William Brangham:
To discuss the major upset in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary this week, as well as the stalemate between the U.S. and Iran, and more, we turn to Brooks and Atkins Stohr. That’s “The Atlantic”‘s David Brooks and Kimberly Atkins Stohr of The Boston Globe. Jonathan Capehart is away.
Happy Friday. Welcome to you both.
David Brooks:
Thank you.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr, The Boston Globe:
Hi. Thanks.
William Brangham:
David, let’s talk a little bit about what happened in Wisconsin.
The Democratic primary for governor there had this big upset, where David Crowley went into this race, in this election looking like he was going to get trounced. And he ekes out a win over Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong. Was this simply your sense that voters simply thought Hong is not a great candidate to run statewide, or was something else afoot?
David Brooks:
It’s worth mentioning David Crowley dropped out of the race like a month ago.
William Brangham:
Right.
David Brooks:
He only reentered it a month ago.
William Brangham:
Right.
David Brooks:
So never give up, kids.
(Laughter)
David Brooks:
I — people are saying, is this the end of the DSA moment?
William Brangham:
Democratic Socialists of America.
David Brooks:
The Democratic Socialists of America moment, the leftward surge. I think probably not.
I think Francesca Hong was a uniquely bad candidate, not only because of some positions she had that would be considered extreme by people like me, but because of all the personal stuff, all the stuff that was on Twitter during the woke era, and attacking Thanksgiving. She had a thing for holidays. Valentine’s Day, she was against it, one after another, and they were bizarre, sometimes bizarre positions.
And then when she was asked during the campaign, she looked terrible on TV on those big TV interviews. And she couldn’t just say, I have changed my mind, which is what she should have said. What Mamdani has said, that’s what you should say. And so I don’t think this is a big indictment of the socialists, though I wish it was. I think she was just a uniquely bad candidate that caused this polling collapse at the end.
William Brangham:
I mean, Kimberly, the Republicans clearly relished the idea of running against Hong, and now they don’t have that as a as a foil in this election.
Again, do you think this is just pragmatism on their part, or, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the more famous of the socialists, Democratic socialists out there, recently said, the woke point 1.0 era is over, and I’m glad for it?
Kimberly Atkins Stohr:
Yes, so I think a couple things are at play here. I agree with you that candidates matter, and you have to have a good candidate running, and that will trump anything in a race.
I also think that gubernatorial races are precise things, that you can’t always draw national implications out of them. I mean, a state like Massachusetts for many, many years had the — blue as the sky, but loved elect Republican governors because they like those checks and balances. So they do like different ideologies for different positions.
I don’t think that you can extrapolate on congressional races, for example, there. But I also think in terms of is woke 2.0 better than woke 1.0, I think what we are seeing and what voters are responding to are candidates that respond to the needs of the moment.
2020, there were different needs. We were in a pandemic. We were locked down. We were seeing police brutality right before us. We were seeing the Trump administration completely fall apart, and there was a different urgency there. Right now, the biggest urgency is economic.
And you are seeing people who are excelling where they can make voters understand, look, I understand that affordability is an issue for you, that housing affordability, that gas prices are rising, and I want to get into office to work for you. That message seems to be just on fire at this moment. And it’s something that Republicans are having a really difficult time responding to.
William Brangham:
David, do you think that that’s right, I mean, that, one, that it’s all about where you are trying to run? Like, Mamdani is not going to win an election in Iowa. But do you believe what AOC was saying, that that era is over, as Kimberly is saying, and that the Democrats are responding to the moment appropriately?
David Brooks:
Well, I agree with her when she said it was crazy. I think it was a crazy period to live through. I think many, many hundreds of people lost their jobs because they said something that was supposedly offensive or had a thought that was supposedly offensive.
The range of public debate, especially on college campuses, was permanently chilled. We’re still living with the effects of that, because students have, 70 or 80 percent, say, I don’t feel I can say what I believe in public.
And, third, it elected Donald Trump. I mean, his devastating ad in 2024 was he’s for you, she’s for they/them.
William Brangham:
This was the trans issue.
David Brooks:
Yes. And it was an ad that — a line that summarized the whole woke period and showed how some Democrats, especially privileged Democrats at highly competitive colleges, were way out of touch with America.
The period has slowed down, so people are much more free to have conversations which they were not four years ago. And the focus has shifted to economics. But the DSA still comes with some pretty extreme views. Should we eliminate the prison system? Should we completely open the borders? These are somewhat views that I don’t think you could get elected, but a lot of people are willing to look past them in order to get the angriest Democrat who’s out there, and those tend to be the DSA people.
William Brangham:
I mean, Kimberly, the — some Democratic critics of the president say that, yes, the Republicans do like to fetish the woke era, but they argue you also have a Republican Party that is in virtual lockstep with Donald Trump.
And what they argue is his very open war on all of the democratic norms of our society, and that that is a much bigger liability. Do you think that that’s true?
Kimberly Atkins Stohr:
I think multiple things can be true at once. That’s certainly a big liability.
People — Donald Trump’s approval ratings on all the things he ran on, affordability, two to three down in the polls. Immigration, more than half of Americans are disagreeing with his policies and the way that immigration policy is going. So you have that.
But at the same time, to push back against your point about how what a disaster woke 1.0 was, we are seeing the results of what people were talking about then. We are seeing a work force where the federal work force is — was decimated, including Black women disproportionately hit. You are seeing Republicans vilify trans people and LGBTQ people with zest and zeal.
You are seeing DEI, whatever they call DEI, being eliminated in a way that even the president is putting up signs on Smithsonian saying that it’s a lie if it talks about the plight of Black or brown Americans, which is factual. You’re seeing such a backlash against all of those things, which is in part because Democrats were walking away from it.
I think Democrats have to build a big tent that focuses on all of the things that are happening as a result of the Trump administration, both economically and otherwise. And I think that’s what Democrats are trying to do at this point. They need a big tent. They need to make the big case to Americans that you can — if you want to keep with all of — everything that’s going on, keep voting Republican.
If you want that to end, give someone else a shot.
David Brooks:
Just one quick thing. I think we lived through the era of what we will call neoliberalism, Clinton, Obama, Bush. That may have died, much as I would lament that fact. But it’s been replaced by two successor ideologies, one on the left, which Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, one on the right, which is MAGA.
I think both those successor ideologies are now in the process of cracking up. And the question would becomes, what’s next? How — is there a new moderate? Is there something else, something? One has a sense of a succession of belief systems that we’re now on the end of. And I wish I knew what came next.
William Brangham:
I’d like to pivot to Iran just because it seems — I know we keep talking about it here on Fridays, but that war does now seem to be in this incredible stalemate, where you have the richest, most powerful military on the planet has been forced into a stalemate by what was already an economically struggling smaller nation.
How do you see this unfolding, Kimberly?
Kimberly Atkins Stohr:
Yes, it’s a disaster, not only for Americans in the pocketbooks that — being hit in the pocketbook every time they go get gas, but also for our military. We have depleted our military arsenal.
You have reports about sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln who are — the morale is so low, there are reported suicide attempts on it happening on it. And you have family members of those folks who are absolutely gutted and terrified. And you have the president today just dismissing those concerns.
It’s beyond a political problem. It’s a massive problem. I don’t feel safer knowing that Iran no longer fears what the U.S. president says, and they can ignore it, as they have been.
William Brangham:
I mean, the president today — again, there have been reports that he’s going to say, I’m going to declare victory with the Strait of Hormuz and back out. Today, he said maybe I will just declare that the Strait of Hormuz is a piece of American territory.
Obviously, it is a piece of another nation’s territory.
David Brooks:
Or no nation’s territory.
William Brangham:
How do — do you think that Trump could actually just — quote, unquote — “declare victory” and get out of this?
David Brooks:
Yes, it’s — tell that to a guy driving an oil tanker. He can say whatever he wants, but the raw facts are there was like 130 tankers going through the strait every day before the war. And now that’s down to, what, a dozen or so.
So it’s — you just can’t argue with reality.
William Brangham:
As much as he tries.
David Brooks:
And it’s — the whole battlefield has shifted against us.
The U.S. forces, in order to keep the strait open, has to protect everything all the time. All Iran has to do is send a drone into one tanker, and no company’s going to want to risk their tankers. And so it’s all on the — all the advantage is on their side, and I don’t see this ending any time soon.
Finally, I have been reminded this week, two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, I went to the Pentagon, had a senior briefing from a senior figure there, and they said Ukraine’s going to lose in five days. Their military is just weak.
Well, we have lived through the 21st century, where the U.S. military, the strongest in the world, has become enemies with a lot of much smaller and weaker militaries, and we have lost every time. So that suggests we’re in a different period as we think about military strength. And the Iranians have certainly mastered asymmetric warfare, so we’re running out of all our supplies, and we’re feeling the domestic effects that Kimberly talked about.
And as I said on this program before, I really think this is going to go on and on and on and on, because nobody — Iran has no incentive to let the straits go.
William Brangham:
David Brooks, Kimberly Atkins Stohr, so nice to see you both. Thank you.
David Brooks:
Thank you.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr:
Thanks for having us.
