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The Realignment
597 | Michael Laskawy: Why States Are the Real Center of American Politics
00:51:43
Michael Laskawy, Editor-in-Chief of The States Forum Journal, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Michael discuss why Americans are increasingly looking to the states for solutions to their problems, how The States Forum's belief in the "American Promise" as a worldview provides a means for addressing the factional fights within liberalism, and explore the implications of Marshall's States Forum Journal essay on "The Missing Liberal Story."
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Marshall Kozloff
Marshall here.
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Welcome back to the Realignment.
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Hey everyone. This week the realignment schedule is a little bit different. I was on the road last week and then the latest US Iran Israel conflict kicked off. So you should check out yesterday's special episode with former co host and host of Breaking Sagar and Jetty on the conflict itself. Today's and Thursday's episodes are follow ups to my essay Missing Liberal Story that I published in the States Forum Journal last month. I turned the piece into an audio essay and have linked it in the show notes, so you can check it out there if you'd like.
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Today's episode is with Michael Laskoway, the
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editor in Chief of the State's Forum Journal. My story was part of a broader second issue of theirs, so we discuss a couple other pieces they published, explain their broader thesis about liberalism needing to shift its attention to the states and and their ability to actually address the
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big problems in all of our lives
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in the face of Washington dysfunction. We wrap our conversation by discussing the themes of my essay and where they could lead. I've said this before, but one of the reasons why I was so excited to publish in the State's Forum Journal is they are my favorite post2024 organization and I particularly enjoyed my episode with their co founder, former New York State legislator Daniel Squadron, where we connected with on our shared thesis that the central
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problem is the lack of a worldview
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on the center left, which directly led to my essay. Hope you all enjoy the conversation.
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Michael Laskoway, welcome to the Realignment.
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Michael Laskoway
Thank you Marshall. I'm really glad to be here.
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Marshall Kozloff
You are kicking off the first of hopefully many States Forum Realignment weeks. You're kind of doing like a channel takeover. If this were a influencer campaign, though, the 501c3 nonprofit space is not quite as lucrative for either party. But you know, we'll try to make it work.
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Michael Laskoway
That is. That's awesome. As much of that as you want to do, we are open for so
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Marshall Kozloff
folks will probably know about the State's Forum as I've been sort of hawking my own things here. Obviously I published my essay the Missing Liberal Story in the second edition of the State's Forum Journal. And then last summer Daniel Squadron and I, a former state legislator from New York who is the co founder of the States Forum, came on the show to discuss. So if you want to learn more about the broad picture, listen to that episode. It will be in the show Notes but we're here to talk about the States Forum from your perspective. Michael. Where you are the editor in chief, so how about you just introduce from your vantage point, because so much of the Daniel conversation was based on him being a former state legislator. As an editor in chief, how about you introduce the States Forum Journal and the State's Forum?
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Michael Laskoway
I'm going to give a shameless plug and say that everyone can find us@statesforum.org and as our name suggests, we believe that the best opportunity for change right now in America is through working in the states. Danielle Squadron, who you were speaking about, Marshall, who's on your show over the summer and who's our co founder, actually has a book coming out this spring and it's titled the Fourth Branch. And I think that captures in many ways how we think about states and what we're trying to do. Right. States are a key element of our constitutional structure, but we think they're too often underutilized and underappreciated, especially on the left. Right. The right has spent years building an infrastructure around and thinking about states. And I think we've too often looked to the federal government as the way to improve people's lives and to fix our problems. And we believe that the best opportunity actually lies in the states. That's certainly true now more than ever. And so we're trying to build a network of like minded thinkers and practitioners who are focused on how to solve our most pressing national problems by using the power that states have. But as importantly for us, and I know we're going to talk about this a little bit more during the podcast, we have a very clear worldview. We call it the American Promise. It comes directly from the Declaration of Independence. It's the promise that all people are created equal with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that government secures these rights with the consent of the governed. We believe this is the fundamental commitment of our nation. It gives rise to four essential principles, representative democracy, effective government, fair markets, and personal freedom, which we think are not actually fully realized. And so I would say ultimately, really that's what we're working to do, to realize that promise and those principles and to do that by providing people with opportunities to collaborate, to develop new ideas and then to get those ideas out into the world. And obviously that's a big part of what we think, what we're trying to do with the journal.
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Marshall Kozloff
So a couple questions about left liberalism's relationship to the states. So I think what makes States Forum unique is that obviously it became quite faddish not to diminish anyone's work during the Obama era to focus on states from a liberal left perspective because you saw redistricting after the 2010 midterms. The right was able to shape the actual Congress because they did so well in 2010. And then that impacted down ballot. It impacted like who are going to be the rising future stars of tomorrow. It's like not for nothing that a lot of the stars that we're seeing in races this upcoming midterm came into power in 2018. So James Talarico, that's an example of that here in Texas. So a lot of states work on the sort of left liberal side was focused on we need to win these races because if we win these races, we could then shape federal policy better. But you're actually focused on the states themselves as the engine. And this brings to mind a funny text I got from someone who wrote my piece which said this person is on the right. So the joke makes sense. They said, I really enjoyed your piece in that lefty states rights org that like publish it. And obviously the states rights part is a joke about how like when the right thinks about the states, they talk about states rights. It's also a joke about the 60s and civil rights and all that different moment. But I think it gets to the fact that I do not think that this current left liberal worldview framework ideology has a clear understanding of where states fit into the model other than a sort of generic states or the laboratory of democracy. Cliche at this point. It's a great quote, but everyone says it every other week. How do you think about our relationship at an ideological level to the states?
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Michael Laskoway
Well, I think that states themselves. I mean, I go back and we can talk a little bit more about this later when we talk about the journal itself. The title of our current issue is Double Security, which comes right out of Federalist 51. Right. That's Madison's discussion of power and his vision of how states the role of states in the constitutional system. I think I go back to what I said before. I think there's an under appreciate. We don't appreciate sufficiently the opportunity for states as engines of change. I think when we. For the reason you've talked about historically, there's a tendency on the left to see federal power as the solution. To look at the history of the United States with regards to small C conservatism in a way and recognize the ways in which states have used as a reactionary force at time and the extent to which liberalism, contemporary liberalism, has its peak success in the aftermath of the New deal and World War II really as federal power and to therefore sort of have ignore what states can do and ignore the role states play. And I do think that obviously that's shifting somewhat because of the current political dynamics, but that's not a sufficient reason only to look at the states. Right. It's to recognize that there is a tremendous amount of power in states. There is a tremendous amount of political power, but policy opportunity in states. Now it differs in ways that I think maybe are sometimes challenging for liberals because you do have to acknowledge regional differences. You have to acknowledge, and this is obviously part of the larger conversation that's going on among liberals in the left right now about how willing people are to accommodate those sorts of differences in the way people thinks and the way policy may be practiced. But that's the opportunity, right? That's the opportunity. I mean look at the end of the day, I think fundamentally those of us who believe that government is a force for good and that is something that we at the state's forum certainly believe, see it as a force for improving people's lives. Right? That's the idea here. And when you look at the ways in which the federal government currently is failing not simply to improve people's lives, but to really do anything, we have to ask ourselves, where are those opportunities right now? And those opportunities I think lie in the states.
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Marshall Kozloff
Are there any examples that come to mind to you when it comes to states serving as a really effective example of this? So one that comes to mind once again, there's going to be a theme here. This is a right leaning example, but I'm really inspired, and I really mean this by former Indiana governor Mitch Daniel's tenure at Purdue. He comes in to run Purdue and he says, hey, we are not going to increase tuition during my tenure here. We are going to find ways that make this. We're going to talk about story later. What's the story of post 70s higher education? The price just keeps going up and up and up and up. He uses his leadership over a state institution to create, I think a model that I wish would scale across to other places. An example of we're going to actually keep cost stable while also still delivering like a top flight research university output and ambition and different kind of prospects. So can you think of any examples of things you've seen or things that you would like to see? Like what's an example of a liberal leader in the state saying here's this right clear example of how we're gonna make people's lives better? If it's just Sort of, you could say in 10 seconds or less, like the tuition freeze example I gave.
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Michael Laskoway
You know, I mean, I think what we're seeing now is more leaders recognizing, recognizing the possibility of making these changes. Like, I think one of the things that we're spending a lot of time thinking about, for example, our utilities, obviously something that a lot of people are talking about, something we've devoted a lot of our energy to recently. If you're a regular reader of our substack, you'll see we've been writing a lot about this and I think that's a clear example of a place that states can take action and people are talking about taking action. Right. Whether we think about, and we'll see ultimately what she's able to do, what Mikey Sheryl is trying to do in New Jersey, we see what Governor Spanberger's talking about trying to do in Virginia. I think those are the sorts of things where the possibility lies in the states for political change, for actually answering people's immediate needs and for thinking about how we can directly improve the conditions that they're facing now. I think one of the challenges obviously we all recognize is that people have lost faith to some extent in government. And the reason they've lost faith is because they don't think government is addressing the immediate needs that they have. And so being able to go to them and say, listen, I recognize what the challenge is here and I've got a specific idea to address it is incredibly important.
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Marshall Kozloff
Here's another good example to make. The states can offer models thing bipartisanship and not just praise the right. And I know Wes Moore isn't the only person who's done this, but think of Maryland going after arbitrary degree requirements they had for state level jobs, which a couple other states, Pennsylvania adopted it. So like, that's an example of. And I think that one is an exciting example for me because you could obviously argue like, how much does that really matter in like the grand scale of things? But I think it matters because if you, you know, you and I have participated in plenty of like, focus groups, like we've read the polls, like people really do feel like late stage meritocracy has made things like, really unfair in this country in the sense that like, you have to get a degree and you have to get another degree, and it's kind of arbitrary. It sort of just becomes a club for people who are succeeding. So say to yourself, I wish we could live in a society that looked a little different. That's actually an example of how you just had leaders at a state level say, okay, we're going to take that narrative and not just sort of repeat the, like we should all take dirty jobs sort of cliche, but just sort of say, hey, we're going to get rid of these arbitrary requirements. And obviously that is not going to change the country as a whole. But that's just like a clear example of how, if you could think about these ideas, the states are like a really effective way of like modeling and signaling and just making a change there.
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Michael Laskoway
Well, another example I would give it's. We had a piece in our first journal by a writer by the name of Claire Kelloway about the right to repair, right. This is something that people may not be familiar with it, but it is the idea. I guess people think about it when they think about their phones, but it has widespread applicability. It's a real issue, among other things for farmers, right. Their inability to. That a lot of the farm equipment that they buy is filled with electronics that they are themselves not allowed to repair or need to rely on the distributor to come and fix them and pay very, they have to pay very, very high rates for this. And it goes to a whole set of questions about people's own sense of their capacity to do things themselves. And this is increasingly something that's being picked up in a lot of states, right. The idea that you should be able to fix things yourself, right. I mean, it goes to core American ideas about self reliance, but also just practically, right? This is a cost that people experience. How do you fix that cost? You give them the power to fix these things themselves or to take it to someone they know that's capable of fixing it for them. And so I do think that's another example along the same lines of ways of thinking about things that states have the ability to do and can enact that is real and meaningful for people.
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Marshall Kozloff
So I'm glad you brought up Claire. I forgot about that essay. So I know Claire, she's a former colleague of my wife when she started her career at the Open Markets Institute. And something I'm. I think this is a way of like making the American promise worldview thing, like clear, coherent for people. Because something that, you know, having edited my work is that I'm like very obsessed with this, like, need to be fusionist, post factional. I'm very bored by like the center left versus, like the left of center left versus the, the Warrenites versus the Bernie people. Like, there are real legitimate beefs between all the different groups I uttered there. But I think it's like very important that you have. And it's not that you shouldn't have different factions being clear about what they think, but I think you do need to have centering things. And I think if folks look through the people who've published under your publication, you will find I think the full spectrum of like reasonable, quote unquote, like left liberal thought. Like on the one hand, open markets is doing deeply aggressive anti abundance niskanin centerpieces. But on the other hand, you know, I'm published in your journal and they're published in your journal that shows a wide thing. And I guess my question for you is if you articulate the American Promise WorldView and those four principles is your sort of editorial POV is that if an org or a writer's point of view is within the worldview you all have developed, it works within the publication. Do you kind of get what I mean? Because I keep hearing this is my ODC inside baseball. When I've talked about fusionism with people who run DC based orgs, they are very, very skeptical of the feasibility of even putting things together. But part of why I think a worldview is so important is because you put Claire Calloway and Marshall Kozlov in back to back issues and, and I think it makes sense because both of our works operate within your worldview. And I think that is not something that anyone would inherently disagree with.
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Michael Laskoway
So I think, I mean, I think fundamentally that's part of the value of having a worldview, right? Which is that you're not locked into the categories or the factionalism that even impacts how people think of themselves. For us, yes, the American Promise is the test. And if we believe that it fits within our worldview, then we're certainly comfortable in publishing authors from all different places. I think again, for us, that test of is this going to improve people's lives? Is fundamental. And so where you're coming from initially is secondary to is this an idea that we think is consistent with the American Promise? And then is it a good idea? Right? I mean those are the tests, right? And that from our perspective, I mean, we're trying to encourage people to think creatively. We're trying to encourage them, I hate this word phrase, but I'll say it anyway, right, to think outside the box, for lack of a better term. So we do want people who are pushing the envelope, but we want to bring all these ideas together and put them in one place. So people are thinking about states and thinking about what they can do and what State power allows them to do.
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Marshall Kozloff
Yeah. And I think the thing that I would add here that I'm very curious to hear about. Thanks for giving me a sort of view into your sort of editorial process. Genuinely, I think it's a helpful because I think there are a lot of realignment listeners who should be pitching you all. But I just sort of love the inside baseball. Something I'm curious about because a couple of things that come up.
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Michael Laskoway
Right.
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Marshall Kozloff
So we've talked about utilities and higher ed and Daniel and Adam Pritzker, his co founder's opening piece was talking about how there really was a lack of alternative offered up over the course of this past year. I'm curious, without requiring you to offer whatever an alternative is, I would love to hear how you have witnessed a lot of the debates about the future of the left liberal project from the vantage point of the States. Right. I'd be really curious if anything immediately comes to mind. If you think about it through that context,
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Michael Laskoway
what immediately comes to mind is obviously the tension between the abundance and anti monopoly, you know, where we think there are good ideas on both sides. Right. So that's what I would, you know, that I think those, those factional differences and not to diminish the ideological conflict, I think that we see arising and sort of the meaningfulness of that for the future of liberalism, which I think we'll. We'll probably talk a little bit more about. But I think our perspective is there are things that abundance has. Right. I think you made a, you know, a valuable case for that actually in your essay. Right. There are things that people that are associated with anti Monopoly as. Right. And that's really the question. Right. That's the question that we should be asking and thinking about. Right. What is, what is that? I mean obviously for us it's. We frame it through the lens of the American promise. And so we use these questions, we think about for us this principle of fair markets, for example. And we think about a lot of these conflicts. But that's the test that we're looking for. And so I do think that's an example of how I think about what the tensions are right now and those conflicts are.
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Marshall Kozloff
Yeah. So two things to sort of clarify the question. So I'm really interested, not that that wasn't a good answer too, but I'm really interested in the ways that looking at these big debates about the future of America after 2024, how does looking at it from like a state vantage point make it a little easier to think about? So I'll Give a clear example of this. So the benefit of me being now in my 30s is like all my cool friends from high school are now in elected office and a lot of them are in state elected office. And one of the big debates within abundance right now is over what's our relationship to artificial intelligence and to the idea that like maybe AI could produce human flourishing, could provide all these gains and these different advantages to. And I do hear in my D.C. centered conversations a lot of focus on that. But when I talk to people at the state level, the thing that comes up with AI immediately was the utilities and data center thing. And it was just like very, very interesting because I think a lot of people in D.C. were caught by total surprise when even the populist right reacted really negatively against the national level AI regulatory ban. When actually at a state level you saw sort of left, right, not quite the center as much, really just be shocking. I'm not gonna say who, but like a VC had me in their office saying like, hey, our lobbyists are saying that it was a total good to go on passing the regulatory ban. Like what's happening here? And my response was, and these people were on the right who I was talking to, I was like, guys, like for the first time in 50 years, let's put aside abortion policy for a second. You are telling people on the right in Texas and other states, you know how our whole thing is federalism and how the federal government does too many things and everything. Power should be in the states. Actually, with this AI exception, you can't do that. The nation's gonna make the decision. Oh, and by the way, your electricity prices are going up. So just by having the state centered mindset and talking to people who are trying to navigate these political environments at the state level, it's very much easier for me to basically say, hey, abundance has a lot of work to do when it comes to housing and health care and energy. I don't want to add making the case to these elected officials that you know what's going to make people be okay if the data centers and the utility bill increases AI related human flourishing. There is not a single state legislator who's looking to get that pitch. So that's just been the way that I think having a state mindset has been very helpful. I'd be curious if you want to comment on that. That's good. But I'm just curious if there have been any issues that are more nationally coded. But just you running the state's for journal have had a slightly different perspective on because you are rooted in thinking of the states as this model.
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Michael Laskoway
Well, I guess I have a somewhat different perspective on it in the sense that I do think right now, I mean the debate was one of the rare examples I suppose, where it seemed as though there might actually be federal action right now. Right. The federal government is largely spectacle. Right. It's not actually doing anything. So to the extent that you want to actually get anything done, the place you're going to do it is the states. I do think with regards to, with regards to AI part of the, part of the challenge and I think you're right in terms of missing a little bit the opposition people and the frustration people feel about the data centers themselves and the relationship to utility prices. Although again, like I think that's very much a phenomenon of the moment was also that what the federal government was actually proposing was not an alternative regulatory framework, but no regulatory framework at all. I do think that's an issue in which states are filling a vacuum that's been left by the federal government. And this is an example of the federal government trying to institutionalize that vacuum. Look, I think one of the issues we're very focused on as is as are a lot of people, is preserving democracy. And that that very much is something that the states have a fundamental role in and now seem to necessarily have a proactive role in the face of potential federal intrusions. Some of we had a number of the pieces in the latest journal actually specifically related to that. And that is a perspective that now whether you want to say we have it because. Because necessarily of our focus on the states or I have it through the journal, its do think that is a place in which the conversation is going to be all about the states fundamentally because that's actually constitutionally, that is who has the power and should have the power. But also states are going to have to figure out ways to protect their election system. I mean obviously that's something that states are already doing and people are talking and thinking through it. But that's where much of the discussion I think is going to be moving forward certainly in the lead up to the, you know, the midterms and subsequently.
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Marshall Kozloff
That's a great example. I want to get to my next topic, but I just want to just sort of say here I'm a big state capacity guy. And what I would love to see, and I know there are secretary of states who are doing this, but I want them to do it very publicly and aggressively from a sort of restoring faith and trust in institutions perspective is like I want a Secretary of State to be very aggressive about like speeding up ballot counting times.
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Michael Laskoway
Sure.
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Marshall Kozloff
I say this all the time on the show. I'll say it again, I have lots of right wing family members. The number of times that like how long it takes states to actually validate results, the number of times that comes up and I'll see that's why the system's broken and corrupt. There are so many sort of election related disinformation, misinformation, folk wisdom. That's not true. That like I just don't sympathize with. I genuinely sympathize in the 2000s, someone thinking like, how is this taking so long? And this is an example where Secretary of State could be forward, leading around saying, hey, I hear you. We get it. We've got two years to get this right before 2028. No if, ands or buts, don't reelect me if I can't get this done.
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Michael Laskoway
I mean, one of our pillars is effective government. And one of the key fundamental ideas behind effective government is you have to show people that government works. It shouldn't be so hard. I mean, we completely agree with you. It shouldn't be so hard to count ballots. It shouldn't take so long. Right. It's not that we don't want everybody's ballot to be counted, but let's make the process more effective and more efficient. We live in an age. And I mean, again, going back to the general rate, in our first issue we had a piece by Jen Palka all about ways more positive ways we can use new technologies to make government work better. Right. And it's one of those things. And of course, she writes about this at length in many, many of the pieces that she had about ways in which the private sector actually does work much better technologically than public sector. And people can see what the private sector can do so efficiently and they recognize ways in which the public sector doesn't. And the sort of the excuse of this is just the way we do things. Like people don't understand that, nor should they understand that they shouldn't accept that. Right. So I wholeheartedly agree.
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Marshall Kozloff
I think it's funny that I cannot think of something more technocratic than like ballot canning procedures. Very rarely do you get technocratic issues that actually have like narrative level import. So I would like a state leader to take like you could actually make spending two years in the computer room doldrums of making ballot counting procedures effective. Actually be something that people think about and demonstrates that government works. Effectively, so someone please pick up the baton on that. All the other state capacity. I had Shaikhata Trakarbati on the podcast a few weeks ago, and he had a line. So he's AOC's former chief of staff, and he said he actually likes abundance, despite being on the left. But abundance needs to be about more than making the DMV work better, which I think is a great quote and is very accurate. This is the only DMV coded category in terms of how do our balloting procedures work, where it's about more than just sort of the boring, technocratic, robotic stuff. So I think that's. I'm just really taken with that. Okay, so this last big section is really. Because I wanted to talk about other things and not just turn this into rehashing my own work. But I think my essay was interesting because I think I specifically made the decision not to say there's a liberal missing story. And here's Marshall Kossoff's articulation of the story, because what I've learned from both the populist left and right is that especially in the early days, especially in the mid 2010s, they were very sort of generative and very just sort of. You go to these meetings and know I was in meetings where early J.D. vance was around. He was not declaring. I, J.D. vance, think this is the future of the New Right. So I just. From that model, I think it's important that we introduce this as a project. So I want to ask you some questions that have been raised about this project moving forward. And the first question is actually a question that one of my co authors, Andrew Dottie, actually brought up, which is that he put out this tweet where I'm going to pat myself on the head. Characteristically sharp observation by MA Kozloff. The center left has no compelling meta narrative, while the New Right has a strong narrative. Me, maybe the New Right story is strong because it's basically true. And maybe the center left's problem is, on some level, they know it. This tweet came out right before our episode. So I'm kind of thinking out loud here. What is your reaction to that tweet?
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Michael Laskoway
I don't know that I agree with Andrew's tweet. I would point out, as you say, Andrew wrote a piece in the latest journal as well, an interesting piece on national service as something that should really be more reoriented towards the States. Look, I do think in your piece you make the case for what the right narrative is and why it resonates. The populist right narrative is. I'm not sure that that is specifically the. The narrative that Andrew is referencing here, which is why I'm hesitant to say I agree with him. But I do think there is a sense, and I think your point that we don't. That, or I should say that liberals don't have a narrative is something that we're aware of. Right. And so I do think in that sense there probably is a sensitivity to why can't we generate something similar? Why are we having so much difficulty?
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Marshall Kozloff
So the way I sort of reconciled this because I viscerally felt this tweet, and not just because Andrew's coming from the right, but I think the answer that I would give is I think the best parts of. So once again, the left narrative. Oligarchy's conquered everything and neoliberal capitalism is destroying everyone's lives. And then the right narrative, like these bipartisan, bipartisan elites, drove the country into a ditch. And that explains why everyone feels like the country doesn't work anymore. You see this in all the different polls. I think both sides in their story, if you're thinking deeply about them, there are questions raised by both tellings of the stories that they tell. Right. So for example, let's look at the right story. It was actually true that at a bipartisan level, America supported the Iraq war and presided over the 2008 financial crisis and struggled during the Trump moment. Respond to the Trump moment at a serious level. And I think it's hard for a lot of people at this stage in the game to sort of say to themselves, yeah, you know what? Like, I'm pretty confident in elites. And I think at its worst, liberal politics has not been aware of this idea that elites have a lot of poor track records and have not behaved properly or not have taken the right policies and they haven't had a response that isn't basically just defending the institutions of set elites.
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Right?
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So that's like a question. So let me put it this way. So if liberals are going to tell a story story, and this is the good news about starting fresh in 2025, we've been through enough cycles that like, I am not responsible for the Iraq War, so I don't have to feel awkward about that. Fifth grade Marshall did a lot of things. The Iraq war was not one of them. So I could just actually say, hey, like, as a center left liberal, how do I feel about the Iraq war and why it would make someone who is skeptical of Americans involvement in the world skeptical of us remaining in NATO. That's a. That's something about, I think about in that context.
- [31:39]
Michael Laskoway
I think that there is a way in which what you, you know, both of the narratives you identify come together, and they come together in this critique of elites. And I do think that that element of the critique is certainly valid. People do. There's little question that I think a lot of Americans look at the system, if we want to use that sort of language and say, the system serves everyone else but me. And in particular, who it serves are the people who appear to be most connected or most able to use the system to their advantage. And I think that that's where, I mean, we can. I mean that that is obviously a fairly consistent theme of populism throughout American history in, in one form or another. And I think it's something that we see in both of these. Right. In both of these stories. So I do think it's hard for us to think of a new story where we refuse to acknowledge how true that is. And as you say, I think. I mean, my view of the sort of story of liberalism in the post war period is that the story really was a story of American ingenuity in a way. Right. That's what we think about in the New Deal, and we think of World War II and what came after it in the Cold War and the things that America was able to build and the prosperity that resulted as a result of that, and then the social change that was initiated as well. But that we became too comfortable with the idea that experts can solve all of the problem. So I certainly think that that piece of it is something that, if you think about what liberalism is enmeshed in, it's very much sort of through and through the idea that we have to rely on specialists and experts and a particular class of people who have this knowledge. And a lot of what we see in these populist responses is very much a rejection of that idea. And so when we think about what a new story is going to be, and I know we will talk a little bit more about this as well, it's got to accommodate that idea somehow.
- [33:47]
Marshall Kozloff
Yeah. And I think thinking out loud here, I think part of what's helpful, and once again, there's a limit to how many words and characters could go in an essay. So I didn't need to throw this in there, but like, you know, we've got all the podcast time in the world. I think what I was somewhat unfair directionally about is I did not know that a certain story can only come about after certain things have happened, Right? So the year to tell of a new liberal story was not 2017, because guess what? Trump was now president, and who knows how that was going to go. And then in 2020, Biden comes back, right? So was this Trump thing just a blip? Biden's the president now. America is going to be more normal. And then 2024 happens, which I think makes very, very, very clear that actually, no, the populist revolt was not just a blip. Something more deeper and structural is happening in this country now. So I think I just want to be very clear. You probably could not have told the best version of the new liberal story at any point before this year, frankly, is my take. And then B, what comes to there then is that you do not have to start the Liberal story in 1992, because I said this in the essay. But what's very noted about both the left and right populist story is they both start in the mid-1980s to early 1990s, whether it's sort of the Reaganite presidency overturning the New Deal on the left or sort of like NAFTA and Pat Buchanan losing on the right. Those are like 1990s stories. And I think there's very little, there's lots of like coulda, shoulda, woulda. Cause it's sort of like, you know, Michael, we should have done trade adjustment assistant better, but this time we've learned our lesson. That's not a good sexy story, right? That's the problem. Start as a center left liberal if you start in the 1990s. So I want the liberal story to start in the year 2026 in the sense that, okay, the people who held power and who many ways were white liberals and also were center right people who no longer sort of fit into the traditional sort of bipartisan scheme of politics anymore. They lost power over the course of 10 years due to Donald J. Trump. And the question is, what is going to come after that? Because I think if we look at approval ratings, if we look at the sort of feel like the country is in a downward trajectory, I don't think people feel like they're in a golden age right now, despite the early messaging around that. What are you going to respond to this sort of moment with? Rather than just falling into a trap of saying, but here's actually why neoliberalism in the 1990s wasn't too bad because I think that style of discourse has not been effective for people who've tried to make that the response over the past decade. This is very much something I'm not speaking of other people at the Niskanen Center. We actually talk about this a lot internally because we're trying to do this sort of project. That's what would transformational like liberalism look back, look like. That isn't just America needs to see the case for pluralism and why an open society matters. Because like, we've done that for 10 years and it hasn't worked. So what does it look like to be forward facing?
- [36:40]
Michael Laskoway
You have to give people a reason to believe that this story connects to their lives. Right. That it connects to whatever their current experience is, but also what they want, what they want the future to look like. As we know that people express a lot of sort of general generalized attachment to democracy as a concept, but it doesn't really say, it doesn't motivate them, at least in, in the United States currently. And we can debate why, whether people sort of fear that it's at risk as much as perhaps some of us do. But. But it doesn't motivate them. Right. It's not a story that they see necessarily connecting to these more fundamental questions that they're asking and that they want to see answered. So I do think that to the point that you're making, it can't just be sort of a retrospective look back or a defense, certainly not a defense of some version of the status quo. Right. Not to say that there aren't debates to be had around whether neoliberalism, for example, is really the most effective framework to use to think about sort of where we are right now. But yeah, it has to be forward looking, right? And it, I mean, to your point and the point I think that you make in the, in your piece, that's really fundamental, right? Like people think in terms of story, right. I think that that to me is one of the essential ideas that, that you're, you're bringing into this conversation, right? That is how people think. They think of themselves that way. And they also think more broadly about, about their lives. They think about nations that way. They think in terms of story. And so before you get into a discussion around something, you can engage them in some of these more philosophical debates or engage them around things like worldview. As you rightly point out, there has to be some connection to a story.
- [38:37]
Marshall Kozloff
And this is where I'm adjacent to Joe Rogan World in Austin. I've been to the studio. So I just sort of was very triggered personally by. Because actually a lot of my thinking on this was really Coming out of the sort of post Joe Rogan election thing, how do the left and liberals do better in those formats? And here's the thing. The Joe Rogan experience is three hours of storytelling. That's why I'm sure you've read some of the sort of post2024 election books. And when they talked about what Vice President Harris wanted to talk about on the Joe Rogan experience, it was her plan around drug decriminalization and like young men. And my frustration there from a comms perspective was like, that's like policy wonkery. That's actually not how these sort of formats work. Could you imagine sitting down on Joe Rogan and saying, like, I'm glad you brought that up. I've got my plan. Instead of like talking about and the way I would have done this if I were Vice President Harris is talked about evolving from being a tough on crime, you know, prosecutor, when we thought about drugs and criminality in the 1990s in a different way to where she ended up today, which is why she's now pursuing this idea of this policy. Right? Because my whole thing is story comes and then the policy flows from it. But like, without trying to turn this into a dunk fest against the 2024 campaign, I'm just bringing that up as just like people could just Google search this. Like that is what it looks like when you do policy without understanding that a lot of these formats where there's admitted struggle not, it's not going to work effectively unless it. And as it wraps into how people actually talk about ideas.
- [40:16]
Michael Laskoway
Well, I, I mean, again, go back to your piece. I thought that, that, you know, the anecdote you used at the beginning where you talk about the panel that you were moderating and where, you know, Derek Thompson says, I'm sure for effect, right. Like, you know, we don't need stories. Stories are for children. Right. And it's, it's, it's a, it's a technocratic way of thinking about the world. It is not technocr. How. It's not how people think about themselves. It's not how people think about their experiences. It's not how they think about what they want in the future for their children. Right. They, they think about it in terms of stories. And, and that to me is, is, I mean, it's fundamental.
- [41:03]
Marshall Kozloff
So I'd be, I'd be curious. So towards the end, and this is one of the things that had to
- [41:08]
be cut for length.
- [41:08]
But, but, and this is actually why I asked you the question about how The American promised worldview being specific, yet broad enough that you could post all these different factions within the same post. We're talking about different formats. You could publish a bunch of different people across the sort of factional spectrum. And the point being to your answer, it's because even though they're within different factions, the actual ideas they're proposing actually fit within the different planks of the worldview. And I wanted to spend more time in the future writing about fusionism, which not everyone has heard this. This is the advantage of going to right wing boot camps. Fusionism was the process by which the right, which was incredibly, if you think the sort of left liberal side feels factional right now, put like a John Bircher and an Eisenhower person in the same room together in the 1950s, literally, the Birchers are literally writing books that Eisenhower was a Soviet spy. Yet somehow these different factions of people are able to work together and by the 1980s overturn the new Deal order. So somehow you project, produce a coherent whole. And that process was fusionism. And my ideological goal, which is helpful in the sense that I'm very much uninterested in party politics, but I like ideology, is I want there to be a broad enough worldview that all of these factions could find some sort of center where there's agreement. So something to try on for size for you. I have an episode coming out after yours with Henry Tonks, who's brilliant. Henry. He's A recently graduated PhD who's done a lot of good history about the Democratic Party post 1970s. His take on how do you build fusionism is that when left liberalism has been strong, it's when there's been a shared economic worldview, platform, set of ideas. That's the story of the New Deal, that's the story of the Great Society, that's the story of even the 1970s and 1980s where there are all sorts of big disagreements. But because the economic part of the picture was the clearest baked and most straightforward, that keeps the fractious coalition together. So his advice for fusionism is, is start with getting everyone in the room around what is actually our theory of what America's economy is. What do the different set of ideas look like? And then you build out and then we get in some arguments about antitrust and abundance and then you get into culture issues. But if there's that core of the economy, it's easier to have a disagreement about culture war issues and those other things. I'd be curious what you think about that sort of framework. And then how would you think about, about fusionism as a project?
- [43:42]
Michael Laskoway
I think it's easier said than done. Right. I certainly think in this moment some of the tensions are around these economic questions. Right. So I do think that's the challenge. I think that when we think. And again, I don't want to be. I feel like I'm being slightly reductive here, but it's certainly something that. It's an obvious, obvious point of contention right now within. Among a lot of people who are thinking about these questions with regards to liberalism. Right. When we think about the debate and the conflict between people anti monopoly and people who subscribe to sort of a more abundance worldview, part of what they're debating is, is a debate around the economy. Right. And what the nature of our economic problems, where they are, really originate. But I do think as a goal, if the goal is ultimately to find to resuscitate liberalism and to restore it as a, as a powerful force in American politics, you are right. There has to be some fusionism because factionalism will destroy it.
- [44:54]
Marshall Kozloff
You know, this is the disaster of not mixing these episodes together because I wish I'd thought of that response to Henry because that's actually. Because think of the history he's telling here, here. The whole point was from the New Deal coalition and the Southern segregationists all the way through the 1980s, the thing that kept the Southern racist together with the Northern liberal was the economy. So the economy was actually not the point of tension. The point of tension was the culture issues. Culture issues are a point of tension today, or at least this is my interpretation of what you're saying. But actually a lot of the tensions actually are economic. Right. So I saw a candidate running, running for office in a state. I'm not going to name names for a variety of reasons, but they like said, my number one thing is abolishing billionaires. It's going to be very hard to get certain parts of this coalition in the room if that's your economic starting point. And that's a difficulty.
- [45:44]
Michael Laskoway
Well, if you'll let me walk out for a minute here. When I was in graduate school, one of my teachers was Alan Brinkley, the American historian. And he wrote a wonderful book about, really about the development of the economic ideas during the New Deal. And sort of part of what he argues is there were these very fundamental conflicts that were being played out over the years and ultimately circumstances sort of resolved them and that we ended up in a place that was sort of very different from what the intellectual debate was, but partly because the economy itself, the aftermath of the war and the resolution of the Great Depression, those circumstances really answer the question. Right. So I do think that it is, you know, you always have to sort of operate within that your particular historical moment.
- [46:43]
Marshall Kozloff
And what I'm also hearing from you is that a intellectual failure in terms of not answering a question is I just casually say, yeah, the right took 30, 40 years to do fusionism and like we need to do that in two or three years. This is like a very obvious, like actually because like what I love about. Thank you for bringing up that one Brinkley reference because the point of that is his father, David Brinkley, wrote a book, Washington Goes to War, which is like super influential. If I thought it's about World War II. It's a great book that people like the book recs. But like the sort of crescendoing point here is, is it's not just that it takes 30 or 40 years to get everyone in the room together and be polite and establish norms. It's like there are if, let's say we just snapped our fingers and got like the 20,000 people who at a both local to like elite level are making decisions on what like the left liberal project thinks about the economy together. Certain debates are not going to be resolved unless you add in the factor of time. This is generative. That's actually like a very helpful. Because I was. Because I've always thought of like answer that. My longer answer to how do you like resolve, like, how do you do this in a few years instead of 30 years? Is, well, you take their model around norms and expectations and like politeness. So I would say, and I'm saying this too, I'm not going to name names when a lefty wants to come to a conference that is more targeted at the center, maybe let the lefty person come because it shows that they want to do fusion. That's an example of norms. But I think, and I think the same thing goes vice versa to like both sides be more welcoming to other people from different factions if they want to come into your space. I think that's like a really good norm. But that doesn't actually address what you just brought up, which is what happens if there are tech talk, tectonic economic forces and issues that cannot just be resolved in the course of a year, period.
- [48:33]
Michael Laskoway
But I still, I mean, going back to, to be clear, when I, I mean going back to obviously where, where we are at the state's forum, We think the good ideas are the good ideas. And so that to me, and I suppose if you want to think about, I mean, we do think of the American promise as a way to bring everyone together as a worldview that leads to fusion in a way, because there are openings, things that are not so sort of rigid and are not so factionalist. You know, what's the. If you're, if your test ultimately, is this an idea that's going to make people's lives better, Better, you know, that's a. That's a pretty good fusion test.
- [49:26]
Marshall Kozloff
So for the final sponsor, but not sponsor service, I think there are a lot of realignment listeners who I think should be and would like to be published in a place like States Forum, journalists journal, what type of ideas? I know obviously, you know, biannual issues. So it's not like you're going to be rushing to do this next week. But what are some, you know, just like topics, areas, curiosities that folks who would like to write for a place like yours might think about?
- [49:50]
Michael Laskoway
There are a host of issues right now that we're really sort of paying a lot of attention to. Affordability, the watchword of the day is certainly one of them. I think, think more broadly, you know, democracy, things that we can do to sustain democracy is another one of them. I think we're very focused right now on ideas around sustaining community. Right. Things that can be done to bring people together. You know, in. In the latest journal, one of. One of the pieces we had was a piece by Matt Lackey, who does a lot of work sort of at the intersection of technology and politics. And it's going to be the basis also of an upcoming substack. And he's making an argument about the dangers that AI and the risks that AI presents, but also the opportunity it presents. Right. That there are ways of using it to bring people together. So we're certainly thinking a lot about technology, but thinking about ways in which it can be used more productively. We. To help create community and to not necessarily be so atomizing. So those are things that we're thinking about, but we're open, quite frankly, I'm open to lots of ideas. So I would certainly encourage people, listeners. They can reach us@infostatesforum.org or they can put, you know, they can reach us at the substack. We'd love to hear from people.
- [51:16]
Marshall Kozloff
No. And my advertiser for the openness was, you know, we did that podcast with Daniel back last summer, and I was like, michael, I've got some Mike Random things I've been ranting about on the podcast. We turned it into a piece and you were very receptive. So I really do want to advertise that. I know that a couple folks have reached out. So, Michael, this has been really great. Thank you for thinking out loud with me. Thank you for joining me on the realignment.
- [51:39]
Michael Laskoway
It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Marshall.