578 | Frank DiStefano: The Realignment and America's 21st Century "Crisis of Legitimacy"

Summary

The Realignment Podcast – Episode 578

Frank DiStefano: The Realignment and America’s 21st Century “Crisis of Legitimacy”
Date: October 14, 2025
Host: Marshall Kosloff (B)
Guest: Frank J. DiStefano (C)

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Brief Overview

In this episode of The Realignment, Marshall Kosloff welcomes back political thinker and author Frank J. DiStefano to discuss the ongoing political realignment in the United States, focusing on a defining contemporary issue: America’s "crisis of legitimacy." The conversation draws on DiStefano’s influential framework for understanding party upheaval, the historical context of political realignments, and how ideologies—not just parties—shape the nation’s future. They also explore the "abundance agenda," why intellectual movements matter more than party labels, and how the search for legitimacy underpins current American politics.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. Defining the Realignment and Crisis of Legitimacy

[04:04, 13:37, 17:25]

• DiStefano traces his intellectual journey from Republican politics to researching American party system breakdowns.
• He identifies the historical pattern: every American realignment centers on a “crisis of legitimacy,” where the public loses faith that existing institutions can address core social and economic problems.
• This moment is likened to crises such as the Great Depression—periods when the very “American Dream” is questioned.

“Every realignment is organized around a crisis. And ... it's a crisis of legitimacy ... something comes and starts smacking the system and calls into question its inherent legitimacy.”
—Frank DiStefano [13:37]

• DiStefano emphasizes that solutions must not only address policy but also restore belief in the American Dream—equality, mobility, and the dignity to define one’s own life.

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2. Ideology vs. Party: The Source of Change

[23:33, 25:36, 34:54, 49:45]

• Both participants stress that lasting political transformation starts with ideology and movements—not merely with party mechanics or winning elections.
• Historic examples:
  • The Progressive movement operated outside and then took over parties.
  • William F. Buckley’s conservative “boarding party” approach used the Republican Party as a vehicle for a broader ideological project, not the other way around.

“I always say the point of this is you build a movement around the ideas and the movement claims the parties.”
—Frank DiStefano [23:33]

“I think what my sort of emerging realignment thesis is, the realignment has already sort of happened to the American right... But the key thing here, though, is...the focus should be on ideology.”
—Marshall Kosloff [25:36]

• On the left, there is a lack of unifying ideology comparable to the right’s “three-legged stool”—leading to fragmented coalitions without a binding vision.

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3. The Abundance Agenda and Its Limits

[43:59, 56:07, 59:34]

• Marshall explains his interest in the “abundance agenda,” originating in work by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, as an attempt to supply the ideological framework missing from modern liberalism.
• DiStefano notes the abundance agenda resonates because it speaks to the legitimacy crisis: it’s not just about policy tweaks but about renewing a sense of progress and fairness.
• Abundance is most promising when interpreted broadly as “restoring American capacity, risk-taking, and innovation”—not only building more stuff (e.g., housing or high-speed rail), but addressing government functionality and social mobility.

“If all abundance is, is getting high speed rail built, then it's not an answer to anything. It's a very small answer. But if the idea is we need to create a government that works, we need to get our institutions... that restored people's faith that the system could work and actually shored back up the democracy...”
—Frank DiStefano [56:07]

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4. The Party Formation Dilemma and Democratic Participation

[09:18, 13:37, 23:33]

• Marshall criticizes the old model of “top-down” party reformation, where elites gather and plan, leaving out regular voters, especially young people who reject traditional party identity.
• Both argue that actual, bottom-up, ideologically-driven movements (“pirate ships,” “boarding parties”) are more vital and likely to inspire lasting coalitions and reform.
• DiStefano calls out the tendency of DC insiders to focus on policy or electoral mechanics at the expense of mission and story.

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5. Inter-Coalition Dynamics: Lessons from the Right for the Left

[25:36, 35:20, 49:45, 52:01, 56:07]

• Marshall presses the need for the left and liberals to learn from how the right built an identity and movement distinct from the GOP apparatus.
• He details how Buckley and others fostered a sense of insurgency, fun, and shared project (“boarding party of ideas”), in contrast to stodgy, exclusionary party machinery.

“If I said to them, cool, we've launched a pirate ship, we're small and we're scrappy... but we're insurgents, we're pirates. People would love to join that.”
—Marshall Kosloff [35:20]

• Coalition management requires accepting deep disagreements but having an overarching framework that guides cooperation—just as Reagan managed fractious conservative subgroups.

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6. The Problem with “Materialist” Politics and the Need for Meaning

[42:02, 43:59]

• DiStefano pushes back against the left’s tendency to view politics as solely about economic redistribution.
• He argues that “meaning, dignity, respect, and agency” are just as important—people don't want to be “well-cared-for pets.”

“If your pitch to somebody is, I will take care of you and give you a lot of nice things, but I won’t give you control and transparency and respect…I will be your owner, but give you a nice life. That's not a pitch. Nobody wants to be a well-cared-for pet.”
—Frank DiStefano [42:02]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Political Movements vs. Parties

  “They were trying to put the parties in service of the ideas.”
  —Frank DiStefano [23:33]

• On Coalition-Building

  “The party comes second. You have your movement, you have your theory, you have your story. You coalesce that group of people, you build your tent. And then... you just take over and you just win.”
  —Marshall Kosloff [25:36]

• On Liberalism’s Intellectual Crisis

  “So many Democrats who I talk to now just say, like, we don’t know what the project is. We don’t know what the plan is. We know that we probably need policies. But actually, you couldn’t literally say, ‘Here are the 10 policies that save the American Dream, and then we’re good to go.’"
  —Marshall Kosloff [43:59]

• On Abundance as More Than Policy

  “Abundance as a ideological framework can do that. But ... not if it’s just about technical wonkish stuff and money.”
  —Frank DiStefano [56:07]

• On Twitter and Coalition Dysfunction

  “It’s very, very, very, very depressing. And from a what do I want to do from my career perspective, it’s that like, I want to promote and encourage the norm, that that just isn’t the way you behave, that this is embarrassing and that you are not witty or cute or just like an edgy person for doing this, when right now it's the exact opposite.”
  —Marshall Kosloff [52:01]

• On the Value of Practical, Not Messianic, Politics

  “I guess, to me, the big distinction is, is your politics moralistic or practical? ... I think messianic, moralistic politics is very effective ... when things are strong and there’s a lot of give... I think when things are chaotic and apart, that same mentality just tears apart what’s already apart and leads to more chaos.”
  —Frank DiStefano [65:41]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–04:00 — Intro, DiStefano’s background, emergence of the realignment idea
• 04:04–09:18 — The realignment as cyclical, crisis-driven phenomena; DiStefano’s research and motivation
• 13:37–23:28 — Explaining legitimacy crises; Lessons from the New Deal and party history
• 23:33–34:54 — Movements vs. parties, role of ideology; Buckley’s “boarding party” model
• 35:20–42:02 — Attracting people to insurgent movements; what made the new right/MAGA strategies persuasive
• 42:02–43:59 — The limits of materialist politics and the need for meaning, agency, and dignity
• 43:59–52:01 — The abundance agenda as a potential unifier for the left; need for coalition-building and healthy debate norms
• 56:07–63:04 — Abundance as a philosophy, not just policies; internal tensions on the left; the necessity of ideological clarity
• 63:04–68:28 — Distinction between moralistic and practical left politics; the rise of pragmatic politicians like Zoran Mondani
• 71:02–71:18 — Closing remarks and looking ahead

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Tone and Style

The conversation is intellectually energetic, reflective, and candid—frequently oscillating between deep historical analogies, pointed critiques of current political practice, and personal anecdotes from both participants’ experiences inside and outside the political establishment. Both hosts punctuate their analysis with references to recent books, movements, and political figures, and maintain a tone that is earnest, searching, and laced with an undercurrent of urgency about America’s political future.

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Conclusion

This episode serves as a comprehensive “state of the realignment,” mapping the most crucial frameworks for understanding the current American political crisis. It challenges listeners—especially those on the left—to move beyond party machinery and consider the foundational importance of ideology and legitimacy. The episode ultimately offers both a historical lens and a call to action: that revitalizing American politics in the face of crisis requires the creativity and energy of new ideological movements willing to question, rebuild, and inspire.

Transcript

[A]

Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today's episode is all about the actual topic of the show, the realignment. I have returning guest Frank J. Disttefano, who is really the realignment OG in May of 2019, he wrote a book, the Next why America's Parties are Crumbling and what Happens Next should be Noted the Realignment. The podcast actually came out in June, July of 2019, and now that we have former Time magazine and Wall Street Journal Molly Ball, reporter, writing her book on the realignment itself, I thought this is a perfect time to sort of level set the realignment topic and really sort of chart the course of where the show is going next. It should also be noted that Frank is now the author as well of the Renewing the Republic substack and he has a article out on the intersection of the abundance agenda and the realignment agenda in Niskanen's policy journal Hypertext, linked in the show notes. It's specifically focused on the title of Abundance is Asking the Wrong Question. Getting at once again the intersection of the abundance agenda topic from the Ezra and Derek perspective, but also zooming out to a broader issue of legitimacy in American politics. I think what I love about talking with Frank is I think he always does an amazing job of getting to the bigger question that people, for a variety of reasons we get into, really struggle to focus on. And in this case, he. He really defines this realignment period from 2015 onwards as centering on a real crisis of legitimacy in our institutions, in our way of lives, and the stories we tell ourselves and use to understand our world. All of that is illegitimate, especially from the public's perspective. And it's really tough for politicians, whether they're populists or whether establishment, to navigate a dynamic like that. So we get into all of this in this conversation, and I hope you, you all enjoy it.

[B]

Frank DeStefano, welcome back to the Realignment.

[C]

Hey Marshall, thanks for having me back on.

[B]

Yeah, it's been a while. It's been almost, almost three years. I think what's interesting about the timing of us doing different episodes is we did three episodes about the realignment. Frank wrote a great book called the Next Realignment that came out a little before the Realignment podcast actually came out. And what was interesting about those episodes is where we were in the stage of like, let's introduce the idea of a realignment. What is the realignment? What are these different ideas? How has America gone through different realignments before? How have the party Systems been really jiggered up during that period. And I think because we had four years of this journey from the start of this podcast, it's sort of like, okay, cool, we know what the realignment is. And I'm just going to do all these different topics that we can sort of explore the lens of what this realignment frame is. But two things really wanted me to actually, three things really wanted really to chat with Frank. So, number one, you wrote an excellent piece on the intersection of the abundance agenda and the realignment at the Niskanen Center's Hypertext blog and substack. Folks should check it out. A lot of folks are always curious why I, as a realignment person, I'm so interested in the abundance agenda. And I think this conversation and your piece will kind of go to answering that question. Two, the realignment is now a settled thing. Molly Ball, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, she has a book literally called the Realign. So I think this would be a fun thing before this becomes hot and before it gets turned into a mini series or whatever. Us just sort of like lay down with obviously noting that you did this first, I came second, and I'm always third. What's sort of our interpretation of this phenomenon? And then three, I've been at this for six years. So because I've been at this for six years, this is no longer a theory. There's been experiments, there have been dead ends, those different things. So how about we just kick off now? We did this long intro of giving context. Just introduce yourself what got you into the realignment idea, and then we'll go from there.

[C]

Sure. So, you know, I am. I guess the way I got started in this was back in the day, you know, I was involved in politics, so I was involved in Republican politics, and I worked on the 2008 campaigns. And I was very unsettled at the time, which caused me to think something had been changing in. In what was going on in the world. So as Marshall said, like, I. I retreated to the library where I kind of. I had been a Washington lawyer and I'd worked in a big law firm and worked for a congressman and done stuff like that. But I. I kind of became an academic unwittingly to. I had this problem. It was like this idea of the splinter in your mind of like something was going wrong. And I needed to understand what it was. So I started researching American political history and political science. And I just. I had the sense that something was wrong and that something was tearing our party System apart. And as I spent a couple of years as sort of a. Becoming an academic, essentially, I learned about American political history and all of our party systems and how they had changed over time and how all of our parties had formed and how they splintered and how they came apart to understand what the pattern was like, like, how. How do these things happen and how does political change happen in America? And it became obvious to me that we were in the middle of another major realignment, and that all of the things that people looked around and said, american politics is going crazy, and I don't understand what's happening. It all made perfect sense to me because I could look and see the historical patterns and. And the way political change happens and see that we were at the beginning of that period. And that caused me to write a book. My. My book, the Next Realignment, and it came out in 2019. So I had started working on it before the Trump election, and I. One of the things I always think is very funny was something I always sometimes say, is that, you know, when I started working on this, everybody thought the idea was kind of out there, that I was looking at this, saying, I think our party system is coming apart. I think conservatism and liberalism as we've known them through the 20th century are starting to come apart. I think that we're redefining the system. And people thought, that's nuts. You know, none of that is happening. And then by the time the book came out, everyone was like, no, I think that's happening. And now it's. It's common wisdom. It's like, obviously it's happening. And so then the question that I've transitioned to after that, so after, you know, studying the system and understanding it and being able to see where we are now, I've been kind of turned my attention to, okay, well, what happens next? How do we rebuild out of this movement, and how do we get to the other side? So we are kind of descending into the chaos side of the realignment. Our party systems are coming apart. Things are getting redefined. So then the question is, well, how do we rebuild two parties that will be stable, that will be able to solve our problems, and will get us to the new era of reform? And that's the part that makes me very kind of hopeful, even though I. Everything has been crazy, and sometimes you can feel dark about where things are going, but if you look at the whole system, how it works in totality, things have to come apart for us to rebuild and come together. And so the question that interests me is less how things are coming apart at this point. And then, okay, well, how, how do we get to rebuild things? Because it will always end with eventually, inevitably a reconsolidation around two new ideas that deal with the new problems of our era and deal with the crisis of our era and a new era of reform. And what's. And I think this is the, the piece that you were talking about and this whole question that now is really interesting of. I look at this as we have this blank slate. We're going to get two new parties. I think we have a whole new set of. Let me clarify here. When I talk about two new parties, I don't mean two new names. Doesn't need to be. We very likely could have parties called Democrats and Republicans. I mean new parties structurally and ideologically and in terms of ideas of what they represent, who they represent, what they do, and maybe the coalitions that they represent. So it seems pretty obvious to me that that's going to happen. But how that happens and what we rebuild is up to us. And that's really sort of exciting because it means that we're, we're on the ground floor. The people who are sort of at this point, this conversations that we've been having and a lot of these reform movements, we get to be on the ground floor of trying to rebuild and trying to rebuild two new parties and two new coalitions that will restore stability and start solving problems and lead us to a new, renewed, exciting period in America.

[B]

A couple of things I want to talk about there. So one, I think because you and I have taken similar intellectual journeys in the sense of that we're taking a step back from the news and just sort of focusing on these deeper ideas. It sort of led us to have different instincts. And I just really want to call out the use of the word we there because what's been really hard for me as someone who just spent six years in the realignment idea trenches and then now recently has reentered the. Okay, but I actually want to be a leader. Okay. I actually want to work at an institution. Okay. I actually want to coalition build is that folks who have been on these reform parts of both parties, so this is The Republican Party 2013, 2014, and Democrats now, they really struggle with the. We partner with the idea that, hey, part of what's causing the two party system breakdown is the fact that individuals think of like liberty and individualism versus communitarianism and collectivism. Young people especially don't like political parties. The biggest takeaway That I always notice when we do big Breaking Points tours. Because I should also note, what's unique about me is that I sort of joke I'm the most populist member of the political establishment in the sense that I do council reform relation events. I just was in a VC retreat about the future of work and I do things at a think tank like the Skanin. But I still, for two years did like a big live tour with breaking points, with YouTube. Like, I really got to like enter into a space which people who have my sort of job never actually get to do. And what's so funny is when you talk to all a lot of these people on these tours, a lot of them are ideological. So they would say they're politically homeless. But it's not that they don't have an ideology, they don't have an idea. They're not sort of like left or right or center, if you were to sort of charter their ideas. But they themselves are very much not attractive to like, well, I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat. Even if they were operationally MAGA or operationally they were a Bernie person, or if they were sort of like a center heterodox person who was attracted to the intellectual dark web, they just don't like the idea of parties because parties feel exclusive and elite and just disparate and that's what you want to be a part of. So what's really frustrated me is that in this reform moment, if I were in charge of an organization, what I would be doing here is saying, hey, everything burnt itself down in the 2024 election, or in the case of the GOP, 2012, 2016, et cetera. And this is a real chance for us in this rebuilding something new. Not to sort of get together in an ivory tower DC we go to a fancy Virginia five star hotel and have a long weekend retreat, but actually bring other people in. So not just sort of say, like, okay, so the Marshall Kozloff Institute is gonna get together the smartest and the most Ivy League credentialed people. We're gonna create new policy ideas that we're then gonna focus group and test and then offer to the American people. And then we're gonna find the candidates who like them. I want much more of, hey, we don't know what we're doing. Everyone privately and publicly admits we don't know what we're doing. So something we could do is bring in new people, new voices, make this very Democratic and make this very, very obvious. But this is Just something that I've just noticed when I try to explain this to DC people, they don't get it. But my out of. Out of D.C. people do get it. So I'd be curious for you to talk about this Democratic rebuilding instinct and how it's just not so to put a sort of period on this, to make this not just about the Democrats. The 2013 rebuilding of the Republican Party was that non Democratic version. So it's like we at the RNC are going to write an autopsy and we think the answer is that we're going to do immigration reform and we're going to create the Reform Conservative Network where all of the reform conservatives will get a big profile in the New York Times and it's gonna be how wonky and smart we are and how we have new ideas for the middle class. And then Eric Cantor loses because there wasn't actually any basis support for these sets of ideas. But it's just so interesting how DC people's first instinct isn't to just sort of. They jump right into, let's talk about ideas and policy. Cuz that feels not vapid, that feels serious. But my instinct is no, you actually have to start with the like, what are we trying to do here? What is the purpose of a political movement in political party and an ideology? But love to give you back the rant phone because we could just go back and forth of our rants. So you got. I already have like three or four.

[C]

That, that I wanted to make with that. All right, so let's, let's go through one by one. So let's step back. Right at the end you said something that I thought was really interesting, which is, is what's the point of the whole thing? All right? And to me, I think that is the moat. Once you understand that, everything else falls into place, right? Like anything, like any strategy, usually the tactics that you need to use are obvious based on what are you trying to achieve. And if you don't know what you're trying to achieve or what the problem is that you're trying to solve, the tactics are sometimes very opaque. You don't really understand what should I do? Because you don't know what you're trying to accomplish. So what are we trying to accomplish? All right? Every realignment is organized around a crisis. And one of the things I've realized since I wrote the book is that the crisis, it's not just a random crisis, it's a crisis of a particular kind. And it's a crisis of legitimacy that basically when you have a stable party system. You have two big coalitions organized around a set of ideas that were geared to solving whatever the last crisis is. And it builds a system of legitimacy. That the reason it's very hard to tap into the system is because the system is generally perceived as working. Everybody feels like they're represented. And the problems that people want to get solved are somehow through this chain of institutions and parties being addressed. Okay? And then over time, that falls apart because, you know, the. The problems of the country faces weaken. You know, the. The problems the country faces change. The coalitions get weaker, and then something comes and starts smacking the system and calls into the question, into question its inherent legitimacy. And you could look at that as something like the Great Depression. All right, so the Great Depression is not just an economic crisis, right? Like, how did the New Deal happen in the New. And. And for people, the New Deal created the party system we have now, right? The, the. The. The. We had this Great Depression. It completely devastated the economy. It had 25% unemployment. Unemployment, and it completely destroyed everyday lives. The middle class, you know, had been thrown into poverty, and then we were stuck in it for years. All right, well, what kind of crisis is that? Well, what matters about that crisis is it called into question the legitimacy of our form of government. Because people looked at this and said, well, democracy doesn't work. Americans, America's institutions don't work because we had just had modern. The industrial revolution in this new, modern world, and we're now struggling, and we can't get the economy to work again. And the lesson they're taking from this is that the system is illegitimate and doesn't work anymore. And this is why people are starting to flirt with communism and fascism and. And the system's coming apart. So what is the New Deal? So the New Deal is not just a bunch of policies solving an economic problem. It's. It's a program that is meant to restore that, to address the real crisis, this crisis of legitimacy and prove to the American people that the system can work. And, and that. That by making the economy function, it's. But to restore people's faith that the American constitutional system and democracy and all of our institutions can function and give people a good life, because that's the actual crisis. And if you look at it and through those lines that. That lens you look at, like what the New Deal's doing, its importance isn't. You know, a lot of people correctly say that a lot of the New Deal policies were crazy and they didn't work. And it's true. You know, some of the New Deal policies like Social Security, were great, but, you know, and we've kept those. But other ones, you know, by basically turning the whole economy into a cartel, was a disaster. It probably caused more harm. But what it did do was restore people's faith in legitimacy that the government had this theory. And. And, you know, the theory of the New Dealers was that we could create progress and efficiency and rationality that would work in a modern economy by creating these government agencies and institutions. And that restored people's faith that the system could work and actually shored back up the democracy and then opened this new debate about, well, how are we going to do that? And you had the sort of the New Deal liberal side and the conservative side, which was this debate over how to do that. All right. Every realignment is a crisis like that, whether it is the Civil War crisis over slavery and that split across that broke up the Union. The. The realignment that created the progressive movement, which was a crisis because industrialization had absolutely shattered the agricultural economy, called into question the legitimacy of the country, the Jacksonian revolution. So every one of these crises is a crisis of legitimacy. All right, so why does that matter? Well, so then the answer to your question about fixing our parties and why people in Washington, people are wonks looking about policies, solving problems. Yeah, we need to be wonks and solve problems, but in a particular kind for a purpose. And the purpose is to shore up the legitimacy of the system. And why is the legitimate legitimacy of the system under attack? Well, because we've had these revolutions where the Cold War world has come down, where America was sort of managing the world economy. We've had this new economic revolution of the information economy, and now we have these new problems like AI I think also we've had problems where things like the financialization of the economy that has sort of. And sort of the decline of the middle class, these things that we're kind of getting out aside where people are starting to lose faith that I could take a job, work hard, play by the rules and get ahead, and that there's going to be social mobility. I think there's a sense that. And something we've talked about before with meritocracy, where there's obviously huge upsides on America's move to meritocracy in the 20th century. But one of the downsides is it has. There are people who feel locked out of that and feel locked. You've got a democracy where everyone's supposed to be in charge, but now we create an expert state in this meritocracy. There's a bunch of these related crises and that's caused people to doubt the American Dream, that, that the American, the promise of America that everybody pulls together is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have a fair chance on a level playing field to reach your dreams. And that is under assault. So now let's back up. So what is really the solution? What's really the crisis we have to solve, we have to reconvince America. That the American dream is real, that you can work hard and play by the rules and there will be a level playing field. That there won't be opportunity hoarding and nepotism and irrational policies and all this stuff, that you'll be able to get ahead and reach your American dream. And not as I've often one of the things that I obsess about about the American dream part is the American Dream isn't just the prosperity part, right? If you look at the American dream and this is how it's always been discussed since it was created, it's, there's the opportunity part. It's not just you'll get the house and the car. It's the social mobility, it's the ability to become whoever you want to be in America. It's that there's un. Unrivaled limits to, to, to rise and to live a life of dignity and respect. And that you can define your own future and become whoever it is you want to be without anybody else intervening. And that you will have a fair chance in a level field. So that's the crisis. So the policies have to address, that has to con. And the only way you can convince people that that's true is to make it actually true. Just like. And you have to actually do things, you have to do policies that people can see that says yes. And then we can have this debate about how in the 21st century, with our information economy, to restore the American dream. Anyway, so that, that, that's, that's my answer to, to, to that. But I guess let me then, since I'm on my soapbox and keep going the other question you asked, which is with Washington policy people, then there's the second issue, which is there are two different levels of this, which is there's parties and then there's the ideas in the movement. And I think a lot of Washington people are institutionalists who are obsessed with I want to win elections for Democrats, I want to win elections for Republicans. And that's how I'm going to get power. And the policies to them are tools to achieve that. Okay, But I always say the point of this is you build a movement around the ideas and the movement claims the parties, okay? And, and the model for that is the progressive movement, the historical progressive movement. And, and the reason that's the model. And I, I just, the more I look at it, I'm just like one. It's a similar prop time in history. The problem of the progressive movements dealing with is industrialization has destroyed the middle class. We've had an agricultural country with a middle class or family, farmers that have been destroyed. We have immigration, these cities exploding. And there's this sense that the economic.

[B]

Temperance and social questions, the moralist.

[C]

There'S no time. And it's the Gilded Age, right? There's the sense of corruption, that Washington's not listening, that it's in the pockets of somebody. All the same issues. It's like it sounds exactly like today. And you look at that and you say, well, how did they solve that? And they didn't try to reform a political party. They created this movement with all these different ideas that worked loosely together and tried to influence the parties in politics, tried to take control of the parties in politics, but not from the inside. They weren't putting the ideas in service of the parties. They were trying to put the parties in service of the ideas. And they created these movement, this movement that had, you know, whether it be, you know, child labor, whether it be temperance, whether it be women's suffrage, whether it be charity, whether it be, you know, what to do with poverty. There was all these different people who were involved in different questions and they worked loosely as a network and that. And people joined it because they were part of a movement. There were magazines, there were events, and that is what allowed them to, under Teddy Roosevelt, take over the Republican Party and then under Wilson, take over the Democratic Party and get all their ideas represented. And I think Washington people should be thinking in that model. It's like you're trying to build a movement that reforms the parties. And that's why. And even if you're partisan, that's how your party wins. But if you try to do it the other way, the problem you have is the parties don't want to reform themselves. They're happy. You know, the people who are in control want. They're doing what they do it because the, it makes sense within the structure of the party. So if you try to change it, it will push back against you and it's much easier, I think so you have to have a foot within politics in the parties, and a foot without. So that's the second part of your question.

[B]

Yeah. And I think the key thing here is I wouldn't even use the word because I'm really trying to translate this episode for DC Folks, which we're making some progress. It's less about a movement and I think more about ideology. Because I think what my sort of emerging realignment thesis is, the realignment has already sort of happened to the American right. The conservative movement is no longer oriented around either the New Deal or Ronald Reagan. It's oriented around MAGA and Trump. And in a way that I think is going to last for a while, regardless of what happens if Trump, Whether or not J.D. vance succeeds him, is we are no longer the party of the sort of George H.W. bush, WASPy elite set of folks. We're no longer the party of the Episcopal Church and the Eastern establishment. We are a anti establishment populist party. We are a party that in many ways has a huge base of people who feels like we're not the party of winners. We're people who have not only lost, but we've lost because of these elites that we're oriented ourselves against and these institutions, institutions not serving our needs. That's a different version of articulating what conservatism is and what the Republican Party is. It's totally different than the way we would have talked about this in 2013. Mitt Romney will not be in charge of this Republican Party. Jeb Bush will not be in charge of this Republican Party. Ted Cruz, kind of complicated, because Ted Cruz, he's wealthy, his wife is at Goldman Sachs, but he's deeply, deeply, deeply anti establishment. He was a Tea Party senator. He was doing government shutdowns. There's weird figures like that. They were in many ways transitionary. So even though in many ways Ted Cruz is a Reaganite, loves low taxes, he's in favor of deregulation. He had his sort of, like, Tea Party Persona that could either be a dead end or could offer him a means of, like, moving forward into this next moment. But the key thing here, though, is. So when I say don't focus on party, I think the focus should be on ideology. Because the main thing that really mattered with the rights reformation during this period is you had people not really fight over what does it mean to be a Republican. You see, Watson, what does it mean to be a Democrat today? Style posts and articles and podcasts. When I was sort of hanging out with the new right during the 2010s figuring it out, period. People would say, what does it mean to be a conservative? What does it mean to be on the new right? What did the old right get wrong? What did they get right? How are we thinking about this thing in this very Democratic. There's all these college kids and young staffers and people who felt like they were a part of something. They're talking about ideology because what's really interesting, and this is why reading Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Will of Buckwheat that just came out and came on the show, is really relevant if you understand part of what Buckwheat's goal was when he's writing and forming national review in the 1950s is he wanted to build a conservative movement and therefore a GOP as the vehicle for that conservative movement. That was much, much, much more ideological versus if you think about the Democratic Party today, the Democratic Party is not ideological in the sense that it's a coalition of different groups and not a coalition in the sense that the modern right is. The right has the three legged stool. There are the fiscal conservatives and the social conservatives and the foreign policy conservatives. It's organized right. There's like, once again, we need all three legs of this stool to keep it up and we have the base and that's our thing. Warner break in makes every single faction happy and not in a everyone's kind of not satisfied sense. But there's a view that this is a unified project. The American Enterprise Institute of 2014 was the definition of a three legged stool institution. They covered all three of those planks. Heritage was edgier, but they also had the same thing, the Hudson Institute. They mostly just did foreign policy, but they were the hawks, the foreign policy side of things. So on the Democratic Party side, you don't just have a coalition. Well, you have a coalition in terms of showing up on election day, but you don't have any theory of the case of, okay, I'm a left progressive Mandani voter. And then there's this centrist Wall street person, and then there's this person in the Rust Belt who's a union member. And then there's this like moderate centrist who lives in like a Texas suburb like I do. There's actually no framework for understanding how those things fit together. And you can't have the thing that unites them be the Democratic Party. And I guess you kind of can in an oppositional sense. So in 2020, the thing that united all those things together were, look, we hate Donald Trump, this Covid thing is crazy. United front. We beat Trump, that works. But then very quickly that breaks down. You have all the issues sort of lead you to today. So what my sort of goal with this podcast is I want people who are left liberal to in many ways learn from Buckley's right wing project and say, hey, there actually could and should be something called liberalism or left liberalism. And it's just very frustrating for me to talk with my sort of elected official friends about how big the gap is between my sort of framework, which I think frankly just makes sense and actually leads to proper coalition building and a way forward versus, and this is where it sinks with you, versus people who still are so stuck in the old party model. So I told a friend who's in office, hey, I would love to put together so, you know, the National Conservatism Conference. And, you know, it happens every year. It's like the new rights, like big conference. It's where the realignment was launched because Sagar and I interviewed J.D. vance there. I was like, man, it'd be so cool if we could get a liberalism conference where the entire premise is our project is lost. Everyone agrees it's lost, but this ideology matters. And it's different than saying this is the Democratic Party. And my friend just couldn't wrap his head around this because he's sort of like liberalism. That just seems so academic. Don't you really mean the Democratic Party is lost? And the thing that makes me not just filled with cope here is, and you know this from like your time on the right, from talking to people on the right, whether you're super highbrow, so you've got your, you know, your blue blazer and your reptile, and you're in Connecticut and you're talking about the Buckley program and Yale University. You understand that conservatism is not the same thing as the Republican Party. If you are a working class populist, a member who I could personally listen to Rush Limbaugh, or was like a huge Charlie Kirk fan, you should know that Charlie Kirk and Rush Limbaugh would talk about conservatism. They wouldn't talk about the Republican Party because conservatism, via this 50 year project, turned into an ideology that uses the vehicle of the Republican Party as a means of getting somewhere. But that 50 year project was just so helpful for this crisis of legitimacy. I'm going to pull that into the title. Thank you for adding that to the discourse here. Because during a crisis of legitimacy, the last thing you should be doing is Telling people, hey, join my thing, join my project. It's a big traditional party. It's existed for 200 years. That is the least sexy, least interesting way of framing it. Think about it this way. What was so smart about the New Right and the way it brought on the tech right and brought on board Maha and brought on board Joe Rogan and sort of the podcast ecosystem, all the independent creators, Andrew Schultz. Their pitch was never, hey, you're a Republican now. Join the Republican Party. Every single person and movement I just listed would not be interested in that at all. Instead it was. And they didn't even say conservative, they just would say New Right. They would say mago, which is like a stand in for like the New Right in a more like expansive sense. It's bigger into sort of the intellectual side. But they were pitching these things in a definitionally upturning the apple cart, building something new. Join this project, man. Ten years ago, RFK Jr. You're never part of this project, but that's okay because you're part of the new thing. So if you just say to yourself, hey, I'm from the Democratic Party and I'm here to help, or, hey, the problem is that we need to fix the Democratic Party, you are actually not going to lead yourself to useful directions or you're going to do what David Hogg did and run for vice chair of the Democratic Party, which was a total waste of everyone's time. Because I think David Hogg never should have been a vice chair. I think he actually is not at all temperamentally suited for that role. And I frankly think he was just trying to build his brand. But even from their perspective, it's sort of like, whoa, you're working within a system. David Hogg should have been. I think if David Hogg conceived himself kind of in the way that, for example, Charlie Kirk never would have run to be vice chair of the Republican Party. Never, never, never, never. And the same way that Buckley never would have done that, Rush Limbaugh never would have done that. Because once again, the right just has a metric for the thing that actually matters is our ideology and our movement. The party comes second. To your point, you have your movement, you have your theory, you have your story. You coalesce that group of people, you build your tent. And then by definition, if your tent is big enough or if your thing is compelling enough, you just take over and you just win. That's the actual nature of the project. And that's how I want people on the left, liberal sides of things to think about stuff.

[C]

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. And what I always think about with Buckley, one of the terms that they use that I borrowed and I used some time, which was that they were a boarding party because they saw themselves as a bunch of pirates taking the ship. And this idea of being an boarding party of ideas, I just think is the framework to think of what you're trying to do.

[B]

It's fun people want. People would love to join that. If I could just sum up the private emails I get from people, many people who are in power on the rise, saying, what's the thing? What do we do? I get a lot of those because of the nature of the show. If I said to them, cool, we've launched a pirate ship, we're small and we're scrappy. It's not that we've got a bunch of billionaires funding us with money. It's not that we've got this big sexy obvious thing, but we're insurgents, we're pirates. People would love to join that. And I just don't see. And this is why the Mandani project is going. Let's put aside his policies. The reason why the Mandani Project is actually going so well is is he built a pirate ship. That's the actual thing. And that's what establishment Democrats and centrists who just like are so mad that frankly people like me aren't as hostile to it, where it's just sort of like, look, guys, honestly, during an anti legitimate. So like for example, I went on breaking points and said positive things about Mondani, once again, not in the sense of his policies, but just sort of like, look, honestly, we didn't need Andrew Cuomo rides again. We just had Biden not see what his subhead is past. Mondani sublimated past his sell by date had passed. I'm just like not excited about getting him back into office again. So I get where people were coming from. My total apolitical normie friends in New York started posting Mandani things and I just totally get it. It just totally makes sense. And that's my reaction as a person who's like weirdly anti establishment for being in the establishment. And I just got all these people who are on the establishment center who just do not understand this. They really just sort of like, but his policy on housing is crazy and the buses and the grocery stores. And I'm like, guys, if that is your starting point during an anti legitimacy age and a crisis age. And once again, this is not to say you shouldn't make arguments about the busing policy. It's not to say you shouldn't be like empirical. I'm not saying we ignore truth, but if you're affect and this is why all the centrists just like getting together and saying we're going to hold this meeting where the billionaires are going to campaign against Bandani. I'm like, what are you doing? That is crazy. Crazy. That is like the literal last thing you should be doing.

[C]

Well, and the thing about this gets back to the progressive movement again, which is the same model, I think is what I was talking about the only difference between what the progressives did and what Buckley did. And you know, Buckley fascinates me. I, I, I talk about him all the time for the same reason. I do think he's probably the most important, not top 10 most important political figures of the 20th century. And people don't get that. They think he's some kind of commentator. They don't realize that he was the architect.

[B]

He was a politician. That's the key thing.

[C]

I think even more than a politician, he's, he was the architect of the modern Republican what became the Republican Party. He is the guy pulling the puppet strings of Goldwater and Reagan and everybody that came after. He designed the thing that they carried out and built. And but, but one thing, sorry, before.

[B]

Before we move on, I just want to like make sure we hit this point because I was rereading Jeff Cabot Service by Niskan and colleagues first book which is called the Guardians and it's about the downfall of the liberal establishment during the 1950s and 1960s through the lens of higher education and the new frontier and all these big figures. And there was this line on Buckley that I just found so fascinating and illuminating. So he points out that via God and man at Yale. So Buckwheat's book that's critiquing the university system, he points out that people had obviously used the term establishment before. There are all sorts of books about this sociology, so like the power elite and books about the establishment. But he points out that Buckley via got a man at Yale in the subsequent debate and tour about the book, he coins the use of the establishment as a pejorative in the early 1950s. So when you say he sort of creates the architecture of like the modern American right, I could see some people sort of saying like, okay, so like by the modern American right, you mean Goldwater, you mean Reagan, you mean Romney, McCain? No, this was actually more than that. It's actually extended into the present day. Because what is the unifying dynamic of J.D. vance and Donald Trump that too many people on the center left do not understand? Having talked to them about this, these are people who think, when you say J.D. vance was a venture capitalist, what do you mean? He's anti establishment or Donald Trump is rich gold toilets? He can't be anti establishment. No, that's not what Buckley's use of anti establishment means. In a way that is descended and still informs the way the right talks to things. Because remember, Buckley is descendant of Texas and Mexican oil wealth. English was actually like, people joke about Tannenhouse talks about this. Buckley kind of had a weird accent and people always thought it was sort of fake. But English was actually his third language because he was so elite that he learned so Spanish via his nanny, learns French and then learns English when he's six. So he actually just had a weird mix of languages there. He's born in Mexico. He's born in Mexico. Oil business. He's like a wealthy Connecticut preppy. He's yachting, he's sailing. He looks great in a blue blazer. So how could he be anti establishment? His point was he's critiquing the establishment. As someone who knows the establishment, I met Yale, and at Yale, I see a elite that's anti religion, that's anti American, that's communistic. And I'm going to critique that. Not in the sense that I'm sort of out in, like Podunk country gesturing at people with education, but just sort of, oh, I know you people, and I think you people are terrible and you are bad, and I'm running a movement against taking power from you. That's how Tucker talks. This is also how people are like, Tucker's got his counter as his big compound in Maine. How can the populace, you know, rhyme with him? He worked at PBS and CBS and, you know, msnbc. How could it be entirely. No, the way he frames it is in this Buckleyite knowledge. So sorry to, like, take the rant, you know, back from you, but, like, I think it's. And once again, the last thing here is Joe Rogan very much sympathized. If you take that sort of idea of, like, a specific style of anti establishment attacks which is not primarily economic. It's not like. And the Harvard elite's full of people of all this money. That's how left politics works. But right politics says, put aside their money. These people are culturally bad. They don't like the country, they don't care about you. At a Deeper, almost sort of spiritual sense. That's where religion comes into it. This is why Tucker talks about demons. It's just so brilliant. And I think that's something people on the left need to come to understand.

[C]

Yeah, well, I'm going to add to that in one way because I've got a sort of my pet peeve that I see on the left, this misunderstanding is, is this framing of everything about money and material stuff, right where. And this comes out of, you know, a lot of the 20th century was, you know, labor movements and, you know, Marxism. It's all, you know, Marx was an economist. It's, it frames everything. All politics is about debates over material stuff. And so the answer is when you look at you like, well, Donald Trump is rich, so he, he's the elite. And the same way you're like, why are they voting against their interests? Yeah, I'm giving them stuff. And if you see politics is exclusively a battle over stuff that makes sense, but when you realize that it's also about meaning and dignity and respect and all these other things that matter to people other than stuff. And, and one problem the left has made is the, it's, it's the pet theory, which is like, nobody wants to be a well cared for pet. If your pitch to somebody is, I will take care of you and give you a lot of nice things, but I won't give you control and transparency and respect. I'm going to run everything. I'm going to be your, your owner, but I will give you a nice life. Okay, that's not a pitch. Nobody, nobody wants to be a well cared for pet. And, and so you have to have a pitch and an understanding and a political understanding that material stuff is half the game, but is not all of the game. And, and if all you're offering people is if you're like, I get all the control and I get all the, the social status and all the dignity and, and I will in exchange give you stuff. People will not take that deal. Yeah.

[B]

And I think for the last thing, I really want to make a case for why this is less a case for the abundance agenda and why I've really focused on the abundance agenda, because people are kind of confused about this. So I sometimes get people writing in saying, man, Marshall, like, you're doing so many abundance agenda episodes. Like, do you really think this is the answer for liberalism and the Democratic Party? And here's my reason for engaging with it. And this is a good chance for you to shout out your piece towards the end where the Reason why I care about the abundance agenda. Let me put it this way. So the Abundance agenda, or at least abundance the book, is Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein writing a book together. They were writing two separate books. They combined them. If you read the book, you could tell who's writing which section. Derek's the one writing about drones delivering GLP1s to people in 2050 and offering abundance in that sense. And Ezra's the one talking about everything, Bagel liberalism and how liberalism can't do trade offs. I'm much more interested in the Ezra side of the story, and this is the way I would explain the Ezra side of the story. And Ezra finally came to a great answer on this. So a couple weeks ago, he was on Ross Douthat's podcast Interesting Times, and he gave just a perfect answer that really answers why I care about the abundance agenda in a seriously but not literally sense. He said, look, because Ross was basically like, oh, why did abundance take off? And as I said, look, this book was originally not meant to be the book defining the future of liberalism, and you shouldn't read it in those terms. And the thing that makes that not just cope for the various ways that Ezra and Derek haven't lived up to that project is the book actually was supposed to come out last year. So when you add in Biden and Harris and the switcheroo and then losing and then the publication delay that happened way before all of this, this was not meant to come out in the way it came out. So Ezra said this book ended up coming out at a time that American liberalism itself was lost and that there was clearly a void. And actually, abundance was quite literally because of the talk about everything, Bagel liberalism and the Talk about the 1970s People Progressive Model not working. It was the only thing that got at the question of how after 2024, should liberalism change and evolve into something that actually meets the moment. So because once again, it's a book about housing and science and progress, it can't answer every question related to how do things change after 2024. But what I'm trying to beat into people's heads with why I keep talking about abundance, is I frankly trying to push the abundance agenda and people who do abundance things into the ideological side of this question. I don't think you're going to build a mass movement of people who are interested in the question of what does permitting reform look like. I'm not doing many episodes where we're like, okay, abundance is the means by which we go from only one staircase to two staircases, we get three staircases. Those things are technical and they matter. But that's not my deal. I'm not a wall Wrong. What I actually care about, though, is I think, the abundance conversation as a sort of gateway drug into the. To your point, what are we actually doing here? It just offers like. So once again, when I told you, my buddy who was skeptical of, like, focusing on the future of liberalism, he read Abundance and he then understood what I was kind of getting at. Because once again, the book is about liberalism. It's not about the Democratic Party. So I'm just getting people to. I'm trying to get people to think 20th century American liberalism and 20th century American conservatism from Reagan onwards was an actual worldview that helped people know what we're doing, what the deal is, help you answer political questions. And so many Democrats who I talk to now just say, like, we don't know what the project is. We don't know what the plan is. We don't know what the deal is. We know that we probably need policies. But actually, you couldn't literally say, Here are the 10 policies that save the American Dream, and then we're good to go. This is a way that the Contract for America, which I know you worked on, sort of misleads people in terms of how politics actually works. Not that many people actually were like, well, I'm going to vote for Republican for the first time in 40 years and give them the house. Because I read this contract for something like Direct. It sort of comes after the underlying project for my pov. But I'm just trying to get people to think about, hey, you have no ideology. You have nothing to say. You don't even have. My friend and soon to be co host, Danielle Lee Thompson, we did a great episode where she was talking about sense making. How do you think about things? Ideology helps you think about things versus, to your point, a political party, if that being your center point, that doesn't actually do it. I did this great podcast with this kid named Andrew Zhu where he sort of brought up in the sense of, you should think of a car. So there's the destination, there's the driver, and there's the car. And his critique of people who focus on political parties on the left and on the right, at their worst, they're focused on, well, we need to change this trim on the steering wheel. Or actually, if we could hit 70 miles per hour instead of 65, or look at how we have this flashing light model of our turn signal. They're overly focused on that and they're not focused on the driver who's driving, who are the passengers and what's the actual destination we're getting to. It's only you focus on ideology and the way you use ideology to answer the questions. If you solve problems like this, when it's like the 1990s and we've kind of figured things out, actually we should just be debating the interior of the car. Actually we should be saying what if we got from 65 to 80 miles per hour? Or hey, is the speed of limit even too low in this circumstance? Or what about the seat belts? I love that metaphor. I'm stealing it from Andrew. Thank you, Andrew. Because it's just like it really gets to like this sort of worldview mental model problem.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm with you on ideology too, because I've always defined political parties as coalitions of ideologies, not coalitions of people and factions. I think the biggest mistake people make is they even look at a political party as united around factions of people and they demographics. They look at they, they do a poll of the demographics of the party and they say that's the coalition. But the coalition, when people say I am a Democrat, I am a Republican. Well, why do people. They don't say I support the Democrats, I support the Republicans. They say I am one because of what it represents, the ideas. And that does 80% of the work in any election is that people because of an idea that the party represents, that people that resonates with people, they identify with it. And that's 80% of the votes are cast before it ever starts. And then the wonks focus on the 20% and they think that's what's determining the answer. And they're ignoring the fact that they're taking for granted that 80% of the work was done by the ideology before you started. Because. And that framework guides all the policies you do. Where you know the Republicans, when they say we believe in markets, all right, that's their ideological belief. Well, how many Republican policyholders who don't know what, what do I want to do about this wonky problem? Well, they know I believe in markets, so then that just controls what they do. And so once you build those frameworks too, they control most of what the parties do. And I think people who discount ideology, it's because their political pollster types who look at winning elections as the winning. You know, you've got 40% of people and 40% of people who are already committed and they take that for granted. And they focus on how you get over the winning line on the little margins. And they think the margins are all that matters. And that's because the 80% is done. But where we're at right now is that 80% come apart and it's getting redefined. It's the most important part, and it's the part that's up for grabs. And people who don't get that and they're focused on the small part that doesn't matter anymore. That only matters once the ideology is set and the frameworks are set and they control what happens.

[B]

Yeah, totally. And I think my last thing here, too, and this also answers a question I get, which is that I did a lot of Abundance Agenda episodes that were really focused on talking to left critics of abundance. And the question I got is, why are you obsessed with doing that? And this is where I just think that this is why centering things on ideology is helpful. Because from my perspective, if you sort of look at my affect, my disposition and my deal, I'm very centristy and moderate. And if I understand how that places me in the political system, I think that very concertedly puts me in a lack of trust scenario, in a sense, where the left, populist, rising oligarchy to our parts of the party, they're gonna be super skeptical or sketched out people sort of from my disposition. So what I think has been very important. I want to see more centrists sort of do this exercise is we have to recognize that we are in coalition with people. And this is also a thing that I just sort of learned from the right, because on the right, you would never have someone say, wait, you're kind of like a centrist moderate. What are you talking to the people at the Heritage foundation for? Or why are you talking to the. The social cons? Because the Buckleyite three stool format is like, no, there is one team, but it all has to be in sync. So if you notice, if you read between the lines of my Abundance in the Left episodes, it's like, oh, wow, there's this perception out there that Abundance Agenda people are just trying to use this project as a left punching, climb to the top and get our billionaire dollars to sort of take over everything. My talks with the left are about like, hey, actually, I have my beliefs, you have your beliefs, but ultimately, we're kind of in coalition here. And I want you all to see that I'm honest broker, and I want to see if there are ways that, hey, so, for example, Zoran Mondani would I personally go all in on building public housing and not focus on the private sector side of building more houses? If that's going to be your thing. The abundance agenda and the idea of enhancing state capacity is going to be a really important tool for you. And this just an idea that I have that you could actually get a lot from. I'm less interested in doing debate club with you. I'm less interested in Twitter dunking. So just the real lack of the sort of embracing my sort of center left politics and just sort of seeing the deal and seeing just how antisocial the left liberal space is, lots of like, we're fighting with X person, we're left punching, we're center punching. It's very just like weird because you just don't see it. And once again, you did see this on the right. This is what the 50s and 60s were. But what successful leaders, both at a politician and at a coalition level, like Buckley did, is they merged everything together. So you go from the Birchers and the Cold warriors and the Rockefeller Republicans, all fighting in the 1950s and 60s to Reagan in the 1980s, say the 11th Commandment is thou shalt not like attack another Republican. Obviously that is not helpful during the 50s and 60s and things are getting worked out. But from a certain perspective, it's not that you shouldn't. There were intensive debates during the Reaganite period. So it's not to say that this isn't demanding conformity on all questions. There are plenty of Reaganites who are unhappy in front of Reagan. But the point is, if you just look on Twitter for two seconds, I'm not going to name names, but it's very apparent. The people who I intellectually respect, the way these people are just dunking and cursing and being rude to each other in a way you do not see on the right is very, very, very, very depressing. And from a what do I want to do from my career perspective, it's that like I want to promote and encourage the norm, that that just isn't the way you behave, that this is like embarrassing and that you are not witty or cute or just like an edgy person for doing this, when right now it's the exact opposite. So that's just one of my goals as a more like in a think tank leader perspective. Just like, and this is why I love in person events. Because what's so funny about all these people is you get on the phone, they don't talk this way. You get them in person, they don't talk this way. Twitter just in of itself is like toxic and really bad for 40 somethings who I think get a literal high from being rude and donkey that way.

[C]

Yeah, no, I hate social media. I think it's the worst. And TikTok has just made it even worse though I do. There's one thing I do want to respond to too because why abundance and how abundance is supposed to work within not just within the coalition but within politics and why I like it as a framework too and yet where I'm trying to push it subtly in my own way as everyone's trying to fight over which is so let's step back to what's the crisis, Right? So abundance has an answer to the crisis. I think that's why it took off. I think maybe even Ezra doesn't realize that. I think the reason it took off it's been the first philosophy that anyone's come up with that actually answers of what has gone wrong and do I have a strategy to fix what has attacked the legitimacy of the system and can restore the American dream. Now abundance as a ideological framework can do that. But and this is the big question, not if it's just about technical wonkish stuff and money. If all abundance is, is getting high speed rail Bill, then it's not an answer to anything. It's a very small answer. But if the idea of we need to create a government that works, we need to get our institutions, we need to increase state capacity, we need to get corruption and stagnation out of the system, we need to be an innovative risk taking country again, which is something we didn't talk about. Like one thing I think is huge in the background and I think it hurts Democrats a lot too is the sense of as Americans, part of our identity is we're the pioneers, we're the innovators, we're the, we're the, the cowboys and we've in the last 50 years homogenize that out of our society and it's not taking people like, like this idea of being risk taking and pioneering and the patriotism stuff of we believe in this project, we believe in the American project, all of that that can all come out of abundance as a framework which is what is the crisis we're going to solve. What is our government philosophy? We are going to make the government work and do what it says, make the agencies actually do the job that's on the tin, get rid of the corruption in the establishment, make the elites act like servants doing a duty instead of sort of, you know, winners enjoying their privilege. We're going to make their level playing field that everybody can compete on equally and that has social mobility and that everybody can, can rise. And all of that flows out of abundance as an idea. But you have to look, step back and see it as the broader idea and, and the folks on the only places. I do think some of the folks in the progressive side of the left are correct that some of those ideas are at odds with what they want, which is I think maybe they're not in the coalition long term. I, I think that if, if you look at those ideas and you find them threatening to your project, maybe your project isn't part of the team and that's okay. You know, we, we, we, we, we.

[B]

Which part, which part of the, which parts of the ideas do you think are threatening?

[C]

I think that they, I think there is a messianic we, we know better and we want to control things to create progress and a better future idea versus we want a better future. See, I think the phraseology that I like which is the point of government is to give people good life to allow people to flourish, okay? So we're going to create rules to allow people to flourish versus we are going to create a system that creates good outcomes. So we're not focusing on letting people flourish. We're focusing on creating a system that meets my metrics of what good is strong, powerful state. I think those two ideas are at odds. I think that if you, and this is why I think there's a distinction between top down management on one side, on the right, there's the view of just let the market take care of it. But there's a third option which is set up, this is the Teddy Roosevelt and progressive movement idea, set up good rules that let people flourish, okay? Which is we've gotten it out of our vocabulary. We don't talk about that set of rules. I think abundance is based on that is we're going to create a society that has good rules, that lets people flourish. But if your worldview is I don't want to set up good rules and then let people do what they want, I, I want to control and micromanage to create what I think is justice in a good life. And there's nothing like, you know, I worry.

[B]

So this is why I worry.

[C]

I think that's at odds.

[B]

I worry you're being too abstract because, so for example, and this is a way that we are still stuck in 20th century debates, there's a way you could argue that here's a top down thing that a Progressive would want. A progressive would want Medicare for all. And yes, that is determining to a certain degree what people's healthcare choices are. But on the other end of things, this is why I'm very interested in this Jefferson versus Hamilton. On the other end of things, it's how free are you if you are dependent on your employer for health, healthcare? How free are you if healthcare means you can't buy a house because it takes up a huge percentage of your actual take home pay. So once again I want to say there isn't a balancing act there. But I think that the, I think your time in sort of like the John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Gingrich Republican Party is showing itself unhelpfully. And that I don't think that quite gets at what progressives are trying to do. Let me put it this way. I think progressives would. And this has been interesting and this is why generations matter here as progressives are increasingly young people who, okay, forgot to put it this way. If you had your healthcare taken care of, if you had less college debt, because hypothetically it was free and paid for and we could debate why is it free and paid for. A bunch of them would say, frank, I'm actually way freer if I didn't have crazy college debt payments every single month. I'd be way freer if I didn't have to stay at this employer. So I just. So this is just like a, so this is a better way of phrasing our thing here.

[C]

Yeah, I'm not saying those things. I don't think health care in particular is something that you wouldn't be for as an abundance person that I don't think that's state down top down controlling of system. I think it's, you know, it's more, I'm talking about sort of free speech type of stuff.

[B]

I think I'll push you on this too. This is very fascinating. So, so this is, we talk to people. This is a huge thing that people are getting wrong. Remember 2016, Bernie was kind of socially conservative in his own like sense in comparison to Hillary. So like the weird. And this is just like a funny thing. A very prominent progressive populist told me he was so mad when Matt Yglesias seized the like, we need common sense Democrats who believe in free space, free speech and moderate immigration policy and all these different things. Because this progressive was like, we could have taken that length. We could have said, you like free speech, you want moderate immigration restriction, that's great. We just want health care. We want antitrust and those different things. Like, there is no tie between the questions of speech and economic issues. So, like, it's less. In a weird way, it's a weird mix of like. Let me put it this way. The people who are like, fueling cancel culture, I would probably say, are more like msnbc, like, left of center than they are like a Zoran Mandani voter in a certain sense. So, like, within the coalition, it's sort of like. So here's my real question for you. Like, how would you define the. That. That. That's what we're really getting. Like, I just, I talk to the left so much, but I just actually have specific, like, institutions and individuals. So I'd love to hear, to understand your pov. Who are you really talking about here when you're thinking of this?

[C]

Well, I mean, I will even step back and say, I. I think some of this is undefined. The same way on the right that when you say, who are you talking like? You know, we say, like, is Mandani progressive, lefty? I don't even know that he is. I don't know what he is. Right. Like, when I look, he said he's got all these economic ideas. I don't know that his philosophy is sort of. I guess, to me, the big distinction is, is your politics moralistic or practical? Is maybe the divide? Now I'm doing this. I'm freelancing this a bit off the top.

[B]

No, but this is good.

[C]

But I'm just saying this is not something that I have a prepared answer for that I've thought about a lot. But I'm going to try to answer this. I can. And this problem exists on the right too. There's one of the distinctions that we don't make enough that exists in our politics, that one of the divides. Is your politics moralistic or. Or practical? Okay. Are you trying to bring about utopia and you think you know what it is, or are you trying to muddle through in a Burkean type of. We're gonna, you know, some give and take, and we're gonna make a lot of mistakes and we're gonna try some things and some things aren't gonna work. And I do think the big distinction that has divided the left, particularly since the 60s and 70s, is this moralistic bent that is a religion, in a sense. And this is this whole idea of the 1800s sort of Protestant moralistic crusaders who led us to the Civil War, I think are the same. And who did the progressive movement too, who were half secular, half religious. The sort of Social gospel left. It's the same ideology that's now, it's you take God out of it, but it's the same sort of moralistic, messianic politics versus the sort of John F. Kennedy type of left where we're gonna practically solve these kinds of problems. And I think a lot of the center left are like that. And I think that that divide is a problem for now, because I. I think messianic, moralistic politics is very effective in times where things are in good times, when things are strong and there's a lot of give and you can root out the injustices and you can kind of be radical and irrational and do whatever you want because you're like, I can take a strong moral stand. I can. And I'm an outsider in the system trying to take control of it, and I'm pointing out what's wrong and it helps the system reform. I think when things are chaotic and apart, that same mentality just tears apart what's already apart and, and leads to more chaos. So I think one of the divides that maybe I'm looking at, and again, I say this, that I'm doing this off the top of my head, but I think that is this huge thing. And this is why I think Mandani is interesting, because I don't think he is a moralistic crusader at heart.

[B]

He was in his 2020. And then once again, this is why the politician side of me was not surprised when Mandani moderated on crime. And I know he got rid of the gifted and talented for the kindergartners, but he kept the third grade version. But he's not running on Defund the Police. And there were a bunch of like, said this was sort of a bet that I made when I was talking about him on Breaking Points before the election. He's a politician. He's not a social justice warrior. In 2020, he clearly adopted the social justice warrior personality because I think there's a real weakness for cause my joke always here is I was a former politician kid in high school, so as I look at my peers who actually got into the game and didn't just like podcast for a while. If I think they have a discrete weakness, it's that they lack an independent point of view. So they're very liable to go with the thing. So in 2020, when it's BLM summer, he's not wearing a suit and tie, he's dressed in like baggy street clothes. He's like aggressive activist SJW in his personality and the way he was sort of in college like writing about like the trials of being a brown kid at about Bowdoin in Maine during school. But like what you then see over the next few years is he starts wearing a suit. He moderates on social issues and notably though he's left economically, he goes on Derek Thompson's show, he goes on Joe Weisenthal's show. He's a politician, he's not an activist person. So it's just very interesting to sort of like I think what kind of developed over the course course of the Biden administration. If I could psychoanalyze him as he developed much more independence and was a very. And is very comfortable doing his own thing. Right. So like hey like I'm going to moderate on crime and I'm just going to do it. I'm not going to like apologize for that and like hey, I'm going to like stick to the left on economics but I'm also going to go on the centrist econ podcast and like say the word abundance a bunch of times. It's very, very interesting and it's very interesting to see that of kind kind of like develop. So I just think it's fascinating to see that. So we are at time here. But Frank, this has been really great and I think what's been helpful here is I think we've got like a bunch of. I'm really curious what people think about this episode because I think we hinted a bunch of forward facing themes rather than us just sort of like not that I would ever accuse you of doing this but like you could fall into the trap of like in this moment of I was, I did the, I did the realignment first and we were so right there we were in the 2010s. Who cares.

[C]

I'm happy to have moving.

[B]

We've got, we have three things for 2020-2022 if people want a non arrogant version of that. But I think this is like, I think we pulled in some threads for the future. So thank you so much for joining me on the realignment again.

[C]

Thanks for having me. Good talking to you and thanks.