The Political Conversation

Remember the trade war with China under Donald Trump? Some argue that Joe Biden started a tech war with China, setting limits on US investments in Chinese technology. Are we headed for a cold war next? 

The goal is not to be alarmist, but to understand: what is at play in our relationship with China? What is the best way forward? And how do we avoid accidental conflict—coincidentally, the title of an excellent new book by Stephen Roach.

Now at Yale, Roach is the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and led the bank into Chinese investments. He has lived these questions, and he has ideas. 

Most of us no longer believe globalization is the answer to our economic woes and inequity—perhaps the more interesting question is: 

Then what is? 

Bernie Sanders has an answer. So does Kevin MCarthy. But I prefer to listen to those with a less politically informed view. 

The Hewlitt foundation has given 40 million dollars to the Reimagining the Economy project to power research at MIT, Harvard and other universities. This project aims to examine what works to power the working class, and inform policy. 

At Harvard, Gordon Hanson leads this project with Dani Rodrik. He is my guest today. 

Website: https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/ 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3WHXYq8xdsP39DXX2xPBQ

We just survived another debt ceiling crisis. Whew! The media told us this time was different; there was a real chance the government would default on paying its debts. After all, the players were now crazy enough to let it happen. 
But a deal was passed, extending the ceiling to early in 2025. I spoke to Prof. Frances E. Lee of Princeton about the history of debt limit crises—are we really in unprecedented territory? She lays out patterns of behavior to look for in 2025, and gives us perhaps an antidote to the frenzy. 

Website: https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/

"Democrats should be asking themselves every day: With as crazy as the Republican Party is, and as Trumpified as it is, why can’t you beat them? As opposed to just squeezing through.”

The Times recently called him "a liberal heretic"; but these are the important questions Ruy Teixeira—who many consider to have written the manual on the future of the Democratic Party 20 years ago—intends to ask of his party today.

Back in 2002, Democrats were in despair. President George W. Bush had an approval rating of 84% as he led the United States in its war against terrorism in the midst of a flourishing economy. 

Then, Ruy Teixeira published his book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, which Democrats read as prophesizing that the future held permanent Democratic dominance in elections based on an irresistible tidal wave of demographic change. Teixeira rallied Democrats and became an intellectual hero on America’s left. 

Today he has something very different to say. Listen now and as always, let me know your views and recommend guests to be on the podcast at [email protected].

In 2009 this was the cool thing to say about globalization:

"Consumers across the globe have benefited from the increased competition, lowered prices and unprecedented availability of goods and services for every socioeconomic stratum." – The Hill. 

Today the false promise of globalization is clear: millions of Americans lost their good-paying jobs to cheap foreign competition.  Who won? Big corporations and overseas governments.

I speak with Rana Foroohar –a Global Business Columnist and an Associate Editor at the Financial Times, and CNN's global economic analyst– to discuss how it happened. We dive into her plan for American renewal — which she details in her new book Homecoming — on TPC.

We all know where we were the day Trump was elected. To many Democrats – myself included – it was a shock but also a moment of great insight.

In her book, "White Working Class", released just four months after the election, Joan Williams describes a Trump voter in the South Carolina election as saying: "We are voting with our middle finger". After all, incomes of the white working class had doubled in the three decades after World War II, but had stagnated since the late 1970s.

Williams concludes: "When you leave the two-thirds of Americans without college degrees out of your vision of the good life, they notice."

As we stare down the possibility of another Trump-infused election, Joan Williams brings us a sharp analysis: There is a shift underway to the right among the two-thirds of us who don’t have a college degree, and it is now showing across racial lines.

Joan C. Williams is an American feminist legal scholar, Founding Director at the Center for WorkLife Law, and a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings School of Law.

From 2019 to 2020, Dr. Lynn Vavreck –professor of political science at UCLA and contributing columnist to The New York Times– and her colleagues interviewed over 500,000 voters, leading them to conclude that our politics aren’t just polarized, but calcified. According to the authors, “polarization — a blanket term that gets thrown around a lot in the media — doesn’t really do much to explain the situation we’re in. Yes, we're polarized. But talk to three different people, even three different political scientists, and you will get three different definitions of what polarization means. In the book, we use the term “calcification” because it better captures the features of American politics today."

https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/

To understand the significance of the 2022 elections, we have to understand just who the Independents are. If you doubt this, Google “2022 election independents”:

CNN: “How Trump’s legacy became ‘pure poison’ for independents."

Bloomberg: “Independent voters are more important than ever."

Vox: “How independents saved Democrats."

To dig into the significance of the 2022 election I had conversations with three very smart observers. Today I am sharing my interview with Mo Fiorina of Stanford, author of “Unstable Majorities."

Up next is Lynn Vavreck of UCLA, author of “The Bitter End", and last is Joan Williams, who is described by the New York Times as having “something approaching rock star status" within academia, to assess the 2022 election through the lens of her groundbreaking book “White Working Class.” Listen to all three and you will be immersed in some of the sharpest thinking about our rapidly changing political lives.

https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/

While the nation was engrossed in the slow-motion car crash that was the election of a Republican House Speaker, the unanimously-elected new House Minority Leader was paid little attention. Yet, there is much about Jeffries to note–not least of which is the fact that he has already reinstated some key powers of the Democratic Leader that Nancy Pelosi previously had lost, and has introduced a new leadership position that could prove consequential on the road to 2024.

In this short, 8-minute episode of TPC, I dive into who Jeffries is, what he has already done, and what is next. 

https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/

In the 2022 midterms post-mortem, some Republicans went for the Democratic candidate over their Trump-endorsed alternative, much more impactful was the a majority of Independents voted for the Democratic candidate. The power of the Independents has risen alongside their numbers–at 42% of the electorate, they far outnumber Dems (25%) and Republicans (32%).

Samara Klar has studied Independents as part of her work at University of Arizona, and shares her findings, which complicate the conventional view of polarization, in this episode.