Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Ben Dreyfus. He is the author of the Substack Calm Down and formerly a writer and editor at Mother Jones magazine.

He is a left-of-center opinion journalist,

and he was at the Democratic National Convention.

So I thought I'd bring him on to talk to him about what

went on there, the state of the Democratic Party, why he thinks Vice President

Harris is a good pick for the Democratic Party. It's kind of a little bit different than

than last week. Some of the listeners I take it from the comment section thought

last week was a little bit too talky pointy from my guess and I understand where they are coming

from it was a bit frustrating at times even though I do think we got a good

conversation in the end. So here's a different perspective from a writer of the left, a commentator of the left, on the

DNC, the 2024 campaign.

And what about the left wing, where the left wing is and how powerful they are within

the Democratic Party. I think you're going to find this conversation interesting, so without

further do I give you Mr. Ben Drives. Thank you.

Ben Dreyf is welcome to the dispatch podcast. Thanks for having me gaming.

I want to begin, listeners, believe not, not all of them at least may know who you are.

So in brief, if you could just kind of describe where you came from in terms of journalism and also your ideological

mores.

Sure, I mean I'm a sub-stacker now with a sub-stacker called Calm Down and prior to that I was

the editorial director of Mother Jones magazine before being somewhat cancelled in 2020 and

moving to the island of misfit toys called Substack.

I think, ideologically, I'm sort of a normy lib whose main interest is in

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