failure?

Speaker 2 Or is he going to be focused on saying, look, I'm the first democratic socialist elected to an office of this significance. I need to be successful.

Speaker 2 And so some of my ideas, while they sing beautifully in the music of a campaign, they could be disastrous in the implementation of trying to actually govern.

Speaker 2 What do you think, which direction is he going to go?

Speaker 1 What Mandani is saying, and he says different things to different audiences, and, you know, that's not uncommon.

Speaker 1 But what he's saying is, I'm going to be someone who's going to care about making government work effectively.

Speaker 1 Hey, look, I might only be 34 years old, but I'm going to appoint people who are serious, experienced people, and I'm not going to fret too much about their ideology. I'm going to be a pragmatist.

Speaker 1 He said he's going to keep New York City's current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, if she chooses to remain.

Speaker 1 You know, a lot of people are saying he's going to put this guy, Dan Gorodnik, who runs New York City's Department of City Planning, in as a first deputy mayor.

Speaker 1 You know, he's, I'm going to bring in experienced people. That's what he's trying to say.
That's what he's conveying.

Speaker 1 The thing that it's really important to understand is that, you know, Momdani has described Bill de Blasio as the best mayor of his lifetime.

Speaker 1 De Blasio has been out there as a real champion, as a validator for Momdani. De Blasio was someone who also, you know, in his youth was a democratic socialist.
He ran a candidacy from the left.

Speaker 1 And people say, it's just going to be like that. It's going to be like Bill de Blasio.
People are catastrophizing. They're losing their heads.
It's just going to be like de Blasio.

Speaker 1 And there are a couple of differences people need to keep in mind. One is that Bill de Blasio had been public advocate.
He'd been at the city council for a couple of terms.

Speaker 1 He was even an elected school board member. Bill de Blasio knew how the city worked.
And he ran a left-wing campaign, but he came in and he brought in Bill Bratton as his police commissioner.

Speaker 1 He understood that, especially for a candidate from the left, if you get public safety wrong, that's fatal for you because every crime, every incident is going to to be hung around your neck.

Speaker 1 The thing about Mandani and his circle, these are people who are a lot less experienced and a lot more ideological.

Speaker 1 There are some policies that he's describing, like creating a new Department of Community Safety, that involves a huge amount of complexity. He's saying, oh, well, they did it in Kansas City.

Speaker 1 They did it here. They did it there.
They didn't do it on the scale of what he's proposing. He needs to bring public workers.

Speaker 1 He needs to get nurses on side, social workers on side to say, I'm going to go into a dangerous situation without law enforcement behind me. He's talking about doing immensely complex things.

Speaker 1 At the same time, that New York City is in an extremely vulnerable position. I'd say the most vulnerable position we've been in in over 40 years.
Why is the city so vulnerable?

Speaker 1 Just a couple of things to keep in mind.

Speaker 1 You know, one is that big picture, New York City has had some employment growth in the last few years, but that employment growth has been dominated by healthcare jobs, like home health aid jobs, social assistance jobs.

Speaker 1 New York City in the Bloomberg era, in the de Blasio era, had lower unemployment than the nation. Now we have higher unemployment than the nation as a whole.

Speaker 1 JP Morgan, which just built this huge building, this Death Star in Midtown East, enormous. They employ more people today in Texas than in New York City.

Speaker 1 Out of the 233,000 jobs created in the last five years, Only 19,000 of those are finance jobs. If you're looking at Goldman Sachs, they could run the entire firm from Dallas tomorrow if they need to.

Speaker 1 Everyone is hedging their bets. The big message that you always get is that, oh, rich people are going to leave the city.
And then Mom Donnie says, that's not true.

Speaker 1 There are more millionaires today than there were 10 years, yada, yada. The truth is this.
There are more millionaires today than there were before.

Speaker 1 You know, if you compare 2010 to 2022, there are almost twice as many. But if you're looking at Florida or Texas, there are like four times as many.

Speaker 1 If you're looking at California, there are 300% as many as you had before. There are a lot more millionaires in America.
I'm not saying that everyone's going to rush out and leave.

Speaker 1 I'm never going to leave New York City. I'm from here.
I love New York City. I'm 45 years old.
You know, I've got kids. You know, I'm here.

Speaker 1 But if you're a 40-year-old in finance looking to build and grow a business somewhere, are you going to do it here? Or are you going to do it in Dallas? Are you going to do it in West Palm Beach?

Speaker 1 Are you going to do it somewhere else? I'm not saying the city is dead. Well, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 And I think that we have a lot of fundamental advantages, but I am saying the city's economy is much more fragile.

Speaker 1 These secondary cities, the Charlottes, or you know, places like in Austin, these are cities that are getting better. The quality of life is higher.

Speaker 1 San Francisco is a city that, under Mayor Dan Lurie, is actually open for business again. So, New York City is in a much more competitive world than we were in before.

Speaker 1 And the way the labor market has been trending is just very different. And this plays out in politics as well.

Speaker 1 New York City has fewer black middle-class residents than we did when Bill de Blasio was inaugurated. We lost about 20%

Speaker 1 of our families with children under five in the couple of years right after COVID. The city is in a much more fragile position.

Speaker 1 What that means is that we need someone who's a lot better than Eric Adams or someone who's a lot better than Bill de Blasio when it comes to convincing people that the city is open for business, that we want employers here.

Speaker 1 We want people who are employing blue collar people and the rich finance guys. We want this to be a city where you can grow a family family and a business.

Speaker 1 What you don't want is someone to come in now at a moment when the city is so incredibly fragile to run a series of ideological experiments. We need to be more competitive rather than less.

Speaker 1 We're not the luxury city we were when Bloomberg said people are going to pay to be in New York City. He said that when you had the salt deduction.

Speaker 1 You know, he said that when people could write off their state and local taxes off of their federal taxes and taxes weren't as high as they are today.

Speaker 1 We've got the highest non-federal taxes anywhere in the United States, a lot higher than California, right here in the five boroughs of New York.

Speaker 2 So we talked a lot about what this all means for the Democrats nationally. I want to talk about the rise of Momdani and what it means for Republicans.
And I want to frame this question, Raihan,

Speaker 2 against the backdrop of events over the last few days. I think for Republicans, Momdani is a very good foil in terms of you want to see what left-wing progressive politics in government looks like.

Speaker 2 We're about to run that experiment. I think for Republicans, they'll be able to say we Republicans are more than happy to run against that.

Speaker 2 But also on this issue of Israel and you and I discussed offline and I'll be doing an episode soon.

Speaker 2 A lot of folks are asking to really do a serious explainer of what's going on on the right as it relates to Israel and anti-Semitism.

Speaker 2 We've seen these repeated episodes by Tucker Carlson and then Carlson platforming Nick Fuentes and then this blow-up with the Heritage Foundation.

Speaker 2 We're not going to get into all the sort of creminology of who who these people are and what this means in today's episode. We'll do that later, Raihan, but I just want to talk the general trends.

Speaker 2 There are these fishers within the right on these issues.

Speaker 2 And there's this Republican pollster whose name I won't mention, but he's a regular listener who does polling for Republican candidates all over the country.

Speaker 2 And he tests often what attitudes are towards Israel.

Speaker 2 And I asked him a number of weeks ago among Republican primary voters, how worried was he that there was this increasingly alarming conversation among the right about Israel and about the the Jewish community and about anti-Semitism.

Speaker 2 So he wrote to me, a few weeks ago, you asked me a one to ten question about my level of concern about anti-Semitism on the right. I said three.
I'm now changing the number to four.

Speaker 2 I'm not one to overreact to the latest kerfuffle from Tucker Carlson and his band of followers. They say such things from time to time.
That's why I'm only moving the number up one point.

Speaker 2 However, I'm also not leaving it unchanged. The Heritage Foundation Carlson thing has demonstrated a greater degree of mainstreaming of the problem.

Speaker 2 Ted Cruz and some others, for their own purposes, are mainstreaming it by the virulence of their response. Obviously, the response has been very strong.
This is the interesting point.

Speaker 2 He says, I still don't see this presently expanding into dangerous spaces. He says, not one additional member of Congress, beyond Tom Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene, is joining the bandwagon.

Speaker 2 Quite the opposite, in fact. He says, two things are keeping things in a relatively decent place.
One is the left, increasingly symbolized by Mamdani.

Speaker 2 If a guy like that is the voice of the anti-Israel sentiment, then it's hard for anyone on the right to want to sound like that.

Speaker 2 Basically, there are these Fissers on the right, and actually Mamdani creates a problem for the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic voices on the right, because they don't want to sound like him if he's going to become the contrast that the right is running against now for the next few years.

Speaker 1 There are two different parallel conversations. So, Dan, to your point, I think that might be true for elected Republicans, you know, people who are weighing a run for Congress or whatever else.

Speaker 1 That might be true. My concern is with what the world looks like in 10 years or 15 years.
You've seen the polls. I've seen the polls.

Speaker 1 There's a huge difference when it comes to Americans over 50 and under 50. When you're looking at under 25s, you are seeing rank, explicit anti-Semitism on the rise.

Speaker 1 I'm not talking about anti-Israel sentiment. I'm not talking about criticizing Israel.
I'm talking about really rank anti-Semitic sentiment.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying it's a majority, but I'm saying it's on the rise, both on folks who identify on the right and left.

Speaker 1 So, from my perspective, what I'm looking at is, you know, the universe of influencers when you're looking at these so-called dissident right online right spaces.

Speaker 1 And I think that in that universe, what you're seeing is this dynamic where the right has been very much, you know, we're against political correctness. We're going to violate the taboos.

Speaker 1 This is one taboo that's been with us in American society for a really long time.

Speaker 1 The taboo that once you have a society that tolerates anti-Semitism, that's a sign that that society is headed straight down the tubes into authoritarianism, into just violent bigotry.

Speaker 1 It's extremely dangerous. That taboo has been breaking down partly because of age, partly because of distance, partly because of family connection.

Speaker 1 When you're looking at Gen Z, a huge amount of Gen Z, these folks are first and second generation Americans. You know, these are not people whose grandfathers stormed the beaches at Normandy.

Speaker 1 You know, this is getting further and further out, okay?

Speaker 1 And I think that in that universe, this whole ethic of the establishment is discredited so that any establishment attitude is under question. Right.

Speaker 1 And I think that, you know, you've heard that phrase, just asking questions. It's this idea that you gain lift if the establishment attacks you.

Speaker 1 If the establishment says that, hey, you're on the fringe, we're going to try to cancel you, we're going to try to get rid of you, it actually weirdly gives you a certain credibility and lift.

Speaker 1 So I think the hard thing for people in my world, the people who are trying to fight the nihilism, is that the old methods of fighting this, we're going to relegate you to the fringe.

Speaker 1 We're going to pretend you don't exist. We're in this moment now where people are feeling trapped.

Speaker 1 because actually these voices are so loud, they're amplified to such an extent that it feels foolish to ignore it.

Speaker 1 On the other hand, you know, whenever you're picking a fight with someone, whenever you're acknowledging someone, there's a way in which are you putting them on the same level as you?

Speaker 1 Are you elevating them?

Speaker 2 It is a dark moment. I saw this rise, this phenomenon rise on the left and among the Democrats over the last few years, and I watched it very closely.

Speaker 2 And one of the things that frustrated me is the Democratic elected officials, the Democratic leaders, they didn't really energetically confront it.

Speaker 2 They kind of said a version of what you just said, which is, you know, we don't want to elevate it. It's a real movement on our side.
There's a lot of energy.

Speaker 2 We don't want to discourage young people from being involved in politics. It's just, let's not overreact.
Let's not big deal it.

Speaker 2 And what they called the fringes ultimately overran the elites and the leadership of the Democratic Party, I would argue in part because the leadership of the Democratic Party never confronted it.

Speaker 2 But we're seeing so far, it appears that the leaders, the elected officials of the Republican Party, are confronting it.

Speaker 2 And you just look at these statements by, you know, Senator Cruz, by Lindsey Graham. I think we're going to see a statement from Speaker Johnson.

Speaker 2 There is a real pushback that I never saw from Democrats during the rides of Rashida Tlaib, Elon Omar, AOC.

Speaker 2 So on the one hand, you say the pushback gives it oxygen, but the non-pushback allowed the oxygen to kind of really catch fire.

Speaker 1 Dan, I'm not saying don't confront it. I'm not saying don't call it out.
What I'm saying is what that internal conversation is looking like, how I think people are trying to puzzle this through.

Speaker 1 And here's a fundamental difference. The Democratic Party has been a top-down coalition.

Speaker 1 That's a coalition that has traditionally been follow the leader in the sense that we listen to the establishment, you listen to the kind of credential elites, you know, the Ivy League.

Speaker 1 Whereas on the right, since the Tea Party era, the whole thing has been that the establishment is weak on the right, right? That's how Donald Trump was able to rise.

Speaker 1 Plenty of establishment Republicans said, hey, this guy's not right. We're going to condemn him, et cetera, et cetera.
And that in some ways was fuel for him, for that movement.

Speaker 1 So I'm not saying that you don't confront. And what I honestly, I think that a lot of people are puzzling through is how do you confront?

Speaker 1 Because the confrontation is not going to be, hey, Speaker Mike Johnson said we've got to get in line. And therefore, we're going to get in line.

Speaker 1 I think that the message is more, what is this exactly? If you're coming after the Jews today, where is this going exactly?

Speaker 1 Because it sounds to me what you're attacking is civilization and excellence. You're trying to attack people who want to build and create things.
You know, where exactly is this going?

Speaker 1 So what I'm saying is that it's not going to be, hey, you know, some prominent figure came in and said this, that then we're going to shut it all down. That's not how things work right now.

Speaker 1 You know, frankly, when people talk about foreign ops, you know, when I'm looking at China, Russia, you know, their cutter, you know, there are kind of a lot of different forces out there that want this country to be divided.

Speaker 1 They want to actually cripple our ability to be effective and do great things.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, to me, it's like when you're fighting a very conspiratorial movement, looking like the elite establishment is marching in lockstep, that's not necessarily going to get you the answer you want.

Speaker 1 When you're pointing out that there actually is a real conspiracy going on that's trying to get the right divided and that's trying to actually send it, you know, in a million different directions that are ultimately going to cripple and divide the country, you know, you've thought about this a lot.

Speaker 1 I think that you need more than one strategy.

Speaker 1 By the way, another piece of this, when you talk about Momdani and what he represents, Momdani understood that the affordability crisis that, by the way, in my opinion, the hard left in New York State exacerbated, they actually have made it worse.

Speaker 1 And I think that for the right to ignore that, to ignore the fact that you've got young people who can't find a starter home, young people who are actually not building wealth, young people who are not forming families, that's ultimately going to be the driver of this poison.

Speaker 1 And I think that you can't ignore that. You can't ignore that discontent that you've seen on the left.
You have elements of that on the right that could get worse over the coming years.

Speaker 2 Okay. And I guess

Speaker 2 back to what we were just talking about a moment about if unless there's a real way to address those issues, that really could be bad.

Speaker 2 The Jewish community is always the scapegoat when these debates get ripped open,

Speaker 2 however unfairly. But be that as it may, we will be coming back to this issue.

Speaker 2 And I will be, I just want to flag for our listeners again, we're going to be coming back and doing a deep dive on this intra-right issue.

Speaker 2 Today's conversation was largely focused on the mayoral election because it's imminent, but obviously, these there are issues going on on the left and the right that we have to dig into further, and we will be doing that in the days ahead.

Speaker 2 And until then, Raihan, thank you for this conversation. And I look forward to seeing what you're writing next about this election.
And we look forward to having you back on.

Speaker 1 Thanks so much, Dan.

Speaker 2 Call Me Back is produced and edited by Elon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti.
Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Marian Khalis Burgos.

Speaker 2 Our director of operations, Maya Rockoff. Research by Gabe Silverstein.
Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.