Cocktail Chatter and Closing Remarks

You guys are just like staring pointlessly down at your phones. We're about to do a podcast. We're about to do it. The moment of magic is about to happen I am husbanding my energy for the big reveal. I am not husbanding anything. I thought we were just like having a moment Hello and welcome to Sleep Pitical Gap Fest june eleventh, twenty twenty six California is an emmbarrassment edition. I'm David Plot of Cititycast in Washington DC and from New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School in New Haven, Connecticut athlon Hello. Hey, David, Hey John. And from New York City, John Dickerson, one of my jokes about when I was doing fake careers for you, John was that you were going to create a new album of John Prine songs. and lo and behold, there you were at the John Prineit Wolf trarap poetry slamming Prine lyrics on stage. How was that Oh, it was wonderful. Hi, Emily It was just amazing. I made some remarks, and then I read the song Mexican Home, which I had done when John was alive. It was super meaningful. Also the last time I was there, he was playing. And anyway, you can see it on the whole thing on my substack. I won't repeat it here, but it was super meaningful and the Prime family is really wonderful. And best part was being able to like hang out with in the backstage context with, you know, some of the greatest singer songwriters. So who were also a part of the show and did actual singing, which I did not. The only thing that would have been better is if you and Jason Isbll had like that cool stage That would have been that would have been you could have died then This week on the GA Fest, the Iran war takes another terrible and predictably terrible turn Then which will last longer the Iran War or California's a vote counting couldould California's a botched primary vote count actually help improve US elections or probably more likely just increase mistrust in them. then we'll talk about the deeply contested and fascinating mayoral election here in Washington, DC with my city guest colleue Mike Safer. Plus, we cocktail Chad Inflation hit its highest level in three years last month. inflation driven by the own goal of a war against Iran that was started by President Trump The war that has now dragged on for five months with no particular end in sight This week brought a shift. Most weeks brought usually have the same news, which is the Strait of Hormuz blocked and Iran and the US. poking each other and Israel hammering Iranian proxies, Hezbollah and Lebanon. This week, however, a slight change, which is that the war got hot again after whole series events we can talk about involving the shootown of an American by an Iranian drone, an escalation of Israel's hostilities in Lebanon that was responded to by Iran and then an exchange of missile fire and bombing between Iran and the United States and then other countries in the region. It's just terrible. They have a region ruins quarter of Lebanon's population on the run, much of southern Lebanon destroyed. The Gulf state economy frozen. Prices in the U. S and around the world spiking Um Did the hostilities on the ground this week change change the facts at all? Does it make it more likely? Now that there will be some kind of resolution. or is it no this is just a diversion on this kind of endless hell that we're cut stuck in. What the Iranians are stuck in, I should say I don't see much evidence of it. And one thing I would add into your recapitulation of what's happened is that last week we had basically an open fight between the president and the Pime Mister of Israel in which the president said he was crazy, then a whole airport shuttle full of White House aids leaked to Axios that Trump had been even more aggressive on the phone, swearing at Netanyahu, saying that he Trump is the only reason Netanyahu was being kept out of jail, that everybody hates him And then Trump, after then there were a bunch of denials of this, basically in an interview in an extraordinary interview with the New York Post, basically cops to having done all of that. That was last week. Th then this week, as you say, David, the Iranians tried to attack Israel. said on Fox and other places that he was going to tell Israel not to retaliate because he was so close to a deal It's now become literally innumerable how many times hes said that Iran is close to a deal, using a signature trick of his, which is to sort of say something's happening that isn't in order to put pressure on that outcome Israel blew him off didid not listen to him. And then he expressed his anger in one of the ways he does so. and the Israeli Prime mininister responded and said, we have a right to defend ourselves. So Two of the parties, three parties involved in this war, seem to be okay with continuing it. Iran and Israel and the president whose leverage is really only the bombs he has U has found what is true in recent American history, which is the bombs only get you so far And the deal that he says is close. is weak relative to His claims about what it's going to be relative to the JCPOA, which is in existence before this and certainly relative to the math you would have to do to determine whether whatever deal he gets was worth all of the expended munitions, dead people and destruction to the economy of the world and the United States It just feels like they're chasing their tail, doesn't it? I mean, Hagsa said Our Secretary of defefense, if we have to negotiate with bombs, we'll negotiate with bombs. But like negotiate it doesn't seem like there's any arc here that gets to a different place because of just what you said, John, there was a deal Trump ripped it up in this first term. He wants something that is crushing of Iran and they're not interested in negotiating their way to being crushed. It's just like a fundamental misjudgment of where they are. And the only off ramp that I can see is if it just turns out that the Iranian regime is actually about to crumble because things are so terrible in Iran. And it seems like there's some hints of that. It doesn't seem like completely impossible that would happen, but it is not in evidence here in the way that would actually make this kind of deal really close. L that's One of the things Dave me in us sadness and It struck me as I didn't know what it was going to give me and then I realized it made me sad. But like it struck me as just a really terrible turn in this war that there was a story in the New York Times todayay that one of the targets in the bombing yesterday was a water plant in us outside of town and that we seem to have deliberately, with precision munitions bombed water facility that served the civilian population and You know, you can You can talk all you want about going to war against Iran's military and about the need to break the military. But the idea that we would resort to destroying the infrastructure that keeps alive the people who you know who are victims of this regime is it's so disheartening. And if it's precision munitions, we obviously know better. I think that with the school, the case of all those murdered children at the school, killed children at the school There was a, you know, there was it was probably faulty intelligence and stupidity rather than deliberate targeting of them. But this if this is deliberate targeting We We're war criminals. Congratulations. So add that into the total into the column of costs whatever the president gets out of this Was that cost worth it? And also Tehran was already running out of water. so This is obviously a particular pain point. And it also is how think about how far we are from the beginning of the war, which when the presresident talked about the Iranian people rising up, U the inclination, they didn't rise up And they're going to be less likely to if their water has been shut off as a result of US. bombings Emily, one of the things that really perplexing me is that A accccording to Mark Zandy the economist, this war has cost one hundred billion dollars, about seven hundred and fifty dollars per household and extra energy costs and military spending for no apparent gain And if you look at the inflation numbers Uh increasing just this suffering that everyone around the world, but particularly in the US, because that's where we live is feeling because everything is costing more, especially energy and It occurs to me that one of the functions of a function or one of the ways a political system functions is that pain signals get through You the point of a political system is to convey pain to the political actors who make decisions and that will change their behavior I feel like we're like a patient who has some weird neurological ailment where we don't feel pain because clin to respond to these these nerves are sending massive pain signals, his own constituents are suffering. they are having to pay more for things. They don't their pocketbooks are emptier and they are suffering from it and they're telling their the world they are saying day after day, this is painful. and yet he cannot feel it. He doesn't get the nerve signals. He is not interested in it And the whole party is not interested in it. And that's a sign of a real non functioning system Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think that's a good analogy. And it's partly the loyalty of the remaining mega base. if it's down to thirty seven percent, maybe percent of the country. Th those were the polls last week. That still seems to be enough for Trump because it maintains his grip on the Republican Party And he's kind of willing, I mean, there's almost something like deliberately defiant about caring about Americans. Uh, you know, economic crisis and financial pain right now where he says like, no, I'm not thinking about that. I'm only thinking about supposedly removing Iran's nuclear weapons. though of course that is nowhere in evidence either I mean, yes, the transmission system is down, although if if you look at the polls, I mean, at least, I mean, the pain is being registered. peopleeople are feeling it, he's losing some of his own base. The problem is you already articulated, David, is that the way that would work is that it would be transmitted through the outcome of the elections. And as we will talk about, One of the things the president is working quite hard on is not lowering prices, but trying to create the conditions so that when he loses lots of Republican seats in the House, he can claim fraud and create a kind of repeat of what he did in in twenty twenty, which is another way of dampening or removing those pain signals, but in the most kind of if what's going on right now is a kind of constant shots of Novaain to deaden the pain, the election u catastrophe he's setting up is like giving somebody a belt in their mouth to deal with the pain. I mean, it's going to be ugly and it's going to create lots of of secondary effects. Can I the only thing that is different than the normal Trump way of behaving in this war is that usually what happens when things don't go his way is he just redefines what success is. And so, you know, the wall, it never gets built Oh well the wall has been built, right? Infrastructure is coming. It never comes. infrastructure has happened. Like he just says things that are implausible in this case, what's the economy does continue to remind people that this war of choice is hurting them. And he tried this weekend when he said this week when he said, I like inflation or I love inflation or whatever. It was his first attempt to go even further in redefining because what they've essentially said is Whatever pain you may be feeling is because he made this difficult, righteous decision to keep you from having a nuclear bomb land on your head U And And that we're basically, I think going to hear that until all the way through until November Though those nuclear bombs were never heading for our heads and nobody was like worried about it and he never built up a case that even his people were supposed to care particularly about this Why had he just blundered into this? because he thought it would be short and, you know quote successful like Venezuela. It's all about the miscalculus in the beginning Yes Emily, what do you think is the way if you are Trump to extricate yourself from this war? What is the least bad way for him? to get himself out of this catastrophe, orr maybe the least bad way for America sign a deal that opens the Strait of Hormz, gets got back to square one pre a hundred billion dollars, pre all the people who've died, pre all the destruction. we just get back there with maybe some additional thing, right? I mean, the Iranians in return for lifting some of the sanctions and giving them some of their frozen funds back, seem to be willing to have some offloading of nuclear material, just like take that and pretend that it's better than the Obama or deal, decclare a victory about something small, but like something that makes the war stop and everyone can like take their weapons and go home And the destruction that the war is causing economically goes away seems like the obvious, simple answer And yet John, they have not done that. Why have they not done that? It's been That has been available to them for weeks, but they haven't done it att least two things, which are not the complete list. The first is Netanyahu is a much different set of demands from Iran As his well and Hezbollah. and One of the parts of the drama this week was the presresident telling the Financial Times Nenanyyahu doesn't have a say, I have a say in what happens You don't say that if that's the way things are U So that's a problem Um And two weeks of bickering between the two of them mean that if the president declares victory or you know some kind of deal that he says is great Nenyaho because his own domestic political conditions require him to be a hardliner and show that he has Israel's interests in mind, not just allies shhip with the United States will call Trump out And so that's a problem. The other is A lot of people are going to go, wait a minute, you did all this and the deal is marginally better or maybe even not marginally better than Obama you caused all of this trouble And and some of the people saying that would be in his own base And I think you could imagine the entire conversation for those jockeying for the next presidential campaign to be around this idea U And so that's ain't that ain't so great for him either. One quick thing I wanted to say that's really There's just so many ways in which Trump is is kind of off his game on both the economy and you know trying to convince a country that is really hurting because of prices that like this is, you know, it's good because we're getting some secret oil from Iran. It's just so it's like an extra layer of shambolic. But one of the things he's saying is, you know, Vietnam was longer, World War IIo was longer Which is not crazy, you know, If people believed in the reason for the war, then they'd be like, let it go through because we're doing this thing. The problem is nobody believes in the reason for the war. They think it was a bad idea and it's being poorly managed. So he doesn't have the country on his side The other reason it doesn't work is that every ten seconds he says there's a deal and we're going like we're going to like muscle them into a deal. and he's been saying it for weeks So you can't say give me patience when every other second, you're saying, hey, we're going to be here any second. Like it just doesn't internally the inconsistencies of his behavior with respect to this this war and also when you look at the interviews, I went and looked at the interview I'd done I did a piece this week about the five instances in which Trump shut down the interviews And u We'll talk more about that in the election thing, but it's his He's always had that instinct, but in the meet the Press interview, it wasn't the fact that he shut the thing down If you go and look at the transcript, it is to linear reason what a Jackson Pollock painting is to a straight line That's kind of the condition he's in in the public square these days. Yeah. I Keep thinking about this kind of alternate path for the second Trump presidency in which he plays a lot of golf He shuts down the border. The stock market goes up. He figures out how to make the AI companies happy, and maybe that's a bubble in the economy and maybe it's not. But things like just sort of percolate along. We never bom Ian. And he's popular. And we go into the twenty twenty six midterms and the Democrats are having a really hard time and the Republicans do fine. And so we also don't have like a threat to elections, which is, you know now, as you were saying earlier, John, seems like on the horizon because they are going to lose and Trump's going to have to find someone to blame There just was this like cushy gig available. and instead, it's like everything is so much worse and so we are going to have or we could likely have a big crisis around the elections. And when you engage in this fantasy, is it a bong that you're using or are they edibles? because there just wasn't, I mean, the reason think I I kid The reason I thought that was never possible is that is the bio feeedback of the election Here's a man who was cast out of his own party for about nineteen seconds after his supporters attacked the Capitol and sought to overthrow the votes of eighty one million people And then he survived that And then he survived an assassination attempt And so a person who had very little restraint pereriod or engage with restraint as a kind of long term way to get around the rules when he did engage in restraint. All those restraints were off and the restraints that naturally recede as one gets older So and a party that had watched all of this And and decided, oh boy, what you don't do is buck this guy in your own part. So I reads Fantasy opposite fantasy One of my least favorite kinds of music is jam band music So like the idea of having to go to a fish show or a grateful Dead show in their prime was couldouldn't have been less appealing to me. And I feel that where the stage we're at in the California count is the jam band phase of of vote counting It's just the county noodles on. you have no idea when it could end. No sense of progress, no sense like are we in the beginning of this, the middle of this, the end of this? Like what would resolution be? done with the governor's race. I mean, maybe know we are, but I just want can we can we raise some sort of can we create immediately a prize for an analogy because that analogy is It So good As someone who loves jam bands, that portion of their jam bandedness, I even couldn't sign up Drums in sppaceic Rful Dead showhs were like excruciating. anyway I mean, Emily U what what is the deal with California? Why is Why has it taken us so long as a nation? Because it does feel like this is the week most Americans and especially Democrats, who are the generally ones who benefit from whatever's going on California, have suddenly realiz The way they're doing this is terrible and it's creates uncertainty and doubt about an election. And it's not that people should mistrust this result. you can understand why people mistrust this result because its just seems so discordant with how everybody else is able to count their votes. Yeah, it's pretty discordant. I think that There has been complaining about California in the past, but This time, there's more of a spotlight on it because it is the election that's hanging out there, right after a presidential election The presidential result in California is never endowed. and so it's just a matter of like everyone sloshing around waiting for the final count. Whereas this time there was actually like a contested set of questions that people were curious about I mean, what California is doing is very dutifully claiming to count every vote and giving people a lot of leeway to turn in their votes. They send an incredibly long mail ballot. One of my friends showed it to me a few weeks ago. It just had so many names on it for governors, so many different things to figure out. It's like a long homework assignment And then you can turn it in on election dayay, but it can arrive up to a week later. And then They you do a lot of like very careful checking of signature verification and the other things with mail and balloting that takes a long time you don't have to do mail and balloting this way. You can have shorter deadlines and shorter turnarounds, but California has this very intricate set of rules for counting, which has led us to this past. And I think There is a lesson here about the excesses of You know, California would say, well, this is all about the franchise and making sure everybody could vote And I think there is a tension between that worthy goal and the reality of needing to know when an election is settled and over. And I think there's a kind of third element here, which is that because Trump and now you know spepeaker Mike Johnson, like the Republicans are piling in with these speicious claims of fraud, there's a resistance to change, right? It's like, well, we can't change our system because people are making these false allegations because the allegations are false and that plays into them. No, that's a bad reason to fix things. But the thing is, it should get fixed anyway. And so like there's just some house cleaning that needs to happen here.an Can I make a point Jum before you jump in, which is that I was thinking about this Really this is the this is the kind of Democratic process version of the argument in abundance This is this is abundance, but for voting, which is a counting ballot. Yeah, county b. What California has done is like we put in a lot of process and rules and regulations to make things safer and fairer visually there are lots of making air quotes all they all that process is done is just make it dysfunctional mess that takes way too long to do something that other people and other jurisdictions and other countries are able to do rapidly. And maybe they do it rapidly because they've cut some corners to be a little bit less safe, but there's no evidence that the actually the results are any less true in these other places. It's just like they've decided to move quicker and to be more efficient. And so we need a kind of abundance, there needs to be an abundance argument for for voting too, which is like, no, the point is to get things to get results as quickly as possible to people to give people clear indications of when the results are coming and to make very strict rules about you know, when your ballot comes in and what you have to do and hold people to that. And it this idea that like if you give people more time or you put in more verification processes, oh, that makes the system better clearly has been belied by what's happening in California. so they just need to get rid of it , get rid of the environmental impact statement version of voting I am not just going to repeat everything you guys have both said because I essentially agree with it, but I would like to carve out a small nook. for a challenge that exists, which is that goodood intentions poorly handled can ruin the good intentions, which is what's happening here. But there's this the what's what I fear is that a lot of measures in other states that exist to make sure that the votes are counted and that everything is tight which have been used as a bulwark against Donald Trump's claims and others Those are what's really app peril here that in other words, what happens with what's what California has done is not just mess up what's happening in California It means that whenver if there's a dispute in the twenty six election, the twenty eight election in Wisconsin or Michigan or something the ability in the public conversation to say, o, you see it's like in California, like when it may not be like California at all when in fact, whatever's delaying the vote in those places is for the right reasons, which is that it takes a long time to get it exactly right so that people can't have fuel for their conspiracy theories. although of course conspiracy theories are perpetual motion machines that require very little fuel. my is my larger concern about what's happening in California? So should we have a rule, even like a national rule that mail in ballot Yes That election day is election day. Yes, we should Yeah. And that if they don't What does that mean? What does that mean? Y ballot It has to be there. The ballots have to be there. Yeah Yes, that you have to mail it ahead of time, right? Like I think To me so I used to be very nervous about cutting off the few extra days because I could totally imagine, right? That you don't realize that putting your ballot in the mail or in a ballot box isn't good enough that actually it has to get there early so that it's going to arrive early. But I've come around to the idea that as long as people understand that that's the deadline, it's fine. And part of the reason I've come around to that is that Wisconsin made a change like that very late in the process, a year or two ago. and it was okay. like got I think Yeah, it's educating voters. I mean, I think the tricky part of this is that with mail and balloting, there are always some ballots that get rejected more than the provisional ballots that get cast at the polls, right? Because people do stuff wrong. They don't sign their names, they whatever, they don't put things into the envelope. And I do think that you know the states that are succeeding at a really high rate with ballots successfully submitted, they have a really simple rules and process, right? You want to make it as simple as possible for people to vote. So there are a few things to screw up. like you don't want to have an extra signature. you don't want an extra envelope, all that bullshit, which Pennsylvania was fussing around with a year or two ago. You want something really simple, but then I think, yes, it's fine to say that they have to go. So I think it's those two one is that. the other The states that don't allow you to start vote counting until like the ball uil the till the polls close until the the last cock crows Yeah. Well it's the problem with rank choice voting, right? Like it all depends on Well rank choice voting is not issue in most of these. That's not is a real issue for some jurisdictions, but that's not the main issue. But there are these states and California is one of them andes, Pennsylvania. been one of them where you cannot start the vote count either until election day or until even the polls close that is not just sm. crazy. It's crazy to not have those results Can I get up Can I get on my hind legs about a couple of things? I mean, the president of the United States is the country's largest and most vocal election denier. Not about his own not only about his own elections, which goes all the way back to twenty fifteen, but now about the elections in California. two points about that. One is that the logic of his vote denial in California doesn't. M any sense. Right. So on the one hand, he says that it's all rigged because the Republican lost in the mayor's race However, the same voting process is the one that ensured that a Republican is now in the final race for The governor's office So the rigging would have had to been so particular that it blxed out the mayoral candidate, but not the Republican gubernatorial candidates. So it falls apart on its face. Now what happens? So the duty of a public official, particularly the one that is the most powerful in the American system is to safeguard and be a steward of the electoral system because like without that, everything you do loses trust and there is mistrust. Donald Trump. thrives in a situation of mistrust. So obviously he wants to do everything he can erode trust. But I mean, it's totally contrary to the job he has. And so when your speaker Mike Johnson, I've talked before about creating how Donald Trump has created a market Mike Johnson rose to power in part because he joined Trump's challenge for the twenty twenty elections it' and and promoted theories and tried to create space for them in the house. That led in part to his speakership. And now in this case He was asked specifically he thinks the election was rigged. He said no. But then almost seconds later, he said when he was asked what evidence he had that there was something afoot in California. He said, well, there are so many things downstream or upstream from this. I can't remember which way he used the cliche that like you can't tell. In other words, no evidence is exactly the evidence we need that there is something amiss here So that you now have the speaker of the House engaging in a basically a cut rate version of what Donald Trump is doing, which is exactly contrary to their jobs as constitutional officers So so doubt in the free and fair elections in America And that's like a really big deal. I mean, it's a huge deal, John. And obviously, they are bad actors and they are they're disingenuous actors and it's It's terrible. States can do things to trust and solidify trust interion. And so we have to, you know, focus focus on the problem you can solve, not the problem you cant solve and you cannot solve the problem of Donald Trump as a state election official, you could absolutely solve these other problems. And so that needs to be something that Democratic officials attack go after in the states where they can go after it nameamely California. And don't not solve it because they're making sure fuss, right? Like But that's a fun mistake That's a false choice. You can do both. And in fact, you have to do both so that the so that things don't get confused. So that when you do fix the things in the states, it doesn't look like you're giving in legitimate claims by Donald Trump. The claims are illegitimate. The state counts slow. Let's fix the the slow counting of the state because it gives a little bit of fuel to highly illegitimate claims by constitutional officers who should know better Well said, well said, almost as well said as Donald Trump in his interview with Kristen Walker on me at the press. I mean, it was that, you know, he was also being very to the point and direct. I mean, that was just to go back to that for a second, just an incredible Bay of Trump's lack of having any actually anything to say, right? He just kept saying there's evidence of voter fraud with no evidence and just endlessly repeating it louder and louder and then he got up and walked out Well, the when I went and looked at the five instances where he's walked out or shut down interviews, including mine from his first hundred days in his first term The the thing he walked out on in every instance was simply a reporter saying, what evidence do you have for what you just said? I up the most basic Journalistic question And the thing is they just kept asking like, well, what evidence do you have? And because they didn't have any he had to shut the thing down. in both the Welker case and with Stevevenskep of NPR, It was specifically about his claims that elections wereed rigged Washington, DC's Democratic primary concludes on Tuesday. It's been the most hotly contested mayoral election here in DC in a generation after three terms of a moderate Democrat, Muriel Bowser being the mayor Bser decided not to run for a fourth term despite having been I think generally regarded as a pretty successful mayor. and the city instead will now elect Almost certainly the winner of the Democratic primary, who will almost certainly be one of two c City cououncil members. Kenya McDuffy relative moderate or Jenise Lewis George, a Democratic socialist This election, for me, as a lifelong Washingtonian, is enthralling because it encompasses almost every single theme in modern democratic politics, the charismatic socialist versus the establishmentarian affordability and crime kind of duking it out for being the key issues in the race whether fighting Trump is the right approach or ignoring Trump is the right approach the state of affordability in the city, the role of the federal government in the life of citizens and in the work life of citizens of Washington. So I am so happy to be joined by my Cityast DC colleague, the executive editor of Citycast DC, and the host of the Citycast DC podcast, Mike Schaever, Mike Welcome to the Gap Best. So thank you So who are these two candidates? Tell those of us who are not mean and you who these two candidates are and why do they how in what way do they embody the sort of fundamental divide of the Democratic Party Both of the candidates are Native Washingtonians, which is in a city that has had like an enormous population growth and gentrification is actually like a meaningful data point One of them, Janise Lewis George is in her thirties. She is a Democratic Socialists of America member. She represents a Ward four, which is a part of town that is sort of like the black middle class and like increasingly gentrified white people. The other is Keny McDuffy. He's fifty. he Uh In his like twelve plus years on the city council, he's managed to be close with both the progressive block and the more establishment centrist group that have really duped it out in the council and Now that he's running for mayor against Democratic socialist. He has sort of been embraced wholly by the moderate Democratic establishment and has increasingly sounded like a, you know angry guy about crime and we got to, you know get these crazy teens off the street and And stuff like that. He did a press release this week where he referred to Louis George as Democratic socialist candidate, Louis George U So he's like he's a very mild mannered guy and it's iss a little bit awkward that he has like taken on this like fighting Middle guy Posture Hold DC for Citycast. And I think the reason I wanted to talk to you on the GB Fest is that we found one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen in a poll a poll that you helped design, I would knowe. Basically these two Democratic candidates who were both You know both highly educated, both Democrats, both native Washingtonians. And if you poll Black Washington about them Black Washington is basically evenly split. Like Black Washington, both older Black Washingtonians and younger Black Washingtonians are basically evenly split on do I support this more socialist candidate or this more moderate candidate If you pull White Washington's Tonians who are now almost a plurality in the city there's something really crazy happening, which is that White Washingtonians have our generation, the fifty, you know, sort of over forty five are favor McDuffy, favor this moderate. But if you poll young Whington white Washingtonians They are for this democratic socialist Den with George by an enormous margin It's true And the newer you are to the city, the more you are for. And so you have this the prospect of this this mayor election basically being decided by a bunch of young white progressives who've moved to the city in the past five or ten years. that almost all of the support she has is the support disproportionately comes from people who just moved to the city. And it's so strange to think that this historically black city with a kind of where the black middle class has always been the dominant political force in the city is suddenly being ed because a bunch of young progressives have moved here And when you were listing the way it kind of ways it sort of mimics all of the big storylines of democratic politics This one, which is really also a educational gap that people with college degrees, much more pro the Democratic Socialist candidate Um and these these new folks. So there's this irony that the Socialist candidates' base of support is not the working class of Washington, not the longtime black residents struggling to stay in a city that's become really expensive. It's this progressive, almost entirely college educated it's easy to make fun of them as know, this is just sort of like you just graduated from Oberlland and this is your next step is to move to Washington and vote for the DSA candidate. But in fact, like moving to Washington for these young people who sort of You know, I'm moving here, I'm going to get meaningful work, I'm going to find a place to live. It's become really expensive. The meaningful work is obviously endangered in the Age of Doge theirir sense of alienation and their desire to go with a left wing candidate who talks about you know, marshalling the government to build a lot of housing. It's not entirely irrational or performative. That's there's this is a demographic that even in the even though in the DC context of a city with a lot of pockets of really deep poverty, these people are not in those pockets They're also not as comfortable as prior generations of like new college graduates who move here What are the main things dividing the candidates? Like what are the things that if Lewis George was elected versus McDuffy seem like they would be the most different going forward But I should subdivide that question. The things they're actually arguing about are fairly symbolic things. like there's been a problem of out of control teens, you know running wild in different neighborhoods. O of the things the police and the current mayor want to do is be able to target certain areas as curfew zones so that of more than I think nine teens can be told to move along or sent home or whatever by the police. McDuffy is very for these. Denise Lewis George is very against these. She thinks it's a you, militarizing and policing youth, just for being youth The real world, I don't think that matters a whole lot about actually controlling crime but it has become a big symbolic issue. So they're spending a lot of their time bickering over this practically Washington, DC is a city whose main industry is reeling, has lost huge numbers of jobs, may continue to lose huge numbers of jobs, is, I think fundamentally transformed, even if there's like a Democratic president who wants to hire a lot of government workers He is much more explicit about I'm going to marshal the powers of the city to try to lure private sector employers, even if that means like giving them sweet deals and stuff She is much more skeptical of that and much more willing to talk about doing things to raise more revenue. by hitting businesses more. She's you know, sort of dances around the specifics of it a little bit, but there is a basic left versus center breakdown. And I would note actually just to add to that. In ten percent of households in DC, someone lost their job because of doge which is an incredible number. I mean, so if you think about the economic impact on the city, the city ten percent of households suddenly have lost their probably their stablest job and their best paying job And that is That's devastating for a middle class, both a white and black middle class in the city Michael, you could imagine that number being used to form a candidacy around attacking Donald Trump, who's responsible for those cuts and who is a person a mayor has to wrestle with. How is the shape of that I rising out of this campaign. Yeah, that's such a good question. They both have talked about like We're not going to do the one thing that the current mayor has done, which is kind of playing footsey with cooperating with Iice And we will stop doing that But I think everybody kind of knows if you are the mayor of Washington, a city that's not like a normal American city, you only have so much leeway to do symbolic things to stick it to the president and I think smart people would recognize that like You know, even if you have it Democratic president and they want to restore the government and so on The kind of old status quo where you can take these jobs knowing you're going to have them forever, knowing that you're going to get stability, that'll never come back because you'll know you're always like one bad election away from a government that's going to try its best to throw you out of work So that is like a fundamental change. and the question of like, well what else can this city do? I mean, these people who've lost their government jobs are often very smart, very competent professionals Um, and presumably, if you can like, get a large shipment of humanitarian goods into Kandahar in the middle of the night, you're probably good at some other stuff too The question is like what kind of private industry can they sort of incubate here that could take advantage of having a lot of people like that around One of the things that really interests me and actually I'm interested Emily and John and your thoughts on this. So Citycast is, of course, a network of podcast and a whole bunch of cities And so I am often looking at patterns across these cities and I've been struck as I've been watching this DC election with Jenise Lis George, the way in which young Washington and particularly the young educated generally white Washington that Mike was talking about been infatuated with Jenise Lis George because she rhymes with Mom Donny that Mum Donny has has ignited the spirit in young people and everyone wants their mom dononnie. And I have and when I talk to city cast folks in other cities, they talk about their own mom donnies. They literally will talk about their candidate as a mom Dnie And this idea that there in every city, there should be a charismatic deemocratic socialist who is going to be who's going to shake things up And I mean, I think that's really interesting just as a phenomenon, but I also think it's interesting because Mamani is a particularly brilliant politician. and Jenise Lewis George, is a democratic socialist, but she is not a once in a lifetime political talent and And so I wonder if people are going to if this if this idea that oh, all we need is our own Mumani and our city will be paradise on Earth is going to survive its contact with reality I think that's like a fantasy within democratic world in Washington. I mean, Denise Lewis George, man, like She is fine as a politician. You know, Mamani, the genius of Mamani is, I'm sure he had the same group of like very strent recent college graduates in his campaign they managed to keep the focus of his campaign relentlessly on the material conditions of people's lives And that's a hard thing to do. You know, you've got people who want you to make a statement about Gaza or about this or about that, which are sort of separate from your constituents' material conditions Jenise Lewis Gege announced her candidac for mayor It was like right before Thanksgiving, the first Instagram reel of hers I was served after that by happenstance was a real in which she was encouraging people to go out and compost after their Thanksgiving meals And it was like Momani would not be talking about composting or at least if he was, it would be sort of offline somewhere. And that just struck me as like you're not going to get the Normies to give you a chance if you're thought of as the composting person It's interesting too, that Mum Donny, of course, has made all these moves to reassure the Normies, right? I mean, he's kept Jessica Tish, the relatively conservative police commissioner. He dropped some of the housing proposals and tax proposals that seemed really more socialist perhaps removed from what he was actually going to be able to pass. And so I guess I wonder in this hunger for this, like DSA saavior to come into a city whether people are factoring in that part of his record or they're just since they're not in New York and probably not paying close attention, it's more just like the charisma of Mom Jonny that's exciting than this question of like, how is this person actually governed, which if I were you guys would be the thing I would care about the most. which of these people seems like he or she will be a smart, prudent addministrator and manager because that's such a hard job I said some version of that to someone in the Jenise Lewis George camp. And you know what they said was was look, You know, M Dani ran as a deemocratic socialist. No shame about it got all the slings and arrows. and that actually you know, earned him the ability to like cave on some things or be strategic or say I'm going to hold back this you know, particularly left leaning proposal for some other time Um, and that They were hinting that that could happen here in DC too. She obviously has not said any of that on the campaign trail, which I wouldn't either if I was her. but that's That is the kind of behind the scenes logic. It's just one that like true believers and pamphletteers and people going door to door don't typically want to address It's always been the case that if a party gets somebody who's successful, everybody else in the party says, oh, we've got our own version of the successful thing. But one thing about cities and Michael, I don't know if this that was true in Washington, but in the early part of the twentieth century Socialists roe there were lots of socialists A lot of American cityities electing socialist mayors because socialism was a way to you know combat the rapacious outcome of capitalism And did DC E't have any mars Yeah, It didn't have writers had Congress And it also your It also didn't have you the thing that helped a lot of those socialists like in Milwaukee propel to be mayor is a lot of the residents were new immigrants from Europe where socialism was like a going concern. Yeah And that's that was never really part of Washington's immigrant pattern eith There you go. Yes Mike Schafer is host of City CastDC. Listen to him on CityQastDC. It's great.llow us follow City CastDC. and actually before we go, Mike our last the segment just before this, we talked about what's going on in California and you want to just reference? If you think California's voting is bad, Wait untill you hear about how Washington D.C does it. So Washington DC is doing for the first time rank choice voting instant runoff as it was buillt, not so instant because Washington D.C also has mail in voting and really accommodating rules because they want to count every last vote. So if you mail as long as you get it stamped on election day, even if it comes in ten days later, they will d ten days. that means because of the way rank choice voting works, you can't calculate the second and the third and the whatever U if you until you have everything So they have said, it could be ten days before we know who's mayor. And you know, in the kind of current context of a low trust country, M It's very easy to imagine Trump or Republicans in Congress saying, look at these people. they can't even count votes. They don't have the right to home ruled to self determination. And, you know, in addition to all the other sort of nonpartisan type of conspiracy theories that could go on in a city of like racial divide and income divide and so on It just seem it seems like a really, really dangerous thing and The kind of voting establishment is a kind of nothing to see here. people, you know, this is all we knew this all along and this is how it's supposed to be. just seems completely not to be meeting the moment Wow. should know who the Democratic nominee and hence the next mayor is By July, by the S quentennial. I'll be happy to come back in September and discuss the results Mike Safer Thanks, Mike. Thank you guys 's the end of that. blah blah blah. All right., let's go to cocktail Chatter when you are sitting up late night waiting for a vote count to come in, waiting for California or Washington, DC to count one more vote Just one more. count it tonight. and you're having a drink just to get you through that vote count Emily Baselon, what will you be chattering about I just started reading a book of short stories by Jess Gibson. It's called The Good Eye And it's just very these kind of clever glancing, but also like pretty gripping short stories about various aspects of modern life. It starts with a lot about a mother who is trying to get rid of the rats she fears. She's seeing them outside, not actually in her apartment, but they kind of take over her psyche and are an excellent metaphor in a way that Gibson develops. So the Good Iye by Jess Gibson, it's a nice slight volume, I am finding myself unable to read anything really long right now as I try to write my own book, I need things that I can quickly digest and I'm enjoying these stories. Just added it, added it on the list John Dickerson,'s your chat? If you haven't read Train Dreams, Emily, that's a nice volume for you. Love that book. Yes.. John Bassinger Oh no, no, it's not Bassinger. It's Basinger who was a college professor and an actor who was widely believed to be the only person to have ever memorized all twelve books of John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost died. He was ninety two And u I think I may in fact have chattered about him before, but it's just amazing. U And he started bringing the poem with him to the gym and basically he would memorize seven new lines on the exercise bike. And then while lifting weights, he would review the last fourteen lines he'd studied. and That's just the way he did it. He also did other extraordinary things that were pererhaps Quixotic. he walked from New York to S Francisco, which is something I feel like David would be interest. Oh, I want to do that so badly. Yeah. although I think in general, you are dismissive of these kinds of memorization feats. I have some recollection of that. But anyway, he moved to Kenya on a whim and became fluent in Swahili U Anyway, u justust like an extraordinary character and to And so now it's up to someone else to carry on the tradition. Or not. I mean, things like we got we got four years without anyone memorizing Mkind' lost. So mankind the whole industrial Revolution during that. Do you know what I wonder though, is of the transistor as we all fight the algo, and I am chief among the three of us, I think in terms of doing quixotic things to fight the algorithm. I wonder if feats of memorization which require slowness and attention and disconnecting from the interruptions, if those might come into vogue as people seek to reclaim their humanity in a world where Everybody is attacking us I bet you're right There are these amazing Karonic recitation competitions where they're reallyally thousands, maybe millions of children across the Muslim world who memorize the entire Quran. E feet of faith and also performance because they have competitions Um, my chatter. quickly, I have added new U dates for my fort tour, Fort Derusi, the secret fort hidden in Rock Creek Park. know they're listeners who have joined me on that, and I'd love to have you again. If you go to Secret Fort DC, I've added some dates in the fall and winter and even into next spring secretf DC dot coma secret for DC and come on the tour. It was the highest rating rated experience on Airbnb in Washington, DC. Um But that's my that's not my chatter. My chatter is a chatter which actually I bet John Dickerson will jibe with and So they're I was with a group of about a dozen people who are all kind of my generation and maybe ten years younger and ten years older. So so people who are maybe from early forties up until midies And for some reason, we were discussing playground games that we played on the as children And we all about, you know, when it came up There was a game that we'd all played our school playground in elementary school, which was to tack a game where you played on asphalt, there was a ball and the goal of the ball the game was you tackle whoever had the ball and everyone else is trying to tackle the person with the ball And this is the game that we played at Lafayette School in nineteen seventy nine, say when I was there And it had two names, and one name was Mal Ball husband M commonly However, and I'm only going to say this once because it's a slur It was called Smear the eer. And we went around the table and all of us from all over the country, there were people West, East, Florida, Dakotas had played this game and all of us had used that horrible name for the game Some people had also called it Mball or some called it Kill the Carrier all of us knew it by its smar name. all of us play this game and used this terrible name for it And so since then I've kind of been like, wow, this is really interesting. Like this is a game that's played universally and I realize that people under forty do not know this game. Because at some point this game that was universal on school playgrounds and known by horrible name just vanished The game and the name vanished. The game was terrible name the name is also worse. But sometime in probably around nineteen ninety six Someone was the last person ever to be tackled plane Sear the in a game. And I just think it's fascinating to think like there's this thing which was a universal shared experience of children in schools in the sixties and seventies. through the eighties, maybe And it just goes away because both the game itself is brutal and it's pointless, and also because its name is a unacceptable name to call anything U so I would I wonder is whether in its how the where the etymology or the usage of the word queer, which was not always or not not exclusively a derogatory smear It meant weird or weird or odd. in the way in which gay used to mean happy U I feel like this is derogatory. of course. No Well, I guess my question is whether it always was derogatory in that specific sense. It obviously, whether the game whether The word changed while after the game or the usage of the word became more of a smear. after the game had originally been initiated. I don't know. I have no idea. but I don't know Yeah and it's of course this game emerged at some point like it probably didn't emerge until kids are playing, I don't know. probablyrobably doesn't emerge until the fifties or sixties. So I don't know. and I don't know I don't know and I haven't done the I didn't because I was going to chatter it. I was like, I'm not going to Google this. I don't want to find out what the story of it is. I was just my own my own investigations were so Did you guys play it Joon? I played mallball. I don't I don't That term is not foreign to me, but I don't remember it ever being used where a small ball was like you went to you went to a fancy private school. No, I went to public school until seventh grade where you would have played this a lot. In fact, but the game we played the most, which was I mean, some of the greatest joy I've ever had in any sporting context was that there were two what used to be, I don't know, if they're still called this monkey bars, which is, you know Um Basically for those you who don't know, imagine you take a ladder and you bend the two ends and then stick it in the ground and they were across from each other like basketball hoops and you we basically played basketball, but instead of having one goal into which you shot the ball, in this case, one of those rubber red things that were probably used in mallball as well. You could pick any of the openings in the in the monkey bars. And of course dunking was possible and in like fifth grade Dunking in any context was extraordinary. So We played that. endndlessly. Oh my God on the on that kind of crushed rock. that would really embed in your knee when you crashed out. Yeah. And those metal monkey bars that you would like swing from and it would hurt your arms smell of the metal on your fingers afterward. Oh the smell smell of the metal. Yeah. ye Um, Emily went you went to a friend school so there was no tact. No, there was something Tactly No Well, I'm discouraged yes, but I mean, I feel like that game you just described, David is just some universal like bad instincts just everybody gangs up on one person. and I'm skeptical that some version of it does not continue. It just might be called something else or called nothing, right? It's just like everyone just pile on to somebody Listeners You let us know what game you played where you were assaulted by every single person at your school? on an asphalt playground If anyone played that game after nineteen ninety six, let us know. also. that would be curious. or before nineteen ninety. six four A teacher out there whose students go out for recess, are they playing Maball? I bet they don't let him do it. I bet they don't let him do it maybe in some MAGA parts of the country, they'll let kids beat the crap out of each other like that? Um It was a gentler time or not the opposite. The listeners, you've got chatters. You've emailed them to us at Gaclate d. com and our listener chatter this week comes from John Kelsey reading California. You guys frequently discuss favorite books on the GabB Fest I wanted to make sure everyone is aware of the Dungeon Crawler Carl book series that is currently sweeping the world in popular. Oh my God, I'm listening to The first time Mat Dinimman has made it to number one on the New York Times bestestseller list with the eighth novel in the series, a parade of Horribles The series is extremely addictive, both in written and audible forms It tells the story of Carl and his ex girlfriend's cat, Princess Donnut. as they try to survive competing on a galaxy wide alien reality game show. While it is a ridiculous premise, it is laugh out loud and insightful at the same time I highly recommend it and hope everyone gives it a try. I am actually listening to this. Anne and I have been listening to this in some long drives we've had recently and I would say if one is initiated into it, I give it some time I mean You got to go Is it like the Hitchhikerss guide the galaxy of the It is a it is a bit, it is a bit. the same kind of wonderful subversive humor There's a lot of littleittle Easter egg jokes in there. It's very video game if you grew up playing role playing games on video games, you'll get it has a lot of that going on that will seem familiar. That's my little brief review after having only gotten you know, some portion through the first one We're not the only slate podcast to listen to. Although there's one fewer slate podcasts this week, our friends at the Culture Gab Fest, I believe of wrapping up or they are wrapping up, which Sad They've been our partners in gabfesting for twenty years, practically and eighteen Yeah. well no Dana and Steve. missed you. Pour one out for you guys. You can, however, listen to Death Sex and Money, something rotten at Stanford, which is an interview AnSle interviews, Theo Baker, the remarkable young Stanford student, the children of two prominent DC journalist, Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, who went to Stanford and basically did the investigation that forced out the president and has now written a book about his Stanford experience that apparently is quite good, how to rule the world. So listen to Anna talking to Thea Baker That is all for our episode this week We we also have a bonus episode in your feed. We're gonna talk about abortion and Down syndrome and modern eugenics. That is for slate plus members only. So if you are a S slate pllus member, thank you. If you're not a Slate plus member, join Today, listen to us talk about abortion downsent a monougenics. Subbscribe to Slate Plus directly from the political GafFest show page on Apple, podcasts and Spotify, or go to slate d. com slash Gavfest plus get access. That is our show for today. The Political Cecest is produc by Neia Brzuki, our researcher of music Ditto, our music is by They might be Giants Ben Richard Geni, director for Podcast Operations, B Lo Beell, E executive producerers like Podcasts and Hillary Friry, executer,ief ofleep Emily Baselon and John Dickerson, Davidlaod., Thanks for listing. Talk to you next week