TGS Live: Democrats' Leadership Crisis + Q&A
The Glenn Show
Intro
Glenn Loury and John McWhorter set up a live conversation about Democratic leadership, politics, and current events.
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Last Friday, John McWhorter and I took our ongoing conversation into new territory: we streamed it live. Eighteen years into our partnership, and we’re still finding ways to keep it fresh!
In the first half of the show, we talk about New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s position on Israel, which John believes is merely woke moralism. While I’m no fan of Mamdani’s plans for free grocery stores and rent freezes, I press John on whether Mamdani’s views on Israel are as simplistic as he makes them out to be. Perhaps Mamdani’s shocking success in New York is a sign that Democratic voters are sick of the party’s lack of direction and looking for an infusion of new blood. John and I agree that substance-free leaders like Kamala Harris aren’t going to cut it. Trump is running the table at home and abroad, and Democratic leadership seems overwhelmed or, in the case of Barack Obama, strangely passive.
Obama was at one time a community organizer, wasn’t he? What happened to that commitment to local communities? I recently witnessed the power of effective grassroots organizing—I tell John about my trip to San Antonio in honor of my friend Ernesto Cortés’s 50th anniversary at Communities Organized for Public Service, an extremely impressive organizing operation. Black communities need leadership like that, and it is in short supply.
In the Q&A segment, we answer questions submitted by full subscribers and talk to a couple of them on camera. We take questions on black conservatism in American institutions, AI, race reductionism, test scores in college admissions, the Civil Rights Act, and the government shutdown.
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