Graham Platner, Jon Ossoff and the New Rules of Political Attention

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2026

⏱️ 78 minutes

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Summary

Attention is working in really unusual ways this election cycle. Graham Platner, a political unknown a year ago, ended up dominating his Senate primary against Maine’s sitting governor – even as his campaign was rocked by a series of scandals. James Talarico also seemed to come out of nowhere to become the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas. Jon Ossoff has ginned up a ton of excitement as a potential 2028 presidential contender, in part because of his viral videos. Meanwhile, the former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt became a political star on X during his bid to become mayor of Los Angeles and yet failed to make the runoff. All of this has a lot of lessons for how attention is working right now in American politics. So I wanted to have on my favorite person to talk to on this topic. Chris Hayes is the host of “All In With Chris Hayes” on MS NOW and the author of “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource.” Mentioned: “Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine” by Jared Golden “We Took AOC to a Deep Red Data Center Town” by More Perfect Union “America Dissected” by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed “Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left?” with James Talarico, The Ezra Klein Show “Joe Rogan Experience #2352 - James Talarico” with James Talarico, The Joe Rogan Experience “Why Everyone Wants Jon Ossoff to Run for President” by Michelle Goldberg “Obama Suddenly Panicked After Gazing Too Far Into Future” by The Onion Book Recommendations: Transcription by Ben Lerner The Godfather by Mario Puzo Alan Opts Out by Courtney Maum Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Julie Beer and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The How to Graham Platner, a political unknown year ago, come from nowhere, to so thoroughly dominate the primary that Janet Mills,
0:40.6	the sitting governor of Maine, dropped out or suspended her campaign, I should say, and didn't
0:46.5	even come back in as Plattner was rocked by even more scandals.
0:50.4	Now, the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story,
0:56.0	that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by.
1:03.0	But in trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all.
1:11.1	This is a movement about us.
1:16.6	The answer is that he had the most important political resource right now, and she was
1:21.7	not able to grab any of it.
1:23.8	That resource is attention.
1:25.7	It's a constant theme now for me on the show,
1:27.9	that you need to see attention as its own substrate of American politics.
1:31.7	And attention is working in really unusual ways this year.
1:35.3	In the Michigan Democratic primary for Senate,
1:38.1	where Abdul Al-Said is now in the lead.
1:40.0	Who here believes in Medicare for all?
1:45.0	And who believes it's time not abolish ice?
1:49.5	And who believes we got to get money out of politics and in your pocket?
1:54.3	In Texas, where James Tolerico, another person people hadn't really heard of a couple years ago,
1:59.4	is now the Democratic nominee
2:01.4	for Senate. One thing is clear today. We're about to take back Texas. In Los Angeles, where we
	...

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