The Political Conversation: Recent Episodes
Wally Knox
The podcast in search of an honest conversation about the vast political changes going on in America.
Biden is making a move on immigration — he has to because, as it stands, it's the Republicans issue to win on. Will it matter? For both the election, and at the border, this remains an open question.
It's tempting to think of immigration in black and white terms — or, rather, in terms of the left and the right. But what Hein de Haas, author of "How Immigration Really Works" and a leading researcher in the field, teaches us is that many of our common beliefs about immigration — coded red and blue — could benefit from a hard look at the data.
His work shines a light on the connection between migration and the decline of the US middle class, while explaining that we got to where we are not because of the invisible forces of a nameless group of migrants, but because of the very real, very American, policy choice we have made.
Lewis, a notable and long-standing member of the Harvard faculty, worries about the state of American education — what do we want our students to learn? For him, too much emphasis is placed in course catalogs on intersectionality, and too little on a more canonical foundation of understanding.
For Lewis, the campus protests are a mere symptom — we are "reaping what we have taught."
Harry Lewis is the Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science at Harvard, and was the Dean of Harvard College for 8 years around the millennium.
As Gallup finds that only 28% of people consider themselves Democrats, the eminent historian Michael Kazin’s fascinating new book What It Took To Win asks if “college educated cosmopolitans in search of a majority” have driven out ordinary working people — the people we need to win.
Michael Kazin is a distinguished professor of history at Georgetown University and Co-Editor of Dissent magazine. While a student at Harvard in the 70s, Kazin led Students For A Democratic Society and today he is a member of Democratic Socialists of America. He is the author of Barons of Labor, The Populist Persuasion, and America Divided.
Michael Kazin introduces the concept of "moral capitalism" while discussing his new book, "What it Took to Win." Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and editor emeritus of Dissent.
His books include American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, The Populist Persuasion, and A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History.
As party loyalty declines, independent voters are becoming a powerful force in politics. In this video, we'll discuss the rise of independent voters and the impact they're having on elections, as well as the impact that extremely polarized or calcified politics is having on the voting public. We also discuss that in 2022 no candidate who lost called for an insurrection to overturn the results. Is the fever breaking?Our guest is Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at UCLA and leading researcher into the electorate. We dive into the analysis of the most recent federal election in 2022, to look to the next one: November 2024. We touch on split-ticket voting, polarization and calcification, and most importantly: whether we'll ever have majorities in Congress big enough to confidently govern us all.
Today, politics feels both stuck and explosive, as both parties are becoming increasingly unrecognizable to the majority of voters. According to Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at UCLA and leading researcher into the electorate, it has to do in no small part with this: Most voters identify as moderate, whether a moderate Republican or a moderate Democrat. She describes the state of our politics as "calcified", and her extensive research and analysis for her book The Bitter End serves as a guide into what the 2024 election has in store.
After Obama was elected, Ruy Teixeira and his co-author John B. Judis were hailed as having gotten it right— in their 2002 book "The Emerging Democratic Majority", they accurately predicted the coalition on the rise to carry Democrats to a majority. Today, the revered political strategist has a different message, or rather, a question: "Where have all the Democrats gone?" Since Obama's second term, the Democrats have rapidly lost white working class voters; in some crucial election states, Biden is under water by 20 points with this crucial demographic. According to Ruy, Democrats embraced "cultural radicalism", making them unpalatable to the median voter. Now, non-white working class voters are also moving away from the Democratic party; especially hispanic working class voters. In our conversation, as in his book, Ruy shares his insight into why this shift has happened, and what comes next.
"We need a system for deciding who gets in and who does not. That's not cruel, it's just rational."
Meet Ruy Teixeira, political demographer, commentator and author of the deeply influential 2002 book "The Emerging Democratic Majority" with co-author John B. Judis. Today, he has a new book out: "Where have all the Democrats gone?" with the same co-author, and a very different message.
Encounters at the border have tripled since Trump left office, and for Teixeira, the reasons why Biden's approval rating on immigration hangs around 23% in some battleground states are obvious: The Democrats have moved too far away from common sense immigration policies that the median voter can agree with.
We get into it in this conversation.
Part 2 of our conversation with Melissa Kearney. Listen to our episode titled "What is happening to marriage and families in the US?" for part 1.
Melissa Kearney, a professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, argues that "we can't keep ignoring the fact that the share of kids raised by one parent is rising — especially among lower income families, and that this is having an impact on the economic mobility of those children."
Kids who grow up in two-parent households tend to have better outcomes, both in young adulthood and later in life.
The New York Times immediately dubbed Kearney's research a blind anti-feminist argument for entering into or staying in a marriage — but this, of course, entirely misses the point. Her research is thorough, nuanced, and clarifying.
What is happening to marriage and families in the US? Listen to Kearney's answer.
Melissa Kearney, a professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, argues that "we can't keep ignoring the fact that the share of kids raised by one parent is rising — especially among lower income families, and that this is having an impact on the economic mobility of those children."
"Kids who grow up in two-parent households tend to have better outcomes, both in young adulthood and later in life."
The New York Times immediately dubbed Kearney's research a blind anti-feminist argument for entering into or staying in a marriage — but this, of course, entirely misses the point. Her research is thorough, nuanced, and clarifying.
What is happening to marriage and families in the US? Listen to Kearney's answer.
Rob Atkinson, who has advised George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden on how to promote the high tech industry, just wrote in the Asia Times:
“The Chinese Communist Party has made manufacturing robot adoption a top priority, backing it up with generous subsidies. To the extent US policymakers talk about robots, it is usually to criticize them for taking jobs.”
In my conversation with him, Atkinson advocated an aggressive industrial policy to boost productivity and economic growth even if it displaces workers with, yes, robots. We tussle on that question as well as with the perspectives of impactful economists like Dani Rodrik of Harvard, Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Brad DeLong of Berkeley—now is a great time to revisit their episodes on this podcast.
This conversation is part of our ongoing investigation of ways to restore the vitality of our middle class.
Since June, President Biden has campaigned on Bidenomics, making the argument that he's in charge of the economy and things are looking up.
He’s right that the economy will play a crucial role in the coming election—but not in the way he currently imagines.
Listen to this 15-minute episode that engages with several prominent perspectives, taking stock of the discourse and offering a distinct perspective focused on the voters we need most in 2024: young people.
Remember the trade war with China under Donald Trump? Some argue that Joe Biden started a tech war with China, setting limits on US investments in Chinese technology. Are we headed for a cold war next?
The goal is not to be alarmist, but to understand: what is at play in our relationship with China? What is the best way forward? And how do we avoid accidental conflict—coincidentally, the title of an excellent new book by Stephen Roach.
Now at Yale, Roach is the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and led the bank into Chinese investments. He has lived these questions, and he has ideas.
Most of us no longer believe globalization is the answer to our economic woes and inequity—perhaps the more interesting question is:
Then what is?
Bernie Sanders has an answer. So does Kevin MCarthy. But I prefer to listen to those with a less politically informed view.
The Hewlitt foundation has given 40 million dollars to the Reimagining the Economy project to power research at MIT, Harvard and other universities. This project aims to examine what works to power the working class, and inform policy.
At Harvard, Gordon Hanson leads this project with Dani Rodrik. He is my guest today.
Website:https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3WHXYq8xdsP39DXX2xPBQ
We just survived another debt ceiling crisis. Whew! The media told us this time was different; there was a real chance the government would default on paying its debts. After all, the players were now crazy enough to let it happen.
But a deal was passed, extending the ceiling to early in 2025. I spoke to Prof. Frances E. Lee of Princeton about the history of debt limit crises—are we really in unprecedented territory? She lays out patterns of behavior to look for in 2025, and gives us perhaps an antidote to the frenzy.
Website: https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepoliticalco
"Democrats should be asking themselves every day: With as crazy as the Republican Party is, and as Trumpified as it is, why can’t you beat them? As opposed to just squeezing through.”
The Times recently called him "a liberal heretic"; but these are the important questions Ruy Teixeira—who many consider to have written the manual on the future of the Democratic Party 20 years ago—intends to ask of his party today.
Back in 2002, Democrats were in despair. President George W. Bush had an approval rating of 84% as he led the United States in its war against terrorism in the midst of a flourishing economy.
Then, Ruy Teixeira published his book, The Emerging Democratic Majority,which Democrats read as prophesizing that the future held permanent Democratic dominance in elections based on an irresistible tidal wave of demographic change. Teixeira rallied Democrats and became an intellectual hero on America’s left.
Today he has something very different to say. Listen now and as always, let me know your views and recommend guests to be on the podcast at Wally@ThePoliticalConversation.org.
In 2009 this was the cool thing to say about globalization:
"Consumers across the globe have benefited from the increased competition, lowered prices and unprecedented availability of goods and services for every socioeconomic stratum." – The Hill.
Today the false promise of globalization is clear: millions of Americans lost their good-paying jobs to cheap foreign competition. Who won? Big corporations and overseas governments.
I speak with Rana Foroohar –a Global Business Columnist and an Associate Editor at the Financial Times, and CNN's global economic analyst– to discuss how it happened. We dive into her plan for American renewal — which she details in her new book Homecoming — on TPC.
We all know where we were the day Trump was elected. To many Democrats – myself included – it was a shock but also a moment of great insight.
In her book, "White Working Class", released just four months after the election, Joan Williams describes a Trump voter in the South Carolina election as saying: "We are voting with our middle finger". After all, incomes of the white working class had doubled in the three decades after World War II, but had stagnated since the late 1970s.
Williams concludes: "When you leave the two-thirds of Americans without college degrees out of your vision of the good life, they notice."
As we stare down the possibility of another Trump-infused election, Joan Williams brings us a sharp analysis: There is a shift underway to the right among the two-thirds of us who don’t have a college degree, and it is now showing across racial lines.
Joan C. Williams is an American feminist legal scholar, Founding Director at the Center for WorkLife Law, and a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings School of Law.
From 2019 to 2020, Dr. Lynn Vavreck –professor of political science at UCLA and contributing columnist to The New York Times– and her colleagues interviewed over 500,000 voters, leading them to conclude that our politics aren’t just polarized, but calcified. According to the authors, “polarization — a blanket term that gets thrown around a lot in the media — doesn’t really do much to explain the situation we’re in. Yes, we're polarized. But talk to three different people, even three different political scientists, and you will get three different definitions of what polarization means. In the book, we use the term “calcification” because it better captures the features of American politics today."
In our conversation, Prof. Vavreck's framework helps us better understand what is happening in our politics by, among other things, illuminating the 2022 midterms and finding the difference between moderates and independents.
https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
To understand the significance of the 2022 elections, we have to understand just who the Independents are. If you doubt this, Google “2022 election independents”:
CNN: “How Trump’s legacy became ‘pure poison’ for independents."
Bloomberg: “Independent voters are more important than ever."
Vox: “How independents saved Democrats."
To dig into the significance of the 2022 election I had conversations with three very smart observers. Today I am sharing my interview with Mo Fiorina of Stanford, author of “Unstable Majorities."
Up next is Lynn Vavreck of UCLA, author of “The Bitter End", and last is Joan Williams, who is described by the New York Times as having “something approaching rock star status" within academia, to assess the 2022 election through the lens of her groundbreaking book “White Working Class.” Listen to all three and you will be immersed in some of the sharpest thinking about our rapidly changing political lives.
https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
While the nation was engrossed in the slow-motion car crash that was the election of a Republican House Speaker, the unanimously-elected new House Minority Leader was paid little attention. Yet, there is much about Jeffries to note–not least of which is the fact that he has already reinstated some key powers of the Democratic Leader that Nancy Pelosi previously had lost, and has introduced a new leadership position that could prove consequential on the road to 2024.
In this short, 8-minute episode of TPC, I dive into who Jeffries is, what he has already done, and what is next.
https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
In the 2022 midterms post-mortem, some Republicans went for the Democratic candidate over their Trump-endorsed alternative, much more impactful was the a majority of Independents voted for the Democratic candidate. The power of the Independents has risen alongside their numbers–at 42% of the electorate, they far outnumber Dems (25%) and Republicans (32%).
Samara Klar has studied Independents as part of her work at University of Arizona, and shares her findings, which complicate the conventional view of polarization, in this episode.
At this moment, only two members of Congress can challenge any state's electoral college votes and throw the election into chaos in 2024. That's why passing the Electoral Count Act is paramount–to prevent a Jan 6 repeat, and to protect election integrity. But it's never that simple, of course–it has to make it through Congress first.
Listen to this week's ten-minute episode, to hear Congressman Adam Schiff discuss what the bill aims to do, the opportunity for bipartisanship, and how and when this bill may make it through the chambers.
Several camps have strong views on what the Federal Reserve should do next to control inflation. And on the federal budget, there always are arguments about whether the deficits are too large or needed to keep America working. Who do we believe?
Wally asked that of Brad DeLong, a heavy-duty macroeconomist at Berkeley and former Assistant Director of the Treasury who has just published Slouching Toward Utopia, a history of the economy from its takeoff around 1870 to our times.
https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
Will the 2022 Midterm election show that we have polarized into hostile camps? That the center in our politics called the shots in the key races? In race after race, were the results determined by which way the Independents went? Or were races dominated by Democratic or Republican loyalists? An interesting context for thinking about the Midterms and their role over time is provided by Stanford professor Morris Fiorina who takes a wider, academic view–in today's 15-minute episode, I return to his work to examine this moment.
Globalization made many promises, but left one detail out: it would pit American workers against workers elsewhere around the globe working for a fraction of their pay. The result was a multi-decade decline of our middle class. In the 1990s, Dani Rodrik of Harvard predicted that people would rebel and elect a spokesperson to voice their rage. Anyone come to mind?
Decades ago Rodrik’s was a lonely voice; today he is sought after. Rodrik is looking ahead again, this time he foresees the rise of a new economic consensus. I sat down with him to examine just what he foresees.
https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
For Daron Acemoglu, the prominent MIT economist relied on from The Times to Politico, what is missing from our current debate on business taxation is an awareness of the difference between taxes on labor and taxes on capital. In our conversation on The Political Conversation, Acemoglu lays out how the huge rate difference between taxes on work (25 percent) and the taxes on capital (now 5 percent) has driven a reckless embrace of automation and has been the primary driver of the destruction of our middle class.
Can taxes be pro-technology and pro-worker at the same time? Daron weighs in.
America's middle class has not had a decent raise since the 1970s. At the same time, our national productivity has soared and almost all the benefits have flowed to our upper echelon. MIT's David Autor explains what is needed to restore wide shared prosperity.
We've all wondered, at one time or another: Are these really our only two choices? But turning that thought to action is not the popular thing to do. This didn't phase Darry Sragow in 2011, when the opportunity to join a serious effort to create a third American party came about.
Sragow's views on America's need for a third party come out of decades spent as a senior official at the federal and state levels and as campaign consultant for a small armada of successful candidates.
https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
Some say Washington just hasn't gotten much done; for others, our democracy seems to be on the brink of collapse.
Take a break from the despair with Frances Lee of Princeton and Congressman Henry Waxman. Lee discusses her new book The Limits of Party,which aptly challenges the idea of total partisan gridlock. Henry Waxman adds the inside perspective as one of the foremost legislators of his times.
In 2012 and in 2016, Steve Bullock was elected to be a Democratic Governor in Montana. In 2016, 25% of his vote also voted for Donald Trump. It is safe to say Bullock understands rural voters, swing voters, and persuadable Trump voters.
In his interview on The Political Conversation, he argues: Democrats might be able to win the presidency with a coastal majority. But with only that, you cannot govern. Governing requires a lot more.
Is a (bipartisan) deal on reforming the Electoral College Act possible? Donald Trump is attempting to restore his domination of the Republican Party; is there reason to think that his domination is not complete? We sat down with Congressman Adam Schiff to get his perspective.
Michael Hiltzik, a Pullitzer-Prize winning colunist with the LA Times, opens up our view of polarization to be more specific: Polarized voices are everywhere, yes. But does that mean most of us are polarized? He argues that the media are not reporting a genuine schism in American politics; they’re reporting on a divide pitting a majority in broad agreement against a boisterous minority.
We all know someone who follows political news obsessively, who gets anxious if they can’t follow the news, and who goes on social media to tell lots of people that they are wrong. That describes less than 20% of us, but, as Yanna puts it, "It, it feels like 80%!”
Yanna Krupnikov, a professor of political science at Stony Brook University, talks about what it means to be deeply involved in politics and how those people — on the right and on the left — have two things in common: they care about different issues than the vast majority of other voters in their own party, and they are absolutely certain that they, and only they, are right.
Between tweets, op-eds, newsletters and, well, podcasts–what does it mean to be politically engaged today? We explore this question with Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, Dr. Eitan Hersh. He is the author of Politics Is for Power.
With slim majorities on either side of the aisle depending on the election cycle, we wonder: Who are the 'swing voters'? What motivates them to be Independents? We explore this with Associate Professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy, Samara Klar. She has extensively studied how individuals’ personal identities and social surroundings influence their political attitudes and behavior.
Morris Fiorina looks ahead to the midterm elections and back into the history of the political majority to address a paradox: The country is increasingly polarized, and yet voter's willingness to subscribe to either party is sharply declining.
Morris Fiorina–who will insist you call him Mo–holds an endowed chair of political science at Stanford University and is a fellow at the Hoover Institute. He has previously taught at Harvard and CalTech. Mo has written several books on polarization: “Disconnect” (2009), “Culture War?” (2004), and “Unstable Majorities” (2017).
Introducing The Political Conversation, a podcast going beyond the two-party binary to have a different kind of conversation.