MSNBC Guest Shreds Ezra Klein and The New York Times for Being ‘Floundering Corporatist-Centrist Flank’ of Democratic Party

Emma Vigeland, co-host of progressive podcast The Majority Report, was furious with The New York Times’s Ezra Klein for writing that Democrats should seek more “internal disagreement” from more centrist members.

“I mean, I don’t know what reality Ezra Klein is living in, that the fact that the Democratic Party has tacked to its left. In what universe?” asked Vigeland on Sunday’s episode of MSNBC’s The Weekend Primetime.

Klein’s latest opinion piece for The Times suggested, “For all the talk of what the Democratic Party should learn from Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, there should be at least as much talk of what they should learn from [Joe] Manchin or [Jared] Golden or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez or Sarah McBride. The party should be seeking more, not less, internal disagreement.”

She continued:

The coalescing around Joe Biden in the 2020 primary, the besmirching of Bernie Sanders supporters, the eschewing of that movement in 2016, and even in this current moment with Zohran Mamdani, who has been a shot in the arm for the Democratic Party, you still have Chuck Schumer refusing to endorse him. And Hakeem Jeffries’s endorsement is lukewarm at best.

There is a fight right now within the Democratic Party, and Ezra Klein is representing a floundering, corporatist, centrist flank that is increasingly irrelevant in the party, and he’s trying to carry water for them in The Times. I mean, I think it’s a lucrative thing to do, but it’s not necessarily matching the reality.

Vigeland’s comments set off a firestorm among the MSNBC panelists, with John Avalon claiming, “I love it. I’m so excited to disagree with you!”

He continued, “The point Ezra’s trying to make is it takes two wings to fly. He’s trying to say Democrats need to build a big tent. And he’s not saying you got to choose between Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders and the centrist wing. He’s saying Democrats need to compete in more places.”

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.