In this week’s episode, Timothy Shenk joins Lee and James to discuss electoral politics in the United States. Shenk is a historian of the modern United States in the Department of History at the George Washington University, where he researches and writes about American political and intellectual history. He is the author of Realigns: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).

Is America on the cusp of a realignment in which a new majority will emerge to shape our politics for the next generation? Or are Americans stuck in a cycle of anxiety-producing, high-stakes elections that are closely contested year after year? What can we learn from the past about the present moment in American politics? These are some of the questions that Tim, Lee, and James ask in this week’s episode.