Mamdani Was Just the Beginning - with Brianna Wu

We want to hear from you. Send questions and comments to podcast@boundlessisrael.org

The rise of democratic socialism is no longer confined to a handful of high-profile politicians. Across the country, insurgent candidates are defeating establishment Democrats, building sophisticated political organizations, and reshaping the future of the Democratic Party.

Host Aviva Klompas is joined by political strategist and former congressional candidate Brianna Wu to examine what is driving this movement and why its influence extends far beyond a few headline-grabbing elections.

They discuss the growing divide between traditional Democrats, progressives, and democratic socialists; why opposition to Israel has become a defining feature of the movement; the role of activist networks and political infrastructure; and what recent primary victories reveal about the Democratic Party's future.

The conversation also explores the upcoming Michigan Senate race, the rise and fall of insurgent candidates like Graham Platner, and whether the party is undergoing a temporary shift or a more lasting political realignment.

Guest Bio:

Brianna Wu rose to national prominence during Gamergate, a flashpoint in the video game industry that pioneered many of the toxic tactics now common in online political discourse. She ran for Congress in 2018 as a progressive Democrat, but experienced a sharp break with her party following the October 7th Hamas attacks. Today, she is a prominent advocate for U.S./ Israel national security cooperation and a leading voice in the evolving debate over liberalism, extremism, and the future of the trans movement.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

When I'm looking at polls and seeing that a majority of Democrats do not support the existence of Israel at this point, I have to conclude that my party is becoming unserious about national security.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Today is Wednesday, July 22nd. This is Boundless Insights, and I'm Aviva Klumpus. In recent weeks, Democratic Socialist candidates have racked up a series of high-profile primary victories. Candidates won congressional primaries in New York and Colorado, and next month, all eyes will be on Michigan, where another progressive insurgent is competing for the Democratic Senate nomination. The Democratic Socialist Movement is defeating establishment Democrats, building its own political infrastructure, and steadily expanding its influence within the party. And all the while, we're watching as criticism of Israel has evolved from one issue among many into the defining litmus test of progressive politics. Understanding this movement and its place in the Democratic Party has become one of the most important political conversations in America. Joining me today is Brianna Wu, a political strategist and one of the Democratic Party's most outspoken critics of the hard left. Let's get into it. Brianna Wu, welcome back to Boundless Insights. Such a pleasure. I always have so much fun when we talk. Me too, though we are not talking about anything fun today. Actually, we never talk about anything fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

That should be our goal to eventually have a fun conversation when you know we're just talking about Madonna's new album or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

That's the most relevant thing in the world to talk about. I know. We're not doing like Travis and Taylor's wedding. Let's talk about the hard stuff. And I want to start with just a basic level setting because there was a time a few years ago where Democrats were asking whether the squad represented the future of the party. And that now feels quite quaint with the rise of Democratic socialists. And so off the bat, I just want to get a better understanding of the words and categories because people will often lump progressives, democratic socialists, and the democratic left all together. But are there meaningful distinctions? I think so.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

I mean, when I think about my party right now, I think you have kind of old school Democrats, you know, people like me that worked in democratic politics and understand extremist policies are not what our black voters want, it's not what our normal voters want. You know, there are Democrats that focus more on school funding, healthcare, you know, kind of local initiatives, kind of 90s Clinton Democrats. And I think you have seen this progressive side of the party. I think, unfortunately, it has changed into something a lot more radical. I understand this is a little bit pejorative, but I think of them as the Islamo-leftists because there has been a kind of red-green alliance in our party that is elevating Palestine. And fortunately, I think that has consumed the progressive movement, which, you know, five, six, seven years ago was talking about universal health care, you know, was talking about racial justice. And today it's focused on Palestine, which is a very odd thing for a political party in America to believe we can win elections with.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

I wish I had a more elegant way to ask this question, but to these voices that are outspoken on almost exclusively Israel or Palestine, do you get the sense they like America? Well, of course they don't.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

And, you know, I think their mission is to tear down the country. And the reason I think this is because I've spent a lot of time in DSA meetings talking to these people when I ran for Congress. Yeah, I spent 10 years working in progressive politics. And I'm telling you the truth, that they genuinely think America is the center of all evils in the world. They think that the solution to the destabilization of the Middle East is for America to fall because we are the primary reason that there is chaos and civil war there. So I don't think that they love this country. And I think that Democrats need to wake up and understand the people that we're standing right next to literally don't want the same things that we want.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

And when we talk about who these people are, one of the assumptions is that democratic socialism is a working class movement. But there really are indications that these candidates perform best amongst younger, college-educated, and relatively affluent voters rather than traditional blue-collar Democrats. Is it a working class movement? No, this is exactly correct.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

You know, there's a reason that most black Americans that tend to vote for Democrats are a lot more moderate than these DSA, you know, Islamo-leftist types. And the reason is they have had to have a very pragmatic approach to politics and inclusion. These are people that faced real problems. And I can say that as someone who grew up in Mississippi and saw the aftermath of the civil rights movement. You know, this is not a working class movement. When I worked in progressive politics, it was all the children of lawyers, doctors, you know, all these very well-off people that then got to have luxury politics because they had never faced having a real job before, right? Explain what you mean by luxury politics. Luxury politics, I think a great example of this is hyper-focusing on Palestine over, say, inflation, which you can go look at the polls. What are Americans worried about? Palestine, like respectfully, is not even a blip in the total thing of what American voters care about. I think hyper-focusing on trans issues, even for me as a trans woman, you know, this is not what voters are focused on.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Or defund the police if you live in a neighborhood where the police are less necessary. Yes, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

It's a litany of ideas that these Islamo-leftists have from talking to each other, but it's literally not what the voters care about and not what the voters want. It it sounds good in reality, but it does not translate into winning elections.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

The other assumption that people make is that it's a highly grassroots organic movement.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So something I saw when I was working in progressive politics for a decade is you know, it really surprised me because I would be working on a campaign or trying to raise money or trying to set up a phone banking operation. And these operatives would appear out of nowhere. And they'd work for free. I never asked where they were getting paid from. And all of them tended to be, you know, with links to the Palestinian cause, you know, and they would work on initiatives like, say, getting Corey Bush elected, but they would just constantly be injecting this free Palestine stuff in there. The belief that I have is that, you know, Students for Justice in Palestine and a bunch of these organizations that are funded by these very pro-Islamist causes have basically been infiltrating the Democratic Party for the last decade and they've focused on our younger staff members. And you have to understand, if you're talking to a literal Democrat candidate, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to a senator or a congressperson, and they just don't even know their Twitter password. They're not on social media, they just pass that all over to staff. So the result is you have this extremely online younger class that has been inculcated with all these far-left ideas from something that I think is a very organized movement to inject pro-Islamist attitudes into our parties. Now I don't think this is a genuine movement. I think it has been planned. And to use the leftist language, I think our party has been colonized.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Well, let's look at the products of that party and talk about Graham Platner. He was one of the Democratic Party's rising progressive stars. Despite quite a long list of shortcomings, there was the Nazi tattoo, accusations of infidelity, misogyny, racism, and yet somehow he was wildly popular, and Democrats were willing to overlook all of that. So what did his candidacy tell us about where the party's at?

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Well, I think it said several things. You know, the first thing is the Democratic Party, despite what we say, despite the marketing, we do not apply the same rules to ourselves as we apply to others. That is the truthiest truth of any statement. And look, both sides do it to be fair. But it's like, look, I've criticized Trump over the grab them by the P line. I have criticized people for these sexual misconduct allegations. The difference is I don't like pull that back when it's my own party. The standard has to be the standard. And the truth is, the Democratic Party is so focused on Palestine that we were willing to excuse candidates even when they literally had Nazi tattoos, which is just astonishing to me. Like I remember us getting outraged about Charlottesville, and Jews will not replace us. And I have to say this, you know, I unfortunately grew up in Mississippi. I've run into anti-Semites before. Jew haters are not a mystery to me. I've never met a Jew hater that then went and had great judgment everywhere else in their life. Like it just leads to a cascade of bad thinking across the board. So for me, even like leaving aside the moral consideration of caring about Jews, if someone is an anti-Semite, I don't need to know anything else about them because every part of their political judgment is going to be broken.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

It's going to be skewered through that lens. And I want to remind people, you are not Jewish. No. As far as I know, nobody's given you the $7,000 per post to post something as the vice president is now accusing anybody who is pro-Israel. You actually posted on X this. I'll read it back to you. You wrote, I'm a Democrat. Here's the truth for any Democrat running for office. If you don't support Israel, I don't need to hear another word from you because your moral judgment is so fundamentally flawed, you will come to bad conclusions about healthcare, foreign policy, and civil rights. It's 100% true.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Like, Israel really is a litmus test. Like, A, do you have integrity to say the truth when it's unpopular? Which I think is just a baseline to being a competent elected official. And if your judgment is so flawed that you side with the perpetrators of terrorism rather than the victims of terrorism, if you're so uneducated about this reach that you don't understand that, you know, the aftermath of October 7th was Israel defending itself, there's really nothing left to be said. And it's again, this is not about Jews in Israel and Palestine being the most important issue, but it is about judgment. And I just think there are some things that it just displays such a cavalier attitude towards the truth that I think it's a binary test.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Criticism of Israel used to be one issue amongst many on the left, but it's now the most important issue. So why is it that Israel, of all the different issues that the Democratic Party could be talking about? And you said it could be healthcare, it could be the economy, it could be immigration, it could be a lot of different things. Why is that such a defining marker of progressive identity?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

You're not gonna like this answer because it's really dark, but it's the truth. So the Democratic Party is not the first party in history to learn that we can get political power by tapping into Jew hate. And this is the truth. We are tapping into this new voter base that is highly activated by conspiracies about Jews and hate of Israel and hate of Jews. And we're trying to bring them into the party. It's activating younger people. It is activating people that are, you know, not traditional democratic voters, and it's bringing them into the party. This is very literally Rokana's electoral strategy, is to tap into the world's oldest hate and to try to basically build a voter base of this. You know, Donald Trump did this to a certain extent with NAGA by bringing in people that were highly activated by immigration issues. I think the thing I would say is there's a reasonable conversation to be had about what America's immigration policy should be. I don't think there's a reasonable conversation to be had about eliminating 7 million Jews that live in Israel. So, you know, this is a strategy for us to widen the party. And my very direct concern is that we're going to lose the soul of the Democratic Party on this course. I am telling you, even as a transsexual woman who desperately needs Democrats to win and safeguard my civil rights, if we continue on this direction, even I don't know who I'm going to vote for. Because a party that is going to betray the Jews is going to eventually betray me as well. How can America survive if we have politicians in charge that sincerely believe that America withdrawing from the world and not defending ourselves from the people that tell us every day exactly how much they want to kill us and have killed us? How can America survive if our politicians are siding with the people that want to kill us? It's literally suicide. I am not someone who is pro-war instinctively, but I remember 9-11. And I think there's just a gleeful delusion about the intentions of these theocratic Islamists that want to destroy the United States. It's a miracle that we have not been attacked again at home since 9-11. And I'm telling you, if we continue on this course, and I worry that if we give Democrats power, our country is going to be hit again.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Last time around in the last election, it seemed like the Democrats were hyper-focused on identity politics. This time they seem hyper-focused on Israel, Palestine. Everything that we're seeing with the primaries, are they optimizing to win the primaries, or is this what we can expect in the general election?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I think unfortunately, these anti-Jew, anti-Israel attitudes have permeated to the highest levels of our party. And I'm going to give you a very concrete example of this. I remember at the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris getting on stage and giving a really good speech about Israel needing the weapons and supporting Israel, you know, pro-national security. And then the election happened and she walked every single bit of that back. And her vice presidential candidate came out and said some of the most awful things I've ever heard about Jews and our national security. So it's very clear behind the scenes, even people that have no excuse not to know better, like Kamala Harris, they've fallen for this particular storyline. So unfortunately, I don't think this is just, you know, the Islamo-leftists. I think it's unfortunately taken over the higher levels of our party. I want to believe that there's still time to save it. But when I'm looking at polls and seeing that a majority of Democrats do not support the existence of Israel at this point, I have to conclude that my party is becoming unserious about national security. Who do you think is going to be the nominee? I don't know. You know, I hope it's Gavin Newsom. Not because I like the man, just because I think he's got the talent to win some of the swing states. Yeah, I worried that it's going to be Kamala Harris again. What do you make of her return to the political scene? I don't understand it. I think that, you know, the American people have told her repeatedly they are not interested in her for this office. You know, she's lost the primaries by massive amount. She lost this election. She was a wildly unpopular vice president. Like it's just sometimes you've got to understand your limits. And I wish she would just understand the American people are not interested in her.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Brianna Takamala, read the room. Exactly. Well, the next major test for the party is going to take place in a few weeks in early August when Michigan voters choose their Senate candidate. Abdul El-Sayed is challenging Haley Stevens for the Democratic Senate nomination. What are you expecting that we'll see?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

I think just the fact that this race is even close is an indication that our party is in some really serious trouble. Michigan is a swing state. This is the place that our moderate ideas and candidates should be at the forefront. You know, this is a state that is lukewarm on even our moderate candidates. And here we are, like putting someone forward credibly that has truly said some of the most disgusting things about Jews in the United States and our role in the world. I think unfortunately, if someone like him can be competitive against just a normal Democrat, I think it's a warning across the board. You know, I think having looked at the polls this morning, ultimately Stevens is going to win. But the fact that it's even a conversation, that it's even a fear, truly makes me terrified.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

And for the reasonable, like-minded people out there, is there a call to action that you have?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

You know, I don't know how many times I can go on shows like this and say it. Democrats have got to stand up and save our party. You know, I was as inculcated into this progressive thinking as someone could be 10 years ago. I ran as a progressive. You can look at interviews of me 10 years ago giving the progressive storyline on literally everything. The thing that's changed for me is I then spent 10 years working with progressives and seeing up close how they don't love this country. They're not realistic about public policy, they make every single institution fragile because they turn it into this reversed hierarchy of oppression. And it's not about accomplishing anything, it's about adjudicating who has the most privilege in the room, which is not a way to get anything done. So I need normal Democrats to wake up and understand our party is being taken away from us. This is not a vehicle that is going to get us women's rights, it's not going to get us health care, it's not going to get racial inequality addressed, it's not going to get your local schools funded. It's going to go to some fringe-left ideology that literally does not even benefit the people that it's built to help. A great example of this is trans public policy. Again, these people have set the idea of what trans public policy is. I'm a transsexual woman. I need healthcare. I need access to legal gender change so I can use the public commons. You know, I need some basic stuff. I need to be able to get a driver's license. They've turned this into self-ID and trans women in women's sports and, you know, marketing trans identities to children in school. It's made trans women so much more unsafe. And it's put our civil rights into this culture war. So I'm telling you, if we stay on this course, that is going to continue to happen to other groups. It's going to happen to black people, it's going to happen to women. If you make the American people choose between this crazy ideology and hardcore religious right conservatism, they're going to go with the religious right. So we better wake up.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Fired up. So tell people what they should do. If you're not registered to vote, you got to get yourself registered to vote. You got to consider running as a normal, moderate, sane Democrat. What else?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

100%. I think we need to revisit some things, and I think we need to start talking more to moderate Republicans. Because the truth is, there are plenty of Republicans out there. They're not on board with this MAGA stuff. There are plenty of Republicans out there that want to treat women with respect and want reasonable immigration policy. They feel as alienated with their party as we do in this moment. We have got to start talking to each other because the polls show most Americans are like us. They want moderate public policy in the middle. They didn't sign up for all this culture war insanity. So we've got to stop saying just because someone votes for the Republicans, they're automatically my enemy. The same people have got to take over American politics again.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

I love when you come on the show because it's like a reasonable person speaking very clearly, and we all need that. Thank you so much. It's always such a pleasure. Thank you so much. That's a wrap on today's episode of Boundless Insights. Whether you've been with us from the start or are just discovering our show, we're so glad you're here. If today's conversation sparked a question, challenged your thinking, or made you shake your head, I want to hear from you. Email me at podcast at boundlessisrael.org. Your feedback gives us ideas for new topics and new guests. And if you believe these conversations matter, there are three ways to support the show. First, hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. Second, help us spread the word. Share an episode with friends and family, post about it, or mention it in a group chat. It really does make a difference. And third, consider supporting our work. Boundless is a nonprofit and we rely on donors to keep the show going. You can make a gift at boundlessisrael.org slash donate. Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, and keep the conversation going.