The Ezra Klein Show

Right after the election, I talked about how the results reminded me of 2004. George W. Bush won re-election that year — and unlike four years earlier, the popular vote, too. Democrats were truly, undeniably in the wilderness. But two years later, they found their way out. Democrats won the House for the first time in 12 years. And two years after that, with the election of Barack Obama, they completed their trifecta. Does that comeback story have any lessons for Democrats today?

Rahm Emanuel is the person to ask. He helped orchestrate that 2006 Democratic victory as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was Obama’s first chief of staff. And before that, Emanuel was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. Emanuel has been a central player in most of the biggest Democratic victories of the past few decades. And people like David Axelrod and Steve Israel have been floating his name to lead the Democratic National Committee to help guide Democrats out of the wilderness once more. But Emanuel is also a controversial figure in the party. And the eras of Democratic politics he represents have complicated legacies and aren’t remembered with unanimous warmth.

In this conversation, Emanuel argues that Democrats have fallen out of touch with what Americans actually want. We discuss why Democrats lost this November, what lessons they’ve forgotten from the Obama and Clinton years and how he would plot a Democratic comeback today.

Book Recommendations:

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

There are a lot of different opinions about how the Democratic Party should rebuild after the blow of Donald Trump’s victory. And for the next two episodes, we’re going to showcase two very different ones.

Faiz Shakir was Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign manager, and he believes that Democrats need to embrace a Sanders-style class-first populism. This question of whether Sanders or a candidate like him could have beaten Trump loomed over Democratic post-mortems of the 2016 election, and they’ve reared up again this year, as Democrats have continued to lose working-class voters. As Sanders put it in a blistering statement: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

But some Democrats have been frustrated with this criticism. President Biden has been arguably the most economically populist president of the modern era. And the Democrats who have been winning in redder parts of the country aren’t democratic socialists. So I wanted to have Shakir on for a lively debate. Shakir worked not just for Sanders; he was also a senior adviser to the Senate majority leader Harry Reid and to Nancy Pelosi. And he’s currently the founder and executive director of More Perfect Union, a media outlet focused on issues affecting America’s working class.

This episode contains strong language.

Book Recommendations:

The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

Don’t Get above Your Raisin’ by Bill C. Malone

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The core conflict in our politics right now is over institutions. Democrats defend them, while Republicans distrust them, and seek, in some cases, to eliminate them.

This is really bad. It’s bad for institutions when Republicans are elected, because of the damage they might inflict. And it’s bad for institutions when Democrats are elected, because when you’re so committed to protecting something, it’s hard to be clear-eyed or honest about all the ways it’s failing. And when Democrats won’t admit to the problems that so many Americans can see and feel, that creates a huge opening for the right. So, what are Democrats missing?

Steven Teles is a political scientist and director of the Center for Economy and Society at Johns Hopkins, and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. Jennifer Pahlka is the founder of Code for America and the author of one of my favorite books on why government doesn’t deliver, “Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.” She’s also a senior fellow at Niskanen.

In this conversation, we discuss how and why the country has become polarized over institutions; the ways this was supercharged during the pandemic; the reasons government agencies are so focused on process, often at the expense of outcomes; how a second Trump administration will probably distract from some much needed institutional reforms; and more.

This episode contains strong language.

Recommendations:

“Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy” by Theda Skocpol

“Infrastructure Costs” by Leah Brooks and Zachary D. Liscow

Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman

The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I’ve been watching since the election to see what timeline we’re in. And Donald Trump’s first wave of selections for appointees were pretty straightforward. But then came the turn: Pete Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends” host, to helm the Pentagon; Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence; and the real gut-punch, the former representative Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

In the parts of government that can be weaponized most dangerously — the military, the intelligence services, the Department of Justice — Trump is putting true lackeys and loyalists in charge. I fear we’ve entered the bad timeline.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of a new book, “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.” In this conversation, we discuss how she’s been processing Trump’s picks, what to make of Elon Musk’s role in Trump’s inner circle, the indicators to look out for when governments slide in an autocratic direction, the appeal and excitement of autocratic regimes that often get missed in our history books, the relationship between autocracies and futurists, the politics of performance and more.

Mentioned:

Join our team as a story editor

Book Recommendations:

Moneyland by Oliver Bullough

Offshore by Brooke Harrington

American Kleptocracy by Casey Michel

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging nonwhite and working-class voters. There are a lot of theories about why that has been happening, blaming it on the party’s ideas or messaging or campaign tactics. But I think the problem might be deeper than that — rooted in the structure of the Democratic Party itself.

Michael Lind is a columnist at Tablet magazine, a co-founder of New America and the author of “The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite.” He argues that the Democratic Party in recent years has become more beholden to special-interest nonprofits, which claim to represent large constituencies but actually reflect the interests of the donor class. In this conversation, we discuss why he thinks the nonprofit complex became so powerful, how that might have led to a disconnect between the Democratic Party and its core voter base and what he thinks Democrats could do to course correct.

Book Recommendations:

Where Have All the Democrats Gone? by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira

Tyranny, Inc. by Sohrab Ahmari

Mother Jones by Elliot J. Gorn

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

To understand the 2024 election results, it helps to go back to 2020. Donald Trump lost the election that year, but he made significant gains with nonwhite voters. At the time, a lot of Democrats saw that as a fluke, a hangover from Covid lockdown policies. But the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini saw it as bellwether.

In his 2023 book, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP,” Ruffini argued that Trump was ushering in a party realignment. A trend that had been happening for years in the white electorate – college-educated voters moving to the left, and non-college-educated ones moving to the right – was now evident, he said, among voters of all races, breaking up the core of the Democratic base.

And so far, the data we have from this election suggests that Ruffini was right.

In this conversation, Ruffini, a founding partner at Echelon Insights, contextualizes the 2024 election results by looking back at 2020’s. We discuss what Democrats missed about these voter trends; the appeal of Trump’s brand of class politics; why Democrats might have been better off with a red wave in the 2022 midterms; and how Kamala Harris’s campaign may have hurt her with nonwhite working-class voters.

Book Recommendations:

Steadfast Democrats by Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird

The Real Majority by Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg

The New Americans by Michael Barone

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, Jack McCordick and Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The coalition the Democratic Party built in the Obama years has crumbled. But Democrats can choose how to respond.

Mentioned:

“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden”

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by our supervising editor, Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Jack McCordick and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Elias Isquith. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In 2010, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a satirical rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., called the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. This was amid the Tea Party movement. Political emotions were running high. And Stewart ended the rally with a speech slamming the media for stoking the country’s divisions.

“But we live now in hard times, not end times,” he said. “And we can have animus and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.” 

That rally has a Rosetta Stone quality to it now. Because what Stewart was describing has only gotten worse. Our divisions feel deeper and more dangerous. 

So as we enter election week, I wanted to have a conversation with Stewart about some of the arcs he has traced in American politics since he first hosted “The Daily Show” in 1999. We discuss how the media has become increasingly segmented and polarized in the past 25 years, how that has affected politics, how he understands Tucker Carlson’s political transformation and whether his own politics have changed.

Note: The Washington Post is one of several news organizations mentioned in this conversation. We taped this interview before the recent controversy at the Washington Post over ending its practice of presidential endorsements -- a decision made by the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos.

This episode contains strong language.

Book Recommendations:

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (But I’m Going to Anyway) by Chelsea Devantez

The works of Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, etc.)

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Our politics are increasingly divided on fundamental issues like the legitimacy of elections and the nature and integrity of the basic systems of American government. That’s the most important fact of this election. But strange new zones of agreement have been emerging, too — on China, outsourcing and health care. What should we make of that?

In his book “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order” the historian Gary Gerstle describes these shifts in consensus in terms of political orders — these eras that stretch for decades, when both parties come to accept a certain set of ideas. In this conversation he walks me through the political, economic and social factors that shaped two political orders in the last century: the New Deal order and the neoliberal order. And we apply this lens to what’s happening in our politics right now.

It may seem strange to take a step back in time right before the election. But I think Gerstle’s framework helps uncover an overlooked dimension of the 2024 race and where politics might go next.

Book Recommendations:

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta

Underground Asia by Tim Harper

The Known Citizen by Sarah E. Igo

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Michelle Harris and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Vivek Ramaswamy burst onto the national scene last year as a wild card candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Here was a relatively unknown biotech executive with no political experience, pitching himself as someone who could carry on Donald Trump’s movement. Trump ultimately won that primary contest handily, but Ramaswamy was a breakout star. There was even chatter that he might be Trump’s V.P. pick.

Trump, of course, ended up choosing JD Vance — Ramaswamy’s friend and former classmate — who has a very different vision for the future of Trumpism. But Ramaswamy believes the future of the Trump movement is still up for grabs and is fighting hard for his camp to win out over the one that Vance represents, including in his new book, “Truths: The Future of America First.”

In this conversation, we discuss the two competing visions that Ramaswamy sees as lurking beneath the surface of Trumpism, what he calls “national protectionist” and “national libertarian,” whether his vision is really so different from Paul Ryan-style conservativism, why he thinks these debates within the Republican Party are really deep down about identity and what it means to be an American.

Book Recommendations:

The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek

The Bhagavad Gita

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.