Diabolical Lies - The Myth of Centrism

00:00:00.360 Today's episode was brought to you by popularism, polling, common sense, Matt Iglesias, Jonathan

00:00:07.720 Schaitt, the New York Times editorial board, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, and my elementary

00:00:17.880 school self whose attitude I'm channeling today, a young, hardcore Catholic grade schooler

00:00:23.460 who would hear her neighborhood public school friends noncommittally call themselves Christians

00:00:28.520 and think, lock in. 0.52

00:00:30.260 You need to pick a denomination. 0.99

00:00:32.040 You need to pick a side, cowards, okay? 0.98

00:00:34.280 Because she may have been a little bit misguided 0.98

00:00:36.460 in that energy back then,

00:00:37.660 but I'm going to bring that same attitude

00:00:40.120 to the concept of political centrism today.

00:00:43.560 I'm locked in.

00:00:44.180 I'm ready to pick a side.

00:00:45.800 Okay, so it might seem strange to talk about centrism 0.72

00:00:49.760 during a time in which Nazis are ascendant,

00:00:52.460 but I'm going to do that annoying thing right off the bat

00:00:55.620 where I make you read a quote from MLK's letter

00:00:58.280 from Birmingham jail, which I do think is worth reading in its entirety, even though we are only

00:01:03.580 going to, you know, sit with a couple snippets today. I must make two honest confessions to you,

00:01:10.540 my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years,

00:01:15.600 I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable 0.52

00:01:20.120 conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white 1.00

00:01:24.760 citizens counselor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white, kind of a good sign that I don't know how 0.88

00:01:31.660 to say that aloud, Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to, quote, order

00:01:36.860 than to justice, who prefers a negative piece, which is the absence of tension, to a positive

00:01:42.240 piece, which is the presence of justice, who constantly says, I agree with you in the goal

00:01:47.740 you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action, who paternalistically believes

00:01:53.240 he can set the timetable for another man's freedom, who lives by a mythical concept of time, 0.97

00:01:58.380 and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a more convenient season. Shallow understanding 0.99

00:02:04.300 from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

00:02:09.960 Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

00:02:13.820 That line about the white moderate is pretty popular right now. I've found myself really

00:02:18.900 interested lately in the notion of political centrism. And it all started with a comment

00:02:26.220 that I got on the Money with Katie newsletter a couple months ago. And so I went back and I wanted

00:02:30.840 to try to read it verbatim today because I think there were a couple key words that really jumped

00:02:36.060 out at me. I couldn't find it for some reason, but what I do know is that it had that familiar

00:02:41.000 tenor of someone throwing up their hands at what they perceived to be like too much polarization

00:02:47.380 and essentially saying the answer to our country's political gridlock is to start electing centrists,

00:02:54.620 people who have moderate beliefs that are not so, quote, extreme.

00:02:59.840 So this is a sentiment that I hear all the time, and I find it very noteworthy

00:03:04.460 because of A, the way it is deployed, B, the function it tends to serve,

00:03:10.860 and see how much it obscures the history of political change

00:03:15.840 and the process by which society improves.

00:03:18.480 So today, I'm kind of thinking about this episode

00:03:21.100 like a spiritual successor to our

00:03:23.880 What Comes After the Liberal Status Quo episode.

00:03:27.940 Kara, when you think of centrism as an idea,

00:03:31.800 like when I told you I want to do an episode about the myth of centrism.

00:03:35.580 I was like Katie's stepping into the center of her power.

00:03:38.280 What did that bring to mind for you?

00:03:40.360 Okay, first is the mythical quote, which I think is the symbol. If there were like a spirit animal in language, this would be it for centrist, which is fiscally conservative, but socially liberal, I feel like is the term you hear very often.

00:03:53.440 Yes. I feel I feel like growing up, I believe that centrists were the most rational because they're not drawn to either extreme. So there's like this implication of rationality. It's like, I believe in gun rights, but not X. I believe in this, but not this. But I don't actually know. I couldn't list to you who a centrist candidate. Maybe Bill Clinton is because he ran as a Democrat, but was a Republican. But he's like the only example I can give.

00:04:18.940 So to me, centrism does a few things. It tends to inadvertently favor the way that things mostly already are. It tends to imply that slow change is inherently preferable. But overall, what's interesting about this concept and the way it's often used is that there is no coherent hallmark of this belief system, the same way that there is for conservatism or leftism, which both tend to have more coherent ideological underpinnings.

00:04:47.120 So you just noted that, like,

00:04:49.300 I cannot actually really even think of, like,

00:04:51.040 who would I point to as a centrist politician.

00:04:53.460 What would be a typical centrist belief? 0.97

00:04:56.760 I'm thinking of Kamala Harris saying she owns a gun.

00:05:00.080 Mm, okay.

00:05:00.920 So it's, like, kind of this idea of,

00:05:03.380 well, yeah, I want that thing,

00:05:04.860 but obviously there should be limits. 1.00

00:05:07.000 Right, like, women should be able to get abortions, 0.73

00:05:08.920 but only if they've been raped by a masked intruder, 0.98

00:05:11.820 and only if they somehow were raped by a masked intruder 0.94

00:05:14.680 and then caught that pregnancy at like two weeks in. 0.98

00:05:17.440 It's like a centrist position.

00:05:20.040 So to start today with a little bit of diabolicalized recreation,

00:05:24.420 we're going to talk about pundit brain

00:05:26.160 because the most relevant centrist voices in society,

00:05:31.180 I think, are not the politicians, but the pundits.

00:05:34.080 They exist in the media ecosystem

00:05:35.760 more than they exist in the political system.

00:05:38.000 And they tend to be left-leaning.

00:05:39.820 So I'm sure you could rattle off a bunch of centrist pundits

00:05:42.260 that embody this ethos.

00:05:43.240 The ones that came to mind for me that I want to spend a little bit of time with are Jonathan Shate and Matt Iglesias.

00:05:48.900 And later, Ezra Klein, because he's kind of more—

00:05:51.440 I was just about to say, where do you place him?

00:05:53.900 He's, like, more centrist now, but not in the same way that these two are, in my opinion.

00:06:00.120 But also, like, I think that you and I both respect and have learned a lot from Ezra Klein.

00:06:04.780 And, and, I don't think that MLK would have viewed Ezra Klein as an ally.

00:06:11.140 Mm-hmm.

00:06:12.060 Well, we know Ta-Nehisi coached us a few Ezra Klein as an ally.

00:06:15.660 Friend but not an ally. Continue.

00:06:18.520 I'm excited to show you something that Ezra Klein wrote in 2014 today.

00:06:22.400 Because I think what you'll find is like he was not always this way.

00:06:25.440 That is why I have to say we have, again, like there is a lot.

00:06:29.300 I think a lot of our listeners, because we are to the left of Ezra Klein and how we communicate online.

00:06:34.440 That is the thing about him.

00:06:36.160 I think he is a leftist.

00:06:37.880 I think he is someone who has probably identical opinions to you and I, but feels obliged.

00:06:44.480 He's conservative passing.

00:06:45.920 Yeah, he's like conservative passing.

00:06:47.780 No, he's centrist passing.

00:06:48.980 And I will also add that as you're talking about this, I think I would refine my description

00:06:53.700 of centrism to say that it's a performance and not an identity.

00:06:57.180 And I feel like Kamala Harris tried to perform centrism.

00:07:00.660 These pundits try to perform centrism, but no one actually is one.

00:07:04.740 That actually fits nicely with my theory.

00:07:07.880 And I think, of course, you have the er-reactionary centrist, Barry Weiss, the queen of the centrists, the queen of the, like, I'm the adult in the room.

00:07:17.600 Great example of performance, too.

00:07:19.720 There's an Onion headline that someone sent that was like, it was like a fake Barry Weiss quote that was like, Barry Weiss says ideological diversity begins and ends with her.

00:07:30.400 Oh, my God.

00:07:31.540 So I don't want to spend too much time on the relatively tired Democrats should move to the center or Democrats should tack to the right stuff because it feels like old hat at this point. We've covered it ad nauseum. But part of the challenge with pulling centrist takes that make that same argument about how the right should moderate is that there aren't any.

00:07:51.020 What about Bret Stephens? What about, like, the David Brooks and Bret Stephenses of the New York Times?

00:07:55.840 Okay, that's fair.

00:07:56.840 That's derogatory. In parentheses, derogatory.

00:07:59.180 But I feel like they do kind of define themselves as being like, well, no Trump, but blah, blah, blah.

00:08:04.880 Okay, that's a good point. That is a notable exception.

00:08:07.440 Because as I was looking for this sort of stuff, I was like, the biggest voices who dictate these conversations

00:08:12.900 and tend to have the most impact on public opinion tend to be liberal people, but who are always arguing.

00:08:21.020 For, like, more moderation.

00:08:23.160 Right.

00:08:23.620 We're going to start with Matt Iglesias writing for Bloomberg.

00:08:27.620 He makes me very uncomfortable.

00:08:29.920 This is just kind of one of those, like, bingo card paragraphs.

00:08:33.580 What the Democrats need, in other words, is not just more moderate candidates.

00:08:39.160 They need a more moderate ideology.

00:08:41.960 Democrats are currently rallying around time-honored progressive ideas,

00:08:45.900 like a defense of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

00:08:49.540 These stances can indeed help them return to power in the Senate, but only if they are accompanied by more eclectic and heterodox positions on everything else.

00:08:58.300 A party that's against the domestic production of fossil fuels is not going to win in Texas, Alaska, or Ohio, okay?

00:09:04.840 On a range of cultural issues such as the death penalty, late-term abortions, trans people's participation on women's sport teams, and immigration enforcement, Democrats have let themselves get persistently on the wrong side of national public opinion.

00:09:18.860 to say nothing of opinion in red states.

00:09:21.100 Okay, I mean, this is just,

00:09:22.820 that's just an unintelligent take.

00:09:26.200 Okay, tell me why.

00:09:27.440 I mean, there's a lot about just this whole ideology

00:09:29.640 of becoming more moderate that I would like to unpack.

00:09:32.940 Like, I would be curious

00:09:33.720 how he would perceive the Biden administration,

00:09:36.040 which repeatedly told the American public,

00:09:37.640 like in the lead up to the presidential election,

00:09:39.180 like, no, you actually are fine.

00:09:40.860 The economy is good.

00:09:42.220 There are elements of the Biden administration

00:09:43.760 that probably code as very progressive

00:09:45.520 and elements that are very moderate.

00:09:46.740 But when he talks about Democrats failing to become more moderate on these positions, I mean, we learned this with the episode on trans athletes. These aren't organic issues. These are issues that are astroturfed by billionaires, and we just don't have that support on the left.

00:10:02.320 And so the idea that they're like coming up short, it's like, well, right, that's because someone has spent half a billion dollars coming up with a wedge issue that Democrats have to respond to and that is designed for them to not win at.

00:10:15.760 So the suggestion that that's just like an organic thing that they don't know how to succeed, I feel like ignores the underlying trail of money.

00:10:23.320 Carolyn, you're playing into my hand perfectly.

00:10:25.140 You're playing into my outline perfectly.

00:10:26.720 Thank you.

00:10:27.960 Just two heads smashing.

00:10:29.720 Brain mushed together.

00:10:31.140 This is why we don't have guests.

00:10:32.320 Yeah, this is about as classic as it gets. Okay, two things I wanted to call out. I immediately

00:10:38.300 clogged the use of the word heterodox. Using the word heterodox to describe what are ultimately

00:10:43.480 positions that conform with the status quo is rhetorically very smart. The other one that

00:10:48.840 jumps out at me here is the mention of fossil fuels, because it's a little subtle, but to me,

00:10:55.640 it really illustrates how far gone we are from a politics that would ever attempt to make a

00:11:00.980 normative suggestion about how we should combat climate change to be like, well, we'll lose Texas

00:11:05.820 if we talk mean about fossil fuels. It's like, babe, Texas is gerrymandered to fuck. You are 1.00

00:11:10.080 not going to win Texas anyway. If you think that, like, maybe if we don't, like, talk about

00:11:15.000 renewable energy, the Texans will vote for Democrats. So he was talking about climate

00:11:19.960 change, trans athletes, late-term abortions, the death penalty. So another thing here,

00:11:25.000 and the immigration enforcement. Okay, so out of all of these, immigration is the only topic that

00:11:29.180 voters care about as a priority issue like it's funny to me that he's talking about topics that

00:11:34.100 in many ways are a binary like you either believe in a woman's right to choose or you don't and

00:11:39.780 some people will haggle over like 12 weeks to 20 weeks or whatever the fuck but like the late term

00:11:44.940 abortion question no there is no moderate position in the realm that is a fallacy argument to begin

00:11:51.700 with like we've talked about that in our abortion episode and so it's striking to me that he's

00:11:55.600 picking topics that code conservative where it's like, well, so you're just suggesting that

00:12:00.200 Democrats take on conservative talking points as opposed to something a little bit more sticky

00:12:05.360 that like actually you could, I could theoretically understand the idea of a centrist position

00:12:09.860 on the economy. I'm sure that you could deconstruct it quickly, but like, do you know

00:12:13.660 what I mean? Like he's picking topics that are like, what the fuck is a centrist position on 0.98

00:12:17.820 late term abortions? What the fuck? More importantly, what the fuck does Matt Iglesias 1.00

00:12:22.600 know about late term. I would love to get on a live with him and be like, tell me what you know 0.98

00:12:27.640 about late term abortions, my friend. The centrist position is that you're allowed to terminate a 0.59

00:12:33.520 late term pregnancy, but only if that baby was going to be a blue haired wokey. So the other 0.92

00:12:40.260 piece that I wanted to spend a second with is a Jonathan Shait piece a couple months ago from

00:12:45.460 The Atlantic. And I want us to read this because I think similarly, it captures a few essential

00:12:50.780 qualities of the centrist pundit op-ed in major media outlets that you will see time and time

00:12:57.000 again, primarily relying on conventional wisdom or common sense beliefs about Americans or American

00:13:03.640 politics in order to explain current events with what ultimately amounts to like fan fiction. So

00:13:09.960 Caro, please read the headline and sub-headline for me. And Jonathan Chait is different from

00:13:14.660 Jonathan Haidt, but is Jonathan Chait also fixated on the kids in social media or is he more?

00:13:19.440 Distinction without a difference. No, no. Chate is more specifically like a politics

00:13:25.400 writer. Okay. I always get them confused. Me too. Okay. Am I reading the title?

00:13:31.020 Wow. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So we're going to use the biggest political upset with the largest

00:13:40.100 groundswell of organic support in modern history. And we're going to use that as an example for why

00:13:45.940 it doesn't work incredible work how much did he get you think he got paid like 70 grand for this

00:13:50.620 column i mean these guys can we also just note these centrists are making hundreds of thousands

00:13:55.620 of dollars a year they're like the last writers making like half a million dollars a year at

00:14:00.160 these outlets which is just something that we should explore at some point today not a coincidence

00:14:04.560 by the way unbelievable elite opinion laundering is a very lucrative job yeah truly okay title

00:14:12.680 What the Left Still Doesn't Get About Winning.

00:14:16.000 Subtitle, Momdani won by a modest margin in a deeply blue city,

00:14:20.780 not because of his radical commitments, but despite them.

00:14:23.900 What a crazy gumbo soup statement.

00:14:27.560 Also, for him to say, Momdani won by a modest margin,

00:14:31.740 I'm like, oh, do you mean he overcame the greatest points deficit?

00:14:35.400 It's like saying the Patriots-Falcons Super Bowl game was like,

00:14:38.080 yeah, but they only won by a few points.

00:14:39.680 It's like, yeah, but it was the greatest comeback in football history. 0.99

00:14:43.180 Like, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.98

00:14:45.120 I can't even. 1.00

00:14:46.140 Okay, continue.

00:14:46.940 You earnestly making a sports reference right now?

00:14:49.600 I know.

00:14:50.120 That was a little flash of old Caro.

00:14:52.620 Yeah, wait, when was that Super Bowl?

00:14:54.620 The Patriots-Falcons Super Bowl, Katie?

00:14:57.380 Yeah, what are you talking about?

00:14:59.120 Oh, my God.

00:14:59.700 Okay, we'll talk about this later.

00:15:01.280 When was this?

00:15:03.080 When was it?

00:15:03.860 It was when I was in Boston.

00:15:05.540 I must have been 22 or 23.

00:15:06.820 Oh, dude, never mind.

00:15:07.540 It was, like, the single biggest moment in Boston history of my lifetime.

00:15:11.980 I feel like I just found out that, like, my boyfriend's allergic to something after five years of dating.

00:15:16.800 And I'm like, why didn't I know this about you?

00:15:18.540 You care about football?

00:15:19.660 We honestly, there's never enough time in the day, Katie, for us to talk about everything we have to talk about.

00:15:24.880 Okay, so this piece is basically exactly what you would expect it to be.

00:15:28.680 But I do want to call it a couple things.

00:15:30.280 If you will please read this paragraph.

00:15:36.080 Do you think the editors help these centrist writers finagle the sorcery of these sentences?

00:15:43.820 Or do you think it's just a natural gift that you have, and that's why you become a centrist columnist?

00:15:48.440 I don't know. Does being a shitty person make you a centrist pundit or becoming a centrist pundit? 0.89

00:15:54.580 Because it's like skilled rhetorical work. Like, that subtitle was rhetorically impressive. 0.97

00:16:00.440 I'm going to push back, though. Once you start reading these paragraphs, you're going to eat those words.

00:16:03.760 Okay, does Jonathan Chait have free will?

00:16:06.600 This isn't even a house of cards.

00:16:10.340 It's like a poor police sketch of a house of cards.

00:16:15.180 Okay, all right, all right.

00:16:16.640 Begin with the basic political geography of the city.

00:16:19.280 All right, I'm with you, John.

00:16:20.860 New York is overwhelmingly Democratic.

00:16:23.640 Last year, Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump in New York City by 37 points,

00:16:27.800 which was quite low by historic standards.

00:16:30.520 Previous Democratic presidential candidates have carried the city by 50 to 60 points.

00:16:35.560 In politics, making it in New York City says almost nothing about whether you can make it anywhere.

00:16:40.660 A win is a win, but Mamdani's nine-point margin over Cuomo is deeply unimpressive in a city where Democrats usually win.

00:16:47.720 I'm sure I'm going to feel this way many times today, but I'm just like, I'm blown away by how bad that logic is.

00:16:54.460 That's just like a shockingly bad argument.

00:16:56.420 Yeah, I'm like, do you see any issues with the logic that you'd like to point out for everyone?

00:17:02.620 I mean, to state it really plainly, the shock of Mamdani's campaign is that he's not like a Hillary Clinton who was a state senator for decades.

00:17:10.520 This is a completely unknown candidate, a Muslim candidate in New York City who went from polling at like one or two percent and then in what, seven months, was suddenly competing with Andrew Cuomo, a dynasty candidate.

00:17:24.580 it. That is the most important detail. The idea that they're just using this, like, it kind of 0.59

00:17:28.580 reminds me a little bit. I wonder if we're going to talk about Nate Silver, where it's like these

00:17:31.600 guys. I thought about that. These guys kind of define themselves as being numbers guys. And I

00:17:36.220 will say outright, I am not a numbers person, but like just using your head, you're like, this can't

00:17:41.180 possibly be the most useful set of numbers for you to illustrate how people, like when you think

00:17:47.020 about the stats of how people vote in elections and how like nine times out of 10 people just

00:17:51.100 vote out of name recognition. Like, we think it's all complex and people are weighing things out,

00:17:55.200 but it's just the people they know. The fact that Mom Donnie won is shocking. It is shocking.

00:18:01.140 One other thing that I'd like to point out about this, just to state it even more plainly,

00:18:06.060 he is comparing a Democrat running against a Republican, Kamala Harris running against

00:18:10.920 Donald Trump, to a Democrat running against another Democrat.

00:18:15.020 Yes! Great point, Katie. This is why I'm not a numbers person.

00:18:17.980 And going, uh, it's like not that big of a margin. And it's like, well, Momdani beat the

00:18:23.320 Republican in the race by 44 points, not nine points. So like, and he would have beat him by

00:18:30.700 more if you didn't functionally have another Democrat. It was two Democrats, one running as

00:18:36.640 an independent, but two Democrats versus a Republican. And Momdani still beat the Republican

00:18:41.420 by 44 points. It would have been a 90 point blowout had Cuomo not been in the race.

00:18:47.040 Right.

00:18:47.900 So something that you'll notice about these highbrow centrist arguments is that they also tend to infantilize those who have more ambitious goals.

00:18:57.500 If you will please read the following and then just like note the points where word choice or like the language being used sticks out to you.

00:19:05.540 The fallacy seized upon by Mamdani's giddy supporters, okay, is that his victory overturns the conventional wisdom that voters punish extreme candidates.

00:19:14.200 Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote on X that Mamdani's election revealed important lessons, such as focus on shifting economic power, and that the elites have little idea what's actually mainstream.

00:19:26.660 Many have noted Mamdani's knack for mobilizing enthusiastic swarms of young voters, and the fact that he garnered more votes than any other New York mayoral candidate since John Lindsay in 1969.

00:19:37.600 But I'm going to explain why that doesn't matter.

00:19:39.940 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:40.480 The problem?

00:19:41.040 With a complete non sequitur. That really doesn't make any sense.

00:19:44.440 Can I just say, I think this is revealing my inner Swifty, but I'm like, I've read this before in every article about why Taylor Swift actually isn't that good.

00:19:53.620 And it's actually not that impressive.

00:19:56.420 The problem that extreme candidates tend to face is that though they may mobilize supporters, they also mobilize voters against them.

00:20:03.820 What? And what matters in politics is not how many votes you get, but how many more you get than your opponent.

00:20:09.660 What?

00:20:10.300 What?

00:20:10.880 You may recall Trump insisting that he must have won the 2020 election because he pulled in more votes than any candidate in history, except for Joe Biden, who won more.

00:20:19.860 What?

00:20:20.960 So you're using two examples.

00:20:22.820 Folks, this is in one of the most supposedly prestige magazines in the United States.

00:20:31.160 Okay, can I just say, I understand Trump didn't win the 2020 election, mostly because it was stolen from him.

00:20:36.220 You'll hear that on the next episode.

00:20:37.500 it's so incredible to me that this guy is using like two of the most shockingly successful

00:20:45.620 political candidates of the last few years as examples for why it doesn't work but I'm like

00:20:50.660 it did work Trump did he did work yeah his approach did work exactly it's almost like

00:20:58.400 voters like extreme ideas this is another thing about centrism that I think you're you're kind

00:21:05.860 of getting it is also like the definition of centrism forces other ideas to be described as

00:21:11.840 extreme. But I would even push back on that and be like, no, they just like ideas. This isn't an

00:21:17.360 idea. You're not giving me an idea. You're just like, you're just like chewing dinner and then

00:21:21.900 spitting it into my hand and saying, do you want some? So we're going to come back to this like

00:21:25.980 common sense idea of voters punishing the extremes, which is basically what he says outright. He says,

00:21:30.920 And I quote, Momdani's victory supposedly overturns the conventional wisdom that voters punish extreme candidates.

00:21:39.880 To your point, he's talking about Donald Trump.

00:21:42.240 He's talking about Zeran Momdani, two people with, like, unapologetic ideas that have rabid fan bases as a result.

00:21:50.640 So you would think, like, huh.

00:21:52.200 Bernie Sanders.

00:21:53.220 Maybe, Jonathan, what you should take from this is that voters don't actually punish candidates that have extreme ideas.

00:22:00.580 But words like giddy, the scare quotes around phrases like shifting economic power or the idea that elites are out of touch.

00:22:09.420 He doesn't have to say, well, these people are just unserious to convey his perspective about those who believe in silly things like shifting economic power.

00:22:19.420 Lastly, he argues that Mamdani was able to win because he embraced more centrist ideas on some of his supposedly unpopular positions.

00:22:29.160 Again, no evidence, no evidence that any of this was unpopular with anyone other than the people who wrote for The Atlantic.

00:22:35.740 But here's what he says about this, and I think this is the most, like, flagrantly bad faith part of this article.

00:22:42.000 It should also be noted that, like, 99% of centrists are white men, followed by white women.

00:22:48.280 You have to be a white man or woman who communicates in a certain way in order for any of this to be communicated as intelligent.

00:22:55.940 Except for Thomas Chatterton Williams. 0.57

00:22:58.480 Ugh.

00:22:59.560 Yeah.

00:22:59.940 I share an imprint with him, and it's—

00:23:01.420 Or Coleman Hughes.

00:23:02.700 Coleman Hughes.

00:23:03.520 Free Press Coleman Hughes.

00:23:04.840 But he's a conservative. 0.96

00:23:06.060 We are not letting any of the fuckface columnists at the Free Press 0.95

00:23:10.600 come into this circle of, like, actually successful centrists. 0.95

00:23:14.800 These are people who are getting paid by Barry Weiss to write clickbait on Substack.

00:23:18.620 I will at least give Jonathan Chait the credit of being on The Atlantic.

00:23:22.080 Yeah, instead of doing something highbrow, like making a clickbait podcast on Substack.

00:23:26.600 Exactly.

00:23:27.300 Okay, here's what Jonathan Chait said. 0.99

00:23:28.700 Have some fucking self-respect. 0.99

00:23:30.480 Seriously, stand on something for once in your life. 0.99

00:23:34.960 Okay.

00:23:35.720 Pick a side.

00:23:38.620 Okay.

00:23:39.580 Despite running against despised opponents,

00:23:42.220 Momdani still had to make ideological compromises.

00:23:45.260 He praised the centrist abundance agenda.

00:23:48.640 Okay.

00:23:49.440 Did he, though?

00:23:50.280 Or was he just like, did he just head pat Derek Thompson

00:23:53.520 when he was asked about it on Derek Thompson's podcast?

00:23:56.380 Oh, my God.

00:23:56.780 okay, well, you just brought up Derek Thompson.

00:23:58.640 Katie, we have to pause

00:23:59.760 and I have to talk about his paternity leave post.

00:24:02.680 Okay, okay, yeah, do it.

00:24:04.980 So Derek Thompson is the co-writer

00:24:06.320 of the Abundance book with Ezra Klein.

00:24:08.160 He writes for The Atlantic

00:24:09.100 and also he started something called The Argument,

00:24:11.120 which we talked about in the-

00:24:12.100 The Argument.

00:24:12.500 Yeah, The Argument.

00:24:13.780 He posted on Substack

00:24:16.740 a list of all the books he read on his paternity leave

00:24:20.620 and how reinvigorated he was to return to work

00:24:24.940 after taking some time off on paternity leave.

00:24:28.540 And he was in the comments being like,

00:24:30.000 well, you get a lot of reading done

00:24:31.200 when you're holding a baby.

00:24:32.480 Yuck, yuck, yuck. 1.00

00:24:33.220 And I was like, get your wife, 1.00

00:24:35.740 get your wife on the phone right now. 0.98

00:24:38.760 I will be on the phone with her for five minutes. 1.00

00:24:41.140 Dump him, dump him. 0.99

00:24:43.100 Any man who talks about his paternity leave

00:24:45.480 as reinvigorating his desire to work again

00:24:48.660 was not helping his wife as much as he should have.

00:24:51.760 so back to back to jonathan jay do not cut that in the edit the women are not mad enough the women

00:24:59.120 are not mad enough okay yeah the tragedy of heterosexuality is derrick thompson talking

00:25:06.960 about how much reading he got done on his paternity leave it honestly gave me a nosebleed okay okay

00:25:13.060 okay all right i'm gonna start this from the top okay despite running against despised opponents

00:25:19.700 Mamdani still had to make ideological compromises.

00:25:22.760 Oh, flag.

00:25:24.040 He praised the centrist abundance agenda

00:25:26.340 and promised to scrap needless regulations.

00:25:29.320 He renounced the phrase,

00:25:30.900 globalize the intifada,

00:25:32.140 globalize the centipada,

00:25:33.560 apologized to the New York City Police Department

00:25:35.700 for having called it racist, anti-queer,

00:25:37.760 and a major threat to public safety,

00:25:39.240 and promised to keep police commissioner Jessica Tisch.

00:25:43.140 We don't know how Mamdani would have fared

00:25:45.520 without these moves towards the center, okay,

00:25:47.460 but his strategy suggests a keen awareness of his own weaknesses he ran like a candidate who

00:25:52.900 understood what some of his fans wish to deny he managed to win in an overwhelmingly democratic

00:25:58.120 city not because of his radical commitments but despite them this is just so weak okay

00:26:03.560 two quick points number one i find it really interesting

Diabolical Lies - February 22, 2026

The Myth of Centrism

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