from New York Times opinion this is the

Ezra Klein

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show so in my postelection essay I said

that the 2024 election marked the end of

the Obama

Coalition but what does that mean well

in part it means that some of the

political strategies the Democrats

thought would turn Obama's 2008 and 2012

coalitions into an enduring generational

majority they failed Democrats worked

damn hard over the past few years to

deliver what they thought what they were

told Black and Hispanic and workingclass

and Union voters wanted and instead of

solidifying support from those voters

they're seeing them flee to Donald Trump

but I'm also saying something about the

structure of the democratic party itself

the Obama era wasn't just built around

one person it was a collection of

Institutions and power bases and Elite

networks Michael Lind a columnist tablet

the author of the book the new class war

and the co-founder of new America he's

argued that it was kind of a political

machine one built around Urban political

support Foundation nonprofits mass media

there are parts of Lyn's analysis I

don't agree with in particular I think

the machine has worked very differently

after Obama left the White House than it

did before I think it's been a machine

without a boss in a way that has not

worked out well for the Democratic party

but I think seeing the Democratic party

through the lens of its component

institutions the places where the people

who run it and staff it work when

they're out of power where they're

educated where they go to find deputies

and higher Staff and get funding and to

see the people they used to work with

and still listen to and learn from I

think that's really important that's

what a political party

is and because of it I don't think

what's next for the Democratic party is

just new ideas or campaign tactics I

think it's shaking free of an

Institutional structure or maybe even an

Institutional straight jacket that's no

longer working maybe hasn't been for

some time and it's learning how not to

listen so much to its funders and

interest groups and how to listen listen

more to the people it's been losing as

always my email as reclin show atny

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times.com Michael Lind welcome to the

show thanks for having me so you've been

arguing for some time now that the

Democratic party since Barack Obama has

has changed in form that at its Center

is a different kind of liberal what you

call a Gentry liberal and a different

set of inst institutions nonprofits and

Foundations what you call the Obama

machine tell me about that the Obama

Democrats in my view are the first

American National party that is also a

national machine in the sense that it's

kind of replicated on the national level

the sort of machine structure that has

long existed both in Republican machines

and Democratic machines at the state and

local level and the elements of the

Obama Democratic machine and it's not

that Obama was aiming for this it's just

sort of evolved under his watch it's the

cities if you look at the 10 most

populous cities in 2000 four of them had

Republican Mayors today it's they're all

Democratic and you basically every Big

City over a million or so people in

every college town is 100% Democratic

all the time and this is kind of new

so since the population is largely Urban

now in the United States to have a

national Democratic machine really just

means linking up these big city Urban

machines and college town you know onep

party systems and the way it has been

linked up in the Obama era has been

through several methods the most

important is campaign

Finance so we've seen this

nationalization of politics and this is

true with the Republicans as well as the

Democrats but the Democrats pioneered

this where donors in San Francisco and

New York and Chicago few other big

Democratic cities are increasingly

influential in state and local and city

council elections around the country and

that has a homogenizing effect on State

and local Democrats and Regional

Democrats you have the old party

structures of the ward healers and the

party bosses and tammony Hall and that

sort of thing they still exist to some

degree but they've been so eroded that

they have been replaced in these

Democratic cities where much of the

American population lives by nonprofits

by not by think tanks that kind of

nonprofit but by Service delivery

nonprofits dealing with homelessness

with uh education with other things

which get grants from the city

government to carry out functions which

were performed before the Outsourcing uh

uh that took place beginning with the

Clinton era these were performed by

salaried civil servants and and since

then the number of civil servants has

not gone up but the so-called Blended

Workforce of contractors uh both

nonprofit and for-profit has just

exploded well the number of civil

servants has gone up at the state and

local level hasn't gone up in the

civilian population federally but state

and local it's gone up quite a lot

you're quite right thanks for correcting

me but about a third of their income

comes actually from Washington right

it's grants from U HHS and other federal

agencies and there's a real question I

think of democratic legitimacy small D

and this is true for the Republican

equivalent as well if these Urban

functions uh are are being carried out

by nonprofit employees who get some of

their money from local donations they

get some of it from rich people on the

coasts they get some of it from

government agencies like HHS they get

some of it from corporations they get

some of it from city council grants then

you know they have multiple

Masters and and in what sense to whom

are they Inc accountable I think there's

something interesting in this that I've

been wrestling with and it's one reason

I want to have you on the show because

I've been thinking about the way you

describe this as a machine and the way

you describe it as a a modern form of

patronage and I found that that

initially I rejected that I was like

this isn't like Tam Hall where you know

boss tweet is handing out the jobs but

then I thought more about the role that

foundations and nonprofits play in

modern Progressive politics in the

Democratic party the amount of power I

know them to hold in terms of what the

White House ends up doing in terms of

what happens in in

Congress it did seem to me that there

was some explanatory value in thinking

about this as a modern patronage network

not exactly based on jobs though

sometimes based on on jobs but based on

campaign Finance donations and and

grants so I'm curious to hear you

describe a bit about how you think this

is similar to and dissimilar from past

networks of patronage and what we would

have thought of as political machines

the jobs thing is important uh uh the

political machines particularly the ones

in the big cities in the United States

where there were large immigrant

diasporas one of the jobs of the local

machine could have been Republican or

Democratic machine was to pressure

employers to hire Irish Americans or

Italian Americans or whatever in return

for votes but it was done informally and

extra legally this has been replaced in

the new Progressive Democratic machine

in my view by these categorical

directives uh so for example the Biden

Administration when it comes to power it

says it will have this whole of

government approach for equity which in

practice means affirmative action it's

just another word for affirmative action

but

it's not the personal kind of patronage

in the past where the ward healer would

say I want you know one of my

constituent uh Sons to get a no-show job

in the warehouse in New York or whatever

now it's all done bureaucratically right

you put down are you aapi that is Asian

Pacific Islander or African-American or

hispanic/latino or non-hispanic white uh

and then in order to get government

funding your organizations have have to

have the Equitable quotas they don't use

that name but that's what it is so there

is a a jobs element there what is unique

that did not exist in the past is the

extent to which the donors

simultaneously pay for the Democratic

politicians but they also

determine what progressivism is and they

determine what progressivism is by

deciding what to fund and what not to

fund and so merely by omission they can

eliminate entire topics from the

definition of progressivism because if

progressivism is what the

nonprofits that are called Progressive

are doing well if they can't raise money

they're not going to be doing it so uh

and I've seen in the nonprofit sector

you simply can't raise money from uh

Progressive donors on promoting

collective bargaining and and trade

unionism this is something that the

somewhat libertarian neoliberal donor

class is not terribly thrilled with uh

unions they may tolerate public sector

unions but they don't want them in their

Tech and finance corporations I I don't

feel like I'm going to push you on this

because I know a fair amount about what

the huet foundation funds which is one

of the very big funders on the

Democratic side and they fund lots of

figures including on the right who are

trying to bring back labor unions who

are pro- sectoral bargaining in the sort

of anti- neoliberalism turn that the

progressive Foundation world has taken

in the past couple of years trying to

revitalize labor has been a pretty big

part of it that doesn't feel to me

admitted at all no well I think huet

though is not typical hasn't been

typical of the progressive foundations

in the last 20 or 30 years you're quite

right they fund efforts across the

political Spectrum on the right as well

as on the left as part of their Beyond

neoliberalism project but what I'm

talking about is individual Mega donors

their family foundations apart from huet

the Ford foundation and so on and the

reason the emphasis is on

non-economic cultural issues which are

perfectly legitimate in many cases

whether it's gay rights or or trans

rights or environmentalism is is defined

as kind of a social issue I think it

reflects the interest of the donors if

the donors wanted a strong union

movement then there would be all kinds

of pro labor think tanks all over

Washington DC but you wouldn't have this

pattern of single issue groups where you

have feminists over here you have the

Human Rights Campaign over here and so

on in my essay after the election I said

at the end of it that I thought we were

seeing the end of the Obama Coalition

the Obama Coalition was exhausted and

and

defeated and as happens when you have to

write after an election I wrote a thing

that I think is true but didn't have a

lot of time to think that deeply about

why did I think it was true and working

through some of your work on this and

and you're much more critical of

certainly the Obama machine in its

Heyday than than I am so to help me

think through this I want to play you a

clip of Obama this is from five years

ago and it's once the leader of the

democratic party talking way I don't

think you hear Democrats talk that much

now this idea of Purity and you're never

compromised and you're always

politically woke and all that stuff you

should get over that quickly the world

the world is

messy there are ambiguities

yep people who do really good

stuff have

flaws people who you are

fighting may love their

kids

and you know share certain things with

you and and and I think that one danger

I see among young people particularly on

college campus Mal and I talk about this

but I do get sense sometimes now among

certain young people and this is

accelerated by social media there is

this sense sometimes of the way of me

making change is to be as judgmental as

possible about other

people and that's enough like if I tweet

or hashtag about I'm curious what what

you hear when you hear that and how it

compares to you to to the Democratic

party you see today well what I hear is

someone who even though he bequeathed

this more centralized uh homogeneous

machine I think not necessarily

deliberately he actually worked his way

up in Chicago politics and in National

politics at a time when there were blue

dog Democrats technically there still

are but the poor blue dogs are almost

extinct you know there were gypsy moth

Republicans that you wanted to vote with

the your faction of the Democrats across

party lines so in that sense I hear

someone more like LBJ or FDR or you know

any other democratic president where not

only is your own party a coalition and

you're the power broker you're not the

dictator at the end of the day you can't

get things done in our system of checks

and balances without winning over a fair

number of people in the other party this

trend that you associate with the Obama

machine feels to me like it got out of

control after Obama left the scene that

when it actually had a political boss in

the person of Barack Obama himself and

and the people directly around him who

had some power over it and some sense of

it it was actually fairly well

restrained which is why Barack Obama was

a very successful president but since

him I think Hillary Clinton was much

more dominated by you know quote unquote

the groups I think the Biden

Administration was obsessed with

Democratic coalitional management and

keeping everybody in the Coalition on

board in a way that was very different

than how the Obama Administration

operated and so you sort of describe

this as a an ongoing thing with maybe

even Obama as like the shadow political

boss it looks to me like almost a

culture that no longer has a boss even

to some inside the nonprofits I feel

like the bosses of the nonprofits got

weaker in recent years and the staff's

got stronger it's like you have this

machine but you don't have any political

bosses anymore and have it maybe for

some

time well I think that's true of

machines in the past so for example

they're assembled by these very

charismatic politicians who are as you

say in case of flexible enough to tone

it down when it's backfiring right and

and to keep it under control but when

they leave you you have it's kind of

like after Stalin dies in the Soviet

Union you get this oligarchy instead of

like the one powerful figure so you

could call it the Post Obama machine

where uh basically no one's in charge

and power goes down to the sort of

self-perpetuating

organizations uh and it would be

interesting for historians and

presidential

biographers to explain why Joe Biden who

was expected to be kind of the Centrist

old timey new delish Democrat who would

keep the progressive single issue groups

under control why he really was the most

culturally left president much more so

than uh Obama who was who was careful to

try to keep his Centrist streak red and

maybe it was personal incapacity maybe

it was a calculation to win over the the

Bernie Sanders voters I don't know the

answer I think this idea of the Post

Obama machine feels truer to me and I do

think it's worth spending some time on

this question of of Joe Biden because

the Biden White House worked differently

than other white houses I've been aware

of and one of the ways it worked

differently was it was just much more

concerned with keeping the left engaged

in the Coalition back in the Obama

Administration there was constant

bickering between the White House and

what it called the professional left

which was many of these groups and

Robert Gibbs the press secretary would

unload on the professional left and then

people get mad at Robert Gibbs and he

would stand by his remarks and this was

understood at every level of it Ram

Emanuel was like this Barack Obama

himself was often like this there was a

lot of there was much more tension

between the Obama Administration and the

left than there was between the Biden

Administration and the left and maybe

that was the Biden Bernie Sanders

Alliance I mean he almost did lose a

nomination to Bernie Sanders so the that

the left was a much more live Force had

changed but I think in a weird way you

see it with Bernie Sanders himself

because Bernie Sanders is a left figure

used to be quite left on economics but

culturally moderate on other things more

proun and it's one way Hillary Clinton

ran against him right that sort of

famous line that you know you can break

up the big Banks but it won't solve

systemic racism but over time Sanders

also became much more coalitional in his

approach to the left right he's not

saying no to anything either one of the

the critiques many people made of the

democratic party in this period And I

think it's true and it goes beyond Biden

to to these figures is it just nobody

said no to anything and so then you have

things like kamla Harris signing an ACLU

document saying yes to surgeries uh

gender surgery for undocumented

immigrants in jail right and that gets

used against her in in all these ads

that sort of reflects a culture in which

nobody is saying no to the groups at any

level of American Democratic politics

but I'm not exactly sure why that

evolved in the way it did and I'm

curious how how you see it if we brought

in it from Just Joe Biden well I I'll

ask you the question uh but but first

I'll point out that a lot of this

started in Obama's second term it was

his education department issued the

transgender directive saying that then

the doj and the education department

would cut off funding and maybe

investigate k312 schools that don't let

high school kids join sports teams of

the opposite sex and so on and I got the

impression that this took even Obama by

surprise I don't think this was

something he was pushing it was just

like the the bureaucracy filled with

these these single issue nonprofit

groups so here I have a question for you

Ezra related to this how much do you

think the uh

internet and Twitter in particular which

we know progressives used more heavily

or at least they did before musk than

than conservatives how much has that

empowered these groups in the old days

if you upset the environmentalists or

the uh feminists or or one another

single issue Group Well people would

write angry letters to the new Republic

but it was like age of paper right but

now you know they can denounce this and

then millions of suburban Urban

progressives around the country you know

will retweet their

condemnation of the Democrat for caving

in on this issue do you think that's a

factor I definitely think it was a

factor in the

2018 2021 era where I think that Twitter

and particular I mean I think it maybe

goes back before that too was a

tremendous

accelerator of ideological amplification

and Division I don't think there's a

Bernie Sanders campaign that succeeds in

the way it does in

2015 without Twitter and Reddit and and

places online where the intensity of his

support could turn into money could turn

into media coverage I mean I remember

being at at Vox back then and we were

watching anything we we put Bernie

Sanders name on like go to the top of

Reddit and that leads to a lot more

media oxygen for for Sanders the same

thing by the way is happening on the

right with Donald Trump I don't think

there's a trump campaign in the way we

ultimately see it without Twitter either

so I I definitely think that's true

there's also another dimension to this

that you just made me think about with

the the example of trans kids in in the

Obama Administration

which is there were issues where the

principles understood the issues really

well and had political experience with

them right so Barack Obama had as much

experience or more experience than

anybody in the Obama Administration

running and navigating race issues in

American life and he knew where he was

going to let things go in the

administration and and knew where he

wasn't but you had a sort of some new

issues begin to emerge particularly

around gender where the principles

didn't have very much experience with

them they had not been used to this I

mean you you talked about feminism but I

would describe the issue that there

differently you had so many female

politicians who actually knew how to

navigate that and knew what they thought

their constituencies would bear and

would not bear and had a lot of

credibility in the room on it and on

some of these newer issues it took time

I think it's still taking time to have

politicians who feel comfortable with it

and when they didn't feel comfortable

with it a lot more was outsourced to

staff and in some of these cases you got

outcomes that now looking back Democrats

probably wish they had held the line a

little bit closer in I want to be very

careful because I'm not comfortable with

the just let's throw trans rights

overboard but I think that what you

normally do in a movement like this is

you decide which things you're going to

fight for and which things you're maybe

not ready to have a fight over or maybe

haven't even decided what the position

should be on the kids in sports question

has been incredibly difficult for

Democrats even though it's so far from

the most important question

in trans rights or trans

nondiscrimination out there and I think

it just wasn't one that they were ready

for and sort of nobody just kind of put

the stop on it I think also you see

about that that KLA Harris um ACLU

questionnaire there was this pressure to

say yes to edge

cases so what I think of after two

decades in the nonprofit sector at

various times is Lynn's law of nonprofit

advocacy you go as far as the voters

support your position and then you go

beyond the border into further territory

where the next position is unpopular and

this is a deliberate strategic move

because if you just are advocating for

what everybody believes anyway then

you've won right nobody's going to write

you a check but if you go 10 or 20 or

30% further into the controversial realm

then you will be attacked and in the

case of progressive nonprofits you're

being attacked by the right which is

what you want and you can say we're

being attacked for this and then you can

link it to your previous gains by saying

you know they don't only oppose this

bridge head into enmy territory but they

want to roll back everything we've done

in the last 100 years so I I do think

that kind of edginess that's baked into

NGO annual fundraising newsletter

culture that's how you get people to

open their wallets and I think that

explains a lot of 2020 whether it was

was the trans issue whether it was the

defund the police things that make

perfect sense if you're a nonprofit

trying to pry openen the wallets of uh

you know small number of billionaire

Mega donors and and big foundations are

just electoral poison there was a

conflict I think about Sometimes some

years ago between Obama and

AOC and it had to do with Obama

criticizing activist tactics which he

did quite a bit and this is post

presidency for him and I see making this

point that not everybody's job is to be

within the Overton window right the

activists have a different job than

presidents um than politicians Etc but

on the other hand the the implication to

that point was that Obama was doing

exactly what he should have been doing

even though this was being used as a

criticism of him that if that everybody

has different jobs and actually it is

the job of the

politicians to hold the line at where

the politics net out for their side

because as you said the nonprofits are

and as AOC said the nonprofits are not

there to win 51% of the vote but the

politicians are and I think this goes to

the coalitional dynamic that that you're

describing and I saw this a lot covering

policy in the last couple of years where

when you weave in the nonprofit complex

into the official party people are

moving between it all the time right

going from the administration to the

nonprofits nonprofits to the

administration members of Congress are

bringing in these groups every time

they're doing legislation and sort of

you know taking their temperat and the

coalitions really matter and you got to

stay on the side of the Coalition or

they'll get mad at you and then you've

mixed up people's roles and by the way I

think that's a Twitter thing and a

social media thing too where people who

used to operate in quite different

spheres of politics were endlessly

thrown into one conversation together

collapsing the roles between activists

between politicians between media

figures between political scientists

between Grassroots organizers between

donors like everybody's in the same

discourse level acting as if they're

doing the same thing when they're really

not I think you're right and but I think

it's a danger for the Republicans as

well because there's this very online

people talk about the new right but but

they're sort of like the moderate

thoughtful policy WS like Oren Cass and

others and and then there are just these

internet autodidact gurus who compete

they're not competing for donations

necessarily like the progressive

nonprofits are these gurus on the right

are competing for money right I mean

it's a commercial law and and and

attention that translates into patreon

subscriptions or whatever uh and and

that's always been the big difference

between for the last 30 40 years between

the Democrats their agenda tends to be

shaped by

nonprofits the uh Republicans going back

to Murdoch and fox and exacerbated in

the internet era and in the Twitter era

they're a counterculture but they're a

commercial counterculture culture so in

the old days you know Rush limbo was

wanted he had to sell Ronald Reagan gold

coins or whatever okay he wasn't he

wasn't raising money from the coch

brothers and I think now it's going to

be a problem for the Trump

Administration that is uh if you have a

lot of younger staffers in particular

who are immersed in this very online

culture where they're trading shocking

memes back and forth every every day or

so and they're going to end up Staffing

you know various positions and and

they're not necessarily going to be on

the same page as their political

appointee bosses

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we've been talking about the way the

Democratic party has changed and we've

been talking about the way some of those

changes have led to democratic party

weakness but you can look at this from

the other perspective too I mean if you

look at the time period of you know

1950 to 2000 and look at how well

Democrats do presidentially in the

popular vote when they have this more

workingclass labor oriented base and you

look at 2000 to 202 before and how

Democrats do in the popular vote they do

better they I mean the 2024 is the first

time Republicans have won the popular

vote since 2004 and they look to people

estimating this who I'm reading like

they going to win it by one to two-ish

points nationally in arguably the worst

environment for incumbents we have seen

since 2008 worldwide right I mean we

have just seen in every wealthy

democracy that has had an election the

incumbent party get destroyed and the

Democratic party actually its loss if

you look at this on a on a chart is much

more modest than the losses of other

parties that were in power in this

period you know compare them to the

absolute annihilation of the Tories in

in the UK and one argument you might

make on that is actually this has not

been masterful politics from Donald

Trump and JD Vance that how extreme they

are you know childless cat ladies and

all the rest of it has held down what

could have been a very very strong

Republican performance to something that

you know if you have two percentage

points of the vote go the other way

Republicans don't even win in

2024 well that that's true but as David

Axelrod pointed out the other day the

only two groups where Harris improved

over Biden are college educated whites

and people making more than $100,000 a

year so I think the the two narratives

about what happened on Tuesday one is

it's a long-term realignment and the

other is it's a short-term result of the

anti-incumbency backlash because of the

postco inflation I think they're both

correct and I think of this in terms of

a covid analogy so covid can affect lots

of people but the ones who have prior

vulnerabilities are the most endangered

so I think the Democratic party had a

lot of Prior vulnerabilities going in

but there's no doubt that being the

incumbent party it suffered uh at the

same time like these other incumbent

parties both on on the right and the

left but one thing the narrowness of the

Republican victory has left me thinking

about is it the fact that we're in a

realignment doesn't mean the Republican

party has realigned into a necessarily

winning Coalition it might yet but this

all seems very consistent to me with the

realignment looking something like

Republicans have 48% of the vote

naturally and Democrats have 52% and so

in 2020 when you have a very similar

coalitional structure but it's a bad

year for the incumbent because of the

pandemic and also because Donald Trump

is bad at being

president you know Trump loses three

points for the incumbent effect and he

gets beat in the popular vote by you

know four to five points and this year

when the Biden Harris Administration are

the incumbents and it's a very very bad

year for incumbents and they lose a

couple points as a penalty to that Trump

wins by one to two points and so you

might have a realignment but one thing

happening in the Democratic party right

now is the sense that they need to

everything that the way the coalitions

have restructured is going to consign

them to minority status forever

potentially certainly I think a lot of

Republicans feel themselves on the cusp

of like a grand era of

winning and you know this other story

seems possible too that the realignment

is not actually that advantageous for

republicans and in a very good year or

what should have been a very good year

they did okay and if you look at the

Senate Races they actually didn't do

that well I mean in the battlegrounds

States Democrats won six of the seven

contested races at least as I say this

right now before Pennsylvania is fully

called but it looks to me like

Republicans will win Pennsylvania that's

a perfectly fine outcome for Republicans

I guess so they won the Senate house

it's all very close they won the

presidency but in a year when maybe it

could have been much more dominant it

doesn't make this Coalition they've

assembled look like such an obvious

majority Coalition well I I agree with

that but we have to keep in mind that

neither party is what I called a

conventional big tent party of the kind

that existed you know in the ' 80s and

90s and even the 2000s the Post Obama

Democrats really are this incredibly

homogeneous wellp policed on message

machine you know with these powerful

single issue progressives kind of

dictating the platform the Republicans

are this island of broken toys right

there this Coalition of Misfits who

oppos OS the the Post Obama democrats

for various reasons the the various

elements of that Trump's Coalition that

he put together with skill or or by

accident they don't necessarily have

much in common with each other they are

anti-woke social Democrats there are

Libertarians who hate big government

there are the evangelicals and those

were all part of the old Republican uh

Coalition but then there are also trade

unionists who think they're getting

nothing from the Democratic party there

are uh growing numbers there's still a

minority uh of uh African-Americans and

Latinos who don't think they have any

loyalty to the Democratic party so one

of the things we're likely to see if the

Republicans get a trifecta that is they

control all three of the elected

branches of government then these

tensions are going to come out and that

can be an opportunity for Democrats but

but I think the only way the Democrats

can seize that opportunity is to say you

know we're not going to be a homogeneous

conformist

machine anymore we're going to be a big

tent party and we can have some

Democrats who oppose transgender uh uh

medicine and we have others who want a

tough line on illegal immigration and

like most of the parties from the age of

Martin Van ber to the present they pick

three or four or five issues that are

that are the litus test everybody has to

agree with and then you have a free vote

depending on your constituency on on

other issues one place where I think

that the actions of this Democratic

Coalition are in ttention with the

narrative about this Democratic

Coalition is that it often sounds like

what people are saying is Well the

Democratic party's really abandoned the

working class right used to have this

trade unionist party and the people in

it were more working class and they held

much more more power in it and then you

have Bill Clinton and NAFTA and and now

here we are but since Bill Clinton and

as a part's become more college educated

and this realignment has been underway

the party's economic policy has become

relentlessly more left Barack Obama was

well to Bill Clinton's left Hillary

Clinton ran on an agenda well to Barack

Obama's left Joe Biden ran on an agenda

and governed on an agenda to Hillary

Clinton's left right it was a notable

and not accidental thing that after the

first presidential debate as this clamor

arose for Biden to step aside his

biggest Defenders were Bernie Sanders

and the squad Biden was the most pro-

labor president certainly in my

lifetime it didn't seem to matter so

what do you make of both the way in

which the Democratic party did become

more economically populist in a

substantive way as it became more the

party of this class and what do you make

of the fact that that didn't seem to

protect it at all among the voters that

these sorts of

material policies were supposed to

attract well I I think you you have to

distinguish two things you have to

distinguish a bipartisan

consensus first in favor of

neoliberalism and then in favor of post

neoliberalism a work in progress from

progressivism on on these cultural

issues so what has changed is and and

you're quite right about this in both

parties the Democrats and the

Republicans at least the Trump Wing

there has been a bipartisan move away

from free market globalization

I think with the Republicans who were

really indistinguishable from under Bush

you know from today's uh progressives

you know on immigration uh the

Republicans became more restrictionist

and I think you'll see more

restrictionism from Democrats uh in the

future under pressure from their voters

so I think we we're undergoing a shift

as big as the shift from the New Deal

consensus that was shared by Republican

presidents like Eisen hour and Nixon to

the sort of Reagan Thatcher Clinton

Blair neoliberal consensus and the main

reason for that shift I don't think is

domestic I don't think it's I think it's

geopolitical it's the rise of China that

made the business Elite and the donor

class and more and more intellectuals

and and economists rethink neoliberal

economics but since the shift is taking

place at different speeds in both

parties then it's kind of like it was in

the neoliberal era you know where the

parties basically agreed on high levels

of immigration and and more you know

free trade agreements at least after

2000 so they're going to fight over

abortion and they'll fight over gay

marriage and I think on these other

issues assuming you have two post

neoliberal parties the post neoliberal

Democrats and the post neoliberal

Republicans then these issues are

favoring the Republicans let me give you

an example in the amarist poll of

registered voters by NPR for on behalf

of NPR 50

7% of Latinos agreed that all illegal

immigrants should be

deported uh and the number was slightly

lower for black Americans okay this is

not what Democrats have been telling

themselves when it comes to uh voter ID

requirements that you have to show a

photo a government ID in order to vote

according to Pew 75% of blacks 81% of

whites 84% of Asians and

85% of Hispanics want mandatory photo

voter ID laws and this is Pew Research

Center it's not a right-wing push pole

or something and just one more example

the Supreme Court decision against

race-based affirmative action was

approved according to Gallup again a

nonpartisan agency 52% of blacks 63% of

Asians 68% of Hispanics in 72% of whites

approved the Supreme Court ban or

partial ban on race-based affirm ative

action so the Democrats it's not simply

enough to say well we're post neol

liberal and we're more pro-union and

we're want strategic trade industrial

policy these other issues they just are

not on the right side of these issues

even for their Black and Hispanic

constituents I think this is a place

where it's very important to look at the

power of this nonprofit complex in the

Democratic party because part of what

that power has been based on and I say

this based on a lot of reporting and and

good firsthand knowledge is a sense that

the way to understand what many of these

collections of Voters want right if

you're going to slice them into black

voters and Asian-American and Pacific

Islander voters and Hispanic voters and

and Union voters too by the way right I

mean you can keep going like this that

the way you'll understand it is by

listening to what the groups purporting

to represent them

want and in some cases that can be

telling I think unions are more often

reasonably good at at telling you what

at least parts of their membership want

although they have a broader agenda than

just that but I think specifically in

the case of non-white Voters it proved

really really deceptive so the groups

that were you know in a sense

representing Hispanic voters within the

Democratic Coalition they were part of

what was leading Democrats many of them

in 2020 to say they were going to

decriminalize border crossing

unauthorized border crossing but that

wasn't what Hispanic voters wanted it

was many of the groups representing

black Americans that pushed the

Democratic party towards defund the

police rhetoric and not all of them went

all the way there but they went much

closer and in cases kamla Harris did go

there but that was never popular and

certainly is not now popular among black

Americans and so there's been this

Dynamic where you have these groups that

are claiming to speak for very very wide

swwa of the

electorate and persuading Democrats of

things that those parts of the

electorates simply don't believe

in the room where the Democrats are sort

of making these decisions you have

staffers from these groups and they're

often maybe the only black person in the

room or maybe the only Hispanic person

in the room so they're granted a degree

of of deference but it has proven to be

a misleading form of politics because

these aren't Mass membership groups and

and this is a place where I think the

democratic theory political theory has

just actually and truly failed the

Democratic party moved into a position

of thinking it was doing more than it

ever had before to win over the

allegiance of this Multicultural

electorate and it is lost huge amounts

of support among that very same

Multicultural electorate because the

people it was listening to as its guide

to how to win them over were

non-representative that's exactly right

if all of the leaders of these various

communities are career nonprofit people

or academics funded by the Ford

foundation and other big gr tours in

their their AstroTurf and this is the

big difference between modern

Progressive ISM and the older liberalism

the two greatest uh civil rights leaders

of the 20th century A Philip Randolph

was a uh a union leader of the railroad

Porters Union and Martin Luther King Jr

you know was a Baptist Minister part of

this Mass membership organization and

then beginning in the 60s and 70s I

won't name names but you know the way

you become a spokesperson for you know

women or lgbtq or African-Americans or

Hispanics is not having this Mass

organization behind you of members it's

also not winning elections it's your

success in getting grants for your

nonprofit or for your University program

uh and George W bush or maybe it was

Carl Rove I don't know who who came up

with this but there's very clever during

the Bush

Administration they were being denounced

as being anti-black by the designated uh

spokespeople for the black community in

the media and in in the nonprofit sector

so Bush invited a bunch of uh Urban

black pastors to the White House you

know who were actual real Grassroots

leaders they didn't approve of in

particularly either as I recall but but

but that's the difference

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something this makes me think about is

the way this is played out in Democratic

policy

making

often outside of the major issues people

are paying attention to so one thing

that's been very important in Democrats

in the past couple years and is

obviously Central to the Biden

administration's policy Legacy is is the

decarbonization Investments right put

aside what you think of them right the

bid Administration certainly wants to

build as much green energy

infrastructure as fast as it can and

I've done a lot of coverage of the way

that permitting and procurement and land

use rules and environmental litigation

and

legislation have proven to be real

obstacles in Democrats building fast and

affordably you have uh example after

example of major energy projects being

stalled in environmental litigation

getting you know sued because uh this

thing that will build a huge number of

solar panels and create a huge amount of

solar power could conflict with an

endangered species or some other set of

laws even if really just what's

happening is these laws are being

wielded by people who don't want the

thing in the first place and so I was

covering and watching what was happening

in Congress is people tried to Grapple

with this and tried to think about on

the Democratic side what pering reform

might look like

and when I would talk to the people

working on it I was just stunned by the

power of small groups environmental

justice groups and so on that didn't

really represent anybody or at least not

any large numbers of people you know and

they would just explain to me that if

you couldn't get them on board they

couldn't move forward with this at all

and I'd say well what is the power of

these groups like what what what is

their leverage on you and there was

never an answer it was just a

coalitional decision that had been made

in the culture of the way the Democratic

party now made policy right it wasn't

that somebody thought they would turn

votes on them wasn't even anybody

thought that one version of this would

be more popular or even more noticed

than

another it's just that a culture of how

you make policy had emerged a culture of

who you listen to had emerged and it

couldn't be broken even if that meant uh

genuinely smaller chance of achieving a

goal that you believed and had told

everybody else was existentially

important the the speed of

decarbonization in the coming 10 years

and I really began to understand it is

at I mean this is probably where I

departed from the version of this

calling it a machine it seems like a

culture to me not a culture sort of

built on anything it's a culture built

on Norms and and and practices not

exactly on

Leverage well it it's not new back in

the 1990s I was having a conversation

with a democratic staffer about some

sensible educational reform I don't

remember what it was and he worked for U

Senator Ted Kennedy at the time and he

he said well we'll have to run it past

the

groups that was the first time I had

heard of the groups you know clearly

with a capital G so well you say it's a

culture but on the other hand it has to

be perpetuated from generation to

generation and if you pulled the plug on

the funding then a lot of these groups

would wither away and if you funded

other groups and you know I I take your

point about the Democrats being

rhetorically and sometimes substantively

more Pro labor but I think Epi is like

the only you know real prot Trade union

think tank of of any stature in in

Washington still right the economic

policy it's been around for 40 years uh

so Money Talks right and if these groups

are raising money from the same donors

that you need to raise money from as an

elected politician then and I don't

think I think it's perfectly rational to

worry

that if you stiff the groups they will

go running to Daddy

Warbucks and say he betrayed our cause

right how much do you see this as

different on the Republican side was it

different on the Republican side in the

air of George W bush and is it different

on the Republican side in the era of

Donald Trump because it's not as if

there aren't Republican interest groups

not as if the Chamber of Commerce has

not at at many times wielded enormous

power the business round table and with

trump it often seems to me to have moved

into he's not even listening exactly to

groups he he's listening to individual

people who are giving him money he's got

this very funny but dark I think riff

where he basically says he didn't like

electric vehicles but then Elon Musk

came to support him and now he's got to

like electric vehicles and I think

that's sort of how he thinks about it he

seemed to change his position on Tik Tok

after meeting with a major donor who is

also a major Tik Tok investor Trump had

been in favor of as president um forcing

Tik Tok sold off to an American firm and

he reversed his position on that sort of

famously suggested to a bunch of oil

Executives that if they gave him enough

money they could have huge amounts of

influence in his administration that the

Democrats listen to the groups it seems

to me now that Trump just kind of has

transactional relationships with

individual people who can help him and

he'll sort of do what they say if he

decides it is worth it to him well I

can't speak about Trump individually

with any Authority but I think going

back even to the 80s and 90s while the

Democrats have been a coalition of

mostly nonprofit astro turf funding

groups the Republicans uh have been kind

of a tribe I mean there's a group of

people they've had the white working

class for several decades and it's

expanded now with Working Class People

of other races there other electoral

constituency not their donors but their

electoral constituency is small business

owners uh particularly in uh the

physical world I I'll just read you a

list of the industries that give the

most money proportionally to the

Republican Party poultry and eggs mining

livestock home builders Automotive steel

Dairy oil and gas okay and this is quite

different from the Democratic list of

tech education public sector and so on

but here's an interesting point that uh

Jerry Taylor formerly of the nanon

center made for me in a TR me very

deeply he said that most people in all

parties don't have this litmus test of

issues and you have to check off every

issue they basically kind of belong to

one party or the other and they follow

the cues of the leaders and you

particularly see this I think on

immigration and trade with Trump so when

Bush was the leader he says oh

immigration is great you know free trade

we need more fdaas and most Republicans

the small business owners in the white

working class they went along cuz you

know he's the commander-in-chief of our

party and then Trump comes along says no

no no the opposite and then they sort of

follow along with him and and I think

this is backed up by the famous uh

political science research that shows

that the mass public does not have

consistent systematic opinions uh you

you have to be an intellectual or or a

member putting together a party platform

to try to make sure your different

beliefs cohere and and this gives the

Republicans I think under anybody not

just Trump more

flexibility than the Democrats because

the Democrats don't have they used to

have it but they don't have like this

just this demographic base where they

say okay you know we're going to dial

back on trans issues or we're going to

add nuclear to the list of the green New

Deal they just don't have that

flexibility that the Republicans do does

that make sense it does and it doesn't

to me because I would say that if you go

back even a couple of years the

Republicans do not feel to me like they

have very much ideological flexibility I

mean they've all signed gr noris

anti-tax pledge you know if you're

thinking about the sort of mid 2000s or

2010s they all have to be against the

Affordable Care Act they can you know

stake a more moderate or it's very hard

to stake a moderate position on

Healthcare and what's interesting to me

about Trump and one of the reasons he's

been effective is that he just doesn't

play by those rules personally that he's

a small set of things he cares a lot

about he's very anti-immigration he's

quite anti-trade very mercantilist very

skeptical of alliances very Zero Sum

oriented but on the other stuff he just

doesn't care right and you know he'll

move around on abortion right he makes

his promise to the right wing that he'll

appoint judges for them um and he he

fulfills that promise but it's a very

transactional promise I don't think

Donald Trump spent a lot of his time as

a person thinking about Pro lifee issues

and and he has much less sense or

internal pressure of what goes with what

than other people do so he's you know

much more willing to to Bob and and

weave on the things he doesn't care

about and the list of things he doesn't

care about is very long well I think

that's right but but it's also because

he's Rich it's also because he's Rich

But Mitt Romney Mitt Romney was rich too

and Mitt Romney did not go you're a

typical Republican member of Congress

even if the public does not want Cuts in

Social Security and manicare your libert

Aran donors do right and they're not

yeah but I think if you I think if you

looked and you looked at the number and

there are quite a few of them because

members of Congress are overall pretty

wealthy particularly in the Senate I

think if you looked at the Republicans

who are independently wealthy like look

at a Rick Scott that dude is extremely

rich I don't think you would find

they're more moderate or more

independent in this way than the other

ones have been no I my only point was do

you have to raise enormous amounts of

money every two years if you're a member

of Congress

MH and and that creates to me the the

big dividing line which I think will

manifest itself if the Republicans do

end up having a majority is their their

donors are not on the same page as their

voters and you think that's still as

true as it once was yes I have it on

good authority that the uh Republican

donors in 2024 want to cut deficit

spending and have taxes cut too well the

only way you do that is is by

drastically cutting government programs

and it's the whole George W bush agenda

and the biggest now the heaviest weight

donor on the Republican side is musk and

he's been very clear that he wants to

cut I think he called it $2 trillion

dollar from the federal government right

I I had vivec ramaswami on the show and

having him on it was a very interesting

conversation convinced me that there's a

much bigger part of the Maga movement

that on a lot of these government

spending issues looks like the

Republican party used to look like with

a much more Nationalist and an

internationally skeptical set of

trappings or even you could say

commitments but that in terms of how

they feel about federal spending they

remain much more libertarian and and

musk who clearly wants to and will

probably exert tremendous influence in a

trump

Administration I think you know has very

strong anti-woke feelings but if you

look at his beliefs about government and

taxes and so on they're pretty standard

Republican rich guy feelings and so some

of the ideological swerve that people

assumed is going to happen when JD Vance

was picked on the ticket it may not

happen because I I do see a republican

donor class more authentic to the Trump

movement emerging and cohering and it

wants to ban a bunch of books from

schools but it also wants tax cuts and

big government spending cuts well I

think that's right you can think of the

Republican party as being three parties

there's the donor party and they're just

Libertarians I mean they're Pro gay

rights and they're pro-abortion and and

all of that and but also you know free

trade and they want unlimited labor

Arbitrage and they they're anti-union

then there are there's the Republican

primary electorate the primary voters

who like the Democratic primary voters

are much more likely than the public to

be college educated and to be

philosophically ideological inconsistent

and these are your your small business

owners the kind of proverbial local car

dealer right in in the small town or the

suburbs and they are today as in the

past utterly opposed to organized labor

to a higher minimum wage and all of that

because many of them have low-wage

service businesses and then finally

there's the Republican General

electorate which Trump has successfully

expanded and in vance as well by

reaching out to African-Americans to

Hispanics and to others but between

elections the politicians are going to

hear mostly from the donors and they're

going to be eyeing the next primary

uh when the primary electorate is much

more anti-government than the general

electorate when you think about these

parties going forward right let's say

you're the Democratic party and and you

want to win back these workingclass

voters right you think the realignment

that is now sort of found or it seems to

be nearing in almost terminal form where

you know Democrats really are the party

of the affluent and and the college

educated and Republicans really are the

party of most people who who don't have

a college education you want to do

something about it and you look at Joe

Biden and you think well this guy tried

to run a full employment policy he tried

to have you know much more industrial

policy he tried to be very pro-union

that mean they supportive of minimum

wage increases and it didn't work it

anti- worked right it failed what do you

do is it aesthetic it's the kind of

person you're nominating it's the

cultural issues right if you were a

candidate who you know like a new era

for Democrats has to begin like I I I

believe like the Obama era has ended and

at this point like the politician sort

of photocopying what he did or getting

too far from what he was able to do and

the sort of influence he was able to

exert like what sends strong enough

signals that it breaks the way the

system is is realigning do you do you

look around and see people who are an

example of that or uh have been

successful at that well Bill Clinton I

think you need to have a sister Soldier

moment with some of these nonprofit

groups and it could be the greens or it

can be the trans movement or something

else and and just say look you know

you're a part of our team and and we

agree with you on many things but we're

not going there uh the other thing that

Clinton and Gore did successfully was to

build up the Democratic Leadership

Council which I think you know some on

the left called Democrats looking for

cash but in a big ttin party you could

say well we're a different kind of

Democrat but there are are various kinds

of Democrats there's not just one kind

of democrat so there's historical model

for this when it comes to appointing

people to office and this is something I

would advise both parties to do the

Republicans as well as the Democrats

don't appoint ideologues whether they're

from left-wing nonprofits or from

right-wing you know substack accounts or

whatever appoint staffers and former

elected officials and and staffers who

worked for elected officials like

Congressional staffers and to the

executive branch and agencies because

even if you're kind of a young very

online staffer for the a senate

committee or a house committee through

your boss you do have a sense you know

like you you have to make concessions to

be politically viable so I I think with

the Democrats in particular I would have

more appointees to the executive branch

in the future from the government itself

both elected officials and government

staffers it can be state legislatures

and city councils and fewer people from

the World Wildlife Fund or whatever when

you imagine the Democratic party might

evolve from here what should the power

centers be I mean it is going to be a

collection of Institutions all parties

in a way are and political parties

themselves are much weaker than they

once were for all kinds of reasons

including campaign Finance laws so when

you imagine this party that has created

its sister Soldier moment with at least

some of the groups certainly they

declared some independence from them

maybe a stronger leadership that is able

to say no more easily but are there

alternative bases of support I mean if

you imagine a healthy party are there

institutions and power centers that

should you know that exist now but

should be wielding more more power than

they are is this just subtraction or is

it also addition well I think it's

mainly subtraction of the influence of

big donors and of the nonprofits because

if you look at normal political parties

in the US past and and also in

modern-day Democratic Europe and Asia

the party line the agenda the policies

the campaign strategies they are set by

career politicians and their staffs

right they're political parties and it's

very odd to have any political party in

any democracy where basically the

politicians have to accept this agenda

from like nonprofit organizations funded

by the donors that they have to raise

money from so you know I I think at the

end of the day the party politicians are

going to have to emancipate themselves

from attendence on nonprofit staffers

and uh from Mega donor contributions I

don't know how they do this now with the

Supreme Court being so hostile to

campaign Finance reform one suggestion I

made to a democratic friend is that you

you make the leaders of the democratic

party and the campaign committees and so

on Democrats elected from swing

districts right because it's a problem

for both parties when you have your

Democratic leaders like Pelosi or or

Schumer and the Democrats and and like

McConnell you know the in the

Republicans being from the safest seat

and so uh my Democratic friend explained

well but they do that so that your

Democratic leader is does not lose the

next election in the swing District so

as happened in Tom dashel yeah yeah so

so I can see that but but I I do think

that if your leaders come from these

completely safe seats then just because

of their environment they're they're not

going to be as sensitive to the the need

for the the party to attack to One

Direction or another as the more exposed

elected

representatives I think that's a good

place to end always our final question

what are three books you'd recommend to

the

audience well a couple of books that

I've read in the last year or so that I

think are more timely than ever uh John

Judas and ruy tshira where have all the

Democrats gone the soul of the party in

the age of extremes 2023 making uh uh

similar criticism of the the Captivity

of the democratic party to what they

call the shadow party of nonprofits and

I I think Democratic leaders thinking

about rebuilding the party ought to read

the where have the Democrats gone by

Judas and toira on the new right you

have some really Dynamic Innovative

thinkers one of them is uh soram Mari uh

in his book also from last year a

tyranny ink how private power crushed

American Liberty and what to do about it

whether this is influential or not in

the the Trump fance Administration we'll

see but but it's it's worth reading by

itself and my third book is about one of

my heroes or heroins Mary Harris Jones

Mother Jones as she was nicknamed uh who

who lived from 1837 to 1930 great Irish

American immigrant labor activist and

the book is Elliot J Gorn from 2001

Elliot J Gorn Mother Jones the most

dangerous woman in America and I'll

leave your listeners with a quote from

Mother Jones sit down and read educate

yourself for the coming

conflicts Michael Lind thank you very

much thank you

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