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From the Straits of Hormuz to the Streets of Minneapolis, plus Mamdani and the Midterms / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner, later in the hour, the working family's party is organizing voters not just to win a democratic majority in Congress and the midterms, but for a movement election, a historic expansion of the electorate that includes a demand for significant change.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maurice Mitchell, the party's national director, will comment.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But first, from the streets of Hormuz to the streets of Minneapolis, John Nichols will explain in a minute.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's week three of Trump's war where they run, and things are not going well for him, or for a lot of the world.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: For Comington Analysis, we turn to John Nichols, of course he's executive editor of the nation, John, welcome back.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an honor to be with you, John.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, what are Trump's goals in this war, and how close is he to achieving them?
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some would say, that's a trick question.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is a trick question, John, because the goal post keeps moving.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: as best we can tell.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I actually listen to the president sometimes for hours as he tries to explain what he's up to.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it appears that his goal is something alone in lines of regime change within the regime.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that is to have a different leadership coming out of some track that he thinks the United States can work with.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: With the United States being in a very dominant role as regards Iran, and particularly as regards its oil.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And no, that's a bit of a loose interpretation, but it's basically a lot of what we've heard.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Beyond that, I think, to be honest, because it's become so chaotic.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: the goal is probably just to have something that could be declared successful and step away at some point because it's become a mess that now creates new goals to deal with the problems that have developed since the goalless initial struggle began.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was a point at which he might have declared victory announced we defeated the enemy and called it quits, but it seems like it's too late for that now with a ran closing the straight of Hormuz, a fifth of the world's oil is not being shipped.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The price of oil is soaring, it's the largest
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oil supplied disruption in history seems like the price is going to stay up for a while and apparently it could take four to six months after the war ends to clear the mines and reopen the straight to shipping.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess Trump hadn't thought of that possibility when he started the war.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, there are some geophysical realities that that probably ought to be reviewed in the early stages of planning for war, even for you.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, and one of those is that there's a relatively narrow space there on the map and to to move oil through that is a big deal and it and Iran.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have countries in Europe as an example, they're now looking at where they get their natural gas oil resources from.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think some of them are looking at Russia, some of them are looking at US at, you know, to extent Norway places like that.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then you've got another factor with China, which relies on an immense amount of Middle East oil.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've got Japan, which could go into a huge crisis because of what's going on.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the end result is that if you were sitting in the White House right now, you're getting these signals coming in as regards an immediate war.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then all these other countries around the world that are giving you messages of, we need these resources or our economies are going to go into crisis.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And secondly, we're not very excited, but helping you with this message.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump in contrast said, maybe we should not even be trying to secure the state of her moves for oil shipping, because the United States produces so much oil.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't need it.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He said about mid-East oil, quote, we have a lot of oil.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're the number one producer anywhere in the world, close quote.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there something here he does not understand?
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, maybe at the fundamental level, is that the world consumes a lot of oil and you create a global economic crisis.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oil becomes too expensive.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Economies cannot function.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Many of the still significantly industrialized economies, Germany, Japan, obviously China.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the kind of thing
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: that creates a global chaos if you read the financial times every day, which by the way, the financial times, the British global paper, they have across the top headline every day.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: They are treating this as one of the most monumental moments in global history.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that Americans quite recognize, and maybe this goes even up to the White House, how many things have been thrown into chaos by this.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this is a very big deal that could reshape the world for a very long time.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: The global chaos does bring death and destruction on a immense scale to lots of people in the world.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But here in the United States, the big thing is the price of gasoline.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ever since he took the oath of office in January, Trump has been talking about how great it is that he has kept the price of gasoline low.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's because voters get pretty grumpy pretty quickly when gas prices go up in guess what gas prices are going up in the United States, even though we produce lots of oil.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're going way up where I live in LA, the price of gas before the war was about $4.30
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, it's about $5.60.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a 30% increase over three weeks.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is something that everybody knows about, because that price is posted on every gas station on every big intersection in the United States.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's no secret.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's one reason why gas price increases, tend to be politically the most damaging kind of inflation there can be.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, voters in the past haven't blamed the president consistently.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: for an increase in the price of gas.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I understand they usually blame the oil companies, but that's not what's happening now, because everybody knows why the price of gas is going up.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a morning consult poll that ask Americans who is responsible for the increase in the price of gas.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: 48% said Trump in the next highest group was 16% who blame the oil of gas companies.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: 13% blamed global market forces.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: The oil price increase means everything else goes up, but that is the key thing for American politics.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The amazing thing is this is what Trump talked about as one of his great achievements and now he has sort of stabbed himself in the back by his own actions.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've laid it out well, my friend.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's let's try out you for a moment here and recognize that this is a war circumstance.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are civilians, there are innocents on the ground in the Middle East, who are being killed.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is massive dislocation occurring in several countries, and including in Lebanon, which is a whole additional story in a place that often when caskers there that has all sorts of global significance.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so we begin with that human side.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: But once we have established that that is a fundamental concern, that's a beginning point of how we all should react politically to this, right, is you want, you don't want the chaos of the region, the death, the dislocation of that to continue.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: You want to find ways to ease that pain.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then you come to the domestic politics.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I only say that upfront because there's a lot of politicians that don't
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: always think that way, but they should.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Once you do understand that death and destruction in one part of the world can often blow back on you and you want to address that, then you get to the domestic political concerns, which are very real.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And let me mention one other thing.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: The farmers getting ready for spring planting have have learned that the price of fertilizer is going way up at a time when farm economics are already in crisis.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Messed up by tariffs, et cetera.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are people who voted very strongly for Donald Trump.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I do think that it's not surprising that there's a potential political reality here and that
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has I believe Republicans and Congress terrified because they are looking at a reality that they have to go out and defend all of Trump's and some days lunacy as well as economic pain.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now it is true that in 2024 Donald Trump was able to make the economy his issue.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: and that benefited him tremendously as well as his party.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think there's any way that he can do that in 2026.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: What that means is that this feeds into a number of other factors that make the circumstance for the Republicans going into these midterm elections really tough.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've already seen all sorts of special election results down Bella races and off your races.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: that have been a very bad pattern for the Republicans, very good pattern for the Democrats.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you lay overlay that with an economic crisis and one that where you start with the high gas prices, that then feeds into high food prices because of what you're talking about with farmers, it feeds into a situation that could be inflationary, at which point the Fed will feel under pressure to step in and raise interest rates.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: If that happens, then we could, you know, I know they try to avoid this,
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if you end up in a serious recession, I got a news for you, John.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: You look back at the history of American politics, which I do a lot in 1974, recessionary moment.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: 1980, 1982, recessionary moment, boy, you start to look at these things.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then you look at the election results.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: You see great big swings against the party in power.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: sometimes transformational swings against the party in power.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the starting point politically here was that they ran war on the first day of the Iran war.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Was the most unpopular war already in modern American history?
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The New York Times put a little chart together that Afghan war in the first week had 92% approval.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Persian Gulf War in 2001 had 82%.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Iraq War in 2003, 76%.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kosovo in 1999 had 58% approval.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Invading Grenada in 1983 had 53% approval.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Iran War is the only war to start with less than 52%.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It had 41% support at the end of the first week of the Iran War.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is before any of this gasoline price shock.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: really hit before people understood the implications of closing the streets of Hormuz.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the starting point already was politically disastrous for Republicans.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's exactly right.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And look, if you go back and look at words, if some were to start quietly, Vietnam were, and for all the around the time of the Gulf of Tonkin,
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: resolution, conferences, debates and things, and I've talked to senators who were in Congress at that time and they said the administration told me it wasn't that that big a deal.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I voted for it, but it was I wrong.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I will add just for because this is a nation podcast that the two votes cast against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution back in 1964 were cast by Aaron Escreening, the former editor of the nation, and
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: and by Wayne Morris Center for Morgan, who is a favorite of the nation.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so we believe our, we tend to end up on the right side of history.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in this circumstance, there was already a lot of opposition among the American people.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's also, frankly, a substantial amount of opposition in Congress, far more than you usually see at the start of the war that opposition is primarily from Democrats.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you even have Republicans on the predictable Republicans that ran Paul and Thomas Massey, but other Republicans who are starting to say, what are we doing here?
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: How is this working?
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so you started with an unpopular war.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has turned into a chaotic and unfocused war, but then confused by Donald Trump's attempts to talk about it, which sometimes are incredibly hard to follow his mixed signals, his mixed messages.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do think we're in a situation where it is very likely that this all piles up.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't necessarily think that voters sit down and say, well, I really want to, you know, enforce some of the basic premises of the US Constitution as regards separation of powers.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: But at a certain point whether the exact words are used or not, or not, there is a desire to check in balance.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: the wayhouse to say, okay, these guys do not know what they're doing, is they're a way to address this.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Democrats have not been very good at that.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: They don't always message as well as they could or should, but in this case, they may not have to because the unpopularity of this work as well as the actual economic pain that may be associated with it could make this a defining factor in the 20, 26 elections.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is why
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think there is a very real possibility at certain point that the Donald Trump does do, and P.H.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: said that all these people do end up doing what is Senator George Aiken from Vermont suggested midway into the Vietnam War, which is to clear victory and leave.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: One last thing, Katrina Vandenhuvall, our editor in publisher sent me an article over the weekend with the headline, why Minnesota matters more than Iran for America's future.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: The author argued that what happened in Minneapolis in response to ICE was, quote, something I'd never seen in 50 years, a spontaneous uprising as of civic activism propelled by a
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: who ever he or she is and how ever he or she got here.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The author called it, one of the most courageous battles ever fought by American men and women and not in uniform close code.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now that article was not in the nation, where was it and who wrote it?
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: The New York Times written by Thomas Friedman, who's a guy who we often, uh, we often differ with.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Friedman has roots in Minnesota, uh, went there to tell a story.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Frankly, he reported it very thoroughly and and came away with the same impression that I had when I went to Minnesota.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, um, and I think the same impression you had watching it as a,
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: as a son of Minnesota, and that was that something very essential had happened there.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: At the nation, we decided it was worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, and we may have to submit Thomas Freeman's article as an addendum to the nomination, if that's appropriate, but I do think that what he is saying there is important.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is it more important than a
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, because I don't know where this Iran thing is going to play out, but is it incredibly important for America at this point to say that it is possible to resist.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is possible to object.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: There have been many, many, many times when Americans have rose a reason up to resist something that their government is doing and they've done so in nonviolent.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: and incredibly often very beautiful ways.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: What happened in Minneapolis in Minnesota has captured the imaginations of people in the U.S. and around the world.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it comes at a time when there's a great deal of, you know, kind of angst and concerned about the direction of the country.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And who knows, maybe Thomas Friedman will notice the no king's demonstrations at the end of the month.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: You may well pass that 10 million mark of people coming out.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bottom line is this is an amazing country for all of its flaws, all of its weaknesses.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's 250 years old and we have not always lived up to our expectations, but that first amendment of our constitution which gives us the right to dissent.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: in the right to object and the right to assemble and to petition for the redress of grievances.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: The people of Minneapolis decided that those rights are real and in doing so, they reminded all of us that they are real and that they're fundamental and that they may well be our saving grace.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Nichols is Executive Editor of the Nation.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now it's time to talk with Maurice Mitchell.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a longtime community organizer and movement strategist and he's national director of the working family's party a multi-racial working class movement that played a leading role in electing Mombani mayor of New York City.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last time he was here in July, we talked about how Mombani won the Democratic primary Maurice Mitchell.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's good to be with you.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I heard you give a talk last week in LA where you said your biggest political worry was not the midterms in November.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, most of our friends are worrying about all the things Trump is likely to do to prevent Democrats from voting in November, banning voting by mail, requiring proof of citizenship, sending ice to blue polling places on election day,
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: maybe even starting another war to serve us a justification for repressing opponents.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you seem confident Democrats will have a big victory at the midterms in November, and Republicans will have a big defeat.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more they're aware that they might lose, the more desperate they'll be.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think we're likely to see a lot of volatility and a lot of chaos because of that desperation, but also a lot of nests and overreach because of it.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm less confident that we will have free and fair elections, but I believe there'll be many opportunities even in the event of their attempt to steal the election for us to be able to put up a good defense and a good
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of confidence that there might be a way of election.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm interested in something bigger than a way, a movement election, a sort of shelacking that is historic and an opportunity to bring a lot of people into the electorate that normally aren't in the electorate.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we're working on at the working families party.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not just defeating the Republicans, but bringing a lot of people into that, defeating and owning that, to
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've also argued that Democrats are too focused on winning elections and not focused enough on preparing to govern when they do win.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why you've said your biggest concern is what happens on January 20th, 2029.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the day that Trump departs from the White House forever when the Democratic President takes the oath of office with the Democratic Senate in the Democratic House.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, that sounds like heaven, but you're not so sure about that.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the path to hell is paved with a lot of good road democratic intentions, right?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, the thing that I'm concerned with is back to this, like Democrats relying on negative partisanship, relying on people's
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: a version to Trump and Trumpism to his fascism in order to build electoral majorities.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those electoral majorities are not sustained because once the Trump threat has been eliminated, then the reason for that electoral coalition is not, is, is, is, is, and so what?
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: What might keep that coalition together?
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the positive agenda.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the governing agenda.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's people's experience after you've defeated Trump.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: What governing is like?
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if that experience is not transformative, if that experience doesn't deal with some of the things that I think most people, if you pull them, they'd say it.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want small change or big change?
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Big change?
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you agree with the status quo, or do you want some, well, I want something different?
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: that those Democrats think that their job is restoration to rebuild rule of law, to rebuild these institutions that Trump destroyed when the working class coalition that brought them to governance are asking for something much more bolder and transformative.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, to me that disconnect might lead to all those folks that got into office
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: based on a version to Trump will be voted out in the next in the next election, in the next midterm, because they will be the party in power.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, before the party in power, faces those electoral, electoral headwinds, whether they're Republican or Democrat.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if the party in power doesn't have a very convincing argument about what they did when they had
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: once those Democrats in the best case scenario, the Democrats win the midterms and they win the presidency, those Democrats will be making the best most pristine argument for right-wing populism.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's talk about mom Donnie.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I understand you had something to do with the mom Donnie campaign.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, just, you know, we're very, very proud of the mayor.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we're very, very proud of his campaign.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I like to remind people that the working families party started in New York.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The working family's party was part of the coalition that created the public funding of elections program that allows our mom to raise $1 million, but to spend $8 million, which was a critical piece of the puzzle.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The working family's party built the progressive caucus in New York City.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: defeated the IDC, which were the turn quote Democrats in the state legislature, helped elections or Armandani to be an assembly person in Queens built the strategy, the Slate strategy, where all these progressives
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: who are working families party progressives who are running against Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Adams.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: They basically ran a solidarity, multiracial solidarity slate against Mayor Adams and Andrew Cuomo.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Zoram was a part of that, created the conditions for Zoram, Mombani, and Brad Lander to cross and doorce each other.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And built a pretty broad labor and community coalition that ultimately rendered a historic victory.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That included Zarrans in incredible mastery of communications, a campaign that was a serious organizing effort that led to more than 100,000 individual volunteers being part of that campaign.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: More than 100,000 individual volunteers and one campaign and one city.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the working families party had a ballot line where more people voted on the working families party line for Zarmam Dany, than all the people that voted for his Republican opponent, Curtis Sleba.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Zarmam also pretty famously voted for himself on his party, the working family parties.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ballad line, right?
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're very proud of this victory, but also we're even more proud of how Thoron and his administration is governing, right?
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let us pause here because you have argued that isn't just winning elections, it's governing that's the key to political success.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: correct and he pretty famously said expectations will be high and we'll meet them.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Really trying to govern in a new way where we actually are engaging in aspirational politics.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, like it's not just him the individual, he's put it pretty together a team.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's really impressive.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was just sitting down with a fear at a mensa who
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: who is in charge of the office of racial justice and equity.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they're going to be really leaning into demonstrating what an economic populist vision that sees race in a city that has the majority of people color looks like.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: a few weeks ago, he was able to make a deal with Kathy Hopewell on child care.
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The child care, the universal child care that he can't paint on.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be a reality.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to pause right here because this is the kind of detail of governing that a lot of people don't understand.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this week's news is that Mombani is going to step in the island to announce that New York City will add a thousand free preschool seats
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: for three-year-olds, including on-statement island.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you don't live in New York City, this is just gibberish to you, but it's a very important part of Mombani governing.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please explain.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, so the power of Zaramam Dani going to stand Island is, look, he could have announced that anywhere.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: He could have announced that in, was some people jokingly called the Kami corridor, which is this strip of communities where a lot of people who align with very, very progressive ideals and their representatives live in government and everything else.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: He went to Staten Island, which is one of the few places where people actually elect Republicans in the city.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: What Zauron said in his victory speech on what he's demonstrating is that he is governing all of New York, all of New Yorkers.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This very, very diverse place, and he's going to ensure that everybody gets experience what it's like when progressives govern.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he's not just
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: from the residents of Stan Island to the folks in Brooklyn that I was just in Black Brooklyn, I was just with yesterday to the folks in Queens, please one of the most diverse communities where, you know, more than 100 languages of spoken, you know, the South Asian aunties and uncles that when he was campaigning, I got to visit.
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: with who were like so exciting and so proud of his candidacy, he's governing for everybody.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think showing up at Staten Island that way is a way to demonstrate that.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like when he was campaigning at Staten Island, like he was getting heck old and he just embraced it, right?
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, this is New York.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm really excited with the momentum that he's building, the sense of like permanent campaigning
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's one other bit of news that I personally found very moving.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mamdani hosted Mamud Khalil at Gracie Mansion to break the Ramadan fast.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now we talked about Mamud Khalil on this show quite a bit when he was in the news last year.
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Remind us of who he is and why this was such a powerful and moving event.
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: because Mahmoud Khalil was persecuted and imprisoned by our government.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: A leader at Columbia University.
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so a leader in Columbia, a Columbia University and academic, that was imprisoned by our government for speech, or speech that our government didn't like in support of the Palestinian people.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: As far as anybody can see, his only crime was advocacy for Palestinian people during what many people including human rights organizations in Israel agree is a genocide.
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was his only clinical crime.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so there's something very, very powerful.
• 29:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: especially considering the direction that his predecessor chose to make, in regards to pro-Palestinian organizing and advocacy, may Adams joined the, basically, the policy of policing speech, pro-Palestinian speech.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, basically set his
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: they and my PD against many of these students and many of the academics that were very critical of the policies of the United States and Israel in their war of a retribution against the Palestinian people.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they were really powerful to see somebody who was imprisoned and was in proceedings to be deported by the Trump administration now embraced by a leading official
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: like a significant reversal of fortune and a signal that, you know, the State of New York is under new management.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because of things like this, people say terrible things about Mom Donnie, just recently this guy Jake Lang had a protest called Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City where Mom Donnie was called a Muslim terrorist and a geodist.
• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is the working family's party due to respond?
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have like a rapid response media team that has the facts to prove that Mom Donnie is not a terrorist?
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's funny when I, you know, I was on C-SPAN.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember when the first questions, somebody asked me was, whether or not working family's party supports Hamas.
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such a odd question.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think people are Jake Nane.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: their actions and the type of public theater they engage with speaks for itself and I don't think it makes sense for us to directly respond to some of those accusations and one of the things that
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: the issues of working people, not on these wild, really unhinged Islamophobic and racist accusations.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's focused on universal child care.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's focused on a rent freeze and lowering the cost of housing.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's focused on the day-to-day needs of working people, not going back and forth with the unhinged by supremacist.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, that's been our policy.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the press, we're not gonna go back and forth.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In some ways, elevate the rantings of unhinged white supremacists, we're going to focus on the thing that they're trying to distract us from, which is organizing working people of all races into a populist movement that fights for them against the oligarchs that many of them are getting paid by.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And actually, you have one other argument.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're counting on people.
• 32:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't need to be told about this.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have enough common sense to say, if somebody says, Abdhani is a muscle terrorist, most people in New York would say, that just doesn't sound right to me.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the other thing is that so much of their unhinged attacks have backfired.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: because people in New York are able to register flag of a better word bullshit.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And whether folks agree with Zaron on everything, they believe him.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And because they believe him, random white supremacist outsiders, taking a fight with him, I think only in Gracious and to the people of New York, ultimately.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of those accusations track with people's experience of the nature.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Look, I have three siblings.
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't always get along, but if anybody outside of our family picks a fight, well, we are thickest feeds.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think when some of these unhinged white supremacists and some of these corporate lobbyists, then all this money in order to cast Zaron as whatever they want to cast them,
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maurice Mitchell is national director of the working family's party.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's one of our heroes.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mo, thanks for talking with us today.
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's been a pleasure.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've been listening to Start Making Sense, a podcast from the Nation magazine.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minsky is our producer, Jack Merkinson is Executive Producer.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Baskar Sunkara is President of the Nation, Katrina Vandenhuvul is editor and publisher of the Nation.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our theme music is from Barcelona, Afrobe, License by Creative Commons.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can find out more about StartMakingSense at thenation.com and you can subscribe to StartMakingSense on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner.
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.