‘We’ve Become Too Complicated’: Where Eric Adams Thinks Democrats Went Wrong
About this episode
Just weeks after winning the Democratic primary, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams talks with Klein about his bid to become New York City's mayor. Adams, a former NYPD captain, argues Democrats have 'become too complicated' — losing working-class voters with jargon while failing on public safety, the issue he says dominates ordinary New Yorkers' lives. They debate policing and crime, his support for plainclothes anti-gun units, and his insistence that safety and civil rights can coexist. The conversation also covers his ambitious housing agenda of upzoning wealthy neighborhoods and reviving single-room occupancies, his plant-based diet and food policy after reversing his own diabetes, and his pitch that government should be judged by whether it improves daily life.