Wednesday Morning Politics: Midterms, Democrats' Identity Crisis

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
WNYC Studios is supported by Wwise. Wwise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. With the Wwise account, you can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get Wwise. Download the Wwise app today. Terms and conditions apply. WNYC Studios is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing.
Odoo solves this.
It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

**Brian Lehrer** (0:58)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. David Remnick is with us, the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker and host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, which the magazine and we here at WNYC produce together. We'll talk about this morning's midterm elections news, some media news, including CBS firing Scott Pelley after he criticized their new boss Barry Weiss. That broke last night. Yes, we will talk about the Knicks, opening their first NBA finals in 27 years tonight and hoping for their first championship since 1973 David wrote a, I'll call it euphoric New Yorker piece about that. And we'll preview a live taping David will be doing for the New Yorker Radio Hour next week as part of the Tribeca Film Festival with former Obama speechwriter and now podcast host, John Lovett.
That'll be next Wednesday, June 10th at 8:15 PM at the Tribeca event space called Spring Studios on St. John's Lane.
So David, I did the event plug at the top instead of just at the end of our conversation. Wasn't that nice of me?

**David Remnick** (2:04)
You're a total mensch. And at the cost of stretching your patience then, I'll be at the Y tomorrow night with my colleagues, Evan Osnos and Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer. The 92nd Street Y to talk politics is a lot to talk about.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:21)
Yes, tomorrow night at the 92nd Street Y. In fact, we had Susan and Evan on together Monday for what was a great conversation about politics. So I'm sure that'll be awesome.

**David Remnick** (2:31)
So I just thank God that it's occurring on a non-NIC game night. Because I would have wriggled out of that baby really fast.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:41)
Yeah. You scheduled it back when the NBA schedule came out in October. Okay.
But I do want to review your Tribeca event a little bit. So we'll totally upstage it. No, I'm kidding. But maybe the biggest thought about the event, in all seriousness, actually very seriousness, is that it's part of the Tribeca Festival's 25th anniversary season. Because it was created to help bring lower Manhattan back and New York City as a whole back after 9-11, which was 25 years ago this September. You were already editor of The New Yorker at that time. Do you ever stop and think how remarkable the city's come back has been after that devastating attack, which could have scared people and businesses off from coming or staying here?

**David Remnick** (3:28)
Well, I think about it all day long. I mean, I'm sitting here and talking to you from One World Trade Center. And the view out my window, if I look down chillingly, is the imprint of those two towers, the memorial and the museum there. And yet, the resilience of the city in every sense has been extraordinary.
My love for this city is unbounded. And I remember that day as if it's yesterday. I was in my office and could see out our window even from Midtown what was happening. And slept in my office for days thereafter, working on what would become known as the Black Issue, the Art Spiegelman, Francois's Moulin cover, those ghostly towers missing from the skyline. So I think about this, or at least it's a presence in my head as it is for so many New Yorkers of a certain age every day.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:27)
I forgot that the New Yorker offices are there in the World Trade Center itself.
And that so many businesses have run back there. I have a family member who works for the Metz Cable Channel, SNY, New York Metz, and they're in the World Trade Center. So just two media examples there of how people didn't get spooked, business owners didn't get spooked from even going right back there to what we called for a while ground zero.

**David Remnick** (5:00)