Matthew Yglesias on the Path Forward for Democrats

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]All right. You ready?

[00:00:02]>> Yeah.

[00:00:03]>> Matthew E Glazius, thank you so much for taking the time to come on to this podcast.

[00:00:08]>> Good to be here. How's it going?

[00:00:10]>> It's going well. Um, to start with an unrelated question, did you know that Ezra Klein has a subreddit?

[00:00:16]>> Uh, yes.

[00:00:17]>> Yeah, he did.

[00:00:18]>> Because I'm I'm not above occasionally nameing myself on Reddit, and I would say the number one place that I come up is on the Ezra Klein subreddit.

[00:00:28]>> Oh, man. I was I was going to like I felt like I I wish that I could have been the person to tell you about it for the first time. I could have like I'm sure that >> Yeah.

[00:00:38]>> Yeah.

[00:00:38]>> You know, it's like you get into this I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I'm sure there are people in this business who uh are are less self-absorbed than me and uh are not not tracking their mentions across the whole web. But uh I'm I'm out there. I want to know what people are saying.

[00:00:54]>> Yeah. Well, I'm sure that you've heard this if you've if you've been on the Ezra Klein subreddit, but back when Ezra did an AMA in like mid 2021, there was someone who asked him the question, "Do you ever worry that your friend Matt will get cancelled for his hot takes?"

[00:01:06]And then you just responded by saying, well, he responded by saying, "You cannot cancel Matty Glazius. You can only make his takes hotter." U >> I think that's true. You know, I was saying to somebody uh the other day that I I don't know who this is a quote from or one of these things that's apocryphal, but but there's a saying that, you know, if you're taking flak, it's because you're over the target. Um, and so, you know, I mean, I I try not to say things that are wrong. I try to listen to criticism, uh, respectfully, and, you know, I get things wrong all the time, and I want to hear from people. Uh but usually, you know, the the fact that you're getting push back on something is often an indicator that you are, you know, hitting on something that's real and and meaningful and and like matters. Um and if you're just tossing out takes that everyone is ignoring, uh you're probably not doing work that's that's all that relevant. Do you ever um have you ever changed your mind or have you ever become more sympathetic to maybe like a steelman version of the types of criticisms that they might levy at you in the Ezra Klein subreddit?

[00:02:14]>> Uh well, I don't know. Uh you know, I mean, I I'm getting all kinds of criticisms from all kinds of directions.

[00:02:20]Um I've changed my mind about a million things over the years. Um and I'm sure both consciously and unconsciously in response to criticisms people offer. Um, you know, I mean, but there there's two different kinds of criticisms that I hear. You know, I will say specific things and people will say, well, you know, the the thing you just said isn't true and here's why I think it's not true. So, that's good. You know, you want to hear from that. I also get criticisms of like my whole approach, you know, and sometimes people say, you know, like Matt should be nicer or something like that. Um, and on those kind of things, I I don't think there is like a canonical right answer. You know, there's no there's no one correct way to be a political columnist. There's no one unique level of contentiousness versus catch more flies with honey. That's correct. Like, you need multiple people pursuing different strategies, doing different kinds of things. I just think my personality lends itself to a certain way of doing things. Uh because I I think most people are a little psychologically conflict averse and you know if that influences their writing.

[00:03:31]>> Yeah. Do you think um do you think you tend to be more conflict averse when you're like writing on Twitter or when you're writing on your blog?

[00:03:41]>> Uh I don't know. You know, I mean I'm I mean I'm obviously I'm I'm most conflict averse when I'm talking to real people.

[00:03:47]I'm like actually a nice guy in person.

[00:03:50]Um, you know, I I think that it's it depends what we're doing. You know, like I I write now occasionally for the New York Times and but I'm writing for a fairly broad audience there. I'm trying to say things that I think are controversial enough to be meaningful, but I also want to want to make it go down smooth. I want I want to persuade that large and influential audience that I am correct. Um on slow boring, you know, it's I'm I'm catering to a relatively small group of paid subscribers. They're like the real heads and I am trying to equip those people with like the most clear like razor sharp version of the take that is out there because I mean of course I would like to persuade people but I I really want to like build the build the squad, you know what I mean? And like get people ready to go.

[00:04:45]>> Your blog is like the place where you present your takes without any degree of obfiscation. Is that is that what you're saying? Um, I would say it's it's it's not that there's no degree of obfuscation. It's that there is I am trying to find the tension points and really amplify them and elevate them, you know.

[00:05:06]So, I I had this piece out today. We're we're recording on May 14th and it's about um like a clean energy abundance um vision and I take a few shots at people who are working on virtual power plants, distributed energy resources, efficiency type things and some of the push back that I hear from people is like well you know like like you know why not both these things go together and I agree with that on some level like it it is it's bad to be wasteful if you can avoid it. we should try to use resources efficiently, etc., etc. But I I want to get people to see that there is a contrast of ideological visions and goals here and that that does matter because politicians and political elites are just kind of masters of coalition management. So they like to say like ah can't we all just get along here people?

[00:05:59]And to some extent like we can and we have to you don't this is a two-party political system. you don't get a majority in Congress around like a crystal clear vision of a policy idea.

[00:06:10]But I also do want people to understand this kind of longunning debate in environmental circles about conservation and limits to growth and its enduring relevance uh to the universe. So maybe like when it comes to like different factions within the left and how they differ and how they might be the same, maybe maybe your friend Ezra is the type of person that's more willing to be like we have a lot more in common than you think and like he's the one that tries to be the bridgeuer where you're the one that's like trying to exacerbate the conflict and pay attention to like the sorts of disagreements that other people might want to sweep under the rug. Is that what you're saying?

[00:06:45]>> No, he's he's a nice guy um compared to me. Uh the other thing is that you know I I think Ezra is a um likes to uh hoard his ammunition, right? So I mean he wrote what was probably the single most contentious high impact column of the Biden presidency when he sort of came down off the mountaintop and was like Joe Biden is too old. This guy's got to go. Part of the reason that was so high impact is that people know that Ezra isn't out here just like looking to pick fights every day, right? Whereas like I'm just, you know, we we're different people temperamentally and I I I like to mix it up all the time. Um so I don't think if I said one day, oh, you know, like Chuck Schumer, he's no good. Like nobody's going to care. Um you know, because I'm just picking fights with people all the time. It's not like, "Oh my god, how could he say that?" Um, so, you know, that's just sort of a the difference uh in, you know, pros and cons um of different kinds of approaches to things.

[00:07:55]>> Yeah. So, maybe one one example of like a fight that you pick with the progressive wing of the Democratic party. I want to try to provide as much context as possible for our audience members. So, let's start with a simple question. What is the median voter and why is it important for Democrats to reach out to them?

[00:08:11]Yeah. Um, you know, I mean I mean the idea of a median voter, right? This is you can have a very simplistic one-dimensional view of ideology and there's just a guy who's in the middle and you win elections by being as close to the median as possible. Now, anyone who thinks about this for two seconds is going to see that that is an oversimplification of real world politics. Uh, people have views on multiple different kinds of questions, things like that.

[00:08:38]I would say though that the one-dimensional view of public opinion is a pretty good simplifying model. You know, it's not perfect. Uh but I think that the complexifiers um retreat into the complexity of the situation in order to rationalize very undisiplined political behavior, you know, in which they want to deny that there's a political cost to being way out of step with public opinion. on broad ranges of issues.

[00:09:10]>> So is this like how in economics there's the concept of how all models are wrong, some are useful. So like the median voter is an example of a model that is wrong but far more useful than the models that you think a lot of progressives use these days. Is that what you're saying?

[00:09:23]>> Yeah. I mean I think that that's about right. you know that yeah and you can you can look I mean you can try to do you know um statistical analysis to like capture the dimensionality of public opinion and you know the sort of reasonable debate in the United States is that you could have a one-dimensional model um or by adding a second dimension you get some additional explanatory power not that much from the second dimension honestly beyond that like very very little that's not like a universal law, right? So, like public opinion in Israel is very highly multi-dimensional because you have I mean there's a lot of stuff going on there, but like an obvious reason is that a lot of the Arab citizens of Israel are quite culturally conservative and the Jewish Israelis who are culturally conservative have very different opinions from the culturally conservative Palestinian Israelis on, you know, issues related to national identity, etc., etc. Then you have a whole other economic dimension. And so, you know, asking like how should Naf Tali Bennett try to appeal to the median voter in Israel is a genuinely incredibly hard question. Um, the United States is not like that. Like this is much more simplistic uh kind of place.

[00:10:41]And you know, different issues have different veilance, but like I I I think we know there are almost nobody in the United States who thinks that abortion should be banned in all cases, but also that um gender identity should be the determining factor on which sports team you play for, right? And there's lots of people of the opposite constellation of views. And like everybody knows that really and there's just this kind of like retreat to like oh like the world is so complicated but it's it's not that complicated. You can model American opinion pretty clearly.

[00:11:17]>> What are some ways in which you believe that you are more in touch with the concerns of the median voter than the average progressive activist might be?

[00:11:25]>> I mean I'm completely out of touch. I I think the the best thing that I can say that I have gone for me is that my actual life biographically is like comical. I I was born and raised in in Greenwich Village in New York. Uh my dad is a novelist. My mom was an artist and a graphic designer. Everyone in my family is an academic. Um or, you know, works in the arts. And then I went to Harvard and then I moved to Logan Circle and like I don't know anything about normal people um on a gut level. But but like I know that, you know, I don't like fancy myself somebody who has some incredibly strong intuitive grasp of like suburban Cincinnati. Um I have been there. Uh I've, you know, I I I I know facts about middle America. Um but you know, when I want to know what public opinion is on something, I try to look it up. Um, and I think a lot of people, you know, just don't do that with a We met at at an effective altruism conference and, you know, I think like one of the best things about the EA community is a genuine spirit of trying to ask questions and answer them. And just a lot of political activists do not have that temperament and I think don't even really understand the idea of like sincerely trying to seek knowledge about something. They are just obsessed with kind of verbal combat. And so the idea that like you might actually want to know what people care about rather than just kind of produce agit prop saying that people like agree with what you want to do. I think like doesn't scan and when they see me disagreeing like if they see me saying you know like most people just don't care about the global poor at all and thus they don't care about the impact of climate change on Bangladesh and they also don't care about malaria bed nets and like all kinds of things that I think they should care about. They hear me saying like this guy is doing propaganda for the fossil fuel industry. But like I think people just genuinely don't care. They don't care as much about foreigners as they ought to. And the progressive activists who are very worried about climate change also don't care as much about foreigners as they ought to because if they did, they would come to the conclusion that some of these public health interventions are actually a better way of helping those people. mind if I try to like play devil's advocate and steal man the critiques that you you read about your work online on a regular basis?

[00:14:15]>> Yeah, do it. Yeah, maybe the the argument so some of them like they're like blatantly mischaracterizing your views, but I think a lot of them their reflexive tendency is to assume that the reason why you are making these arguments and just phrasing them in the incredibly blunt and controversial way that you are doing so is because you're trying to engage you're you're essentially engaging in engagement farm on Twitter where you know that if you say in a more like controversial or if you say it in a more argumentative way, you're you're you're not likely to persuade people online But you are more likely to get more up votes. What would you say to that criticism?

[00:14:50]>> Um, you know, I mean, I think it is true that I am in the attention industry and I want people to pay attention to me and if I, you know, go on somebody's podcast, I will have a different sort of manner of speaking. But like I also think that the opposite thing that I see people doing all the time where they're not really saying what they mean and they're not really being clear about what they're saying is its own, you know, uh, troubling habit of activity and I think it has generated a lot of confusion out there.

[00:15:28]>> Okay. So maybe this is an example of something that you said in one of your recent articles that I think is a good example of like the the type of writing style that you use when you say quote half of adults read below a sixth grade level. All questions of snobbery and nepo babies aside the typical American could not do the job of even a really incompetent journalist. They would in fact struggle badly to even read and understand journalist journalism outposts. End quote. So, like I think that was an example of like you being very honest and opuscating the point about the lack of education of a large percentage of Americans out there. But do you think that maybe um maybe the the types of criticism that you get is sort of like a natural outgrowth of the type of blunt in your rhetoric where like even if you're not doing the wrong thing, they're not doing the wrong thing either by criticizing you.

[00:16:22]>> Sure. Although, you know, so I I should actually flag on that one. Um, a guy named Elliot Haspel has raised questions about the validity actually of the data that I was citing there. I have not yet had the opportunity to like fully explore um his points that he was making about that, but it it may just be that factually um the actual median American reading level is closer to a ninth grade um than sixth grade. So that that would slightly change my take. Um, I mean, sure, you know, like I'm I'm happy to give as get as good as I give whatever it is. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. I mean, I I I don't know what's going on. Um but I think that in general a kind of more um you know forceful statement of the facts is important to actually understanding some of these situations. Um I forget exactly what the context that was that was all coming up in was but I think that there's like a general tendency of you know educated this kind of discourse class people to lose sight of how detached we are from the typical person's experience of the world you know because you rebaseline to yourself right um something that I always think about in this term you know there's kind of like a stereot type of like like the dumb jock that exists. And one reason for that is that like good athletes get a boost in their college admissions. So like at any given school like the football players are in fact probably not as smart as the average person who's there on campus. Um but actually like college athletes are smarter than the average American. Um and and you can see the football players specifically and like they actually make uh football draft candidates take an IQ test as part of the combine and you know NFL players are not like dramatically smarter than the average person but they are above average um in intelligence but if you are in like a little you know uh when I was in college like I I took a political science class with a guy who went on to be an NFL quarterback and you know he was like one of the least impressive people in that seminar.

[00:18:45]But like that's a smart guy. Um, and you know, you just like miss out on what reality is like and the world is full of dummies and it's like very rude to point that out. Um, but then people get obsessed with things like, oh, all the people voting for the other political party, they're so stupid. Like this other party is full of idiots, which is 100% true. But then it's like the people voting for your favorite candidate are also full of idiots. And it's just a lot of idiots out there.

[00:19:15]>> And so like maybe the argument that you're making is part of the reason why there are a lot of idiots is because people are not like people people are not rude enough to point out the the flaws of other people.

[00:19:27]>> I mean that's part of it. You know there's a lot of um you know you there's a lot of things you can do with language right as an endeavor. And one thing that a lot of people do is try to come up with verbal formulations that paper over differences to achieve like surface level agreeability. Um, and I was a philosophy major and you know I wouldn't say like they like philosophers try to be rude but like the way they teach you to do philosophy writing is the opposite that like you are supposed to be trying to draw distinctions between different things that a person might conceivably mean by a given turn of phrase. Practical politics I which I care about a lot tends to be the opposite. Right? you want to come up with a slogan that a lot of different people can listen to the slogan and be like I agree with that that guy knows what's going on >> like yes we can like like Obama slogan when he was running for president >> that I I actually you know one of my favorite examples of this was um John Federman who has become controversial for other reasons uh but he liked to say you know well we've got to make more [ __ ] in America right and one way of reading that is a kind of like an abundance framing right? Like we need to increase the productive capacity of the American economy. Another way of reading it is a kind of a trade protectionist reading, right? Like we need to be like less dependent on imports in the United States of America. And there's a good verbal formula for both doing sort of like steel worker politics in Western Pennsylvania, but also having like like the smart center-left people be like, "Yeah, this guy knows what he's talking about." And it's because you're not actually probing the question of like what what do you mean by we need to make more stuff in America? Like what you know what how do we draw the distinction? And like I'm working on piece now and I'm trade stuff again. And I'm drawing like incredibly fussy distinctions between like labor oriented protection and like developmental industrial strategy. And this piece is very like low. It's not like hot takes, you know, it's not going to make people angry. But it's just the same thing where I think it's important to try to be precise and try to draw distinctions in in my work and my writing because I want people to think more clearly about these problems. So, you're right that a lot of the time both pundits and especially politicians, they tend to talk in like a sort of platitudy way where you're sort of papering over the the fine distinctions and disagreements that many different coalitions might have with each other. So, how about this? I'll give you I'll give you permission to sound as rude and as brutally honest as you want on my podcast as long as I have permission to do the same with you.

[00:22:17]>> Yeah. Well, let's rock it. Yeah.

[00:22:19]>> All right. So, tell me some tell me some more like policies. Tell me some more ideas. Tell me some more examples of the ways in which progressives to your left tell me how you think that they're out of touch with the concerns of the median voter.

[00:22:33]Um, you know, listen, uh, everybody is aware that, you know, it's like affordability is sort of the the slogan, uh, of of the moment. Um, and everybody is trying to be responsive to that. And yet I think that Democrats really really really don't want to break with labor groups or green groups in any kind of a substantive way in order to address you know affordability quote unquote and it just has generated a lot of I would say like unclear internal conversations where you'll see a bunch of Democrats left and center people together in a meeting in C and they're like talking about their affordability strategy. And I want to say and sometimes have said, are we talking about a strategy to actually prioritize the voters's cost of living concerns or are we talking about coming up with a way to lie to voters and make them think we're prioritizing those concerns while doing something else? That's obviously a rude question to ask and nobody wants to say like no this is a strategy session about lying but I think a lot of the time that's what people want to do and then you get like you start wasting time right in a kind of like a pointless side issue when like if all you're actually trying to do is like optimize for like a a deception problem that's a different conversation than well we want to like solve this problem. Um, and yeah, I mean I I think that's like the sort of most operative short-term one.

[00:24:17]Um, in the longer run, you know, I mean, I think the biggest gaps between progressives and public opinion are probably around questions of sort of crime, public order, punitiveness, um, this kind of thing that there's just a lot of I I mean, I was thinking one example. I was, um, I was in Tennessee somewhere um, and I was driving around.

[00:24:38]I was stuck in traffic and there was this local NPR segment and it was talking about homelessness in Nashville and the NPR person was uh interviewing some uh you know NGO type people who work on this problem and and their definition of like homelessness as a problem was clearly that homeless people are like in bad shape and we need to deliver more and better social services to them. Uh but then the what I was actually going to do was sit in on a focus group that was being held with some swing voters. And these swing voters were also very concerned about homelessness. But like what they were saying is that they feel a sense of visceral disgust at the physical presence of homeless people. And they are also concerned that homeless people are causing crimes and they want this like nuisance, right? that is like the presence of homeless people removed from their daily lives, right? It's completely different from the kind of like progressive concept of like what the problem even is. And you could say like on a superficial level like well we want to address homelessness in Nashville, but people are actually talking about like very very different things there. Now I try to be a humane person. like I don't want to just like dispose of the homeless by any means necessary, but like it was really clear listening to the swing voters in in this focus group that like the interests of the unhoused are like not like what they care about about this at all. They just want these people to go away. So the stuff the stuff that those swing voters say that they want to do about homelessness, maybe that's an example of like a policy where if we did it, it would be popular with the median voter, but we should not do it because it is immoral. Would you agree with that?

[00:26:28]>> Uh yeah, I mean it depending on exactly what it is we're talking about. Um, but I mean I I think the median voter is pretty selfish, you know, like in a way that I do not approve of and like I think is bad. And I think that that has a lot of, you know, implications for what is and is not feasible in democratic politics.

[00:26:52]Um, you know, there was a time like 10 years ago when it was like very much in vogue to say bad things about charitably inclined billionaires. Um, I think billionaires have become less charitably inclined since then and so this whole discourse has sort of died off. Uh, but I thought that that was really misguided. Like I I believe in democracy. I think it's the best system of government etc etc. But you also have to be realistic about what democratic politics is and is not going to achieve.

[00:27:23]And there are limits to what you can feasibly ask a democratic public to take on. And individuals um taking moral action on their own part is like a really important part of building a better world.

[00:27:38]>> Yeah. So maybe then maybe like there's kind of there's got to be some kind of like X and Y axis between like there are some policies that um the median voter supports that you think the Democratic party should support and then there's some part there are some policies that the median voter supports that you think the Democratic party should not do.

[00:27:56]Maybe try to try to draw that distinction with me between popular policies that you think the Democratic party should support and popular policies that the Democratic Party should not support.

[00:28:06]>> Sure. I mean obviously like so you there's like three factors right it's like how unpopular is it how big of a deal is it to voters and like is it actually a good idea right x y and z axis basically >> yeah yeah yeah yeah so you know I mean I mean the the best thing right like um >> I wrote an article recently about the idea of like merit pay for public school teachers um this is incredibly popular it matters a lot to voters I don't think it's on the merit It's actually like as good an idea as voters seem to think that it is, but it's not a bad idea.

[00:28:42]>> So like they think it's a great idea and you think it's a mildly good idea.

[00:28:47]>> Exactly. And so like you should just do it, right? Like like take on the labor unions like do the right thing there, you know, like it's it's it's a no-brainer. Um, you know, similarly like uh affirmative action in college admissions is very unpopular. voters care a lot about it and I think it's a real mixed bag on the merits. I mean, I could come up with some things to say in its favor, but like I share voters like basic fairness intuition that this is not like a super defensible idea. So, you know, I I would love to just like win more elections with that kind of stuff, but like you get trade-offs, right? like there's this um uh you know, save our bacon act um coming through Congress and you know, this is like a an anti-an animal welfare bill and the idea is to make pork products marginally cheaper uh at the expense of a a big welfare loss uh to pigs. Uh, I haven't seen like detailed polling on this, but everything I know about politics suggests that like voters uh like this bill and there is a political price to be paid for opposing it.

[00:29:57]I would think, you know, it's it's it's good to try to expend your political capital on stuff like that, stuff that matters, stuff that is not um that actually requires, I think, like systematic legislative solutions to really make any kind of headway on. Um, and you know, it's unpopular, but it's also a little bit below the radar, right? like this is not like an obsession uh of the national political class. Um you know you just get stuff where like a lot of times people care about things that don't act that don't seem like they in fact are very important.

[00:30:40]You know what I mean? So like I don't people on both sides get mad about anything that you say about this question of um you know who should play on sports teams of which gender.

[00:30:54]I just think clearly like you could arrange society either way around that like it was not like >> society would continue to function roughly the same.

[00:31:07]>> Yeah. And even though it would be different, I mean, I don't just want to say like, well, it wouldn't make any difference. It would make a difference, but just like how big of a difference would it be? Like how important is it ultimately? I think just like not that important. And like if you say, you know, and I get that it matters to people because if you want to say, you know, if you are a transgender woman and you want to say trans women are women, then if a trans woman is a woman, then she should be able to play on the women's soccer team. But if it was called the cisgender woman's soccer team, then does that resolve the problem? Like maybe, right? I mean, I don't know.

[00:31:47]Stepping way way back, the question of like who governs the country is very important. And the question of like how do we regulate access to gender segregated school sports teams strikes me as genuinely not important and like something where I think politicians should just do what voters want. You know, like it doesn't it doesn't matter.

[00:32:10]And if somebody thinks that I'm wrong and this like is way more significant than I believe, like try to change people's minds because if everybody wanted to do sports based on gender self-identification, I'll be the first guy to flip-flop. Like it doesn't like the the logic doesn't totally track for me, but like it's fine. Like I'm like thrilled to have this go whichever way they go. I don't personally care who uses which bathrooms any place. like it's fine, but you've got to convince people in the world that your ideas are fine. And asking people with a lot at stake to bear a big political price uh for defense of this kind of thing, I I just think is not reasonable in a way that's saying, you know, we should expend some political capital to try to, you know, rescue PEPFAR, right, which like hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance around that. Um, and you know, I mean, I I talk to people, politicians and ex-politicians and things like that, and you know, there's members of Congress who feel, I think with some reason, that they lost their seats in the 2010 midterms in part because they voted for the Affordable Care Act. But they can say to their grandkids, "When I was in Congress, I voted for a law that gave health insurance to millions of low-income people." and it was politically controversial and there was a backlash and I lost my seat, but I'm proud of what I accomplished.

[00:33:43]>> Yeah. Like like it's like how never Trump Republicans could say the same thing about like voting to impeach or convict Trump after January 6th.

[00:33:51]>> Yeah. And you but you got to like Yeah.

[00:33:53]Like just you know ask yourself like like like what are we what are we doing here? Like because you know I mean it's like democracy is tricky, right? Like the voters deserve to mostly have their views represented, but also like we want to have good good outcomes, but we don't want to have people just like charging into buzz saws for no reason or doing things that are bad on the merits and unpopular just because of internal interest group pressure and conformity.

[00:34:22]>> Yeah. So maybe like the sentiment you're saying right now is that like assuming you know like in general like there are obviously exceptions but barring those exceptions in general Democrats need to be more in line with the concerns of the median voter. Do you believe that like Democrats are too leftwing and they need to moderate in order to become more in line with median voter concerns? Yeah, I mean I think especially on some of these issues related to race and gender identity, on issues related to crime and then you know specifically on tradeoffs around climate change and and local economic growth that we need to see more attentiveness to public concerns and and especially because you know I'm we're talking about Democrats. I'm a Democrat, but this is a a bilateral relationship actually. Like the reason that like politics seems so like crazy and bad to people is that both parties are quite far off center and they tend to like we're having this like seessaw backlashes, right? That makes it hard to have like a stable congressional regime in which some of the like quieter behind the scenes just like professionals making deals with each other can even take place. I remember um back in like 2020 2021 like the peak woke era when left-wing cancel culture was a much bigger deal. There was a lot more opposition to the stuff that you might say about how Democrats need to moderate when it comes to topics like race or crime and so on and so forth. But I would say like would you agree with me that Democrats have already moderated pretty substantially on those issues over the past four years? uh they have definitely like walked away from uh some dangerous cliffs. I I think that there has not been a recognition that the 2012 era Democrats were already considered by most voters to be too leftwing on those topics. you know, they like went further left, got really stung badly by it and have sort of like walked back to a like a workable level of unpopularity around these kinds of things. But there was so much like internal struggle to get there that it's like they think they've become these like real killers, you know, who are like locked in on public opinion, but like are still, you know, quite quite far out there. Um, I think and and you know, I mean, that's okay. Like you don't need to be popular all the time if you have really really strong feelings about it. But another one that was on the list, I mean I I brought this up for for the New York Times is based on research by uh David Brookman and Josh Kala, but like one of the most costly things that Democrats um uh support, politically costly things, is like special treatment for minorityowned small businesses. Um this like polls terribly. It's more salient with voters than I would have thought that it was. And like I've never like meet somebody who's like genuinely like enthusi, you know, it's like this is like my top thing is like I'm gonna I'm gonna give more garbage hauling contracts to like Latinoowned garbage hauling. Like who cares? Like it's very um I I mean I get who cares?

[00:37:48]It's the people who own the minority owned small businesses, but like it's not a large group of people. It's not a real activist passion point. It's just something Democrats have kind of like cidled into. I think it probably made sense in the specific context of the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Nixon administration was trying to create this kind of like black capitalism uh as part of the post civil rights construction, but it just like it hasn't really taken off. Um, I did a did a podcast with um my friend uh Jerusalem and you know I mentioned to her this thing that the DC public schools contracts for its cafeteria services with a company called Sedexo Magic and Sedexo Magic is just a joint venture between Sedexo like the regular cafeteria services company and Magic Johnson who's just like a smart guy who realized that he could launder a regular cafeteria management company into a blackowned cafeteria management agement company and get some extra municipal contracts. Like this doesn't help anybody. Um and like I don't think anyone would actually defend that on the specific merits, but it would be contentious also to move away from it or to say it or to even admit that this is happening.

[00:39:03]>> Maybe we finally drill down on like some of the disagreements with either like the social progressives or the leftists that continue to critique you online.

[00:39:12]Like I mean I'm sure that like at least some portion of them would agree with you that like wokeness went too far in 2020, but like maybe their position would be that Democrats have moderated since and like there's a certain point at which Democrats reach the point of diminishing returns when it comes to how much moderation actually helps them.

[00:39:28]Whereas your your your disagreement with them is that they need to go much further. They need they need to move to the center even more than they currently have. Like is that what Go ahead.

[00:39:37]>> I mean, you know, I I don't want to say need to because people can do what they want. Um, but I think they ought to and they ought to recognize that they have more highcost low value baggage than they realize they have.

[00:39:53]>> Yeah. So maybe like um you you might say that Democrats ought to moderate like they don't need to because they they don't need to do anything like we don't really need to do anything other than obey the laws of physics. Um but like I I want to know like the your desire to have them moderate. How much of this is coming out of like a pragmatic political decision and how much of this comes out of like they they will align more with your own personal political views if they move to the center? Like when you when you say Democrats ought to moderate, do you see moderation as a necessary evil or a necessary good?

[00:40:26]>> Uh so I mean there's two different levels to it. Like one is that I do think like I think that aspects of the like MAGA Trump movement are like really really genuinely dangerous and I want to see it like defanged with more electoral victories and I would just say it place a higher priority on this than some people do. Secondarily I think that there are a number of these positions that are bad on the merits and so I think you can do better electorally by moving closer to my view. I do also have a lot of views that I don't particularly encourage practical politicians to espouse and I sometimes feel like I'm in a double bind about this because when I talk about those things people will say what happened to Mr. moderate and when I don't talk about them people will say well you only want to moderate on things that you agree on and so it would be like a very awkward column to be like I sort of think you know we should like directly expose electricity rate payers to the spot price of energy because that would be way more efficient but also that would be very unpopular so then if we did espouse that I would start scolding you for losing a so it's like whatever it's just if somebody asks me like that is my opinion um and I feel that way about a lot of things, but it's just, you know, we don't have to put it at the hot center of the political agenda. Um, the other thing though is that like beyond Democrats versus Republicans, I am quite worried about like the basic stability of the political system. Like if I got to go on somebody else's podcast, um like a more a right-wing podcast, something I would say is like I hear conservatives all the time expressing their own forms of like dire concern about Western civilization and the perity of the left and so on and so forth.

[00:42:19]If you feel that way as a Republican, you really ought to come up with a real answer to the question of what how do poor people get medical care like no other >> unless you don't want people to get unless you don't want poor people to get >> Yes. Right. Absolutely. But like no other mainstream conservative political party in the world takes the Republican party's view of this. And when I just like I I hear conservatives talking that like none of them seem to be saying my number one top priority in life is to make sure that like some poor mom thinks her kid is sick but it's not quite an ER level crisis. I want to make sure she can't go take him to see a pediatrician for a probably useless but maybe useful and definitely psychologically reassuring checkup. This is like in [ __ ] Canada, anywhere you go, like a low-inccome mom could do that, no problem. The vast majority of people think that's how the system should work.

[00:43:22]Like, Republicans lose ton of votes over their extreme stubbornness on healthcare and abortion. And if you really want to like choke out the far left and like achieve whatever Elon Musk like wants to achieve, like getting Republicans to be more reasonable on these topics would be a huge step forward. And then Democrats would be like, "Oh [ __ ] like we can't possibly win an election against a Republican party that has like conservative party of Canada physicians on healthcare and abortion." And then Democrats would have to move to the center and like then the far-left would be objectively less threatening and nobody would be able to rationalize, oh, I need to support this like authoritarian kleptocratic maniac because he's the only thing standing at the door blocking socialism, you know?

[00:44:15]And like we could just have like a way more chill, way more normal, way more like um centered around the median voter, but also like politicians would be more punished for corruption and scandalous behavior if the gap between the political parties was not so large.

[00:44:34]Right now, you know, you got so many people who are like, I'll vote for like any [ __ ] who has the right party label because they see the partisan stakes as being so high. If both parties were more attentive to public opinion, people would not care as much. They they wouldn't like live in terror of switching parties and you could hold people to a higher standard of conduct.

[00:44:56]You know, uh, we talked about the the Ezra Klein subre earlier, and I like we we did talk about how they tend to have very mixed opinions of you, but sometimes when when they're arguing about what they think about you, sometimes people defend you by arguing that you're you're actually just as progressive as like say Ezra, but like you're you're a lot more pragmatic and you're a lot more persuasive in how you approach Democratic politics. Do you ever like encounter that of like people trying to defend you by claiming that you're more progressive than you might be? Um, I mean, I I think that, uh, you know, I mean, I'm like more progressive than most people in America.

[00:45:37]And that is a good point that is sometimes raised by me. And I think that there's a slightly odd obsession of people who are like in the 98th percentile of progressive politics with like firing at people who are in the 65th percentile. Um, I do think I mean Ezra and I have never like sat down to do a checklist on like what do we think about every issue. I think I think he's just somewhat more leftwing than I am um on on certain kinds of of topics. And so that's not like a a misperception um that people have. It is also true though that like I think policy would move to the left in important ways if Democrats behaved more the way that I think they should.

[00:46:24]>> Okay. So maybe this is a natural transition point. Could you explain the concept of a moderate candidate and does a moderate candidate exhibit the exhibit the types of qualities that you want Democratic politicians to exhibit? I mean, this is just kind of a joke, but there were some people out there who were like, "Oh, you know, like there's all this talk like Democrats should move to the center, but like what really counts? Voters are like eclectic and they want authenticity." And I was like, "Yeah, but you're just redescribing from first principles like what a moderate politician is is like, you know, oh, he's got to like fit the district well and, you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah." I mean, it was interesting to me because like leftwing people decided that they like Graham Platner.

[00:47:12]Um, so because they decided that they like Graham Platner, when he came out against an assault weapons ban, most of them were like, "Oh, that's fine. That makes sense. Like, I don't agree, but that's in line with what voters in Maine think." Um, so I say like fine, but you could name like a dozen other things that Graham Platner could say that to be clear are consistent with his like main theme of fighting the oligarchy. Uh, but that voters agree with, right? So like in Maine where he's running, like they won't give you, uh, plastic bags at the supermarket. You've got to get paper bags. Uh, and the paper bags >> environmental friendly or something like >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and the paper bags that they give you don't don't have handles. Like here in DC, I get like good handle paper bags at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. When I go to Maine, I get these horrible ones. Um, and they rip and they break and it sucks. And it's like, does that does banning plastic bags fight oligarchy?

[00:48:11]Like, no. Right. It's some weird environmental thing. And you know, I think like Graham should should go go assault weapons ban on a billion other things. And maybe he would never be considered a moderate because he was a left-wing insurgent, but he could be moderate, you know, like he could be a guy who says things that his constituents agree with because he's mainly focused on his top priority of fighting oligarchy. And if people feel more comfortable like reasoning in that direction, you know, great.

[00:48:44]>> Yeah. voters are more like enthusiastic when it comes to populism about dealing with corporate power, fighting the oligarchy, dealing with the billionaires and inequality and all of that, then like there are some policies in that direction that would be a good idea and there are some policies in that direction that would be a bad idea. So you think that they should you should focus on the first thing because it overlaps with their populist rhetoric.

[00:49:06]Is that what you're saying?

[00:49:07]>> Yeah. you know, try to try to be good ideas. Try to I mean, I I I just think that for anybody thinking about politics that just setting priorities will naturally lead you in a more pragmatic direction, right? And then a lot of problems are downstream not of like people's ideological self-conception as like, oh, I'm very because I see the other thing, right? I see Democrats who think of themselves as very Democratic elected officials who think of themselves as very moderate. Uh but because they're not prioritizers, they like have actually like backed themselves into a more extreme set of policy commitments than I think they realize. And you see a lot of this like I call it this like duality between governors and senators because if you're the governor of a state, you have to deal with budget constraints, right? So you like ultimately have to say, okay, I had, you know, a billion dollars to spend. And like I'm a Democrat, so I believed in spending the billion dollars. I didn't just cut taxes. But it's like I had to pick something to spend the billion dollars on. And that meant I had to tell somebody, I didn't actually think your idea was that good. That's why I spent the money on the other guy's thing. If you're a senator, you can just sign on to every bill and then like they mostly don't pass because laws mostly don't pass. And then everybody will like you and you're in a safe seat and you can just be like I'm like such a pragmatic guy. I'm not like out here saying we should defund the police and then you look at the set of bills you've signed on to and it's like 80 trillion in new programmatic spending. But because you're not like in a accountable position, you don't need to actually set priorities. So I guess like that's my message. people like want to not think of themselves as moderate. Just like think of yourself as a prioritizer, like what do you care about and then and then try to scale it down and then of course ideally what you would pick as the thing to care about is something that's actually good and important. Um that's a high bar for people to reach, but I try to set priorities that I think are important. This kind of uh reminds me of something that Dylan Matthews told me during the Biden administration where like when it came to all of the the different like bills that uh the Biden administration was trying to pass like the American Rescue Plan or the Inflation Reduction Act back in those days, Joe Mansion and Christian Cinema were the examples of Democratic senators that were more like obstructionist and less willing to pass Democratic bills.

[00:51:34]But like there were plenty of other senators that were essentially like uh signing on to what was like uh being passed explicitly, but they were like if they had a certain concern, they would use Mansion and Cinema as human shields, but they where they didn't they didn't want the reputation of those two, but they had like that didn't mean that they enthusiastically supported the bill.

[00:51:52]They just didn't want the reputation of the two people that were opposing the bill. Um yeah, >> absolutely. Yeah.

[00:51:59]>> Yeah.

[00:52:00]>> Yeah. No, I I totally agree with Yeah.

[00:52:02]Dylan's diagnosis of that uh was spot on.

[00:52:05]>> Yeah. So that um are there are there any examples of unpopular progressive stances that you think Democrats should spend more of their political capital on in the hopes that they may be like they might be able to successfully shift the Overton window leftwards over time?

[00:52:22]>> Um I mean there's an Overton window question, but then there's also just like what do you do, right? I mean you can you don't need to be like popularity maxing at all times. Um, you know, I mean, I think the stuff that is within the scope of politics that's really important, um, is things related to housing supply, things related to, uh, clean energy, you know, infrastructure buildout, um, and things related to sort of like world peace and and international development, you know. So if I see people spending down political capital, working on those causes, I'm thinking, you know, these are big important issues uh that have big long-term payoffs. I think that they are tractable. Like I I I think in the sense that like when these things are up and running, there isn't necessarily like immediate back. Yeah. Like like you could do it, right? Like even if you wouldn't want to say to voters like this is like my number one thing is like I want to make people in Malawi be less poor. Like if it worked, it's just good.

[00:53:29]It's just like a positive flywheel and and you could easily get away with it.

[00:53:33]um you know then like I want to see politicians addressing more mundane voter concerns like about their healthcare and you know like is like the public schools their kids go to like my kids in public school and so I also care a lot about his experience of fifth grade and the part of me that has like read research is aware that like objectively this is probably actually not that significant um in terms of you know the long-term trajectory of his life But, you know, it still matters.

[00:54:03]It's an ongoing human experience. It matters to me. So, you know, the the that should be the mix. You know, like do do stuff that works on things people care about a lot and do stuff that works on things that are very very important even if voters don't love it.

[00:54:18]>> So, this is going to sound a bit out of left field, but you did you have talked about in the past that like you think that like Trump and a lot of the norms that he's setting are very concerning to you. You would agree with the assertion that Trump is an authoritarian, right?

[00:54:32]Yes.

[00:54:33]>> Who do you think is more responsible for the rise of authoritarianism? Voters or politicians?

[00:54:40]>> Uh well, I mean, in an ultimate sense, the voters are the ones who are responsible, but if we want to know like what's changed, I don't think the electorate became like sharply more open to authoritarianism, uh, you know, in in the mid20s.

[00:54:58]>> Let's create another x and y axis. Maybe there's a difference between causal responsibility and moral responsibility.

[00:55:04]So, who do you think is more causally responsible for the rise of authoritarianism? And who do you think is more morally responsible for the rise of authoritarianism?

[00:55:11]>> Uh, huh. I'm not sure that's the axis. I would I I guess I was trying to say that like the proximate cause is the politicians and the sort of ultimate cause is that public opinion is just a little less, you know, a little more illiberal uh than I would like it to be.

[00:55:27]I don't know. I do I even believe in moral responsibility? I'm not sure.

[00:55:30]These are hard questions.

[00:55:32]>> Yeah. All right. Um so maybe like one example of a direction that the Democratic Party wants to go in as a way to um compete against authoritarianism is to be a lot more populist. This is where we get the whole leftist rhetoric about fighting the oligarchy because a lot of people believe that that is genuinely the solution for what the Democratic party should become to fight people like Trump. Uh, what do you think of Zoron mom Donnie's tenure as the mayor of New York so far?

[00:56:03]>> Uh, you know, as like Mayor Qua Mayor, like I feel like he's doing an okay job.

[00:56:09]You know what it reminds me of is everything I've ever read about when Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington, which you know, I was a little kid when this happened, but as I understand it, it was like a huge news story that like some third party socialist won a mayor's election, but then as mayor, he like reconfigured some waterfront development deal in like some way that voters liked better, you know, but like they went forward with the waterfront redevelopment and he lowered property taxes by increasing taxes on hotels. Um, and he made a new contract with the police union and he was hardworking and energetic and got city services functioning well. And then at one point some activists were doing a protest and they were going to shut down a weapons factory that was in town where they were like selling guns to right-wing Central American regimes that were putting down socialist rebellions. And there was a lot of pressure on Bernie to like join with the protesters and then ultimately he was like no I got to side with the workers at the gun factory and like arrest these protesters and keep it open. Um, which is to say like he was just trying to be a good mayor of the city. And I feel like Manny just turned off all the discourse and like that's what's going on here. Not that he's flawless, but that like he had a budget deficit. He went to Albany and he got some extra money from the state.

[00:57:47]He's making some tax changes that seem reasonable. He's abandoning a lot of his spending pledges. He's making a deal with the police chief so she stays on.

[00:57:57]He's like like he had this like really stupid idea of city-run grocery stores which he like cut down to well it's going to be a fivetore pilot and now it's going to be like a onetore pilot. Now if it was me I would love for him to just be like you know what guys like that idea doesn't make sense. We're not going to do it.

[00:58:15]But like he's clearly not going to do it right. Um now at the same time he's like he's trying to expand child care which seems reasonable. He's trying to like make affordable housing projects more feasible. Like he's got doing bike lanes. So, he's like focusing on some progressive ideas that make sense and that work. And he's like trying to make people think he did a good job so he can build his reputation as a a socialist.

[00:58:40]Um but he's not like nationalizing the banks um or whatever socialism would mean.

[00:58:47]I don't I don't buy into the idea that fighting oligarchy is like a solution to everybody's political problems, but I also don't if that's what people want to say while making reasonable decisions about municipal government. I like I don't have a huge problem with it either.

[00:59:05]Yeah. So, it sounds to me like there's a there's a pretty big difference between the rhetoric that Mum Donnie uses, both the rhetoric that he used when he was campaigning and the rhetoric that he still uses. There's a difference between that rhetoric and the actual policy that he passes where the rhetoric was a lot more populist and like leftistcoded whereas the policy seemed like a lot more wonky and a lot more technocratic almost like he's a he's like a populist on the streets technocrat on the sheets.

[00:59:30]Maybe that like what would you say to the idea that that might be like a solution for the direction that the Democratic party could take to to navigate their electoral competitions with Trump? I mean, every Democrat, I think, ever has been a little bit of a populist in that sense. You know, I was I was reading the 1852 Democratic Party platform. And this is like a million years ago in terms of American this is a pro-slavery party. They're like against building railroads, you know, all this kind of stuff. But they're still there.

[01:00:03]And they're like, "These Republicans, they only care about the rich and powerful and we're standing for the working man." And that's just like that's what Democrats say and like it's fine, you know, like I don't I don't think I sometimes hear this stuff people are like, "Wow, what an amazing new idea."

[01:00:20]But like you look at how Al Gore campaigned, how John Kerry campaigned, how Barack Obama campaigned, how Bill Clinton campaigned. It's like Democrats say they are standing up for the little guy and they like in fact do stand up for the little guy more than Republicans do in certain key ways. But I think the good ones also recognize that like a market economy um is a positive sum undertaking and you don't like actually want to get rid of private enterprise and entrepreneurs and business people. So you know like that's all just like all fine and I think you know we'll probably shake out in a reasonable way sooner or later.

[01:01:02]>> Final question. Would you ever consider doing an AMA in the Ezra Klein subreddit considering how often people talk about you there?

[01:01:10]>> Uh, I mean, I'll do an AMA somewhere.

[01:01:12]Um, should it be that one? I don't know.

[01:01:15]>> Yeah, >> I want my own subreddit, you know?

[01:01:18]>> Yeah. Well, maybe >> I'm out here on these Discord streets like, wait, where where's my respect?

[01:01:23]Where's my subreddit?

[01:01:24]>> Maybe the there there's going to be like a bargain where if you do an AMA in the Ezra client subreddit, then then people will create a subreddit for you in response or something like that. Um, >> sure. I don't know. I don't know. I'm ready. I mean, I'm around. Uh, I'm ready ready to to to to do AMAs everywhere.

[01:01:40]>> Yeah. I look forward to seeing how that that might shape up. Um.

[01:01:44]>> Okay.

[01:01:45]>> Mattie Glazius, thank you so much for taking the time to come on to this podcast.

[01:01:49]>> Thank you.

[01:01:50]>> Yeah. Um, I just want you to know it was an honor to be able to speak with you.

[01:01:55]>> Oh, thank you so much. Uh, that's really kind of you. Uh,