Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from November of 2024. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

With Donald Trump winning the presidency, the popular vote, the Senate, and the House, in what The New York Times has described as a “crushing electoral rebuke” of the Democrats, there is a lot of soul-searching going on in the party. Our guest on the program today tried to warn the Democrats in his previous book. He says the progressive moment in American politics is now over — and the Democrats are going to have to face that fact if they want to win again.

Ruy Teixeira is a cofounder and politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter on Substack and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, with John B. Judis, is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com