Right Now With Perry Bacon

Michigan votes tomorrow, Wisconsin votes next week, and both Senate primaries have become this cycle’s version of the New York primary—everyone left of center is watching. Anat Shenker-Osorio, who has run hundreds of Democratic focus groups since 2021, and Nathan Kalmoe, a professor who studies public opinion, join the show to break down what these races reveal before any votes are even counted. We discuss why voters are less ideological than pundits assume and more driven by dissatisfaction with Democratic “fight,” why polls showing Abdul El-Sayed slightly behind a Republican shouldn’t be read as an electability warning, why comparing Fran Hong’s genuine working-class background to Graham Platner’s “cosplaying fisherman” persona exposes a double standard in how “authenticity” gets judged, and why Shenker-Osorio’s research keeps landing on the same conclusion: voters think Democrats are weak, not woke.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Everyone says they don’t know what AOC’s foreign policy is—but Jonathan Guyer, program director at the Institute for Global Affairs, argues that’s not quite right. He joins the show to break down his piece “AOC Meets World,” tracing how she went from a shaky, underprepared answer on Israel-Palestine early in her career to a confident speech at the Munich Security Conference tying global oligarchy and authoritarianism directly to economic policy. We discuss why her worldview is more class-based than Biden’s, why the left is pushing to disqualify Biden’s Gaza-era foreign policy advisors like Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken from future roles, and whether foreign policy—driven by the Iran war, gas prices, and strikes in the Caribbean—will actually be a factor in the next Democratic primary.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Debbie Wasserman Schultz decided to run in Florida’s newly redrawn 20th District instead of her old seat—and Elijah Manley, one of the primary challengers taking her on, joins the show to make his case. We discuss why he thinks seniority isn’t the same as results, his own background growing up homeless after the 2008 financial crisis, why he’d have picked Abdul El-Sayed over Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate race, and why he sees himself as part of the same progressive wave winning primaries in Colorado and New York. We also get into the crowded primary field working against him, and why he still thinks he has a shot at beating Wasserman Schultz on August 18.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Progressive candidates just had a strong primary season—but is this a real realignment or a moment that fades? Julia Azari, professor at Marquette University, and Seth Masket, professor at the University of Denver, join the show to break down what’s actually driving the left’s wins. We go factor by factor: whether Democratic voters are genuinely moving left, why the socialist label has lost its Cold War toxicity, the role of anger at Democratic leadership’s response to Trump, and the influence of the Gaza issue on a motivated slice of the electorate. We land on the big question: Is this new left-wing coalition more like the Tea Party of 2010, or something smaller and more contained—and what happens to the narrative if establishment Democrats win in Michigan and Wisconsin?

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

We talk about masculinity and politics constantly right now, but gender politics runs both ways—and it’s usually invisible when it comes to men. Danielle Kurtzleben, White House correspondent at NPR, and Meredith Conroy, political science professor and author of the Gender Gap Substack, join the show to unpack how loaded terms like “authenticity” are actually coded by gender. We discuss why working-class masculinity became the template for authenticity in the Graham Platner era, why that same template essentially excludes women candidates, why men like Barack Obama and Zohran Mamdani are allowed to be playful or angry in ways women aren’t, and why Democrats obsessing over “electable” white working-class men might be asking the wrong question entirely.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Trump has spent two years working through the authoritarian playbook—and Donald Moynihan, professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan, joins the show to score how far he’s gotten. We go category by category: controlling the bureaucracy (a nine out of ten), capturing the legal system, co-opting the military, cracking down through internal security agencies like ICE, and coercing civil society—law firms, universities, and the media. Then we get to the one place where Trump has fallen significantly short of what authoritarians typically accomplish—controlling elections. We discuss why that makes the 2026 midterms so consequential, and why Moynihan, a tenured academic who studies public administration, feels an obligation to speak out even as universities come under attack.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Trump’s opponents keep talking about restoring what he’s broken—but Adam Gurry, publisher of Liberal Currents, joins the show to argue that going back to normal isn’t enough. We discuss the Reconstruction Papers, a collection of essays laying out a post-Trump policy vision across immigration, higher education, foreign policy, and more. We talk about why the pre-Trump status quo had its own serious problems, what liberals can learn from both the successes and failures of Reconstruction after the Civil War, and how a small publication is trying to shift the Democratic Party’s intellectual direction from the outside.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Yale just released a report on declining trust in higher education—and Education Secretary Linda McMahon loved it. Charlie Eaton, professor of economic sociology at UC Merced, and John Warner, writer at Inside Higher Ed, join the show to explain what’s really going on. We discuss why elite university presidents are echoing Republican talking points instead of fighting back, how billionaires like Marc Andreessen helped design the strategy to take down higher ed, why elite endowments sit largely untouched while top schools enroll more students from the top one percent than the bottom 60 percent, and how attacks on Harvard and Yale end up destroying funding for community colleges and working-class public universities that had nothing to do with any of it.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon

Democrats are favored to win back the House—but don’t expect a 2006-style wave. Carrie Dan, managing editor of Cook Political Report, joins the show to break down the 2026 midterm map. We discuss why redistricting has already netted Republicans six to eight seats, why there are only 36 truly competitive races compared to 58 in 2018, what Democrats would need to see to gain 25 seats or more, how the Iran war and gas prices are quietly eroding Republican enthusiasm, and why the key swing voters this cycle aren’t white suburbanites—they’re Latinos in South Texas and South Florida.

Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.

➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon

➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to watch Right Now LIVE: https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon