6/25/26: Dems Panic After Zohran Sweeps NYC, DSA Chairs Slam Stephen Miller Smears

22:43and if the argument is that she was correct but too early I don't think there's anybody out there who's a normal person who's going to say okay well you make a very good point yes she was right

22:54Ryan Grim:but she was right too early she was right too quickly yeah yeah no I mean I remember I remember covering up to October 7th I remember the pit in my stomach I remember all of us internally talking about what sort of hell was going to be unleashed. And, you know, it was impossible to wrap your mind around truly how just inhumane and disgusting and the siege and all of the entirety of Gaza turned to rubble. And so, yeah, that she was there on October 8th, understanding the history, understanding the political dynamics, understanding what likely was to come. I think that's a point in her favor personally.

23:33Ryan Grim:Let me just hit on this note. There were some somewhat surprising defenders against the mass blanket charges of anti-Semitism here. In particular, Joe Scarborough showed up to say, hey, if you want to point to rising anti-Semitism, I've got an idea of who is to blame. And it's not Zoran Mamdani. This is A1. Let's take a listen. I just I just, you know, hearing a lot of people say talking about the anti-Semitism in New York City and last night proved the anti-Semitism in New York City. And this is Mom Donnie's fault. This is so and so's fault. It's this is this left. No, no, no, it's not. It's it's really not.

24:10If you want to blame anybody for what happened last night, my opinion, if you want to blame anybody, Jonathan, I think you have to blame Benjamin Netanyahu. Four years of maximalist aims, four years of a historic goals in the Middle East that anybody, anybody from Dr. Brzezinski to even me could have told anybody over the past 20 years. It's not going to work. And I've said it all along. There's always blowback in the Middle East. The idea that you're going to be able to brutalize children and women in Gaza with bombing that looks indiscriminate on TV day in and day out for years, that you're going to be able to level half of Lebanon, that you're going to be able to continue to allow thugs to run wild in the West Bank and brutalizing Palestinians, brutalizing Christians in Bethlehem, brutalizing Christians across that area, along with Palestinian Muslims, especially Palestinian Muslims, blowing up Catholic churches in Gaza.

25:14I can, I, of course, I'm saying things that would relate to some of these people who were so shocked that Israel is in such low standing in America right now. Forgive me for a quick digression, but I was always instinctively pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian growing up. You know why? Because when I was a young child, one of my first memories was the 72 Munich Olympics when, when, when Palestinian terrorists killed Israelis and it was shocking. And we saw time and time again, terror attacks throughout the seventies, that shaped an entire generation's views on that conflict. Well, what's shaping the views now?

26:01images out of Gaza, images out of the West Bank, images out of Lebanon, a famine out of God. And an American president who tells Netanyahu, go. You're unrestrained until his war in Iran goes horribly wrong.

26:21Ryan Grim:What do you think of that, Ryan? you know i i grade on a more generous curve i think than you do and so fair um i see that paper from scarborough i'm like incredible progress this is like you know and he i think also from a regular person you know the kind of person who's watching morning joe that's great for them to hear yeah i think but go ahead i think you got some criticisms of it which i don't necessarily disagree with. I mean, it's obvious. Like, okay, Netanyahu, yes. But what about our own political leadership? Like, what do you have to say about Joe Biden, who you, you know, he caped for longer than anyone else, the best version of Joe Biden we ever saw, blah, blah, blah.

27:04Ryan Grim:It's just very noteworthy to me. And I get very, to me, it's such a red flag when anyone tries to pawn all of the destruction and carnage and antisemitism to off on this one individual who is democratically elected and has been many multiple times, is not some fringe outlying character in Israeli society. Just go take a listen to his quote unquote moderate opponents to see how much daylight there is between him and them on issues of, you know, human rights. There's zero daylight effectively. And then, you know, our own political leadership class being incredibly, not just complicit, but I mean, directly involved.

27:38Ryan Grim:So that's my, that would be my note on the paper, I guess. I'd put that note at the bottom. I'd put that note at the bottom too, but still give him high marks to encourage him to continue doing good work. Yeah. We've got our guests standing by, but just really quickly, I do want to mention, put a 11 up on the screen here because this is relatively extraordinary. We've got House Democrat anxiety rising after wins by MomDani back candidates. Are we going to let them take over the party? One battleground Democrat told me they are so concerned about the rise of DSA. They are having serious convos with donors about leaving the party all together next term.

28:16Ryan Grim:I would encourage them to go. Go ahead. Josh Gottheimer. OK. Yeah. Goodbye, Josh Gottheimer. Go be a Republican. And this is the problem, again, going back to the Carvel piece of like, you can make that choice, but you've already really lost the base of the party is gone. You know, the Jennifer Welch's of the world are in a very different place today. Your average normie liberal voter is voting for Graham Plattner, not Janet Mills, is voting for Abdul El-Sayed, not Haley Stevens. It's a very different dynamic. It's not just New York City. It really is a national reckoning. And Israel is the sort of most potent dividing line because it does take, in the D.C.

28:58Ryan Grim:political context, it shouldn't, but it does take some political courage to stand up and say, it's a genocide. I'm not taking the AIPAC dollars. We need a totally different approach to all of this. We actually do need to put human rights first. But it's a stand in for are you willing to make those hard choices? Are you willing to reflect the will of the people versus the will of the donor class? And obviously that has applicability in all sorts of issues across the board where the Democratic base and the majority of the American people, by the way, really want to see a different approach, a checking of the oligarch class, true accountability for the crimes that were committed by the Trump regime and their and their acolytes.

29:34Ryan Grim:And so, you know, Gaza and calling it a genocide and standing up against it are a touchstone that indicates to voters you are the type of politician that is going to be different than the class that's in Washington today. Yeah, and we'll be talking to Cory Doctorow at the end of the program about AI and what its effect is going to be on the economy and how we should think about that. And I think people would be a lot more scared of the idea of socialism if they weren't completely frightened about where capitalism is planning to take us and is, and where capitalism is telling us we're going to go, which is like the complete eradication of jobs.

30:13Like that's what they're, whether it's true or not, like that's what they're telling people is going to happen. So when you have a group, people are like, well, we have an alternative vision for society. People are going to be like, okay, let's hear it.

30:23Ryan Grim:Right. Yeah. I mean, they're the ones that are out there. Like we need a totally social new social contract. It's like, okay, well let's, let's get started on that. Let's start talking about that. And that's how you end up with a situation where in the This will be a good transition to our guests where socialism is more popular than capitalism in the Democratic Party. DSA is more popular than Democrats in Congress. And there is just a real reckoning that is unfolding right now in the Democratic Party. It is not going to look the same after these midterm elections as it looked before. Indeed. I turned off news altogether.

30:59I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.

31:06Ryan Grim:It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. This is Tony Ayo from The Real Report with Tony Ayo and Uncle Murda. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent's going up. Streaming services are going up. Even your favorite burrito spot suddenly thinks salsa should cost extra. But with Boost Mobile, you and your phone bill don't have to play the will it go up soon game because Boost Mobile has an unlimited talk, text, and data plan at a price that'll never go up.

31:47It's the same price you'll pay for life, meaning you're set to never worry about your bill increasing again for as long as you're on the plan. While the world keeps finding new ways to nickel and dime you, Boost Mobile gives you unlimited wireless at one set price for life. Imagine something in your budget actually staying the same. You'll pay the same for unlimited wireless when you're posting mirror selfies in your 20s and when you're posting mirror selfies in retirement. Some things never change. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up, only at Boost Mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds.

32:20Customers will pay$25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around L.A. in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. Want the full story? Take a listen. Hedy, she starts dating Howard Hughes, the aviation tycoon. Do you know a lot about him? I mean, I watch The Aviator, so I know everything Leonardo DiCaprio has allowed me to know about him. But incredible innovator. Right. She says he's a, quote, very strange man. But they do get along really well. Give us examples.

32:55I know. They do get along intellectually. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. She takes a look at what he's designed. It's got these square wings. And she's like, that doesn't make sense. And so she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of like what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy Lamarr and Billie Jean King. Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Goodbye.

33:30So President Trump was asked about the sweeping DSA Zoranamdani victories in New York City in the Oval Office. It's always fun to hear President Trump talking about the mayor of New York. Let's listen to his reaction here, B1. Great night for Democratic Socialist candidates last night. and the New York primaries, they swept and knocked out two incumbents. You're from New York. Why do you think it is that now the endorsement of Zoran Mamdani means more than the endorsement of Hakeem Jeffries? Well, they're going radical left. They're going, really, you know, you talk about the Democrat socialists.

34:10You took, really, it's really communists. These people, I watched that woman last night. That's not a socialist. I know socialists. That woman is a communist. and you know what they don't say is that I was 16 and 0 last night but mine were a little more boring a little more mainstream they were republican conservatives but we were 16 and 0 and if you look over the last two and a half years we're about 347 and just about 0 that's pretty good but nobody writes that but he picked three they won they beat a guy named Dan Goldman who's you know, loser. He was one of my prosecutors, one of my many prosecutors that they used on me.

34:52Dan Goldman, not a good prosecutor, fortunately, but he's now looking for a job. I was very surprised to see, you know, because he's a pretty liberal guy. When they go more liberal than Dan Goldman, they're really into Never Neverland. we can put up uh b2 here because it really was a a historic sweep um across across the board of course you had the three uh you had three races at the at the federal level if you throw in brad lander which we will we'll talk about that in a sec in a second as well as a significant number down at the at the state legislative level and and elsewhere uh so joining us to kind of break all of this down are the two co-chairs of New York City Democratic Socialists of America, Gustavo Gordillo and Grace Mauser.

35:46Grace, Gustavo, thank you so much for being here.

35:52Yeah, and I was fortunate enough to get to run into both of you guys on Tuesday night. Grace, you were up at the Daria Lisa election night event. Gustavo, you were down at the Claire Valdez won later. Grace, I wanted to start with you. Donald Trump also, later in his comments, continued his bromance with Mom Donnie. So even though he's talking about all the communists that are taking over New York City, he still seems to personally have a lot of affection for Mom Donnie. What is your response to somebody like Trump, though, who says, you know somebody like Dan Goldman that's about as left as New York City ever ought to be and what what is he missing about the city that he grew up in?

36:40And I think he's missing how unhappy people are with the state of American politics. You saw over we counted over 170 ,000 people voted for socialists in New York City on Tuesday night. That is indeed because of our organizing, because we knock doors, because we mobilize people, but it's also because people are deeply dissatisfied with what's happening in our state and also throughout our country. If people were happy with the war that Trump started in Iran, if they were thrilled that we were busy invading other countries, I think he would be seeing a lot more success. His numbers would be up.

37:27His favorability would be up. Everyone would be absolutely clamoring for his endorsement, but that's not happening at all because what he's doing is immensely unpopular. And socialism is on the rise. It's getting more and more popular than ever. And that's because we're actually talking about what matters. And more importantly, we're delivering what matters. We're delivering material improvements for working people.

37:54Ryan Grim:So Mayor Mamdani had a bit of a different view of this week and the victories that you all were able to secure. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. What you all have shown this evening, whether for state assembly, state Senate or Congress is that a year ago it was not the end of a political movement. It was the beginning. And let's hear it for a politics, for a politics that will never forget working people. For a politics that is ready to write a new chapter in our party's history. And for a politics that realizes the old politics that got us to this crisis is not the politics that's going to get us out of this crisis.

38:45It's time for working people to be back at the heart of our politics. These are the champions who will do it. Thank you all so much.

38:53Ryan Grim:Gustavo, I'm curious, how much momentum have you all gained from Zoran's victories and then from these victories Tuesday night? How many new members have been added to New York City's DSA chapter? Yeah, you know, these have been transformative wins. And when we have these huge victories, they become moments of political awakening for ordinary people. So when we endorsed the mayoral campaign back in 2024, we were at 5 ,900 members. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were at 14 ,000 members. And in the nights since these victories, we've added, I think, almost 400 members or maybe more. So we're probably pretty close to 15 ,000 at this point.

39:36And, you know, we're going to keep welcoming new members, having absorption events, because that's what keeps us going. That's what allows us to grow.

39:45Ryan Grim:And Gustavo, I actually saw a right wing commentator talking about how he thought part of the success of DSA, and obviously it's the values and people agreeing with the messaging that you all are putting out, But also this sense of community, like we're doing something together. We're not just isolated on our phones, like doom scrolling. There's a positive vision that we can enact into the world. I feel like that has been a really central part of Zoran's, both his campaign, but now his governing style, which has made him really broadly appealing across the city. How much do you think that that plays into the appeal of DSA, an organization like yours in a moment like now?

40:20Yeah, it's a huge part of our organizing. You know, we always joke DSA is the answer to the male loneliness epidemic. We focus, of course, on electoral campaigns, running candidates. We contest in the legislature. We try to pass legislation. We work in the labor movement. But when we're doing our new member orientations, we always say that a core arm of what we do is building community. so we've really invested quite a lot of capacity into building social spaces we have a run club we have a soccer league our canvases themselves always have a social afterwards people make friends that way you know for young people it's a pretty dsa is a pretty good way to to meet new people in the city and can you elaborate on that a little bit for people who maybe are outside of this city too like because i think it's you joke about it being a cure to male loneliness or female loneliness is a thing too uh loneliness is a thing and you actually do seem to be doing you know very serious work pushing against that even if that isn't the kind of purpose of it um but the purpose kind of creates that uh if if you're out if you're somewhere else outside of new york city if you're in new york city i guess search up new york city dsa it's probably easy to plug into at this point But if you're outside of New York, you don't have a chapter, like how hard is it to start a chapter?

41:54How hard is it to join one? Sure. At this point, we have so many chapters all across the country that there aren't that many parts of the U.S. that are not served by a DSA chapter, although it is possible to start a new one if you go to dsausa.org. but for one of the things that we started to implement a few years ago was standardizing a DSA 101 format this is a welcoming kind of orientation for people who are thinking about joining or have already joined and want to know what to do in their chapters it's something that basically every DSA chapter does now and we started pioneering it here in New York and actually one of the very first major events that Zoran Mamdani did when he launched his campaign was join us for, at the time to us, it was, it seemed like a mega DSA 101 where we had, I think, 400 people back in the fall of 2024.

43:00And he, he gave his own story of how he joined DSA. And And the reason that he did so was because we were the only organization who thought it was possible to run anti-Zionist candidates at the local level and actually win. So, you know, there are different ways to plug in all across the country. And we take membership very seriously. We think the members lead the party. We don't lead from the top down. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.

43:41Ryan Grim:It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. This is Tony A.O. from The Real Report with Tony A.O. and Uncle Murda. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent's going up. Streaming services are going up. Even your favorite burrito spot suddenly thinks salsa should cost extra. But with Boost Mobile, you and your phone bill don't have to play the will it go up soon game. Because Boost Mobile has an unlimited talk, text, and data plan at a price that'll never go up.

44:23It's the same price you'll pay for life. Meaning you're set to never worry about your bill increasing again for as long as you're on the plan. While the world keeps finding new ways to nickel and dime you, Boost Mobile gives you unlimited wireless at one set price for life. Imagine something in your budget actually staying the same. You'll pay the same for unlimited wireless when you're posting mirror selfies in your 20s and when you're posting mirror selfies in retirement. Some things never change. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up, only at Boost Mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds.

44:55Customers will pay$25 a month as long as they remain active on a boost unlimited plan. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around L.A. in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. Want the full story? Take a listen. Hedy, she starts dating Howard Hughes, the aviation tycoon. Do you know a lot about him? I mean, I watch The Aviator, so I know everything Leonardo DiCaprio has allowed me to know about him. But incredible innovator. Right. She says he's a, quote, very strange man. But they do get along really well. Give us examples.

45:31I know. They do get along intellectually. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. She takes a look at what he's designed. It's got these square wings. And she's like, that doesn't make sense. And so she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of like what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy and Lamar and Billie Jean King. Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Goodbye.

46:05Ryan Grim:Grace, I want to get your thoughts on some of the coalition critiques, I guess, of who is DSA and who's voting for DSA candidates. There's a bit of a divide that has emerged, you know, from sort of the establishment Democrats and the Republicans. They can't decide whether they want to say DSA is all white people or the problem is DSA is all third world brown people. We can get a flavor of both of these directions from Batya Ungarsargan went with the what has been the original critique, B5, that Daria Liza Chevalier lost the Bronx part of the district by 30 points. She also lost predominantly black and Hispanic areas.

46:41Ryan Grim:She lost lower income areas by 10 points. She won with younger voters and higher income voters and won majority college educated areas by 20 points. So this is basically the idea that, OK, sure, you can win in the commie corridor because it's this gentrifying area. You have highly educated young white people that like you, but the coalition doesn't really extend to communities of color. But now we have a new critique that's launched by, you know, Stephen Miller certainly said something like this. Matt Walsh and also Jesse Waters on Fox News articulated a version of this. Let's take a listen. Crazy communists to right wing tough guys.

47:16Is that how America is supposed to be? Because that's the way it looks. These people don't believe in borders, capitalism, our founding fathers. They're here to steal, punish us, and then throw around welfare. This is a third world takeover. This is what happens when you import the third world. Did you know that New York City is 70 % nonwhite, 40 % foreign born, 50 % of the apartments, they don't even speak English, not even their first language. These three women who Mondani endorsed weren't even born in New York City, weren't even raised in New York City. They're carpetbaggers. Carpetbaggers, Jessica.

47:58And everyone's talking about like, oh, Mondani, oh, you got all this juice. Like he's this like harmless novice politician on a hot streak. This guy is trouble. This guy is a Trojan horse. horse. And communism is going to take over the Democratic Party, and then we're going to have to beat it, because you can't do anything else besides beat it to a pole.

48:24Ryan Grim:So, Grace, what is your response to both versions of that critique of the coalition that supports DSA and then supports these candidates? I'll take the more, obviously, evil and immoral one first. The right-wing critique about the left and about New York City is just disgusting. It's so silly to be so afraid of people who did not grow up the same way you did. Nativism should never be a requirement. We're in a moment where our Supreme Court is considering making non-U.S. born citizens fearful over their very rights that have already been granted to them by our government. And DSA unapologetically stands in solidarity with those communities, people who came here many generations ago, but also people who arrived in the United States yesterday.

49:28I mean, it's particularly funny hearing that kind of critique coming from a political commentator who can't even say the mayor of New York's name correctly. But Mayor Mamdani, as well as many of candidates in DSA, are continuing a great legacy of immigrants who have come to the U.S. to build an economic and political future, who have fleed prosecution for a number of reasons, who have come to the U.S. for any number of reasons. And New York City, as well as America, I would remind, Mr. Waters does not have a standard language. You're not required to speak English as a first language. And that's what makes us strong.

50:14And I think you see that New York City is the powerhouse, the economic and political powerhouse of the country. And that is in large part due to the immigrants that live here. Yeah. And New York City is kind of a particularly absurd place, I think, to level that critique, since it's been a place of immigrants for hundreds of years, whether Irish, Italian, and so on. It's just constantly evolving Greek neighborhoods, etc. But I am also curious, you guys ended up winning, it seems like, Harlem, which cuts against this kind of, this rudimentary graphic that the New York Times had put out. It does actually seem that with black voters in Harlem, Darylis actually seems to have beaten Espyat.

51:05How, like, what do you think it was that her, that about her campaign that was able to do that? Even though, because I think the critique that there are more kind of white activists in DSA than kind of on average, say, in Harlem. Like, I think that, like, those numbers are probably true. yet they were able to win over those voters in Harlem. So what was able to bridge that divide? A big narrative. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Gustavo. I'll say working class people of color in New York cannot afford to live here. 77 % of Latinos cannot afford the true cost of living. For Black New Yorkers, the numbers are not far off.

51:51and our candidates are speaking to their needs. They're talking about a working class economic agenda that's going to side with the working class over the billionaire class. And we're running against people like Esbayat who are trying to actually divide the working class against each other through racist attacks that Latinos cannot have solidarity with Black people, that Haitian is a term that should be a slur. You know, New Yorkers, this doesn't like land with New Yorkers. I was actually astonished that when we ran Daria Lisa, the racist attacks coming from Esbayat's camp, it was something that they thought could succeed.

52:35I think if anything, it moved voters closer to us. Now, her district is about 50 % Latino. The electorate is about a third Black. There's just no way to win a race in this district with only a white electorate. I'll also add that in New York City DSA, first of all, our steering committee is very multiracial. I think it's about 40 % Latino. And where we are growing the fastest is in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. We've almost tripled in size there. Actually, we probably definitely have tripled in size there by now since the Zaron campaign launched. And the new members coming in are a pretty multiracial cohort.

53:21it's about 25 % Latino. It doesn't quite look like the rest of DSA. And I think that's what happens when you build a mass movement that's actually reaching working class people at scale.

53:34Ryan Grim:Yeah, because bottom line is, whether you're a young person in New York City, whether you are a person of color who's a longtime resident, you are all struggling with these same issues of affordability and an out-of-touch political class and life just being made very difficult for you on a daily basis. Grace, let me get your response to that as well. But let me add one more piece to it here, because it's not just the right. We had Letitia James, who had something to say about the DSA victories this week as well. Guys put B6 up on the screen. She said that it's a wake-up call and, quote, obviously there's some hurt feelings tonight, particularly in communities of color.

54:14Ryan Grim:What we have to do is sit down and see if we can come to some sort of understanding, which again is hard to square with the incredibly diverse districts that were won with large multiracial coalitions here. I have a lot of respect for the attorney general, and I think we're on the same side on a lot of issues. However, I do think she's part of a misunderstanding of a progressive and establishment political class in New York that believes that leaders are always totally in sync with the electorate and with the people that they represent. In Bed-Stuy, which is a historically and predominantly Black neighborhood and area of the city in central Brooklyn, we now have socialists at every level of government except for Congress.

55:09Congress, of course, is represented by minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. They won a majority of Black voters. It wasn't close. We have a strong base of Black socialism. We have very strong Latina, mostly leaders in DSA, in elected official positions. These are just critiques that are stale and not reflective of what the electorate actually wants. They, yes, believe that demographic representation is very important. But what's more important is that you have a representative who is going to fight for you, who is speaking to your material conditions. And boiling things down like this is neither narratively coherent to me, nor is it reflective of what we actually see in the voting patterns from Tuesday night.

56:02And last question for me, you know, now that you're going to be sending a non-trivial number of socialists down to Washington, depending on what happens in November, you know, the socialist bloc, you know, could make the difference between whether or not Democrats can kind of get over the 218 needed to not just form a majority, but also then kind of elect the speaker. There's obviously been a huge push by some people to just block Hakeem Jeffries from becoming speaker at all. my own read of that is that that's going to be very difficult because no candidate has kind of risen to oppose him and Pelosi's uh very inspiring slogan used to be you can't beat somebody with nobody that was literally what she would run on and she was correct like that but you need another name to run against but in order to then to get the rules package approved in order to get the vote across the board Jeffries will will need this block of social support so that's a moment of leverage where you could ask for anything, whether you get it or not, but you could demand things like super PACs out of Democratic primaries, APAC out of Democratic primaries, or policy concessions down the line when it comes to whatever you're asking for.

57:14Or you do the big money concessions, which then presumably lead to the policy concessions, because if you can take the big money off the board, then they don't have the ability to kind of push back against popular ideas. Is this is New York City starting New York City DSA starting to strategize around what to do with this power in Washington? And is there anything you can kind of signal where people should start kind of exploring ideas? I think that it's definitely true that Jeffries, if he if the Democrats take back the House, he's going to have to earn the vote of socialists in Congress. You know, they are there not to be accountable to him, but they're there to be accountable to the communities that have elected him.

58:01And I'm not sure that he's totally in sync with the working class in the districts that are electing Democratic Socialists. So I think the demands that you've raised are going to have a lot of purchase, I think, among our base, forcing money, big money out of politics, stigmatizing AIPAC, making them a non-starter within the Democratic Party. I think these are all demands that there's going to be a lot of interest around. We've been so focused on just winning these campaigns. times. We, you know, we don't get ahead of ourselves in starting to think about what the immediate next steps will be for governing, but that's what we're starting to do now.

58:48We're going to be meeting, setting up, you know, increasing our federal socialists and office committee. That's the body that we use to coordinate with our elected officials in DSA. And I think this will be one of the top questions if we do end up having, you know, a powerful block like that.

59:04Ryan Grim:Lastly, from me, Grace, so we played in our last block, James Carville kind of melting down and saying there should be a schism in the Democratic Party, that people like Daryl Lisa, they're not in the same party as him. You had Jamie Harrison say these type of candidates should not be Democrats, should not run in the Democratic Party. You've got all kinds of articles in Axios and wherever about how freaked out establishment Democrats are in the House. One apparently said they're even exploring switching to the Republican Party. You have sort of struck fear in their hearts? Are they right to be afraid?

59:35Not if they start doing stuff that we think will work. The reason that the Democrats have become weaker and lost ground not only to the Republicans, but to us as Democratic socialists, is because they have failed. Not just since Trump took office in 2025 for the second time, but for years, and not just since Trump took office for the first time either. They have failed for decades to actually fight for material changes for working people. And voters notice that. They notice when you say something and then you do nothing to make it an actuality. They notice when you label someone a fascist and you complain loudly in the press about them, but you actually don't fight to get them out of office, to fight as hard as you can for the people, the immigrants, the trans people, the children and women that they're throwing under the bus.

1:00:38Everyone notices that. And if they're losing ground because of that, they should think about why that is. They should think about what they are doing and more importantly, what failing to do that is making voters change their minds, vote for Democratic socialists, and then worst case, sometimes turn to Republicans and people who are running on fascist platforms because Democrats have failed to do anything.

1:01:01Ryan Grim:Well, Grace and Gustavo, great to have you both. Thank you so much. Congratulations on some massive victories this week. Thank you. Great to be here. Our pleasure. And last note for the audience, the nightmare for the party isn't over. DSA has backed the candidate Melak Kiros in Colorado, who is up on Tuesday. Cori Bush is up August 4th. She's running to come back into office after AIPAC spent many millions to oust her. I noticed that the prediction markets are now quite panicked that Bush, despite having not a whole lot of money behind her, has a very good chance now of coming back to Congress because there's these these like these forecasters are seeing the energy that's on the ground there.

1:01:44So these are a couple a couple more to watch. This block could continue to grow. But, you know, thank you both so much for for joining us. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around L.A. in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. Want the full story? Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius.

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