Today we speak with University of California-Berkeley law professor Ian Haney López, a bona fide real-world Critical Race Theorist. Not the fake ones that conservatives are hyperventilating wherever Black people might reside, like in school and public libraries.

President Joe Biden ran on, among other things, student debt forgiveness. It still hasn’t happened. The politics of student debt relief are more complicated than it seems on the surface. One poll pegged support at 62%, but the politics of resentment work well on this issue. Many people have already paid their loans off, so they feel jilted. Of course, college is exponentially more expensive these days than it was just a couple of decades ago, but remember: in politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.Joining us to talk about the issue is Cody Hounanian, executive director of the Student Debt Crisis Center joins us to discuss the how and why on the show today.

Joining us today we have Paul Glaze, the strategic campaign manager for NGP and its affiliate, New Georgia Project Action Fund (NGP AF). NGP is largely responsible for giving us the Senate in 2020. What are they doing this year to keep Warnock in the Senate, and get Abrams into the governorship?

Our guest today is Sarah Longwell, publisher of the conservative never-Trump publication, The Bulwark, and host of The Focus Group with Sarah Longwell podcast. Sarah gives her insights into the current state of the Republican Party, what she sees in terms of the GOP's ability to recapture Congress in November, and what she would advise the Democratic Party to do in terms of messaging and tactics. It’s  a great look from the other side of the aisle, from a Republican that is just as terrified about the state of our democracy as we are.

Joe Trippi has worked for high-profile campaigns like Jerry Brown’s in California, Howard Dean’s for President, and Doug Jones’ for Senate. Joe has a great podcast, where he’s been sharing his long-earned political wisdom. He has argued that despite historical headwinds and Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats actually have several reasons to be optimistic this November.

Today’s guest is Daily Kos writer Dave Neiwert, the nation’s premier expert on right-wing militants and extremists.

We’ll be talking about the January 6th insurrection and the wave of prosecutions that have taken place in its wake. 

Today we’re looking at the youth vote—how important it was in 2020, and how critical it will be in 2022 to have any chance of retaining control of both chambers of Congress. Our guest is Ben Wessel, the former executive director of NextGen America, an organization focused on youth voter turnout. His advice on how to keep young people engaged can’t be missed.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daily-kos-the-brief/id1549983077?i=1000526586496

This episode original aired July 21, 2021.

Democrats have long considered the rural vote as completely unchangeable. Are we wrong about that? Are rural values aligned with those of the Democratic Party? How can we change our messaging to appeal to rural voters without losing our progressive ideals? J.D. Scholten and John Ray join us in conversation on how the fight for rural America is far from over.

This episode originally aired December 8, 2021. Happy Holidays!

As we all prepare for the holidays, today, we’re going to talk to Monica Guzman, journalist and author of the upcoming book I Never Thought of it That Way, now available for pre-order. There are clear challenges reconciling our partisanship with Guzman's desire to “be curious” when talking to our political foes, but the advice is wise and applies far beyond politics to business and our personal relationships. This podcast could very well save your holiday gatherings if you must deal with … difficult relatives.

When we first checked in with Demand Justice executive director Brian Fallon, back in March, he it made clear that “[i]f we go to the trouble of getting rid of the filibuster to pass H.R. 1 … but then we forget to do anything about the structural problem of the judiciary that has been utterly ‘Trumpified’ over the years, then these judges will just overturn all these proposals and gut the new Voting Rights Act the way they gutted the original Voting Rights Act.” In other words, if we didn’t do something about the court system, all the legislation in the world would simply die at the hands of those Trumpy judges. Well here we are and not much has been done. But Brian explains it is not all doom and gloom, there is some hope, and there have been some positive changes in how once conservative court watchers feel about expanding the court.