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The Realignment
562 | Oren Cass: American Compass and the Right's Trump-Era Realignment
00:56:06
Oren Cass, Founder and Chief Economist of American Compass and editor of The New Conservatives: Restoring America's Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Oren discuss the evolution of the conservative movement since the 2016 election, the fifth anniversary of American Compass, and the organization's new volume covering the new right's perspective on trade, immigration, labor, family, industry policy, technology, and more...
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- [00:00]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Last month was the fifth anniversary of American Compass, the conservative think tank that's played a major, if not the central role of offering up policies and political perspectives on the rights realignment, specifically on economic policy. So to mark that anniversary, American Compass released an edited compilation of all of their major pieces of writing and thinking to cover that space and and help those on the right, left and center understand the evolution of the American conservative movement during the Trump era. The book is the New Restoring America's Commitment to Family, Community and Industry. And in today's conversation, Oren Cass, American Compass's founder, and I speak about the rights realignment and the work of American Compass over this five year period. Hope you all enjoy the conversation. Oren Cass, welcome back to the Realignment.
- [01:01]
B
It's great to see you.
- [01:02]
A
It's great to see you too. We were just discussing this before the start of the episode, but this new volume we're here to discuss, put out by American Compass and edited by you, the New Restoring America's Commitment to Family, Community and Industry is being launched in concert with American Compass's fifth anniversary. You actually made your podcast debut on the Realignment. So we're gonna be able to go full circle here. Yes, and that's really exciting. But I do want to start with something, something the realignment's really done over the past five years is build a cross partisan audience. So some people here are traditional establishment folks trying to get the pulse of the intellectual space. Others are New Right acolytes and other people are kind of in a weird space, leftists who just are curious what these things are up to. So can you just level set by giving your diagnosis that anyone in these different camps could like either agree or disagree with with what is the state of America in the year 2025?
- [02:05]
B
That's a broad question and you could.
- [02:08]
A
Take it any direction you want to go because I think in a way your perspective will be shaped by, once again, the American Compass sort of thesis.
- [02:15]
B
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I guess I think of two kind of categories I'd want to dive in on. One is in terms of the sort of substantive reality of life in America, what's going on in the economy, the culture and so forth. And then the political question of what on earth is going on in American politics? And obviously these things are related, running in both directions. It seems to me the fundamental underlying reality of America today is that we are at this very unsettled moment where an arrangement both within the country and our understanding of Our place in the world that was established really at the end of the Cold War in the early 90s has finally come completely undone. I think domestically there was an assumption coming out of the Cold War that the sort of free market model was ascendant everywhere, that essentially even Bill Clinton says the end of big government is over, we're going to continue to deregulate, and the magic of markets and technological progress is just going to lift everyone up forever. And I think there's an era in the 90s when that seemed to be happening. I think certainly by the time we got to the great financial crisis and then the, I guess now 15 plus years since we've seen that that's not necessarily true, that a lot of the things we took for granted weren't necessarily going to happen, that the things that venture capital was investing in were, weren't necessarily going to generate wonderful progress for everybody, that profit growth, stock market growth wasn't necessarily going to translate into wage growth, obviously, that free trade and embracing China wasn't going to lead to great new jobs for everybody. And so we went through a period of hoping that would be true. We went through a period of denying that it wasn't true. And now I think we are in the period of picking up the pieces and coping with and grappling with a lot of the costs that that imposed and the problems it created, you know, for the typical worker and his or her family. And, you know, that's still somebody who doesn't have a college degree. That's still somebody who is in what I would call a fairly insecure job. You know, certainly income below $50,000 a year, might not have disabled benefits or foreseeability in earnings or hours. You know, if you're in a lot of parts of the country, you're seeing economic stagnation or even outright decline. We're obviously seeing family formation decline. And the statistic I always point to that I think captures this in a really stark way is, you know, I think our mental model, again going back to the 90s of like a failed state is post Soviet Russia. And we have this idea of like, just, you know, rampant alcohol addiction, like, you know, just people dying all over the place from substance abuse and just the complete failure of everything that society aspired to. And if you look at actually the death rate in the United States now from drug abuse, it is. It is as high as it was from alcohol abuse in the Soviet Union, in Russia in the decade after the Soviet Union fell now, we've seen actually over the last year or two, that started to come down a little bit. But when you think about the scope of social decay, that's really where we've been. And then obviously that informs our politics in a whole lot of detail.
- [05:54]
A
Before you get to politics, I want to really pull something out there that folks may have missed before we get to the political side of the story. So you spoke specifically about the American worker. And one of my questions later on in the script here was going to be how would you define the new conservatism? And I would say as someone who grew up and got interested in the right in the 2000s and 2010s, I would say that your focus on the worker and your acknowledgement of class politics is probably just the easiest demarcation point between the way that pre Trump conservatism conceived of its nature and its project and America from what came after. I remember the sort of party line in the Weekly Standard or National Review was very much class politics is a European thing. America doesn't have class politics, politics engaging with worker discussions and even some forms of middle class focused politics and discussion. That is just a left leaning conception. So speak to this dichotomy.
- [06:55]
B
Yeah, that's a great point. And again, I think it goes back to this kind of 90s mental model we had that and it really starts with Reagan, this idea that essentially what is good for capital, what is good for business ultimately is just almost automatically going to be good for everybody. And you know, that model certainly took over how the Republican Party and the conservative movement thought about things. And in the 90s it seemed to perhaps be vindicated that yes, there's no need to think about classes, there's no need to think about divergent interests. We all just share this interest of economic growth, growing the economic pie, and it will work for everybody. And I think what, what we have seen more recently is again like the 90s in a sense validates that it can be true. And I realize I'm, I'm over lauding the 90s. The 90s had its problems too. But in a well functioning capitalist economy it can be the case that you have a situation where things that are good for businesses are good for workers too. That's, that's what you want. But that it's not automatic and that if we are now in a period where those things are not moving together, then you do have to acknowledge the class side of things, you do have to recognize that there are trade offs, that there are competing interests, and then you have to decide how you're going to weigh those. And I think the Republican Party, as it became increasingly clear that there were conflicts here, overly defaulted for a long time to the business interest side and the job creators and the assumption that somehow if we lean in far enough there, we hope that will take care of everybody else too. And I think a lot of what the new conservatism comes down to is a just starting from a descriptive recognition that to the extent that that's not really true good policy and policy and politics that's actually going to vindicate the foundational elements of a society that conservatives care about, is going to have to make a different set of trade offs there and focus more on what is actually good for workers, what is good for families and communities, and in a sense make the opposite of the case that Reagan made. Right? Instead of convincing workers that whatever is good for capital is good for workers too, there is a real need now to make the case and ideally have the business community understand that to some extent they need to care a lot more about what's good for workers, that people need to more realize the things that are going to be good for workers right now ultimately can and will redound to the benefit of everybody.
- [09:43]
A
And quick comment before we get you back to the script here. I think the other thing that we should take away from your point and the 1990s conservative rejection of class politics is, and this speaks to what I think American Compass has tried to do and I think done successfully from a sort of putting policy on the shelf perspective. There was a lot of motivated reasoning when it came to saying America doesn't have classes. Because I think at the time, and for a long time there just were no right leaning articulations of what like worker centric policy would look like. So if you were to say in the 1990s and 2000s, okay, we're going to start working, focusing on the worker, we're gonna start focusing on like the lower middle class people who have been left behind. The, the obvious policies on the shelf you would pull from would be minimum wage increases, increasing traditional union access, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there really was like a gap on the right of center to conservative side on policies. Or you could also say more redistribution, tax increases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For a long time, just saying we're going to focus more on working people would just lead you to default left wing policy positions. So I understand why that happened. So I think that's why it's very key that American Compass spent a lot of time really building out that policy shelf. Because it's just not true that a focus on the groups we're discussing leads you to agreeing with like every single thing Bernie Sanders believes.
- [11:11]
B
Yeah, that's, that's a great point. And you know, the way I always put it is that I feel like a lot of the conservative muscles just sort of atrophied. That the, you know, the commitment to the quite libertarian, you know, trust the free market to take care of everything, led to exactly, you were saying, just nothing on the shelf for what conservative policy could even look like. And then once you're in that position, there's a very strong instinct to then want to deny that there's a problem and there's fear. And I think we saw this in so many areas, again, you know, in anti poverty policy, on a lot of these economic policy issues, you know, even like an issue on climate change. I think you saw this same dynamic of like, well, if we acknowledge even the existence of climate change, well then that means we have to sign up for the Green New Deal, because there just was, there was no either existing policy or real. I think good thinking about, okay, how would you actually apply conservative principles to solving problems? And so I think that's a lot of what we are now getting back to. And some of the conflict you see within the right of center between a more libertarian mindset that says, you know, kind of the, the free market and the small government is the end unto itself, which, look, you know, that's, that's a principled position you can take if you want, but it then does leave you in this position of kind of having to deny that anything's wrong or. No, no, there are a lot of real problems. And by the way, if you just insist on ignoring them, that's how you lose and end up with the left solutions. So let's actually go back and you know, it's funny where the book is called the New Conservatives. In a sense, it's the old conservatives hide in the last. Just pretend we're kind of inventing anything. You know, there is nothing new in policy. In a sense, there is kind of applying principles and ideas to the problems of a moment. And the problems of the 2000s are just very different than the problems of the 1980s. And so not just picking up the 1980s playbook and picking your favorite tax cut, but instead going back, starting from conservative principles, you know, absolutely recognizing the limitations of government, but also the need for government and therefore asking, okay, what, what do we want to do here? I think is, is very much needed. And I think it's what you're seeing happen on the right of center and.
- [13:33]
A
That gives the perfect pivot to the political side of what is happening in America in 2025. Because I think the central political critique that many of your critics on the right just have not had a cohesive response to is that maybe I don't want to even say market fundamentalism because they would not agree with that framing. But at the end of the day, post Romney 2012 and the sort of cratering of Jeb Bush's campaign in 2015, you worked on the Romney team in 2012. So like you were very much in this space as a political project, it just did not work. Consistent losses in the popular vote, consistent inabilities to actually achieve policy wins, there just was not. And this is why I started getting interested in your work because I read, you know, Grand New Party by Raihan Salaam and Ross Dauthin despite, like where everyone in the sort of crew we've just mentioned has ended up. A lot of that thought in the 2000s was just about the fact that, oh wow, we as a conservative movement are dependent on the political votes of these like working to middle class voters and man, they are just not interested in our market oriented agenda. So politically then where are we in 2025 building in all of this?
- [14:49]
B
Well, I think where we are. And it's funny, you, you know, it was so prescient that, that you called your project the realignment.
- [14:55]
A
I mean we're, this is my central skill set.
- [14:59]
B
Well, I was going to say like, it's like you may need to just rename your podcast the Alignment at some point because, you know, this is, we are in this new world now. And what I think we've seen happen to your point is that our, our politics in a sense broke and, but I don't mean broke in like a negative way. Right. Like it could sound like, not like fell off the shelf and shattered but, but more sort of snapped in a way that, you know, I, I like to use the metaphor of an earthquake where you have pressure building up on the tectonic plates and, and the rifts that everybody is accustomed to in, in our politics. And at some point because the world changes now I'm past my knowledge of geology, but you get that snap and everything shakes and that's actually an important and healthy reset in a lot of ways. You wouldn't want a stale sclerotic orthodoxy to persist forever. But what snapped, I think beginning in 2016 was exactly the response to, well, wait a minute. Kind of The Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama or Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton view of the world does not reflect the set of issues we have, the things that actually divide people in a lot of ways and the problems that need to be addressed. And in a sense, you think about Donald Trump on that debate stage in 2016 against, you know, what, 16 or 17 other candidates. I mean, from, from a pre2016 view, that 2016 field was, was an extraordinary one. I mean, you look at those 16, 17 other candidates that you had running against Donald Trump, and by a, by a pre2016 standard, it was an extraordinarily highly qualified, you know, very promising crew. And yet, at the end of the day, they were probably closer to the five or six Democrats running than any of those 20 plus folks were to Donald Trump, who was just showing up and talking about a completely different set of problems that obviously resonated a lot more with a substantial share of the population and a willingness to throw out all that orthodoxy. I mean, you think about his approach on entitlements, his approach on the Iraq war, his approach on trade. He just was not trying to replace an old playbook. He was trying to speak to the actual issues of the day. And so I think what has been playing out ever since is the effort to rebuild after that earthquake and figure out, okay, what does make sense in this new world. And so you're seeing that in the way that voters are realigning between the parties, and then you're seeing that in the way that political leaders are responding and trying to both, you know, politically speak to who their constituents, in fact are, but also have policy that, that responds to the problems that, that clearly.
- [18:03]
A
Matter to people, you know, something I'm curious to get your thoughts on. So I'm always in weird ideological spaces, and even as I've kind of like pivoted to the center or to the left in certain ways, I'm still just rooted in the belief that, that there is something deeply wrong with the country in a way that citing economic growth or citing statistics or offering correctives like David Brooks, I'll look at those show notes. David Brooks has had a New York Times op ed out that basically serves as like a response to a lot of what we're talking about today, which is that, like, look, you actually look at the statistics and you look at what's actually kind of happening here. The picture of bleakness, of course, Michael Strain is cited that we sort of hear on podcasts such as this and in work such as your own is just like not true in the 21st century. And I just keep coming back to the fact that if that were all true, we would not have the political dynamic existing that you just referenced. And the thing that I just think a lot about, I'm working with Hewlett on sort of industrial, like a big retrospective on industrial policy right now. And the thing that I kept thinking about, as I understand that story, is if we go back to the 1990s, when I was born, so much of the story that we were telling ourselves about how the American economy was going to transition in work just did not end up being true. And that is the central issue. So even if productivity went up in certain ways, even if the story of deindustrialization is more complicated, my summary. I'd love to hear your summary. In the year 2000, when President Clinton is saying, we're building a bridge to the 21st century, the thought was, okay, we're transitioning from a economy based on manufacturing and so much of like America's post war order to an economy which is going to focus on services. And we are going to send people to college, they're going to get upskilled, and of course there are going to be some people who are left behind and we're going to offer them trade adjustment assistance or we'll compensate them with redistribution. And we're basically going to continue this like, upwardly moving understanding of how we could tell people the country is actually working for them. And I think the central problem with establishment friendly responses like David Brooks's is that they just have not reckoned with the fact that we have not had a coherent under and coherent shared understanding of what the deal is. And I think that as soon as you basically had 2,000 come around, you have the dot com bubble burst, you have 9, 11, and then you have the 2008 financial crisis, and then you of course have like the resounding sort of buildup of deindustrialization. We just very clearly did not establish some sort of new framework for how we should understand what we are actually trying to accomplish in an economy and how we could have a way forward for people. That's just sort of like my reflection, but I'd love to hear your reflection.
- [20:59]
B
Well, I love the term you just used, the sort of understanding of what the deal is. And so I want to focus on that. But just to quickly first make a point about the statistics, because you're right, there's still, it is bizarre to me that it's now 2025. And we are still having these sorts of debates about like, well, but if you adjust the chart, you know, if you adjust the data with this alternative inflation measure, in fact, you can see this wage increase looks a little better. And it just in a sense seems to me to misunderstand the point of data, like data is supposed to help us describe and understand the world. And when we look around at the world and see real problems and the data isn't capturing them, the answer cannot be to say, well, therefore the problems are not real because we have this data. The response has to be to ask, well, what is wrong with the data? What are we not measuring correctly? And it a little bit goes back to your earlier point about the sort of sense of if we deny there's a problem as kind of an element of motivated reasoning. It just seems to me that if we're not working from the actual world and trying to understand and address it, then we can't possibly expect our politics or our policy to operate effectively. And so I love that question, that kind of what the deal is. Because one thing that's striking about a lot of the folks who kind of focus in on this data is they'll say, well, look, things haven't gotten worse, right? It, it's impossible to look at the data and deny that that outcomes have diverged significantly, that this model has worked an awful lot better over the last generation for some people than for others. But they'll say, but things haven't gotten worse. You can still, you know, in the 1970s, you could afford a house of this size and like, and you can still afford that. So what are you complaining about?
- [23:02]
A
And you can fill that house you could still afford with. And this is true, right? But this, to your point, shows the limit of data. You can get a flat screen TV off of Amazon for an incredibly cheap price. So there are all these, there are these real data points that you could sort of neoliberally like, tweet out and point out. And I'm not trying to disparage you because I think that this does need to be seriously engaged with.
- [23:25]
B
Yes, no, absolutely. And the other thing I always emphasize is that that data isn't wrong, it's incomplete, and that it's not that we should stop measuring those things, it's that if we realize that those measurements don't give a full picture of what's going on, we need to ask what's missing and what else needs to be measured as well. And so the argument that you end up landing on a lot of time is a question of, okay, well, if things haven't gotten worse, does that mean that nobody has cause to complain? And the, the deal, it seems to me, that was promised in the 1990s and ever since, and the deal that has to be right if you want to have a cohesive society, especially a market democracy, is that in fact the economic system as it operates and the markets and their outcomes are in fact, ones that allow everybody to share fully as, as participants in the market, as productive contributors, and as ultimately, you know, as beneficiaries. And so if, if you don't have that, if your system doesn't deliver that, and ours clearly doesn't, then you can't turn around and say, but I don't understand why people are upset. Look at my chart. Because of course they're upset. And, and by the way, go back and look at your own political rhetoric and what you promised them, right? If for the past 25 years, the message from our economist friends had been, look, guys, these free markets are not going to boost your wages very much, to be clear, we are primarily here going to benefit holders of capital. But that's okay, that is still a good economic policy because we are going to redistribute stuff to you in the form of benefits and your TV will be bigger. Vote for me. And if that had been the message and people had voted for that, then fine, fair point. But everybody knows that that is not an acceptable deal. That's not what people want, and that's why that has not been the political message. And so, on its own terms, on what was promised, it has failed. And people have, I think, every right to be outraged by that. And when the people who have failed then turn around and say, we don't know what you're talking about, they, of course, are rightfully even more outraged. And so I think that is where, you know, I, I find the term populism so interesting because on one hand, it is obviously used as a kind of derogatory term a lot of the time, and there are plenty of very bad forms of populism. But I think there's also a very healthy form of populism and, and one that, that we, we are seeing in our politics today. And, and it's very good that we're seeing, which is when the people, in fact, hold the experts accountable for their failures and say the mere fact that you are the experts and the people in control and with power gets you nothing. If you are in fact, not doing a good job and you don't get to still assert any sort of right to hold that power if you are failing in those things you are obligated to use it for. And I think that's the situation we've been in, and I think that that is being held to account. And it is also admittedly a very messy and chaotic process. But I feel actually very fortunate that we in the United States are going through that, as opposed to places in Europe you see, for instance, that are just much more sclerotic, where those in power who are failing do appear to have the ability to just hold onto power and suppress those who are objecting to it. And that may feel more pleasant and calm in the short run, but that is a far more dangerous and fragile model in the long run that cannot possibly be sustained. Whereas I think the sort of renewal we are going through in America is one that actually potentially could lead us to a much better and stronger position going forward.
- [27:34]
A
Something I appreciate about you is that you're obviously a policy wonk, policy scholar, but I think maybe not to over psychoanalyze you, but because you had this formative experience on a political campaign on the policy side, you just intrinsically understand that you cannot just take expert driven public policy and take and treat it separately than politics itself. This tends to be my biggest sort of conversation ender when I speak with expert types, because I think there's something about the DC culture of PhD driven think tank expertise focus that just treats you, that treats the intersection of policy with politics as kind of vulgar and something unfortunate and something needs to be overcome rather than some of it, I think actually needs to work together. So that's why, you know, I want to keep following up on this deal language we're describing here because it reflects sort of my understanding of how politics actually works. So, for example, why did this sort of 1990s deal break down? It's not just that, you know, we didn't properly fund trade adjustment assistance. It's not just that like redistribution didn't perfectly work or we didn't perfectly handle the rise of like opioids and all those different things. It's also that like, hey, like actually a economic strategy for a services and globalized economy that relies on most Americans wanting to go to college is not something that actually people are interested in anymore. So at the end of the day, our strategy cannot be, well, if we do X, Y and Z, and then we follow that exact path that's going to lead us to a successful second quarter of this century when if you just look at the polling, the reflections, the reactions, especially with Gen Z and especially young men, there's just not a compelling pitch for believing that there's a mass market of people who want to go to four years of college and then transition there. And strategies that are dependent on that being the case are just not going to reflect this moment. So that's just something that really matters to me. But kind of getting back to the, to the script here, something I'd love to really talk with you about is the relationship of conservatism and American Compass to the Republican Party. And then of course we'll get to and close on Trump. Because I had this like, really fascinating. I had two interesting conversations after the election. So one, and this is just sort of helpful fodder for you. I've gotten increasing interest in American Compass from just broad center left people because they've noted that there isn't a real center left to center to establishment policy organization that takes not like necessarily your diagnoses, but just takes your frame of let's put the kind of work on the shelf. And very interesting that that doesn't really exist. And then the second thing that then built on that conversation I had with the center left staffer that builds into my question to you is someone kind of reached out, they said, hey, what should we be thinking about coming out of this election? Because obviously things are not working for us right now. And I said, look like there are two interesting books here right now. One is Abundance by Ezra and Derek. We've both interviewed Ezra about this topic and then why Nothing Works by Mark Dunkelman. And the central theme of both of these books is that liberalism lost its way in the 1970s and needs to chart a path forward. You could have all sorts of disagreements with like how Mark and Ezra and Derek recommend liberalism move forward. But I found that to just be like an interesting and useful frame that people should take seriously. And when I explained that frame to this person on the center left who was reaching out to me, they just sort of said, isn't like the topic of like liberalism just kind of like wonky and academic? That's just like not very useful. I tend to think about the Democratic Party as sort of the center point here. Maybe I could do an event on the future of the Democratic Party. And that was such like a sort of like mind blowing experience for me because coming up on the policy right, people on the right understand there's something called conservatism and there's something called the gop. And these things sometimes intersect, sometimes The GOP is the means by which you implement policy, but these are just totally different things that, like, aren't necessarily drawing on the same group of people, aren't trying to accomplish the same goals. So, like, I just threw a lot at you, but I just, like, would love to reflect on that experience with you. I just realized, like, oh, wow, there are, there's not really a left liberal movement in this country. There is a Democratic Party, but on the right there is a conservative movement and there is a Republican Party. So just reflect on that with me because this is kind of happening organically.
- [32:35]
B
The asymmetry there is very real and it's something that I notice somewhat, but notice more when people point it out to me from the left of center, that they will look at what they're doing and say, we don't really have the same thing. And, you know, I think there are a few reasons for that. One is, I think generally speaking, at least in, in my experience, the. The right of center has tended to be a little bit more of a kind of rough and tumble, you know.
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A
Very rough and tumble.
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B
You know, arguing is, if nothing else, arguing is fun. And it is a sort of cultural precept that you should accept and grapple with, you know, different conflicting arguments. Obviously you could point out the orthodoxies on the right where that's not true, but those tend to be more narrow. Whereas I think on the modern left of center anyway, there tends to be much more pushed toward kind of maintaining orthodoxy and sort of a single line. I think that's probably a fairly long running phenomenon. I mean, if you think of even like the neoconservic, not the Iraq war neoconservatives, the original neoconservatives, you know, the term comes from the fact that they were basically liberals who realized there was no space in 1960s liberalism for the kinds of discussions they wanted to have. At least they could have those discussions on the right to some extent. And so I think there's that kind of basic disjunction. But then I also think the other thing that we're seeing just, and it is a feature of this realignment as it's happening, is that the realignment has very asymmetric effects on the two parties. The realignment is one in which you have a sort of very ideologically and ethnically diverse working class moving to the right and you have a very non diverse, homogenous old country club Republicanism to some extent moving in toward the left, the bulwark.
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A
And so I, I saw this on Twitter, the bulwarkification of the Democratic Party.
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B
Exactly. That's.
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A
By that I'm referencing people, I'm referencing like the Bulwark, the publication. It's no longer described as another Trump publication. It's clearly just a, a faction within the Democratic Party's coalition.
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B
Yes. Yeah, so that's a great example. And, and so that has. So what does that mean? It means on the right of center, all of a sudden you have ever more different ideas and debates about, you know, what are the actual things people want, what should politics and policy be trying to do, who are the constituents, what is this, you know, what does the movement represent? And then simultaneously on the left you have kind of an ever more sort of narrowing, bubbled, kind of educated, socially progressive. And because of the Trump phenomenon, generally kind of defined in response to Trump ideology, that is, I think quite constraining. It really makes it very difficult to kind of ask what we're getting wrong and we might need to think differently about and so on and so forth. And so as long as one quick.
- [35:52]
A
Thing, and this actually speaks to. Because you know, when you're having private conversations, it's hard to articulate the dynamic I'm trying to describe. So that's actually the perfect example here of why it's a problem that left of center thinkers and individuals think of things through the means of the Democratic Party. So I'm sure you saw the big article about how there's this like massive like donor funded effort to find the next Joe Rogan. So even so, because the thing that's kind of like interesting here is that like if I were in charge of things, the actual project is, hey guys, we actually have quite literally nothing to say to a whole swath of the electorate post realignment. So let's actually focus on developing ideas, narratives, frameworks that would appeal to Joe Rogan himself, that would appeal to a non college educated like black kid in Texas or like a Latino guy in South Texas. Let's actually put stuff on the shelf. It doesn't have to just be wonky because like it could be like an anecdote, it could be a narrative, but instead it's like, no, no, no, like we, the Democratic Party's apparatus are going to use our traditional consultants to like hire someone to do that thing. That is an example of what I mean by there differentiation between like there are center left ideas and then there's also this bureaucratic, DC centric donor driven coastal structure of the Democratic Party. So that is, that is the dichotomy I was trying to establish Here.
- [37:14]
B
No, that's, that's. I, I think that's a, that's a great example. And it's something that was so clear in, in the lead up to the election last year, and it was something we were doing a lot of research on at the time, that the, the Democratic Party's message was just simply a. A total dud with particularly younger non white voters. And you could tell, like, they knew this in their own polling, but they, they had literally no way to respond to it. And in the last monthly into the election year, these bizarre instances of like, Barack Obama getting up there and, and literally just saying his message to young black men was like, like, you need to just like, listen to what, like, I guess women tell you to do or like, or vote for them. I mean, I'm going to get the exact formulation wrong.
- [38:04]
A
That was the vibe.
- [38:06]
B
Yeah, it was this bizarre sort of hectoring, in a sense. And then you had the, the Harris campaign tried to put out their, like, their opportunity agenda for young black men crypto. Literally, you know, the five items. Number three was crypto and number five was legal weed. And it was just like, wow. And so obviously that substantively as a whole, it speaks to the sort of political challenge, but I think ultimately it also speaks to what we were talking about a few minutes ago in terms of populism and the actual willingness to kind of, in a sense, those who are in power and have influence, to look beyond their own interests and frame, to try to take seriously those of other people. And obviously that's hard for anybody to do, but in a sense, out of political necessity, I think you're seeing a lot more of that on the right of center. You know, to your point about sort of not everybody wants to get a college degree. You know, that is, that is not people's idea. You know, people's idea of what the good life is, what they aspire to, is many and varied in ways that the elite class tend to not have such many and varied views. And that's sort of being forced into the conversation on the right of center, whereas on the left of center, my perception is you see a lot more struggle to actually do that, to get out of the. Okay, but what is the thing that we want and believe. No, no, no. Our role is to represent and manifest that which the rest of the country cares about and wants and believes. And ultimately, I think for what is happening in Democratic Party right now, the best way to see that is the two things they sort of really tripled down on over the last year. Or two was one, defending democracy as a capital D brand, and two, it's sort of aggressive social justice progressivism. And what's becoming clear is that their brand of social justice progressivism is not broadly popular. Well, what do you do when your two core commitments are defending democracy and advancing a substantive vision that cannot win democratic support? You just sort of end up paralyzed. It seems to me quite obvious that if you aspire to lead in a democracy, then your own personal views and preferences obviously have to give way to that which reflects the broader preferences and priorities of the nation. But you definitely see, I think, a struggle on the left to reconcile those things.
- [41:04]
A
The perfect example of this is the. So two examples come to mind. So one is the cringe inducing, bureaucratically focused, like the Dems need to get better with young men conversation. And that's like a case where you're still seeing. Because the thing is, because people are electorally minded. And this is why I'm rooting these thoughts in, like the Capital D Democratic Party. Okay, yes, it is now true that like, everyone sees the polling numbers, they see the results. This is a problem. But you're seeing, and we've seen 30 different versions of the op ed, we need to create a positive model of masculinity for these young men. And it's just sort of like, hey, guys, no offense, but I guarantee that like, these young men are not interested in you delivering them a model of anything. Like, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's. No, the problem is not that. Because. Because if you actually think what they're really meaning by like, positive masculinity, that's just kind of a McKinsified political consulting articulation of what they already believed and just trying to package it rather than doing the very, very tough work of like, actually where is the gap here between like, what we believe from our interest perspective to your point and where the actual voters are? And then the second thing, and this is why I think I want to be make. I want to make very clear that like this episode is less about praising every single policy proposal that American Compass has and more just praising, I think, the process by which you got there and the fact that there is not a similar process on like the left of center to left. Because the other thing too, and you see this with the Democrats with like immigration. So, like, for example, I had, you know, one of the largest, like refugee groups, resettlement groups in the country that came on the podcast, you know, for the past month and you know, the the, the, the woman who leads it was Michelle Obama's policy director, and she was very explicit on the podcast. Biden's border policy did not work, and we have to reckon with that. So, like, the talking points have gone out. Like, everyone knows that the 2021-2022 border policy thing doesn't work. Every Democratic Party operative knows that in 2019, when most of them, except B, their hand saying we're decriminalizing border crossings, they know that doesn't work. But they're only looking at these things politically, and they're not actually getting to the deep of the core of like, but wait, like, what do we actually believe about immigration? What is immigration's like, like, relation to this country to, like, where we are at a country right now? How much are we just sort of repeating sort of, you know, Emma Lazarus poems as if that that's a policy proposal? There really needs to be a deep thinking of, like, okay, like, it's not just that we were politically shellacked for supporting a vision of immigration. It's that we can't actually. And when the last thing here on this rant is the reason why Kamala Harris could not explain why her immigration policy had shifted from 2019 to 2024 wasn't because, and this is me speaking praise of her. It's not really praise. It's more of an explanation. It's not that she's dumb. It's not that she's not serious. I don't think most Democratic Party politicians could. Could actually do that effectively because there was not a culture of rooting the party's positions on actually, like, rooted and deeply thought beliefs that respond to a country that doesn't work anymore. That's, I think, the central flag. And once again, I think something you guys have done very effectively on the right. And I want to just highlight as a model for every sort of ideology as thinking through this moment.
- [44:34]
B
No, I appreciate you saying that. And it's definitely something that I have noticed and enjoyed actually talking with folks on the left of center about is just this question of, like, what is your substantive vision? Because, you know, to, to. To plug the book the New Conservatives a little bit. The thing that was interesting putting it together was seeing like, oh, yeah, we. And some of this just happens organically. You don't plan it out as you're, you know, building an organization. We really did end up sort of creating from the foundations. Look, here is the sort of conservative perspective on what we actually care about and want to achieve and sort of see as the ends in all of this, and that defining that is itself a political exercise. It's not merely a question of, well, what is the technocratic kind of regression analysis? Tell us the answer. It is. It is in the nature of politics to grapple with that and that if you then can define that. And for conservatives, it obviously comes down to a significant degree to a focus on building strong families and creating the conditions for raising a next generation, having strong communities as an environment in which to do that, caring about the identity of the nation and the prerequisites for a strong and stable nation. And then, okay, well, if you can define that, then you have a really good basis from which to critique what is or is not working in the market, in the government. What needs to happen differently? What kinds of policies would you pursue? And I think that's something that conservatives, when they put their minds to it, tend to be very good at. And that building that story is really important to a successful conservative politics. And we're seeing it happen right now. And then I think, a little bit to your point on the left of center, I do think they struggle somewhat to answer that question. And in part, it starts to the extent that it is that everybody has their own truth and we can't infringe on any of them. And so kind of autonomy for its own sake is the highest good, if that's where you start. It becomes very difficult to answer a lot of these other questions, obviously. But I do think it's a place where my hope is that we'll see a lot more development on the left of center, because the answer will absolutely be different from what it is on the right of center. But I think it will be better than the absence of an answer that we see right now.
- [47:18]
A
It's funny, before I get to my last question, an American Compassion member who, you know, was sort of offering this praise on Ezra Klein's project, which he was saying, look, I obviously, like, disagree with Ezra, but he was like, the reason why I'm rooting for Ezra and abundance to a certain degree, despite disagreeing, is like, I would much rather the argument be between sort of RPOV and Ezra. That is a healthier model of American politics than sort of the alternatives. And I think that kind of speaks to the development side of things. So, okay, here's the last question. I've given you lots of praise, but this is where things get difficult. Obviously, Trump is now in power, and this weird moment we're in right now is that in many ways, I think at a. Because Once again, policy is politics plus policy. I'm sorry, Governing is politics plus policy. And I think there's many ways that the Trump administration's implementation of certain ideas associated with American compass, specifically like industrial policy, reindustrialization, et cetera, have been politically disastrous in ways that I don't think you would have recommended. I don't think you would have recommended Lutnick going on TV saying our vision of America's future is millions of factory workers, like, screwing iPhones together. That's not sort of the American compass pov. But a lot of people were sort of like, why isn't Horn Cass happy he got the governance agenda he wanted and now Trump's polls are falling in accordance. So, you know, I would just love to just get like your broad thoughts and just how you've thought of the past four or five or six months and what that means for your project in its next five years.
- [48:53]
B
Well, I think, to start with a slightly pedantic point, I know this has come up a lot about Lutnick and I do think it's, I think it was taken very much out of context what he said. It's actually very interesting to go back and look at what he was saying, which is that, yes, what is currently done is people screwing in screws in iPhones. We want that to come back to America. But he actually said quite clearly that, you know, that's all going to be automated here, that the kinds of jobs you're going to have in the United States aren't the screwing by hand. You're the people building and maintaining the machines that screw in the devices. And you know, I think to some extent that, you know, this speaks to sort of what has been a muddled at times message coming from the administration about, you know, okay, what, what is the end goal here and what are we trying to achieve? But I think the positive side of.
- [49:50]
A
It has been and wait and quick bit of pushback. Though not to your point because this isn't pedantic, but I think, and you pointed out the muddled messaging here because like a, okay, if this is mostly automated and then focused on like high skill jobs, then the pitch is not re industrialization. And once again, like there was that clip but then there was the broader pitch. That is not a vision of this like leading to all these like new manufacturing jobs. And secondly, when you hear your reframing of what he was saying in context, that's actually not any different than a Thomas Friedman column to a certain degree. If anything, that's actually kind of A weird sort of iteration of the 1990s neoliberal confidence of oh, of course, and then we're going to upskill all of our workers and then people are going to learn to code. So I think it's just sort of your corrective is key there. But I think that there are questions that emerge from that corrective that need to be thought thought much more deeper about and reflect the fact that that narrative was not ready to be shopped on cnbc.
- [50:54]
B
Yeah, I think the re industrialization narrative in my mind, rightly delivered is that reindustrialization has a whole bunch of important benefits. One of them is on the job side. It's not in a return to the 1950s manufacturing job. I also think it's important to say though that the types of jobs you're talking about in a modern manufacturing facility are still a set that is accessible both geographically and skills wise to a very different set of people than who you're pitching to. Can just get a college degree and become a designer of the Apple product to go be made somewhere else. But I think what all this gets to, and you're entirely right on, is at the highest level we have all of these ideas we've been talking about here and then we have okay, and how is it actually playing out in practice today? And I think there have been parts for them very encouraging and that we've been very supportive of in terms of just again being willing to focus on this set of problems and saying here's what's wrong and here's what needs to change and we are willing to reject the old orthodoxies and have a new set of policies that we're going to bring to bear on it. I think in the specifics and tariffs is a great example where we've been very public in saying here's the parts we like, here's the parts we think have not been done well in general, I've been encouraged to see that. I think they've, they of course corrected as they've gone along and things are certainly in a better place than they had been initially. And I think we're seeing positive responses to that. But in the long run, and I guess this goes all the way back to your initial point about you can't have policy separated from politics. I think this is the natural way in which change happens. And I think something I've been very struck by and frustrated by, I guess is that, okay, you see, let's say the administration go out on their tariff policy and the expectation is like, okay, well either you have to kind of go to the mat for this as the single most brilliant and effective manifestation of terrorist policy ever. Or you have to sort of disavow it and say this is all terrible and obviously due to failure. And again from the like, policy is just an abstract exercise in white papers on the shelf. It kind of makes sense that those are the two white papers you might write, but that's not reality and that's not constructive reality. And this is something we always try to emphasize in designing policy is you have to design policy taking into account for the messiness of implementation. And then you have to be involved in that process and be willing to kind of, of get your hands dirty and say, and honestly talk about here's what's good, here's what's bad, here's what we think needs to change and, and you know, treat it a little bit more, treat it a little bit less as kind of a combative team sport and where, you know, you're always either on side or offside and a little bit more as a, you know, what I think is fairly kind of collaborative public process of trying to figure out where things go. And so exactly to your point, it's, it is for us a question of what's the next five years. And the next five years we'll see places where we're extremely excited about a direction of policy has gone, places where we think it's gone in exactly the wrong direction. But I think if we can maintain this general outlook in our own work and what we push policymakers to do, really trying to start from, okay, let's be clear on what we think the ends are for the nation where we're falling short and what those problems are. Let's be creative in the kinds of policies we're willing to pursue, consistent with our principles, and then let's try to make progress. Of course it won't be perfect at times, it will be whatever the opposite of perfect is. But that process, I think is heck of a lot better than the kind of sclerotic head down ideological enforcement that we had a decade ago. And so the fact that we're actually going through this, and I was contrasting with Europe earlier, I would much rather be us going through this than a country that was still saying, no, nothing will change, it's going to be 2014 forever. Because I think we have a good chance of success and I think that alternative has no chance at all.
- [55:51]
A
That is the perfect place to end. Oren, thank you for joining me on the realignment. The book is the new conservatives restoring America's commitment to family, community and industry.
- [56:00]
B
Well, thank you for having me. This was awesome, and I think you should. And we will be back next time on the Alignment podcast.