Episode 890: The Maine Event

We won't have Graham Platner to kick around anymore, or will we? Also, can you have full boomer luxury communism amid a property tax revolt? We'll discuss all this and more in today's episode of The Editors. Rich is out today, but I'm holding down the fort in his stead, Noah Rothman. I'm joined by Phil Klein, Charles C.W. Cook and Michael Brendan Doherty. Our sponsors for today's episode are Vare watches and fast-growing trees. More on them a little later on. If for some reason you're not already following us on a streaming service, you can find us everywhere. You get your podcasts. If you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget I said anything. So, Phil, I don't know if I can count the number of shoes that have dropped on the Graham Platner campaign. It's a full payless outlet at this point. And the rumors are that we haven't heard the last about Graham Platner's sorted past. But Democrats managed to push Graham Platner to the side. This week, he announced his withdrawal from the race on Wednesday night in a really graceless 11-minute video in which he spent most of it complaining about how unfair. his situation was and how the democratic establishment had crushed his and his supporters dreams. Politico reported this, by the way, as a condition of his withdrawal from the race that he had to be allowed to dump all over the party. The prime directive defeating Susan Collins in the fall, the whole point of his exit from the race, was at best an afterthought in his video. So it's not a sure thing just yet, but we can pretty much assume that this is the final chapter of the Graham Platner saga, Phil. What, if anything, do you think the lasting legacy of this chapter will be? Does it have a longer tail on it than Democrats seem to presume? I mean, the thing that I just find amusing is that here we are in July and Democrats are having to scramble to dump and replace a candidate after something's exposed that was blindingly obvious to literally everyone except Democrats. Right. So Molly Zhang Fast said on TV the other day, she said, oh, well, you know. We really bought into this whole character arc that was being sold by the campaign that somehow he had had a rough period PTSD after serving the military. And then he did all these bad things, but now he's become a better man. And so and so. I mean, I just keep thinking back to the whole Biden debacle where before the Biden debate, if you would have asked Americans, do you think, Biden has the mental fitness to serve another term, majority would have said no.

And yet, and they had beaten back the whole, you know, Robert Her report describing Biden quite in an interview quite like he appeared in the debate. And then the debate comes out. We get all these stories about how shocked all these Democrats are. And they couldn't believe it. Who could have possibly thought that he would have face planted in the debate like that? Not the Joe Biden, I know. And what's like, what are we talking about here? Here's a guy who came out of nowhere. He's a socialist activist. He, he had a Nazi tattoo for almost 20 years, lied about it, lied about being an oyster farmer. In reality, he sold a few thousand dollars worth of oysters to his mom's restaurant. He lied about purchasing a house through VA loans. It really was purchased by a handout from his rich father. He was wealthy. He didn't come from a working class background. He was sexting multiple other women while. months into his marriage. He joined, he was had an active profile in, in an app that's known as a Predator's Paradise. That's the one we don't know nearly enough about, to me. I feel like there's some uncovered details there. I mean, and then we get the New York Times story, of course, where we talked about physical violence toward women, but because the Times wrote in such a way that the featured woman was a Republican, that was somehow dismissed. And this was all full. And then we kept Mali Youngfast saying, well, you know, we were kind of duped by this whole, by this whole. Character arc turn, you know, narrative. What are you? I mean, I know where, you know, if I had, you know, phony Rolexes, I know whose door I'm knocking on to, to sell my phony Rolexes. I mean, come on. How absurd. I mean, why does this keep happening? I mean, if you're, you know. So, Michael, Phil mentioned. Biden and the Biden saga, and there are a lot of parallels. But let's look forward a little bit. So after 2024, conventional wisdom took hold among Democrats in which they convinced themselves that the biggest problem with Kamala Harris's nomination was that it all happened behind closed doors. If only this was some open process, even one that produced the same results, it might have soothed frayed nerves and helped the public get over the Biden cover up. No, no, no, no.

The problem here wasn't that the party didn't have some performative nominating convention. It was that Democrats contorted themselves into hideous knots to defend the indefensible. And as Phil noted, they've done the same thing here with Graham Platner, four months, smearing veterans, smearing working class Americans, abuse survivors. There could be, you know, some frayed nerves from that, too. But they think they have a remedy, this rapid fire convention in which delegates and committee members will hold some sort of determinative straw poll, which will give us another nominee. Somebody that progressives insist has to come from Graham Platner's mold or else there's going to be a civil war inside the party. This isn't over, right? They're not going to wipe the slate clean by November and everybody's going to have, you know, good, happy feelings about how this process unfolded. No, they're not. And you're right that just coming up with a process doesn't solve the issue. The thing that bothered people about Kamala Harris, the way she was selected, was the same thing that bothered people about, I think, the way Kamala Harris, during the early part of the vice presidency, was sidelined, which is that I think what creeps people out about. Democrats at a high level is the ability of elite Democrats to converge on an answer across institutions, across, you know, all sorts of institutional lines, and just decide that this is the way forward. Right? So, like, the process doesn't matter. It's actually this weird form of elite coordination that I actually think a lot of Americans find terrifying. They found it terrifying during COVID. You know, they find it terrifying during 2020 during the George Floyd riot, you know, when suddenly everyone was in favor of riots. So I don't think the process solves it unless the process becomes really meaningful. and really is soliciting different democratic constituencies rather than this weird professional class. And I think the other thing that is troublesome about this whole debacle for Democrats is it shows that this hive mind I've been trying to describe. exists now in the place where a political party used to exist, right? Like there used to be an actual institutional democratic party that could say yes or no, and really vet a candidate. And now they're just relying on like random consultants and, you know, political entrepreneurs that are putting themselves forward. You know, those are the people that push Graham Platner on them. So, yeah, I think this is not an easy out for Democrats at all. Those are all really important caveats. But it does seem to me like we have ample evidence now that Platonorism, such as it is, is what Democratic primary voters want. I mean...

We have ample evidence that the activist class craves outsiders who couldn't pass a conventional vetting process because either their views are out of step with the nations or their past conduct is pretty horrific or both. You know, the Nazi tattoo is one thing. Another is maybe going to a pro-Hamas rally. Wow, Hamas is ongoing in the effort to murder Israelis in real time, as Dary Eliza Chevalier did. This is authenticity, right? This is what we constantly hear. Democratic primary voters have been told for a decade now by Democratic officials. The GOP suffered zero setbacks politically as a result of the populist takeover. And the public doesn't care at all for public morality anymore, not in the age of Trump. None of this is true, but it's become a shibboleth. So does the Graham Platner area contribute to the notion that, look, this is just what Democrats want? And even if the party were to somehow discover courage and institutional mechanisms to enforce its will, that they're going to run up against a party that is increasingly inclined to reward anger and extremism as a species of political zeal. Well, I think there's a whole bunch of stuff going on here. One is that the public has convinced itself that things are much worse than they are, on left and on right, under Republicans and under Democrats. We have a reflexive dismissal of the miracle that is America. That opens the door to Platoners, but also to Roy Moore's and Donald Trump's. There is... the problem of primaries per se. We have primary electorates that are not, in my estimation, any better at choosing candidates for the general electorate than a smoke-filled room would be. I do understand we're not going to go back. to the previous setup, people rarely relinquished power having been given it. But I really do think that a convention is a better mechanism than a primary in a whole host of cases. One great example in recent years was Virginia, where the Virginia Republican Party had become a disaster. When it switched to a convention, it got Glenn Youngkin. who won and remained popular among Virginians throughout his term. And the third problem, although this might be changing, given the recent Supreme Court decision, is the defangging of the parties and the empowering of the groups. I don't have any time, though, for those... in the professional political class, who, as has been discussed, and now trying to justify their support of Graham Platner with a whole host of excuses that don't in any way abandon the problem, which is that they trusted Graham Platner. They did not see this coming.

I mean, this seems to be the new argument, right? That, well, we were juped, as Phil says. We know that. That's the critique. You can't say, well, I as a professional political commentator was unable to see this coming. As a defense, that's the attack. That's what you did wrong. We could see it coming. We've been talking about this for months. We knew. That this whole thing was at worst and up, and at best, mass psychosis. We could work out the likely consequence. I mean, we saw Jill Philippovich saying, well, yes, of course, Graham Platner has terrible judgment, and he's never really had any. role within politics. But I don't see why that would be a problem for a US senator. Don't forget, she said light misogyny. Light misogyny. That is the problem here. If you can't intuit it, I don't mean occasional. Of course, we all get things wrong. I get things wrong. But if you couldn't see this one, if you couldn't see this massive flashing red light in front of you for eight months. then it's on you. It's not on him. It's not, oh, of course, we were all very upset to have been deceived. It's not as if this guy, you know, presented as Colonel Brandon in sense and sensibility, but turned out behind the scenes to have been a cad. No, he had a tattoo on his forehead that said, I'm a cad, don't trust me. And they all fell in line. So I think it's a combination of those two things. There are structural reasons that we're getting Graham Platner, and I don't excuse the right here. If you look back to 2022, the right, especially in Senate races, got into bed with all sorts of bizarre people who also lost, it should be said. But they also seem on the left at the moment to want it. And you mentioned... You know, maybe somebody having gone to Hamas rally. That's seen as a sign that he, and Trump is the same on the right, that they won't be viable or they won't be cowed. You know, if they've done something heinous or they talk in a heinous manner, then you know that they'll really stand up for you when it matters. I have to say, that is not only. a weird way to look at politics. It's also, I think, wrong. I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever that it's true. I mean, with Trump, it's certainly not true. Trump is not reliable. Trump is reliable only in the sense that if you decide that Trump is your North Star and follow Trump around, then you're always on the same side as him. But it's not the case that he has been rock-ribbed in the ways that those who have glued themselves to him want. It's not true, although he's a different species, and I think a much better man, it turns out, of John Fetterman, who has been proven to have his own mind. And I don't think it would have been true of Graham Platner either. All right, exit question for everybody. It's going to be hard for Democrats to find a candidate as damaged as Graham Platner.

So Republicans probably shouldn't be celebrating prematurely. However, it's definitely an overly clever analysis to say that Democratic troubles are behind them. And this is actually great for their prospects. But who knows? So does this make Susan Collins reelect more or less likely, Phil? I think it ultimately doesn't change it that much. I mean, yeah, I guess her, I guess in under a scenario in which. platinum stayed in with all of this baggage, then it's more likely, it's less likely relative to that. But I think that when all of the dust clears, you'll probably have people pulling roughly where Plattenor was prior to this latest revelation. So, Basically, the point is it's going to still be a close race that's within a few points that on election night, we're going to be waiting up to see the results and we won't really have a good sense of what's going to happen in it going into election day. I think if Graham Platner stayed in the race, it obviously would have been easier after, you know, everyone called him, you know, to drop out if he had then stayed in. People would try to claw it back, but I think the damage would have been done. It would have been hard for him to, you know, hard for him to win. All right. Michael, we have a negligible on the board between more or less. We have one neither. Where are you at? I think the Dems and Disarray story helps Susan Collins. I think she just appears very steady. in contrast to the Democratic Party in our state. And I think Graham Platner's unceremonious exit from the race demotivates some of the young, ultra-progressive voters that Maine Democrats need to win. You know, whoever they replace them with will be someone who is like, boring and looks less transformative and looks like they're not engaged in the big debates of the that are driving the democratic left. So I just think it's, yeah, I think it helps Susan Collins. Charlie, more or less than either. Well, I go back and forth on this. I had come to the view that Susan Collins was going to beat Graham Platner two weeks ago, say. I had decided that Susan Collins was going to beat Graham Platner. I think that his exit from the race makes it less likely that Colin wins because she won't be running against Platinum. On the other hand, the phrase that I'm now seeing pop up across the left, it is crucial that we beat Susan Collins. It's just a funny phrase intrinsically. I don't think there has been anything less crucial in American history than that Susan Collins is defeated and removed from the Senate. It's like saying it's imperative that we beat Joe Manchin. No, it's desirable if you don't like Joe Manchin. It's preferable if you want a Republican Senate. But it's not crucial that you beat Joe Manchin.

And so I do wonder how many people in Maine who don't share the overarching or broader aims of the Democratic Party are going to hear that it is crucial that we beat Susan Collins. Look at the next candidate. Decide the Democrats in the state are a bit of a mess and stick with the devil they know. I, on balance, though, think that this is bad for Susan Collins. relative to Platna staying in? I think I'm going to side with MBD on this one. Marginally better for Susan Collins. The Republican Party is united in Maine. The Democratic Party is obviously not. And this convention will only paper over some of that. And its lingering effects will have. Good. We'll help Susan Collins a little bit, but it's going to be a tough year for Republicans across the board, and she could still be swamped by a wave. With that, let's take a minute to hear from our first sponsor of the day, Bear Watches. Take it away, Charlie. Indeed, well, we have spent a good amount of time this year discussing tariffs and whether it is actually still possible to make things in America. And our first sponsor today is putting that question to the test. Vair was founded in Los Angeles back in 2016 with a simple but very ambitious mission to revive the American watch industry. Cut to today, Vair is proud to be the largest independent watch assembler in the United States, building watches in California, Arizona, Rhode Island and Alabama, as well as manufacturing leather straps in Illinois and Florida. All of us here at the editors have been wearing our VAR watches for a while now, and I can tell you firsthand, they are truly amazing. In fact, I'm wearing my VAR watch as I speak. Vair makes some of the most durable, well-built watches on the market. They use top-grade luxury materials. They all come with a waterproof warranty, which means you can safely swim or dive with your watch on. They've earned over 10,000 five-star reviews. What's more, Vair's classic analog approach to timekeeping is not only sophisticated and refined, it's also a welcome departure for people who are tired of getting pinged on their smart watch all day. So if you want to support American craftsmanship and own a watch that's both rugged and refined, check out there. You can find them at Vairwatches.com. That's V-A-E-R-Washes.com. Thank you, Charlie. So, Michael, there has been a strange synthesis emerging between the far left and the establishmentarian right when it comes to something they shouldn't agree on at all, local tax policy.

This week, socialist candidate for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed endorsed freezing property tax rates for seniors so they may, quote, age in place with dignity. It's an odd pander for a socialist, for whom wealth extraction is the sine qua non of both their policy preferences and their cosmic notions of fairness. And beyond that, it's bad policy. But on the other hand, It is kind of heartening to hear somebody who's as ideological as Abdul El-Sayed bend to the demands of parochial politics and admit that those demands must temper the socialists' expropriative instincts. Even the revolutionaries have to pander here and there. Do you take similar reassurance from that as I do? I didn't think about it in that exact angle. I have a lot of thoughts on this, though. I historically have said on this show that I don't like property taxes on domiciles. The home you live in should not be taxed, precisely because I like the idea of protecting seniors who stopped earning and doing this. However, I recognize that in our current mix and how we currently structure things, we actually make it relatively easy. for people who earn over a lifetime to accrue savings and investments to help them cover this stuff. But you are seeing all over the country, like little revolts against property tax increases. A lot of this is driven by the kind of post-COVID jump in assessment, assessed value of homes. But you're seeing, like, North Carolina, Missouri, Iowa, all introduce bills or ballot measures to freeze county revaluations. You know, the thing is, though, is that as much as I, like, in theory, don't like property taxes, what I hate even more is something you refer to at the very top of this show. which is like luxury boomer communism. And the fact is, boomers who own homes are, in general, the wealthiest Americans, like as a giant group. Boomers are buying more homes than any other. generational group right now, which is an astonishing thing. It's usually not the eldest group that's buying homes. It's usually a group right in the middle of their lives, right, in their prime earning ages. Yeah, and this is a giveaway to people who have already been given away, getting a lot of stuff. And remember, a lot of boomers receive... pretty generous social security benefits that usually cover property taxes even on their own. I think this is a really bad pander, and I think it's really a bad sign for the country that we are still pandering to seniors this way when a lot of economic data seems to show that what we really need.

is more housing built faster so that younger people can get on the property ladder and begin forming families that they want to have, that they say they want to have. And to me, it's like the only major economic problem America faces right now is shortage of housing and starter homes for young people. And this is this would exacerbate the problem too, because again, In the absence of this, a lot of these seniors might downsize and make their homes available for others to buy and put them on the market. Anyway, I think it's a terrible idea as is. Charlie, if you squint hard enough at what Elsaid is saying, you can kind of see the predicate. For a Zohran Mamdani style affordability message in there, even though Zohran Mamdani himself advocated a substantial property had tax hike in New York City, he called it a last resort because there was such a big pushback from his constituents, both inside the city and from without it. Where do the displaced go after all to go to Westchester? Still, the threat was sufficient enough to get the legislature in Albany to back his tax hikes aimed at the wealthy so that he would give up on the property tax hike. We have enough evidence now to suggest that there's something of a property tax revolt in more than just New York City, Michigan, and elsewhere. It's a slow rolling one. In New Jersey, where I live, we've had one for the past two gubernatorial cycles, although Democrats have managed to overcome that as a deficit. It was still a deficit, and they addressed it each time. How do you have a socialist revolution if no one wants to pay for it? Can you have the kind of government they're advocating if they're also saying, well, we can't really tax the people who have the wealth that we want to extract? Well, you say you can detect an affordability agenda, but the question here is for whom? Because the obvious counterattack against Abdul El-Sayed is to say, no, you're making America more expensive for young people. If we keep giving tax breaks to older people and we don't cut the government, which is not what socialists wish to do, then other people have to pay. This is, of course, my objection to salt. I pay more for the same federal government than someone in New Jersey. Why? Because people in New Jersey are profligate. The property tax question is an interesting one. It's one I've thought about, given that we have a property tax revolt here in Florida. It's odd that this is on the agenda for somebody running for Senate. Saeed is not running for governor of Michigan. He's not running for his county board. He's running for the U.S. Senate. That's a federal office. The federal government doesn't impose property taxes. It, in some cases, subsidizes. property taxes through federal tax rules. But we're now watching a state-level debate in a federal race. Far too many people in this country are running for the wrong office. They want to be somewhere else. They want to do something else, but perhaps the only avenue available is for federal office when they're thinking about state issues or state office when they think about federal issues, and it's creating this weird cycles.

Probably taxes in general are quite efficient. They're much more efficient than income taxes. I understand on a emotional level why people don't want to pay property taxes. And I find, if I'm honest, many of the arguments in favor of property taxes quite annoying. If you go back 150 years and... You look at those who went west. We've all seen the movies set in that era and in that place. You see families who cut down trees and built houses in the middle of nowhere. And those houses were theirs. Now, they might have had to fight off Indians, but those houses were theirs. Nobody came to them every year and asked them for money. And that's a beautiful thing. And I think there's something in the American character that wants that uniformly. But there's also a great deal in the American character that wants government services. Government services that my hypothetical frontiersman would not have had. And if you're going to have those government services, the money has to come from somewhere. Now, in Florida, which I followed more closely than Michigan for obvious reasons, we don't have that many taxes. We don't have an income tax at all. We don't have any sort of income tax. We don't tax capital gains. We don't tax interest. We have no income tax. I think that's great. And we have a relatively low sales tax at about six and a half to seven percent depending on where you live. And then we have property taxes. And the property taxes are higher than in some places, but they're lower than Texas, which is another no-income tax state. If you substantially cut those property taxes and you don't cut government, then you have a deficit. So although I'm... relatively sanguine on Florida's plan because it's much more modest than the slogans would suggest. As a general rule, this whole thing across the country strikes me as being divorced from sensible budgeting and, if I dare say it, being a little bit self-serving from those who are pushing it. A lot of people, and I'm not a class or generational war guy, as you all know, but a lot of the people who are pushing this are now retired. And effectively what they're saying is, well, I worked for the last 40 or 50 years. I got a whole bunch of tax cuts along the way. And now the one tax that I routinely have to pay is property tax. And I don't want to pay that either. And that rubs me the wrong way. So I think you're right that we're in the middle of a generalized tax revolt. I think as a philosophical matter, that's probably good. It's a good thing that it is difficult in America to raise taxes. But this one, both from the candidate himself who is not running for state office, and from those who are pushing it, doesn't strike me as being well thought through. So Phil, to tug on that thread.

that Charlie has unearthed. This is not just a left-wing thing. It's arguably more of a right-wing thing. When she was running for governor of South Carolina, Nancy Mace, called for the abolition of property taxes. Ron DeSantis in Florida is pushing a ballot measure that will raise homestead exemptions, move the move to eliminate property taxes on primary residents. Charlie also mentioned salt relief that boosted property tax offsets to $40,000. And as he also noted, that's philosophically offset perhaps by a small government philosophy, although that doesn't describe the populist wing of the GOP. A lot of this is aimed at seniors who just don't want to pay property taxes anymore. And believe me, I feel their pain. And yet, this is obviously horrific policy. It would blunt the generational turnover in homes. It would raise the cost of existing homes. It would make it harder for young families to establish equity. You know, this is, if it's an affordability agenda, it's an affordability agenda for the wealthiest generation of Americans. That, too, is a liability for the GOP, is it not? Yeah, I mean, to be clear, Nancy Mace just called for abolishing property taxes for seniors, not abolishing property taxes in general. And, yeah. So I would say that, you know, This is sort of ridiculous policy. I don't generally love as a way of making tax policy, using tax policy as a way to reward certain constituencies. I didn't like the gimmicky Trump, no tax on tips, and the no tax on social security and no tax on car interest payments and so forth. Generally speaking, I don't like the sort of basically the point of taxes is to raise revenue for necessary government purposes. If you're going to get rid of property taxes, you have to figure out a different way to do it. If you got rid of property taxes, only on seniors, it would be completely arbitrary. Now, because why would you reward just that group? The argument would be that I suppose seniors don't have kids in school, so they're not benefiting from the property taxes and much. But if you were to make that argument, then most of our tax system, which transfers trillions of dollars from working age Americans to retirees, who eat up the largest chunk of our federal budget. comes to retirement programs and retire you health care. So already there's this huge shift, and you're pointing to basically the one area in local areas where you could say that property taxes, the revenue has more of a net benefit to people who are younger working age families. So to me, this would be, you know, completely, I mean, for all of the reasons, I mean, one of the drawbacks always have going less is that your brilliant colleagues have made a lot of the salient points. But one thing I'd add is just on the politics of this.

I don't think it's that great because the sort of, you look at the kind of Zohran Mamdani coalition, which El-Sayed is clearly trying to see if he could win with at the state level of Michigan. The biggest chunk of them outside of his hardcore kind of jihadi base is the, is this these sort of downwardly mobile people, the people who may have grown up. in relatively well off, we're used to going on vacations, went to elite schools, and then they end up in a situation where it's very, life is very affordable to buy food, the prospects of getting married and living in buying a home in a nice neighborhood along the lines of where they lived and raising a family. It feels to this generation like that's slipping further and further away. So that's sort of what you kind of want to tap into on the affordability front. So I think that his opponent, Heli Stevens, actually, if she plays this right, this could be a huge vulnerability. You could run ads that would be quite. defensible saying El Caird wants to raise raise the cost of home buying for first time homebuyers. I mean, there's no doubt what that would do because one, there would be the supply issue. You'd have more older people motivated to sit in their houses for longer and not downsize. And you'd have the shift of how are you going to make up that revenue? Well, by raising taxes on non-seniors. So if basically you have one house and it transfers from a senior. to somebody who's younger, just by virtue of them being younger in age, their property taxes would go up significantly. Not because the property appreciated per se, but just because the owner... of the same property happens to be younger than not. So to me, I think this is a huge vulnerability. If I were the Stevens team, I would be salivating at this because I think that you don't play it as you're against.

seniors, you play it as this guy is trying to raise costs on young people. And housing is probably, you know, comes up if you talk to people in surveys, what are the costs that you're most worried about? Housing is one of the big costs. It's why people delay having families because they're worried about. All right. So, Phil, you've inspired an impromptu exit question because I think this is a departure from standard DSA political philosophy. What does this tell you about the Abdul El-Sayed campaign? It's a bit of a hellmary. So polling doesn't suggest right now that he needs that, but he's doing it. And he's also accusing his opponent, Haley Stevens, of supporting Charlie Kirk's worldview because she voted to honor the life and legacy, quote, unquote, of a man who was murdered for his beliefs. Is he in trouble? And if he is, does this in combination with Graham Platner's disgrace mean that the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party will be a bumpier process than so far it's looked like? MBD. Yeah, I think he is flailing. I think he's, as you said, he's been throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. And I think it's part of a broader problem, a brand problem for Democrats that goes back to the Biden years that they have not solved. And that even the, even though I think it's been positive for the Democratic Party to kind of. have fights with its progressive wing in public. I think that always energizes a party. They still have this, this trust problem. And I think they're having an identity crisis, too. Is this really the party of the little guy when it's dominated by the professional class the way it is? Charlie, is there trouble in the socialist paradise? I don't know. I find this one really hard, if I'm honest, to evaluate. I do think that Syed might have a problem winning the Senate race against Mike Rogers. I'm not quite sure what to make of the primary. The polling I read yesterday has been corrupted a little by a good number of surveys that were done. on behalf of Abdul El-Sayed and were intended to make it look as if he was dominant. If that's the case, who knows where public sentiment really is? I'm not sure. I will say as a broad matter that although right-wing populism comes along with many left-wing economic ideas that I disdain, I think... right-wing populism is much more likely to succeed in the United States than left-wing populism, especially in its current incarnation, where it's bogged down by all of these ideas that aren't populist, or at least aren't popular. I defund the police and all jails and...

pretend that men are women and so forth. So I am alarmed by the direction of the Democratic Party in one sense, in another, I think there's a paper tiger lurking here. Phil, is this a cry for help from the Abdul El-Sayed campaign? I mean, if I don't have access to all of his internal polling, but if this were sort of one of those questions where you're saying, like, what's the most likely conclusion to draw from this? I would assume that they're worried about his support among seniors. Typically, the older Americans have been the most skeptical. of the sort of socialist vision, Zohran Mamdani did. That was one of his softer groups was among seniors. So my guess is that his sort of... You know, he's trying to do these sort of social media dance videos to get, you know, to get the young vote and copy some of Zohran Mamdani's success on social media. So I would assume that they're worried that he can't win seniors or that he's having trouble winning seniors. So this is sort of an effort to try to pander to that group. I agree. It's a cry for help. With that, we'll turn to our second sponsor of the day, fast-growing trees. Did you know that fast-growing trees is the biggest online nursery in the United States with thousands of different plants and over two million happy customers? They have all the plants your yard needs like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so much more. Whatever plants you're interested in, fast-growing trees has you covered. Find the perfect fit for your climate and space. Fast-growing trees makes it easy to get your dream yard, order online, and get your plants delivered directly to your door in just a few days without ever leaving home. Their alive and thrive guarantee ensures your plants arrive happy and healthy. Plus, get support from trained plant experts on call to help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants, and learn how to care for them. Long time listeners will know I have two Meyer Lemon trees, which are from fast-growing trees, which are approaching maturity. We've got, you know, a nice little crop that's almost time for harvest. But listeners may not know that I also have fast-growing trees, Arbor Vitas, that I planted along my property line for privacy. I planted them about four years ago when they were about five feet tall, and today they are well over 20 feet tall. Fast Growing Trees has the best deals for your yard and up to half off selected plants and other deals. And listeners to our show will get 15% off their first purchase when using the code editors at checkout.

That's an additional 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com using the code editors at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees.com code editors. Now is the perfect time to plant. Use editors to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. So, Phil, I'm going to go to you again for this one. We have a mini scandal that's erupting in New York City this week after Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration put out a map. that identifies 30 historic ethnic enclaves inside the boroughs. Some of those enclaves include little Palestine, little Egypt, little Pakistan, places that I've not been familiar with, having spent most of my time alive in the orbit of New York City and even inside New York City itself. So this is all news to me. But somehow, the Zohran Mamdani administration managed to miss some other far more popular ethnic enclaves like, I don't know, little Italy, which even though it was a bit commercialized, still contains a few old families. They couldn't find a single Irish neighborhood like Woodlawn Heights in the Bronx. And they have no idea where the Jews live. The administration said that this map was supposed to be one that identified substantial foreign-born populations from regions and countries around the world. City Hall said it, quote, does not highlight religious groups. So by immigrants, the mayor just means himself. Foreign-born New York City residents. Phil, that's pretty convenient. Do you buy it? I mean, it's just completely bizarre. I mean, it's, I don't think that, I mean, as a native New Yorker, I don't think that many people are thinking of your little Senegal or little Guyana. And, you know, that, like, I'm sure it would be news to some people who've lived in Bay Ridge their whole life, that they're actually living in Little Palestine. So I just think that this is completely ridiculous, you know, ridiculous that if you're going to do something like this, you don't name Little Italy. Now, the argument, of course, would be that he's talking about kind of, you know, in its current... In its current iteration, a lot of Little Italy has been taken over by Chinatown. And you have, you know, a few restaurants around Mulberry Street where, you know, and it's not, there's not a large number of Italians that actually live in Italy, in Little Italy. But, I mean, I think that there's something more sinister here, which is it seems to basically say we're going to celebrate. communities that have not assimilated yet and deprioritized communities that have been here for a long time and have assimilated. You know, people don't think of, you know, people think of Italians and Irish as New Yorkers, right, as Americans. They've been here for, you know, going back to the 19th century. But he seems to sort of prioritize the...

21st century version of immigration in which people don't assimilate over the 19th century model of immigration with its emphasis on assimilation. So I think it's hard to just, you know, chalk this up to some sort of oversight. I mean, obviously, neighborhoods change. Little Italy isn't, doesn't have the same Italian presence that it did a hundred years ago. But it's a historic immigrant neighborhood that's crucial to the history of New York City. So I think it is telling and sort of less innocent and more sinister than they're trying to spin it. Yeah, Michael, I just don't buy it. Like the notion that you wouldn't include Mott Street because it's just a theme park now. It just doesn't hold up. They have Ktown, Korea Town, on this list in Midtown Manhattan. And that's all a bunch of restaurants, and it's a block. The same with Little Brazil, which didn't make this list, but it's just a bunch of restaurants in a single block. How does this happen? The city's, the city's explanation just doesn't make any sense to me. No, it's very bizarre. You know, it's interesting. Even unlike the contemporary way of New York neighborhoods, this is insufficient, right? Like, there's no little France in Kabul Hill. And there really is like a little France in cobweil in Brooklyn, or a little Paris. Just the way they correctly identify little Odessa at Brighton Beach, where there's been Ukrainian and Russian immigration. It's a very, it's also a missed opportunity. I mean, if you're going to talk about immigrant enclaves and exclude the 19th century, you're also excluding a lot of great... New York historic sites and even museums that are, you know, dedicated to the Irish, the Italians and Jews who made up, you know, a part of this city and still do, uh, in some places. And the other thing is like, you know, These neighborhoods change, and some of them change very quickly. There's a comedian who, you know, an Irish-American comedian, Des Bishop, who grew up in Flushing, and he has a special coming out this week on YouTube where he talks about these neighborhood dynamics that, you know, he grew up in Flushing in the 1980s when it was like... super irish and you know like a hotbed of IRA support and now it is and then he's joking about we were not going to talk about who moved in there and he looks at a table of Chinese patrons at the comedy club and they're laughing and then he talks about how he now lives in dime square and the Chinese people there in a historic Chinatown are complaining about gentrification because it's like all these

hipster whites are moving into the the bottom of Manhattan in what's being called the last hipster neighborhood and it's like you win some you lose some and that's that's actually been the attitude in New York basically for over a hundred years I mean that you know these are not going to stay with the ethnic mix they have and It just seems wrong. You have to choose whether you're going to mark it as a historic or live thing. And the, I don't know, the New York administration here really seems to have picked almost kind of out of their way to exclude both the 19th century, the, you know, supposedly assimilated immigrants, but also like, you know. almost all non-white. I mean, it's almost an entirely non-white list except for Odessa and Poland. So it's, I don't know, it's a very strange artifact. I hope it gets laughed out of existence. Charlie, this kind of goes back to the Zohran Mamdani Fourth of July speech we talked about on Tuesday in which he spoke from the immigrants perspective. and credited immigrants for somehow managing to see in a land of opportunity in America, even though he delineated all the reasons why it was not for the immigrant populations in historically and today. To Phil's point, it seems like this administration and its underlings, whoever crafted this map, they just don't like assimilation. They advocate against it. They want to encourage resistance to it. This is just another instrument in that campaign. No, I just want to congratulate the Italians on finally becoming white. The news to them a couple of decades ago. Look, the explanation for this is extremely simple. The figures in our political world who think like Zohran Mamdani and hover around figures such as Zohran Mamdani, Zohran Mamdani himself, of course, counts here, are complete weirdos who are obsessed with race, sex, and national origin. That's how they see the world. They do not believe, as the old school liberals do in a colorblind constitution, in the promises of the Declaration. and in what is loosely termed, universalism. They have gone out the other side of that. They are the equivalents on the left of the race realists so-called on the right. The horseshoe here is clear. The... Reaganite conservatives and the old school liberals disagreed on many things, but they had a broad commitment to the notion that all men are created equal, to the notion that one ought to be judged by one's character, not one's skin, to the notion that America is best when...

We talk of Americans. Those Americans could be anyone. They could be from anywhere. It could be male or female, tall or short. Even gay or straight. Zohran Mamdani doesn't. Zohran Mamdani in this regard is, although it manifests in a different way, like those weirders who... I think that it matters whether you can trace your lineage back to the Mayflower. He is consumed with interest in where people are from. He has in his mind a hierarchy into which people fit depending on where they are from. So of course he did this. Of course, he fractured New York into 40, whatever it is, pieces, and then excluded the older groups from the exercise. How is this remotely different to all that we have seen in the evolution of American progressivism over the last 20 years? This is American progressivism. This is why I believe that it, not those who disagree with me, not those who are Democrats, not those who are old school liberals or what you will. But this is why I think American progressivism is so pernicious. He doesn't see the world like we do. He sees the world like this. So yeah, maybe it's one corner with one restaurant. But that is little Bosnia-Herzegovina. And that has to be treated as its own entity. And we need to slice and dice New York up. And he can say the Bosnian-Huscovian community, which incidentally will always agree with him. We'll speak with one voice and will be delineable. in comprehensible political ways. One of those rare instances where you can actually use the Balkans to describe Balkanization? Yeah, it's Balkanization and I absolutely hate it. I'm not going to pretend as some who go too far the other way do that we can't determine differences. Of course. Listen to me. I'm quite obviously, as fashionable people would say, I present us. An immigrant, listen to my accent. I am different. Someone who has a different color skin than I do is different. If you put us next to each other, you would describe us differently. I, as a non-practicing, but cultural Christian, am different than a Muslim or than Phil, who is Jewish. There's no point pretending we're all the same, but this is something different. Because you could put all the people I've just described together at a barbecue, and no one would care. No one would care. It's not how we see the world, but he does. So, yeah, this is what he's going to do. I think, though, and I know I've taken this at a much higher level than it was pitched, but I think this has to be defeated. I think this is the death of America. It's not just about assimilation.

It's about the fetishization of difference. We did have an immigration approach that was more focused on assimilation, but it didn't always succeed. I mean, we had areas in New York City for 30, 40, 50 years in which many people never learned the English language. Often, it would be the third generation that did. But that wasn't seen. by the reigning culture. It was seen by some politicians who wanted to exploit it, especially in the late 19th century, but by the reigning political culture that was not seen as a good or defensible thing. And that premise has to be protected. That assumption has to be kept. The Zohran Mamdani's of the world have to lose on this. On that note, we'll take a moment to plug NR Plus. That's our digital subscription service, and it's your way around our metered paywall, as well as your way to see 90% fewer ads when you sign up and log in. In addition, NR Plus subscribers are invited to comment on articles and blog posts, and they get invites to exclusive calls and events with our writers and editors, as well as conservative newsmakers. It's a great deal all around, but most importantly, NR Plus is a crucial way to support our valuable journalism. If you're not a member already, Please consider joining tens of thousands of your fellow national review readers by becoming a member of NR Plus today. So, Charlie, let's stick with you for a couple of other things. You recently took your kids to Universal Studios. No, I took one kid. See, I'm taking them on separate trips. It is definitely better, by the way, to split your kids up sometimes. Well, we normally do everything together, but I don't know why. I think they wanted to go to different places, and they both got straight A's. The bribes worked, and now I have to make good on the bribery. And yesterday I took my eight-year-old to Universal Studio, just the two of us. And you know, we didn't have fast passes or any of that. And it was busy, and it was hot. It was 100 degrees. And it was great. And the lines were there, but they weren't. crazy. I had suspected it might be a zoo given it's the summer, everyone's off, a lot of foreign tourists and the World Cup. But no, I think amusement parks in general have got a lot better at managing cues than when I was a kid. If you go back and you look at the sort of lines that major attractions were commanding in 2000 and you look now, Perhaps it's that the parks have got bigger. I wonder about the involvement of computers in allocating guests. But no, we had a great day and it was just great fun to hang out with just one of them. And I look forward to doing it with just the other of them next week. That's great, Michael. You two have a similar, a great American dad summer story that you were telling us before we started recording. There's baseball, there's summer, there's kids, and it sounded magical. Yeah. So yesterday, my son's been playing on a local travel team for baseball this year and started last year. And he's always wanted to just be a fielder. He's comfortable.

In the middle infield, he's comfortable in the outfield. He moves laterally well, but he's never been interested in being a pitcher or a catcher. Well, yesterday, we're in an absolute blowout of a game. It's like 16 to nothing in the final inning. And his coach comes up to him while he's playing second base and says, apparently said to him like, Owen, we're out of pitchers. We need you to come in and my son told him not a good pitcher. He's never done it before. Never, never even wanted to try it. But he felt duty bound and obliged and took them out and started taking his practice pitches. And I started recording. I texted my wife, who's two states away on a trip with another child. And I was like, he's pitching, you know, because she, in the modern age. There's an app called Game Changer, and moms that are away from their sons get to watch the games remotely. And he took the mound, and he bailed his team out of this disaster game, this disaster inning. He just had to get one out, but he got it. He induced the ground out to himself. picked up the ball, manfully took a breath through it first, and finished it off. And then I looked down at my phone, which was warning me basically that I was about to have a heart attack. It was like my heart rate had gone up 30 beats per minute in about. 20 seconds. I know this because I wear one of those wearables that plugs you into the Matrix. So yeah, that was my experience yesterday of nearly having a heart attack on behalf of my son, who himself was just game about it. And then afterwards said, you know, I think I'll try that again. It's like, okay, great. Phil, speaking of the great outdoors, you're planning a camping trip. Well, maybe. I don't know. I'm sort of monitoring. I've got like all the weather apps and radar. I have a thread going with Claude to every few hours. Look at the updated weather situation because, you know, I'm not whiny about rain in general, but it just there are certain activities that just suck. with rain. And if you're trying to camp and you can't light a fire, you can't really go hiking, you're just in sort of a muddy tent, just sitting there in a tent and you can't do anything. It's not so much fun. So I don't know, it's going to be sort of a last minute decision. I'll see what Claude says. So overnight, things are looking worse since last night's update. So we'll see. Well, I have a positive spin on big violent weather events. I can't be the only person in this audience who looks forward to them because they might save me some money on tree removal.

I have a couple of trees on the periphery, long dead, big ones that would cost probably five figures to get rid of. So I'm just kind of hoping the universe chews them apart. And one did. A big giant limb came down on us the other day. And I had to do my best grand platinum impression, put on all my outdoor stuff and got the chainsaw out and the log splitter and took it all apart. And I probably have enough wood out of this one limb to get me through January. And I, you know, that's how I survived, just limbs coming down and saving us from being totally bereft of firewood. in the winter months. With that, it's time to move on to editor's picks. Embeddy, what's your pick? My pick is Jim Garrity's morning jolt on the disaster of this new Qatari donated Air Force One, not being completely secure. Just Jim is always at the ready with this stuff, and you have to make him part of your feed. Yeah, that is such a scandal, and I'm glad Jim took a swing at it. Phil. What's your pick? We talked about Graham Platner. My pick is Jeff Blaher's, who he took the time to sit through all of the 11 minutes, which I didn't. I was just sort of, you know, trying to fast forward to the part where he says he's going to suspend his campaign. But Jeff, listen to the whole speech so you don't have to and had some fun with it. So his piece is a sniveling Graham Platner torches the Democrats on his way out of their party. Very good. Charlie, what's your pick? My pick is Ramesh Pannuru's cover story in the latest issue of the magazine, The Fight on the Right. I am as the author of The Conservatarian Manifesto a few years ago. Always interested in fusionism. I know that has a specific historical term. I'm using it with a small F. I want to find common ground. I don't thrill to division, even though I'm quite happy to engage in it if I... believe it necessary. And I think this is a great overview from Ramesh about where freedom conservatives and national conservatives, who are often at loggerheads, can agree and also can't agree in 2026. Excellent. I am going to go with author and contributor Daniel Flynn's latest for National Review, JD Vance, Milton Friedman, and the Raw Way, elegy to skillful articulation of Milton Friedman's economic and political philosophy and a equally skillful dismantling of the vice president's misapprehension of it. That's going to do it for us. You've been listening to a National Review podcast. Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of the show without the express written permission of National Review magazine is strictly prohibited.

This podcast has been produced by our own Charles C.W. Cook. He's standing in for the incomparable Sarah Shudy. And he, too, has made us as well as himself sound better than we all deserve. Thank you, Phil. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Michael. Thank you to the absent, Rich Lowry. Thank you to our advertisers, Vare watches and fast-growing trees. And thanks especially to all of you for listening. We're the editors. And we'll see you next time.