Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
Gaza criticism is now the entry ticket for progressive voters to even hear your pitch — but it's just the ante. The candidates who have actually won built coalitions around energy, vision, and relentless work. The candidates who lost weren't simply pro-Israel; they were also stale, complacent, and neglecting chunks of their districts.
Where this was said
At 52:35 · chapter starts 47:50
Tim Miller introduces Cameron Kasky — former Parkland activist, congressional candidate, and Ro Khanna advisor — and immediately digs into the previous night's Colorado primary results. Michael Bennet lost the governor's race, Phil Weiser (attorney general) lost to a more progressive challenger, and Hickenlooper survived a Senate challenge but not without a significant protest vote. The most striking result: DSA-affiliated Milot Quiros defeated Diana DeGette, who had represented Denver in Congress since Miller was a child. Kasky notes that critics immediately said after the New York DSA wave that it was a local phenomenon. Colorado just proved them wrong. He also flags that another candidate — Manny, in Colorado's 8th district — won and happens to be notably handsome, briefly derailing the conversation.
DSA-affiliated Milot Quiros defeated veteran Denver congresswoman Diana DeGette, proving DSA electoral success is not limited to New York City.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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