ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS CHOOSE THE LEAST APPEALING OPTION

I found this yesterday in Reddit's Bulwark subreddit, from a poster who didn't know much about the world of podcast bros:

After reading and listening about people like Andrew Schulz, I decided today to listen to Andrew Schulz on my commute this morning.

I was prepared for a bunch of Dem hating but that's not what I got.

What I got was an hour or so of barstooly type humor and some real anger and frustration towards Trump and his administration. And it wasn't all about Epstein. There was a lot about how much Trump defers to Bibi and Israel in general. They were pro-student debt cancellation (with some complaints about how Biden did it of course).

The biggest surprise for me was when they said Trump wasn't being America First, but you know who they did think was being truly America First? Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani.

It's not that they necessarily agreed with Sanders and Mamdani on everything. They liked them directionally. They liked that Sanders and Mamdani were at least speaking to and trying to help normal people.

Maybe the pod bros aren't as non-gettable as I thought.

Young male podcasters generally favored Donald Trump in 2024, but they weren't truly Republican and they're skeptical now. Their target demographic is turning against Trump, but doesn't seem to be turning toward the Democratic Party:

A new CNN poll found 40 percent of men younger than 35 approve of Trump's job performance and 60 percent disapprove.... And 65 percent of men under 35 are dissatisfied with the government's handling of the Jeffery Epstein case, while only 10 percent are satisfied with the information that's been shared.

“You said you were going to show us (the Epstein files), now you’re just being the very thing you said you were going to end,” said Ben, a chemical worker from Battle Creek, Michigan, who asked CNN not to use his last name. “Not as transparent as what I thought.” ...

If given a chance to go back to November, Ben said, "Maybe I just wouldn’t vote,” he said.

Ben attended a standup comedy performance by Theo Von, who helped cement support from younger men with a viral podcast interview of Trump last August. The comedian has since become a vocal critic of the president....

Another fan, 21-year-old autoworker Justin Centers, expressed dissatisfaction with his first-ever presidential vote.

“Completely being honest, I’m a little iffy now,” said Centers, who lives in the Detroit suburbs. “One of the things I primarily voted for was ‘No new wars,’ and unfortunately, that has been a big lie to my face. So, it’s extremely disappointing to see that.”

Some of the young voters who turned Republican in 2024 were Black. As The Washington Post's Perry Bacon Jr. notes, they've shown increasing interest in the GOP -- and in progressive politicians and ideas. The Democratic Party mainstream, not so much.

It has been well-chronicled that more African Americans, particularly younger ones, are voting Republican than in the past. But there are growing signs of another crucial shift — the younger African Americans who remain Democrats are dissatisfied with the party’s center-left establishment and increasingly open to progressive candidates and stances....

Though [Bernie] Sanders, a socialist like [Zohran] Mamdani, struggled to win over Black voters in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, he did much better among the younger bloc. Polls show that younger African Americans are more open than their older counterparts to reducing police funding, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports according to their chosen gender identity and other progressive positions.

Surveys during [Joe] Biden’s tenure consistently showed younger African American Democrats were much less enthusiastic about him than older ones. In the New York race, Black voters ages 50 and older supported Cuomo over Mamdani by a 64-36 margin, according to an exit poll conducted by Change Research. But about 70 percent of Black voters younger than 50 favored Mamdani.

The one political philosophy that doesn't appeal to young voters is mealy-mouthed left-centrism, but that's precisely what Democratic leaders seem to want to give us all. They don't even want the Democratic Party to be a big tent that includes progressives, even though progressives seem to have solved the problem -- winning back young voters -- that the party is paying consultants millions to solve.

Hakeem Jeffries again declines to endorse Zohran Mamdani, saying "I don't know him well." CHRIS HAYES: Why are you not endorsing the guy that won the democratic primary in a contested election in your backyard? JEFFRIES: I didn't get involved in that primary election, and I don't know him well.

[image or embed]

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 8:03 PM

If the establishmentarians succeed at their top short-term goal -- uniting behind either Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams and defeating Zohnran Mamdani in November's general election -- I think they might lose an entire generation of young voters. This is a generation that believes America needs more than incremental change and believes, rightly or wrongly, that both the Trump GOP and the progressive left understand how much change America needs. Both Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have found that many of their supporters also backed Trump in 2024, and I think this is why.

I think these voters might respond to mainstream Democrats if, like Chris Murphy and Conor Lamb, they acknowledge the harm being done by billionaire oligarchs. (Even the anger about Epstein among the young seems like redirected economic rage.) But most of the party mainstream would rather lose billionaire donors than lose this large cohort of voters. I don't think that's a wise choice.