Dirty Moderate with Adam Epstein

Jason Kander is an Afghanistan Veteran, a former Missouri Secretary of State, and a guy who kind of ran for president for a minute. Today, he is the president of national expansion at Veterans Community Project, the co-host of the Majority 54 podcast, a bestselling author, the founder of Afghan Rescue Project, and a men’s amateur baseball player, as well as a little league coach.

In his searing memoir, “Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD” Jason writes about his journey as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan and how he came to terms—wrenchingly, thoughtfully and bravely—with his mental health in the aftermath. 

To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade.

Adam and H.W. Brands discourse about Brands’s latest book Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics, which offers readers an incisive look at the perils of partisanship which played not only a key role in our founding but remain foundational to the American experiment in all its messy glory.  Enjoy!

Check out H.W. Brand’s Substack:          A User's Guide to History

H.W. Brands on Twitter/X: https://x.com/hwbrands

We discussed his latest book, but he has written a healthy handful of incredible reads! Check them out here —> H.W. Brands on Amazon

Are you registered to vote? Is everyone you know and everyone THEY know registered? www.vote.org

Batya Ungar-Sargon, American journalist and author, is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and the former opinion editor of The Forward. She has written a really powerful book called Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women

Luke Nichter is a professor of History and the James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University. Luke joins Adam to discuss his latest book, “The Year that Broke Politics:Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968” which was named one of the top books of 2023 by the Wall Street Journal. 

Nichter shows 1968 to be a pivotal year in American politics, but not for the reasons we’ve come to accept. The conventional wisdom of the Republican and Democratic Party rivalry is redrawn to reveal sunrising insights about the cast of presidential candidates in the ‘68 election. It’s been said that history may not repeat but it does rhyme, and “The Year That Broke Politics” is both an astute reassessment of 1968 and something of a cautionary tale for 2024. 

Love democracy? Despise the idea of another Trump White House? Well then you are in the right place! If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast and don't miss our Substack-Dirty Moderate Nation. 

White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States.

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman join Adam to discuss their book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, which has been received with equal parts acclaim and blowback. The New York Times Bestseller has been called a searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens—who are also the least likely to defend its core principles.

Reed Galen is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, host of the Lincoln Project podcast and author of The HomeFront Substack, and a self-proclaimed Cassandra.

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William Inboden is Professor and Director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, and Peterson Senior Fellow with the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  He joins Adam in a discussion centering around his latest book

Inboden’s masterly book provides a definitive account of  Reagan’s strategic approach to diplomacy, his nuanced statecraft, and the impact of his decisions on the global stage. This compelling book is a must read especially for its analysis of Reagan’s policies of peace through strength. An examination of Reagan’s military buildup and tough rhetoric towards the Soviet Union are central to Reagan’s legacy, but Inboden goes beyond the surface to explore how Reagan the “cowboy” became Reagan the diplomat,  and emerged as arguably the most consequential 20th century president next to FDR.

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Alana Newhouse  is an American writer and editor. She is the founder of Tablet magazine, a dynamic hub of Jewish life, which features news, essays, podcasts and opinion pieces.

In November 2022, Alana wrote an essay for Tablet called “Brokenism.” The essay remains deeply compelling because, as Alana argues, that “the real debate today isn’t between the left and the right . It’s between those invested in our current institutions, and those who want to build anew.”

This is a must read essay and Alana and Adam use this piece as a springboard to discuss our political and cultural divides , but -also to examine the implications of “Brokenism” for Jewish people at a time of rising antisemitism.

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