Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…And they’re like, “Well, that’s Ezra. He’s brilliant.” They’re going to be worried about their own candidate. If AOC comes off brilliant, they’re not going to be thinking, “Oh, this is a place to be brilliant.” They’re going to be like, “Well, because AOC is brilliant, but my candidate is not.” It’s still boils down to the caution. I’ve had a lot of Republican, high profile Republican people reach out to me, they don’t give a shit. They’re just like, “Whatever, I’ll come.” People on the left, I’ve had two people who I respect deeply and admire, expressed caution about the previous people I’ve interviewed and not wanting to come on. Well, that’s the thing the left has to get over. Yeah, that’s a very important cultural. They began to do a thing where spaces were verboten because it had platformed so-and-so, and I think that culture is changing. I think they realized, I mean, that they abandoned huge, vast swaths of significant culture because they wouldn’t go places. It’s crazy. The idea that you only go where people agree with you is genuine lunacy. I don’t want to act as your booker here and 2020 candidates are what they are and they each have their own press strategy. But I would say I’m doing this myself on my show. I don’t think the best people to get right now in the Democratic Party are the seven people who lead the polls. I’m looking for people who will think out loud. I just had Jake Auchincloss on. He’s not that well-known house member from Massachusetts. I just think he’s a guy who thinks out loud. I am booking someone else right now two more people like that frankly, who are neither of them. They’re like [inaudible 00:50:51]. I could get a bigger name. I’m more interested in people who are thinking. One reason I think Bernie Sanders always did everything is to him, the thing he was really doing was he had something to say. The point of almost everything for Bernie Sanders is to be in a place where people can hear the thing he has to say, and a lot of politicians don’t have that, right? The point of anything is what it does for them in the polls, what it does for them with the donors, how it repositions them. I’m interested right now at this moment because it’s not 2028, it’s not 2027, there’s no democratic primary happening right now. The idea that you’re going to pre-run the Democratic Party primary is stupid. We don’t even know what the, we might be in World War Three. We have no idea what, we might have AGI, the things that the 2027 primary might be about, the kinds of scandals that might’ve erupted by them are totally different. Whereas, the reason I have people on is because they are saying something. They’re a live mind in the moment that has a perspective on this that you want to hear. And so, I would look for that. And I think a lot of people who are not there are people who are trying to protect something, protect a standing in the polls, protect a sort of coalitional set of allies they currently have, and then there are people who are trying to just be heard. Again, a lot of Bernie Sanders’ culture, the way he does media is now Bernie Sanders is Bernie Sanders. He didn’t used to be. He wasn’t in 2015 even. When Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2015, it wasn’t initially a big deal. It was like, “Oh, bummer.” Elizabeth Warren didn’t run for president was a feeling of most people on the left. And so, Bernie Sanders was the guy who’s been saying the same thing for decades, but in the wilderness and nobody was listening. rren didn’t run for president was a feeling of most people on the left. And so, Bernie Sanders was the guy who’s been saying the same thing for decades, but in the wilderness and nobody was listening. And now, he still has the instincts of somebody who understood that the most important thing was to find a place where people were listening, where they would let you talk and even better let you talk for a while. I think the candidate who’s going to do well in 2028 is going to have an instinct like that, but even right now, I think the question is, one of my big questions is I’m booking for my show is just I want someone who has a perspective on this moment, who feels like they have had a thought that is about right now and who we are right now and what the story of America is right now. I think what’s really important is what Ezra said, it’s about having something to say. We wanted to talk to you and talk together about how much we wanted to talk to you because we got something to say. We wrote a 300-page book about how much we have to say. We love going on podcasts and television shows and radio and then doing live events to tell people what we have to say. We think this idea of abundance isn’t just important for redefining what the American left means. We think that the outcome of thinking abundantly about housing and energy and science and technology is what politics is all about. It’s about people, the good life, and we think this is the path toward it. So certainly, one thing that’s profoundly motivated us is having something very concrete that we just want to get out there in the world. My sense as a writer, as a thinker is I want my software running on as many pieces of hardware as possible. I want to get my ideas out there as much as possible and who gets credit for them and where the idea goes, and that’s all secondary. I believe on ideas because they’re important. And so, I want to talk to people who have large platforms about those ideas because how else is the idea getting into the mainstream except through those large platforms? That’s how broadcast technology works in the first place. So maybe one thing that you’re touching on is a little bit of ideological ambiguity. Maybe a part of this is this sense that people don’t know exactly what it is they have to say for three hours. All I can say for sure is that we know.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.