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When Ezra Klein visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. early this year for a series of off-the-record meetings with top officials, President Joe Biden’s cautious inner circle assumed that the New York Times opinion writer and podcaster would remind Democrats of Biden’s successes heading into the final year of his first term.
The president had pushed through a huge climate package and a series of housing and economic policies that a generation of liberals like Klein had championed. Klein’s stature as the liberal media’s top policy wonk, a man who could see the administration’s substantive achievements through the bad political optics, made him a natural messenger.
Then, in February, White House officials were stunned by the result of Klein’s trip: a series of in-depth opinion pieces calling on the president not to seek reelection, advocating for an open convention, explaining to the Times audience how a situation like that would play out, and laying out which prominent Democrats might replace Biden.
That bold and prescient move cemented Klein’s stature as a breakout media star of the 2024 election cycle, and as perhaps the most influential Democratic media figure, a place occupied over the decades by Times luminaries from Scotty Reston to Anthony Lewis.
While Klein’s call for Biden to step aside was loudly criticized in February by liberal Biden supporters, his show quickly became appointment listening for Democrats during the month between Biden’s disastrous debate performance and his decision to drop out of the race. The numbers showed it: The Ezra Klein Show wasn’t among the top 10 podcasts on Apple Podcasts last year or in Spotify’s top 25; currently, Klein’s show is No. 8 overall on Apple, and hovering in the high 20s on Spotify.
Now “Ezra” is a first-name-only figure in liberal family group chats. His show is popular among Democratic staffers and the media and Hollywood elite. NBA commissioner Adam Silver is a fan; he and Klein were spotted chatting when ESPN cut to them during the broadcast of a WNBA game. Podcast godfather Ira Glass, the creator of This American Life, is a fan too, telling audiences onstage at Hot Pod Summit earlier this year that The Ezra Klein Show was his favorite new podcast.
The former HBO executive Richard Plepler, who first met Klein when he was running Vox, briefly interrupted his summer vacation in the south of France to heap praise on Klein when Semafor asked about his podcast’s increasing popularity among liberal figures in the entertainment industry.
“He writes and thinks like [Roger] Federer swings,” Plepler told me. “There’s a kind of precision and effortlessness to the quality of his intellect and the way he expresses himself.”
Klein, 40, has also become the subject of fixation among the terminally politically online: The women’s digital publication Bustle last week published 1,664 words about why women are “horny for Ezra Klein.” The piece details his thoughtful political takes and meaningful tattoos and speaks to women for whom Klein is a “marital hall pass.” (Maybe they were listening closely to his exploration of the growth of polyamory?)
His show is also becoming a crucial part of the liberal communications ecosystem. Democrats looking to get their message out to their own party are also increasingly seeing Klein’s podcast as an important part of any media tour. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used his appearance on the show to introduce himself to Democratic voters and expand upon his messaging about Trump; several days later, Kamala Harris asked Walz if he’d join her ticket. Nancy Pelosi, a longtime fan of Klein’s policy writing, made news about her feelings about Walz and Biden’s stumbles during an appearance on his show promoting her book.
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Klein’s Times podcast has been an extraordinary success at a moment when it’s difficult for podcasts to grow and break through. It has redefined and further elevated Klein, already one of the most well-known personalities in mainstream digital news media. (Indeed, one of the only well-known people in mainstream digital news media.)
Klein came up in the early internet era as one of a handful of earnest liberal bloggers known as the “juicebox mafia” for their relative youth. They were defined by a swing away from the careful triangulation of the Clinton years, toward a more confidently progressive politics that would take human form in candidate Barack Obama. (Other members of that loose, mostly male circle of young bloggers included Matthew Yglesias, now a star of independent journalism; Semafor’s Dave Weigel; and Crooked Media’s Brian Beutler. They were, The Times wrote in 2011, “Washington’s new Brat Pack.”)
Klein’s influential Washington Post blog, which he wrote from 2009 to 2014, helped shape the Obama agenda in crucial areas like what became the Affordable Care Act. He then founded Vox Media, where he hosted a podcast but ran up against the limits of how much his wonkish brand of journalism could scale. He left in 2020 amid an exodus of digital media to hone his own voice.
Klein wasn’t the only person advocating for Biden to step aside in February. But his reputation as a serious, earnest commentator on policy and his complimentary tone towards the president, coupled with his high-profile position at the Times, gave his words significant weight.
“Ezra’s piece was the first crack in the dam on which I was trying to shine light, one which began shifting the mindset of the chattering class,” Rep. Dean Phillips, who mounted a failed challenge to Biden in the Democratic primary, told Semafor.
Max’s view
The show is a commercial home run for the New York Times as well, which has cemented itself as one of the biggest players in audio, producing three of Apple’s top 10 podcasts.
Whether the paper will admit that The Ezra Klein Show is a success, however, is less clear.
The show’s growth comes just as the Times is engaged in intense internal conversations about how to distance itself from the movement progressive politics of 2020, and how to avoid being seen as a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party. The clearest indication of that is the gradual abandonment of voice-of-God unsigned editorials that used to read like memos to Democratic leaders, and are now nearly entirely gone: Last week, the paper announced that it would stop endorsing candidates in races in New York state.
But Klein’s own missives to Democrats are now as influential as those unsigned editorials ever were. His outsized profile at the Times and his role inside Democratic politics make it hard to argue that the organization stands above the electoral fray; he beat the paper’s editorial board to its own realization about Biden some months later, following the debate. And so, in recent months, the Times masthead has carefully enforced the editorial boundaries between The Ezra Klein Show and the newsroom, keeping some of the paper’s journalists off of the show.
The paper has put aside some of its discomfort to embrace a growing reliance on its stars, and is cooperating with New York magazine for a glossy upcoming profile of Klein.
But Klein and his bosses declined to talk to me. (Boo!!!)
“Ezra is doing amazing work across an impressively broad array of topics,” publisher AG Sulzberger said in an email, declining to comment further.
When I asked Yglesias, Klein’s longtime friend and former podcast co-host, in February whether he’d noticed that Klein’s podcast seemed to be breaking through, Yglesias said Klein’s aversion to a more conflictual journalism style, coupled with his new perch at the Times, had helped elevate him beyond his blogger/MSNBC days.
“Ezra is a very thoughtful, very deliberate person who doesn’t shoot from the hip or troll or say things just to stir the pot. I sometimes think he tries too hard to avoid being contentious,” Yglesias said. “But that means that when he does say something provocative, people take notice. That’s even more true now that he’s at the Times than it was at Vox or back in the day at Wonkblog.”
Room for Disagreement
To people in Biden’s orbit, Klein remains a bit of a sore subject. A few people close to the White House and the campaign were quick to point out to me that no podcast episode has had any bearing on Biden’s decision-making process, and that the Democratic Party ultimately didn’t follow Klein’s suggestion to decide on a replacement at the convention this week in Chicago, instead coalescing around now-nominee Vice President Kamala Harris immediately after Biden stepped back from the race.
Critics of Klein’s initial piece don’t necessarily feel that they owe him an apology, either.
Joan Walsh wrote in the Nation in February that Klein was “deeply wrong” to suggest that Biden drop out and the Democrats pick a new nominee at the convention. Asked how she felt about that argument today, Walsh told me in an email that while Klein does “some great work,” she stood by her piece.
“The idea that Biden would step aside and we’d be heading to Chicago for some kind of open convention next week was always ludicrous. That’s especially clear today, but it was clear to me at the time. And like most pundits, he underestimated Kamala Harris’ popularity and charisma,” she said. “But he was sadly right that Biden was not going to be up to the rigors of the long campaign.”
Notable
- Klein was labeled a new-media wunderkind as early as 2012.
- Simon & Schuster’s page for Klein’s book, Why We’re Polarized, reminds would-be readers that it was one of Obama’s favorite reads of 2022.
- Among Klein’s recent interviewees: his wife Annie Lowrey, an economics reporter for The Atlantic.
Correction: The “juicebox mafia” were not defined by opposition to the Iraq War. Klein supported the invasion, and later apologized for his support.