Season Finale | Danielle Lee Tomson: Why the Future is Fusion

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Realignment - Season Finale | Danielle Lee Tomson: Why the Future is Fusion

Date: April 15, 2026
Host: Marshall Kosloff
Guest: Danielle Lee Tomson
Episode Theme: Exploring the urgent need for a new “fusion” on the American center-left—a public and authentic project to build a shared worldview and story capable of meeting the country’s fragmented political moment.

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Overview

In this season finale, Marshall Kosloff and Danielle Lee Tomson dive deep into the post-2024 American political landscape, focusing on the vacuum in worldview and narrative among liberals and centrists. Drawing from political history, personal journeys, and recent essays, they argue for a new left-liberal “fusionism” to counteract the authenticity gap and cynicism pervading the center and center-left. The episode is part intellectual brain-dump, part collaborative therapy, and part rallying call—to make meaning out of the confusion and to articulate what a new pluralistic fusion on the left could look like.

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Main Topics & Key Insights

1. Host’s Personal Evolution and Broader Context

Timestamp: 00:00–06:45

• Marshall describes the unpredictable and exploratory journey of the podcast over the past year and a half, which mirrored his personal evolution: becoming a father, returning to center-left roots, and moving from think-tank content creation to event convening.
• The 2024 election, contrary to expectations, did not yield a lasting realignment on the right. Instead, the left-liberal/center is now the battleground where ideas matter most.
• Marshall positions the podcast's future at the heart of center-left experimentation and dialogue on national renewal.

2. The Case for 'Fusion' — Lessons from Political History

Timestamp: 06:45–12:38

• Drawing on Cass Sunstein and George Packer, Marshall explains conservative fusionism: disparate groups uniting against a dominant liberal consensus.
• Fusion's essence is not consensus but public, good-faith argument and open coalition building—not obscure D.C. dealmaking.
• Quote (A - Marshall, 07:32):

  “If New Fusion has a central mission, then it is reconciling these two groups. If you are interested in this project, definitely reach out...”

3. The Problem: The Authenticity Gap

Timestamp: 12:38–16:55

• Danielle’s concept of the “Authenticity Gap” is foregrounded—the growing chasm between the stories society tells and lived experience.
• Policies like “College for All,” globalization, or meritocracy—once sources of optimism—now feel hollow, fueling generational discontent.
• Storytelling, not policy, shapes how people relate; the center suffers by dismissing this in favor of technocratic “wonkery.”
• Quote (A - Marshall, 10:14):

  “Words like affordability are just empty calories... No one cares. Politics isn't a wonk debate club.”

4. The Missing Liberal Story and the Limits of "Liberal" Identity

Timestamp: 16:55–27:08

• Danielle and Marshall dissect why centrists/liberals lack a shared story, unlike MAGA populists or Democratic Socialists.
• The label “liberal” is both empty and ripe for reconstruction; terms like “progressive” or “centrist” lack clear ideological content.
• Ideology-centric identity (as on the right or the far left) gives coherence and makes coalitional action possible—center-left needs its own ideological core.
• Quote (B - Danielle, 19:24):

  “I don't know what a centrist is. I think it's just a person who claims to work with both sides. Guess what? MAGA populists and socialist left, they work together too.”

5. Fusionism vs. Factionalism — What’s Required on the Left?

Timestamp: 27:08–34:35

• The right’s “fusionism” is not perfect agreement but pluralism with enough overlap and clarity of ideas/worldviews.
• In contrast, center-left spaces have abandoned open ideological debate in favor of party-faction games (primaries, inside appointments).
• Effective fusion requires each group to first clarify its worldview—beyond just policies or issues.
• Quote (C - Danielle, 30:15):

  “Fusionism is actually different ideological factions that are clear about what they want to see in the world with enough overlap and a common enemy... You actually need to come to this conversation being very clear about what you believe ideologically.”

6. Why the Debate—and the Story—Is Missing

Timestamp: 34:35–44:54

• The left-to-center spectrum is plagued by mistrust and policy technocracy. Both sides (pragmatic centrists and fervent activists) see each other as either naive or cynical.
• Prosperity and party dominance dulled the need for real ideological reflection in the center-left.
• Lack of “enemy naming” and concrete narratives weakens the center’s ability to mobilize and form coalitions.

7. What Should the New Story Be?

Timestamp: 44:54–55:12

• The hosts debate whether one can propose a new story or if it must emerge organically, as on the New Right.
• The current system (education, upward mobility, party structures) is fundamentally mismatched with 21st century reality—a new, plainly stated vision is needed.
• Danielle urges abandoning jargon: “Invite everyone to write down what they believe without using jargon… It was actually quite hard and really, really instructive.”

8. Reimagining "Liberal" — Lessons from Post-1968 History

Timestamp: 55:12–58:08

• The golden age of American liberalism (FDR–LBJ) unraveled post-1968, leading to decades of unsuccessful attempts at reinvention (McGovern, Third Way, etc.).
• “Progressive” and “liberal” language remains hollow; center-left must embrace ideological clarity and historical self-awareness.

9. Worldview vs. Ideology — The MAGA Case Study

Timestamp: 58:08–66:50

• Trump personifies how raw worldview and authenticity can be more powerful than rigid ideology. His coalition was “shape-shifting,” allowing multiple projects to hitch a ride.
• The left must distinguish between worldview, ideology, and mere policies, and tell stories that resonate at a personal, cultural level, not just policy or party levels.

10. Concluding Thoughts: Vulnerability, Plain Speaking, and the Hard Work of Fusion

Timestamp: 66:50–end

• “Liberal” is an empty vessel ripe for renewal—a chance to create a meaningful fusion that is open, pluralistic, and future-facing.
• Fusionism’s conditions: real opposition to illiberal, oligarchic, or technocratic concentration of power, and a willingness to embrace discomfort, friction, and vulnerability.
• Speaking plainly (i.e., “does not fuck” vs. think tank cant), honesty about who your adversaries are, and cultural specificity are vital.
• Quote (C - Danielle, 78:53):

  “Politics, policy and all of this over avoid in a weird way those deeper issues because they are vulnerable and the language is kind of scary and squishy and like, and, but that's indicative of like a larger problem of getting back to real friction in the world.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• The Authenticity Gap (Danielle, 08:08):

  “Our expectations of reality, shaped by the stories we tell ourselves, no longer align with our lived experiences, reality itself can begin to feel like it's unraveling everywhere you go.”

• On the Need for Story, not Technocracy (Marshall, 10:14):

  “Words like affordability are just empty calories... No one cares. Politics isn't a wonk debate club.”

• On the Failure of ‘Fusion’ as D.C. Horse-Trading (Marshall, 66:50):

  “When you basically turn different factions working together to produce some sort of whole into this inside baseball... Everything I just said is gobbledygook. And that doesn't translate. So that is what bad fusionism looks like.”

• On Plain Speaking and Friction (Danielle, 55:12; 78:53):

  “Invite everyone to write down what they believe without using jargon... It was actually quite hard and really, really instructive.”

  “Politics, policy and all of this over avoid in a weird way those deeper issues because they are vulnerable... that's indicative of like a larger problem of getting back to real friction in the world.”

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Key Segment Timestamps

• 00:00 – 06:45: Marshall’s reflections and the context for a new center-left project
• 06:45 – 12:38: Conservative fusionism and the need for public coalition on the left
• 12:38 – 16:55: The authenticity gap and the limits of policy-centered approaches
• 16:55 – 27:08: Liberal/centrist void—why the story is missing, language debates
• 27:08 – 34:35: Fusionism vs. factionalism, the value of clear ideology
• 34:35 – 44:54: Trust breakdown, the culture of technocracy, and naming enemies
• 44:54 – 55:12: Why you can’t manufacture a “story”—emergence, not diktat
• 55:12 – 58:08: The fall and attempted rebirth of American liberalism
• 58:08 – 66:50: MAGA as worldview, not ideology; lessons for the center-left
• 66:50 – End: Embracing the unknown, being vulnerable, and why “liberal” can still matter

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Tone & Style

The conversation was intellectually adventurous, candid, and often irreverent. The hosts blend deep insider knowledge (think tank, campaign, movement history) with vulnerability about their own uncertainty. Humor (“does not fuck”), real-life anecdotes, and plain language are foregrounded as antidotes to performative, jargon-filled political conversation.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• A new fusion is inevitable on the American center-left; the challenge is to make it public, clear, and rooted in honest debate—not back-room jobs and deals.
• The “authenticity gap” is the defining malaise for Millennials and Gen Z. No single policy or technocratic fix can overcome it; only an authentic, pluralistic worldview can.
• Ideological clarity matters. Parties without stories, and coalitions without honesty about worldviews, are doomed to drift and fragmentation.
• Plain speaking isn’t simplicity. Cultural connection, not just policy expertise or party identity, will define what “liberal” can mean for a new generation.
• Embrace vulnerability and discomfort. Real fusion is not about smoothing over differences but facing them in search of something new.

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Final Remark (Danielle, 78:53):

“What I loved about your piece so much is in its own way and its own language to its own audience, this missing liberal story piece was able to articulate the first steps of that effort of like, really bringing it down to a place where we can actually begin to see... where our ideas, our worldviews, our ideologies, our stances, our pain, our desire is actually where it overlaps and where it doesn't. So, you know, good first step.”

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For those looking to understand not just the themes but the spirit and future direction of debates on the American center-left, this episode is essential listening—and a foundation for the conversations yet to come.

Transcript

[A]

Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Longtime Realignment listeners will know by now that the start and end of any of the show's seasons is pretty random, especially since my editorial and booking strategy usually comes down to here's who I want to talk to this week. Today's finale is different. The past year and a half or so since the 2024 election has really been a season itself focused on exploration and pulling on different threads, even though I often have ended up in dead ends or without enough coherence to help a casual listener understand exactly what's going on. Some people do their thinking by writing. Others, like me, do it through podcasting by talking to other people about the topics that are at the top of our minds. So during this period, the questions doubled in length, the rants got rantier, and the tangents went ever outwards. At the same time, I started to get signs that I was onto something. Before I get into today's conversation then with Danielle Lee Thompson, I wanted to share what I've concluded in a coherent and understandable form, because the episode you're going to hear is basically a brain dump where Danielle offered to sort of talk through some of these things with me. Number one best place to start is with my identity in a way that relates to the show. So during the year and a half I went through a lot of personal and career changes that really reshaped my relationship to the podcast. My son Theo is almost a year and a half old. I left Conservative Think Tank World and went back to my center left roots, joined the Scannon center full time where most of my work honestly has nothing to do with podcasting, and I found my real passion, which is producing events that draw on the themes I cover on the show. The best way to understand me then is as a convener and think tank leader who also runs a podcast rather than as a content creator who does side gigs at various nonprofits. This upcoming week I'm producing and co hosting a national competitiveness focused event in Austin called Endless Frontiers with partners including the Council on Foreign Relations, University of Texas, and VCs like 8VC and overmatch, and other partners. I also want to produce other topics that bring folks together around the ones that line up with the Realignment's themes as we all try to use the next two years to sort out what things look like at a political and policy level. 2. The future of Left Liberalism and the Realignment As I said before, the story of the right after 2012 was the most interesting story in American politics It seems like 2024 represented a potential realignment moment. The conventional wisdom, and sometimes conventional wisdom is true, is that that moment quickly passed and the future once again remains open. However, it seems clear that the post midterms period leading up to the GOP nomination and the 2028 election will be more about personalities and Mar a Lago palace intrigue rather than ideas. Instead, the place where ideas actually will matter a lot more is on the left liberal center side of the aisle. My own biases aside, the space that would determine the outcome either by its success or its failure is to the left of center, and that's where this podcast will live. So for three My big idea that's built from the work of the past few months Left Liberal Fusion I recently read Cass Sunstein's on Liberalism in Defense of Freedom. I've spoken previously about how the story of conservative fusion inspires me, but my description of what fusion actually is and was was more of a vibes based retelling of narratives I'd heard in various right wing intellectual boot camps in the 2010s. So it was actually great to see a very specific definition of fusion that will make sense to people. Here is Sunstein's description of what fusion was through the lens of National Review founder Roylf Buckley. In the 1950s, Buckley was famous for championing fusionism by which conservatives claimed support from people with disparate commitments, liberty lovers or libertarians who loved free markets, religious conservatives who thought that their faith was under siege, and national security enthusiasts who emphasized the threat from the Soviet Union. Getting back to my thoughts, the thing that united these disparate groups in the same tent was the only thing that they completely aligned on, and that was opposition to the centrist to liberal post New Deal status quo that left even successful GOP presidents like Eisenhower in a permanent state of accommodation. The end product of fusionism varied. Different leaders prioritized different aspects of the coalition, and some factions went out more than the others. But eventually the New Deal era did indeed come to an end. The math works out exactly the same when one switches from the right to the center to the left. No one faction has the outright majority required to win and govern successfully. Therefore, fusion is inevitable. I was recently discussing my fusion idea with an initially skeptical, nationally prominent left organizer. The two of us eventually realized that we already do do fusion, though just in the least efficient way possible. Biden's 2020 campaign, which was premised on a centrist return to normalcy, won the primary. But after that victory, huge policy staffing, concessions were made to the left during the fall and the transition period before the inauguration in 2021. So rather than a public open process that allows for buy in and mass consensus, a typically Washington situation and game transpired, where organizers and think tank staffers received obscure but incredibly important appointments and policies no one had ever heard of moved to the top of the agenda. No wonder a coherent understanding of the mandate, policies and purposes of the Biden administration never emerged. This New Fusion that Danielle and I talk about and wish to work on has to be different. It has to be public, clear, argumentative, but good faith and the opposite of the Washington parlor game. The types of leaders who succeed at Fusion won't look and act like those who dominated the previous world, where individual factions and their own struggle for internal

[B]

and external power, where all that mattered

[A]

One of the most impactful books I read over the past year was George Packer's Blood of the Liberals. I wanted to share the full quote here to really give context to fusion and the problem it's seeking to solve. So in the book, describing a Rocky period during FDR's first term when his grandfather served as a populist Southern congressman, Packer writes of quote, the moment where liberalism, reaching the peak of its New Deal heyday, lost its connection to something vital from the past. In the summer of 1935, to the harm of both liberalism and populism, the brain truster with his briefcase and the one, Gallister Farmer, parted ways. If New Fusion has a central mission, then it is reconciling these two groups. If you are interested in this project, definitely reach out for Last but not least, the Missing Story piece that I wrote about in the State's Forum Journal, Danielle and I recorded this episode about the Missing story in the immediate aftermath of publication and initial inquiries into what I actually think the story is.

[B]

At the time, I didn't have an answer. It was helpful to talk it through on the podcast, but I've taken the time now to actually provide the answer.

[A]

I want to get the story that

[B]

anyone has to tell and come up

[A]

with a response to in terms of

[B]

its consequences is the Authenticity gap, which

[A]

Danielle coined in her substack last year. Defining the Authenticity gap as when our expectations of reality, shaped by the stories we tell ourselves, no longer align with our lived experiences, reality itself can begin

[B]

to feel like it's unraveling everywhere you go.

[A]

You can't miss the authenticity gap.

[B]

As I noted in my last episode of Noam Scheiber on the failure of College for All in the excerpt of

[A]

the book that appeared in the New York Times, Noam actually articulated the authenticity gap in his own independent language and own independent wording.

[B]

But as with this sort of idea

[A]

that when it comes to like new intellectual, scientific, technological discoveries, different people could sort of end up at the same

[B]

place via different means because it's just

[A]

sort of the moment or it's sort

[B]

of the challenge that's ahead. I think that's what we're seeing here.

[A]

Here is how Nuam described the authenticity gap story once again in his own wording.

[B]

But for young college graduates, extended bouts

[A]

of unemployment or long periods stuck in a low paying job that didn't make use of their degrees upended the entire picture of adulthood they've been taught to expect.

[B]

In effect, a gap has opened up

[A]

between the life they've been promised and their actual prospects.

[B]

And they are seething about it.

[A]

If, like Danielle and I, you were

[B]

born in the 1990s, so much of your life, no matter how successful you

[A]

are, is defined by the authenticity gap. Our first decade was built around a series of bets and stories.

[B]

The promise of an information superhighway powered new economy, post deindustrialization worker retraining, the rise of China and globalization leading to win wins for everyone, deregulation, the end of history and Pax Americana college for all. All of these ideas were either overstated,

[A]

led to winners and losers, or didn't work at all.

[B]

There's no policy that closes the authenticity gap. Words like affordability are just empty calories.

[A]

You, you can't refute it with talk

[B]

of rising GDP gotchas about how a consumer now has access to ever more abundant amounts of cheaper technology, goods and services than their grandparents had access to.

[A]

No one cares. Politics isn't a wonk Debate club.

[B]

One of the central failures of centrist liberal politics over my lifetime is the elevation of the sort of hyper meritocrat striver type who went to the right schools, played by all the rules and won the game at a career and lifestyle level. This personality and the institutions it leads is well suited for moments of consensus calm where nothing is up for grabs, and your ultimate duty as a person

[A]

who is engaging in public work or

[B]

trying to work in politics or policy is to keep the ship steering on a steady course doing realignments. However, these people find themselves increasingly outmoded.

[A]

Stories aren't empirical, they may not even

[B]

be totally accurate, but they are how actual human beings relate to one another. As I see it, my goal is

[A]

to take the authenticity gap as the

[B]

story of my generational cohort and political moment help develop the worldview and ideology that acknowledge the gap and then responds to it and then, and only then talks about the specific policies that will

[A]

close the gap itself.

[B]

Coming from think tank world, I recognize

[A]

that this is hard for people, but

[B]

if one of my implicit goals over the past year and a half has been trying to unlearn so much of the received wisdom, norms and expectations of this think tank space, a lot of these ideas were ideas that I, you know, good faith adopted as I tried to break into a space I didn't think I'd ever get access to. But my ability to succeed in this moment, to deliver a podcast that's helpful for everyone, to have coherent conversations, requires finding balance between this idea that there is truth. Empirical reality is a thing. A lot of the failure of populism over the past decade has been leaning too far into unlearning things that were learned. But at the same time, I still believe that we could find a balance here. This past season's journey has been realizing via people like Danielle stating that what I do and what my world in think tanks represent is a set of things that, quote, don't fucking really served as a helpful corrective for me.

[A]

And I hope with this coming season I get the balance right.

[B]

Hope you enjoy the conversation.

[C]

Hey Marshall, it's great to be on the show here to essentially interview you about that really great piece that you wrote for the States Forum about the missing liberal story. I'd love to interview you and give you the opportunity to express some of these ideas that we've been working on together and you've developed on your own. Um, but basically your main argument was that different parties should, in the sort of liberal set, should recognize that stories as a story, as a concept or worldview is something that's really underemphasized and that they need to invest in these kinds of things. And in thinking about it this way, now, story is not just messaging or marketing, right? Like, stories are actually something that both, both emerge and produce worldviews. And I define worldview in my work as a story about how the world works and about how it should work. That's basically in a layman's terms. So maybe you can walk me through the argument of the piece and some of the solutions that you proposed.

[A]

Yeah, thanks for doing this, Danielle.

[B]

So I would say a lot of

[A]

this was generated by the fact that I spent time in left and right

[B]

populous spaces and then sort of reentered centrist center left. We'll get into. Into a little later, like, these different terms. Sometimes I'm saying liberal, sometimes I'm saying center left. We'll get into that nuance later. But I reentered that broad, moderate, centrist, center left space, and I just noticed that there was no presence of a coherent worldview or even just like a story to be told about what was happening in a way that really contrasted with, once again, these left and right populists. And this sort of has a couple different origins. So origin number one, and I talk about this in the piece, is that there was a story. It's not that centrists or even traditional liberals can't come up with stories. It's just that, like, the whole point of the past ten years of revolt is that people do not like those stories and they have been invalidated in many ways, right? So, like, if it's the 1990s, the world is flat, globalization, we beat the Soviet Union, the end of history. Like, those are worldviews, those are stories. Those really are tangible. And you would not have had the difficulty of answering that question to, to Thomas Friedman, let's say, or Robert Rubin, the Treasury secretary in the 1990s. So that story was overturned. Another broad story was just sort of, hey, America's working. We are becoming more progressive. We're getting more diverse. That story wasn't invalidated in 2016 because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. So it's easy to basically say, and I don't say this aggressively because I think people felt this in good faith. If we had a different constitutional system in terms of our elections, you would not have had Trump be the president Obama. If he had been able to run for a third term, he would have beat Trump. Everyone agrees on that point. If Joe Biden had run that year and not in, you know, 2024, he would have beaten Trump. There's lots of polls to show both

[A]

those cases are true.

[B]

So actually, the thing itself still works. There's just this, like, unique deus ex machina situation with Trump. However, 2024, with Trump winning the popular vote and lacking the sort of, like, Russiagate misinformation, disinformation dynamic that killed that story too. So everyone just sort of finds themselves without any ability to engage with that. And then the last thing to sort of close this rant about my own rant in terms of written stuff is I've also noticed that one of the stories that is a real story, but it's a story that the left and right tell about the center and the center doesn't understand about itself is that the meritocracy and the rise of technocracy and the rise of like the way you show that you are serious about public policy and political problems is by being wonky, by proving you listen to Ezra Klein, by having your Matt Yglesias or Derek Thompson style wonky explanation of how the world works. In centrist center left circles, that is how you show you're serious. And you often think of things like story and the vibes and the cultural stuff that you like, really talk about. Those do not read as falling into the same category of seriousness. So there's no incentive to, to engage in this type of work unless you're noticing its absence.

[C]

Yeah, no, in the piece you have these two stories or worldviews, right, that both the maga populist right gives and then the left populism gives. And I think it's worth sort of saying those out loud like the maga populist story was. Since the 1990s, bipartisan elites drove the country into a dish. Jobs overseas, illegal immigrants coming in who are changing culture and bringing crime. You know, also opioids flooding into the country. Also I would say the FDA allowing synthetic opioids to even, or rather prescription opioids to be in the market in the first place. So there's this mistrust of all of the administrative state and as well as a country, both parties going into a terrible essentially 20 year war on terror. And then Donald Trump the outsider will flip that. Then you also have the left populism thing that you outline, which is Bernie Sanders, aoc, Liz Warren, all of that, which says kind of something similar, but same same, but different in a way like, okay, this neoliberal market worship and oligarchy basically eliminated the middle class. It's 1% versus 99%. The Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United basically allowed market capture of our government. And then the centrist Dems like Clinton and Obama are essentially complicit in this. So we as outside Democratic socialists are going to cure this ailment. So you say what that leaves for folks who call themselves liberal or see themselves as in the center of all this. And you and I can get into a little bit about what my distaste for the term centrist. I'm like, I don't know what a centrist is. I think it's just a person who claims to work with both sides. Guess what? MAGA populace and you know, socialist left, they work together too. Like that's not even true, right? Like bipartisanship happens everywhere. So I would just say like There is this idea that the liberals in this quote, unquote, center or the hegemony, right. The sort of common sense that dominated the 20th century didn't make sense anymore. Is that like, does that functionally, Is that like, basically what you're saying in this article and I would say, is liberal just another word for centrists? Should centrists stop calling some centrists like, you know, is this helping even the, the culture to say that you're a centrist right now?

[B]

Yeah. And the key thing is I chose

[A]

the word liberal for a reason, because,

[B]

you know, as having spent time in right spaces, I keep telling this anecdote, but you and I both know that on the right there is recognition that party and ideology are compatible, but different things. Right. So to say I'm a conservative or to say that I'm a Republican means something.

[C]

Right?

[B]

So let's say you're at, you know, you're hanging out at Butterworths in DC which for non DC insider listeners is sort of like the MAGA Trump hangout for administration people. If you were to walk into that room and just say you're a Republican versus saying like, oh, I'm on the new right, or I'm a conservative, that would, it's not that Republicans wouldn't be welcome there, but that would be a very uncool answer to say you're a Republican. That would actually mean something very significantly because once again, it's like one's a party person. And this is actually cut from the original piece. So glad I could talk about this. But, like, my whole thing is that, like, the right is ideology first, party second, and the center to center left is party first, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Maybe ideology, maybe. And even when they say ideology, they'll use the word progressive, which. And if what's funny about this is like, think of the word progressive. So some people wondered, like, why I didn't talk about being a progressive. Well, here's the problem with the word progressive. Progressive. I do not think that progressive is actually an ideological, like, worldview inherently. It could be, but what it really was was a sort of response to Ronald Reagan's dominance thing of like, okay, so we can't use the word liberal anymore because a liberal is like a limousine liberal. And they're elite. They're Michael Dukakis. They're, you know, all the 1980s stuff that doesn't work anymore. We're just gonna not use that word. So let's just start calling ourselves progressives, which people started doing. And I think that's probably helpful in the 2000s. But then over the course of the Obama presidency, being a progressive started to actually force you to make choices on what that meant. So you could say you're a progressive if you were pro Occupy Wall Street. There are plenty of Democrats who were not Occupy Wall street and probably would have called themselves progressives in the 2000s because they were saying like, I'm a progressive. Moveon.org I love Howard Dean. Like Howard Dean used to be seen as a radical right. Like that's an example. And he was then DNC chair two years later. So like, that's how our standards of radicalism really change. But the word progressive doesn't mean anything. And then you saw the Overton window shift where Bernie did not run as a progressive, he ran as a democratic socialist. Because democratic socialism is an actual worldview and ideology where there are actual lines of demarcation, there are actual takeaways you could take with democratic socialism. It's like you believe that it's, it's, it's, once again it's good we have democratic socialism and not like communism because it basically says like, look, the idea that we have a democracy, if it's not authoritarian, is perfectly compatible with like the government doing things for people. That's basically like the intellectualized version of what democratic socialism means versus once again of progressivism. We couldn't actually say what that means. So what I am trying to do with this project at a core level is bring ideology back into left liberal spaces. And that also requires that we be very clear about what these terms mean. And there's the other thing that I didn't write about as much. But this is where the opportunity is. No one likes political parties right now. If you think about it, right, like the Democratic Party has like a 23% approval rating. It's like a disaster. And too many people who are trying to respond to 2024, their response because they're party first is like, okay, how do we rehabilitate the Democratic Party? Like so many of these projects, whether they say it explicitly, it implicitly turns into let's make Democrats more popular. Or they do the thing that they're starting to do in red and swing states, which is like run as independent. So they're like, let's just not call ourselves Democrats, but basically just be Democrats. And as we saw with Dan Alice Board in Nebraska, that's actually an effective in some cases like short term response. But that's not going to be a long term sustainable approach. Because the second you actually get into Congress, you're going to start voting on things and you're probably going to start voting towards the center or after the center. And, and that's just like, that's like a one trick pony that it literally only works once and it requires just like a tier talent. You cannot have like the B plus version or the B version. And I think the best version of an ideology that actually works, that actually fucks in your telling, is something that takes, and I think you said this to me in D.C. earlier this week, it takes someone who's a B and it levels them up to an A because they asked me to say it's very, very compelling. And the other thing they'll say too. And once again, this is why. Long response to your question, but I

[A]

think it matters here.

[B]

The other problem that people in D.C. able to take to their logical conclusion is the big complaint amongst the DC centrist class is they are well aware of the fact that they don't have their own version of the squad. So they are well aware of the fact that AOC and Zoron and Elizabeth Warren all coming on stage together during a Zoran rally represents a embarrassing contrast to the center. Because if you look at Abigail Spamberger or you know, the governor of New Jersey, like, you know, Governor Mikey Sherrill, if you look at all these different people, we can name a bunch. Jake Auchincloss, we could name Ruben Gallego. None of these people have ever come on a stage together where they're holding hands saying, like, this is our thing. Well, the reason why this happens, and I've both heard this from people who are involved in their spaces, is because the whole thing is like, okay, being a Democrat sucks. So I have to not be a Democrat to win these swing states. They are independent, even if they're Democrats. So if you're independent, you think of yourself as being on an island and you have no incentive to like, work with other people. So a lot of the people who work in Democratic politics are like, no centrists. Work together, do the things together, go on the podcast tour, do your version of the oligarchy tour. And they just don't understand why it's not happening. And I'm like, well, it's not happening because under your framework of only caring about whether you are or aren't a Democrat, if it's like, you know, I'm voting for Spanberger because unlike all the Democrats, she's this unique individual moderate, why would she want to align herself with anyone else who's a Democrat? So the other reason why I'm talking about ideology here is ideology offers a new vector for being able to say, here's my thing. Bernie wasn't saying, hey, Barney, I'm a Democrat. He's like, hey, I'm a democratic socialist. That's what the DSA does, That's what Zoron does. That's what Trump did with maga. So it's just like so funny that because there's just no awareness that ideology is something you could use. And in past, the center left and people who are even centrist have had ideology themselves keep ranting over. This is just what I'm obsessed with. I've been doing a lot of reading about the history of American liberalism post 1950s. And what's so funny about this entire period is you, you used to have people who are centrists, the original neoliberals. This is what I'm talking about. From the 80s, they would call themselves liberals. Like when they said neoliberal, they were not referring to like Hayekian Margaret Thatcher. Marker first thought their thought was, oh, wow, like, you know, Richard Nixon's blowing us out in elections. Jimmy Carter just lost. Neoliberalism just doesn't work as a political project anymore. So we need a neo dash liberal thing. That's what they were thinking about. That was their thing. So they, so even they were thinking in ideological terms. So it's just like so fascinating that like this used to be a thing and it's just totally gone away. So I threw so much at you so you could do whatever you want with that.

[C]

Let's tease this out a little bit. And I think it's also worth talking a little bit about this MAGA worldview. Now. I think a lot of folks who call themselves centrists or liberals look at conservatism and MAGA and they say, wow, they're in lockstep. They have a worldview. And anyone who has grown up in the conservative movement knows that like there is not a singular worldview even if there is a coherent story. Right. It's actually very pluralistic, hyper diverse and a lot of different things. Which is known in the 20th century, his conservative movement, as fusionism. Right. Like after the New Deal, you had a lot of people left out of that consensus. You know, the sort of laissez faire libertarian economists, the anti war types, the. Or on the flip side, super anti communist types. Right. And the traditionalists, the evangelicals who felt that they weren't going to be able to participate in this very objective secular staid. Almost scient, scientized state. Right. And they kind of found each other in, as outcasts from the system, but they didn't try to like necessarily convert the other right. They, they found sort of a common cause against the, the New Deal liberal state. And they worked together in coalition, ultimately producing Goldwater. Right. And then later Reagan. But I think that that's a really important thing to think about is like these, and you quote me as saying, like fusionism is actually different ideological factions that are clear about what they want to see in the world with enough overlap and a common enemy. And this is very different than like this idea that the left or liberals need to immediately get consensus with the DSA or with like a certain, maybe a social justice faction or a abundance factions. Like oh my God, we all have to agree. It's like. No, no, no, no. You actually need to come to this conversation being very clear about what you believe ideologically and not just on like an issue base. Right. But on like a worldview, like societal base. And that, that saying. And when I say issue, I'm sort of saying that as like policy. Right. And you define this really, really well in the piece where you delineate what is a policy versus a worldview and you give the example of like, take government should intervene and regulate markets when they fail, like in 1929 or 2008. That's like a worldview. A policy is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should be produced and like we're going to solve that problem. But not everyone believes in the worldview that the government should intervene in the markets in that way. So I just want to step back and really invite you to go into this idea of fusionism that you introduce and a new fusionism into the piece that I think liberals, progressives, other folks who consider themselves broadly left need to understand.

[B]

Yeah. And the way I talk about this

[A]

is in the context of pushing back

[B]

on how, and I'll throw this back to you after I give my answer. But once again, coming from these right spaces where like you come into your conservative boot camp in the mid 2010s and they will start with telling the fusionist story of like. And this is also used the metaphor of like, the conservative movement is a three legged stool. You've got the fiscal people of the social people and the foreign policy people. So it is just inculcated in you from your first like undergraduate seminar that you are a part of a project once again against a liberal consensus in a variety of different areas. But there are different people and guess What. And when you're talking about your version of the 1950s, when you were talking about there these evangelicals and they weren't quite, you know, a coherent political block at first, but they would be the people who care about school prayer and who would care about the legalization of contraception. So it's a person who was thinking about those issues who really saw these are the people who got Eisenhower to add in God We Trust to coinage because you were trying to push back against what felt like creeping communism. See, that was a. That's an intersection. You have a person who thinks communism is the worst thing ever. You have a person who thinks that like a secularizing America is going to be a disaster. They find something to do together for their own individualized reasons. But it's just so inculcated in you. You enter into these center to left to liberal spaces. And these are three different things, I think. And you just do not see any of that instinct A. Because people are only thinking about party a lot of the time. Until very recently, they can only think who controls the Democratic Party. So like, that's why the instant thing is like go factional. Because the question is, okay, so this left progressive DSA type is primary, this centrist Democrat in this district. Why would you start focusing on fusion? Why would you start focusing on like, what is something they want to do but we also want to do? Because you're ultimately sort of fighting over a fixed pie in a very like defined sense. So that's why once again, and not just for 501c3 purposes. That's why I'm like, no, this isn't about individual races. This is about like a broader, broader, broader ideological picture, but then will then fit in separately. And then secondly, and this is sort of the sort of just this is actually talking about elections. What's always annoyed me, just analytically when you say it out loud about the whole, like, we need to be factionalism and factionalism is good, several things. So one, what people kind of say sometimes. So Jake Auchinquass said this at welcome Fest, we're going to have this like big debate between these factions, but it literally, it literally does not exist. So if we had, if the response from factionalists to me, because they push back very aggressively was Marshall, we're hosting faction fest 2026 where you're going to have the DSA person and you're going to have the centrist and you're going to have the traditional liberal. And guess what? They're going to like fight it out, they're going to fight it out and they're going to argue. And we are doing that event. And New Marshall saying we need fusionist consensus. You're stopping people from having that fight.

[A]

That would be one thing.

[B]

But that's not even happening. Literally. I know centrists who have tried to speak at lefty events that couldn't talk, and lefties who tried to speak at centrist events and couldn't talk. So there's no competition. Secondly, the whole, obviously this is definitely sort of romanticized, but the idea that William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal are debating the great era of the great issues of our time, even if we buy into that mythology, which isn't quite accurate, let's take it broadly, or any of the 2028 candidates at that level of like intellectual discourse, of like debating the big thing. No, that's just like not the deal at all because for a variety of reasons. And this is also why reading a liberal history is fun. Like Hubert Humphrey was a much. This isn't about how, how smart people are just like the type of politicians who were produced by the 20th century. There was just like a higher level of like elevated thinking and debate where like imagine Daniel, Daniel Patrick Monahan could have like a very serious debate with the left about like his sort of neoconservative centrism versus their sort of model. We basically don't have those different versions of people. And even someone like Jake Akost, who I really respect, he's a policy one. But I want to hear like, your response to that.

[C]

Just ask, actually, what are some of those reasons that we don't have those debates or that story? Is it because. And I, I'll just throw out two things on the table, right? I think that the quote unquote centrist or corporatist Dems looked at the DSA types with a huge amount of suspicion or threat to their own politics. And instead of seeing like an embrace, they, they just sidelined them entirely. And I think also on the other side of it, especially in 2020, you had a lot of social and racial justice organizers, particularly in swing states, coming out for Biden and then, you know, really doing the work in a lot of ways and then maybe not getting back what they put into. And so there's like this like mutual and very, I think, well deserved skepticism in a weird way there of the quote unquote centrists who always think that they have the answers and they, they have the policies and these other folks do not. So that's like one reason but then the second reason is also this like capture and this confusion of policy partisanship and ideas. Like I think right now Democrats oftentimes think that these are all the one one thing. And in fact, partisanship is not ideology and policy is not ideology. And I think in part it's because like candidates have ceded so much of their power to these political consultant mahers who just take a billion dollars and light it on a fire in four months or so, like every four years, which is absurd. So I think like those two things, like if you could just lean into and answer this question of what are some of the reasons this deep story, this worldview, this thing doesn't exist and you know, is it culture? Is what is it? And reflecting on those two dynamics I just introduced.

[B]

Yeah, so several things. So one, I said this on a recent episode, but actually I think I

[A]

said this after a recent episode.

[B]

Both sides of the left to liberal centrist spectrum have I think correct suspicions about the other. So I'm going to validate people's suspicions. So I think it's perfectly justified to be a centrist who just want Dems to win a majority and a majority to do what is an issue. But from a peer, like from a pure just saying their opinion in the most sort of good faith sense of just like, look like I'm here to win elections, we need to have a majority. That's how we stop Trump. That is like the number one question. I define that as pragmatism. And what they see, especially if huge parts of the dsa, is a total lack of pragmatism and instead moral fervor related to them deeply believing what they believe. So then on the DSA left side and even the left, because there's plenty of the left there to the right of the dsa. Right. So I will note for you that there are people in Bernie and Warren words who are also deeply skeptical of the DSA too. It's a spectrum. The DSA International Committee endorsed the ccp. So like, I don't want to sort of over valorize the DSA and just say that there are plenty of people on the left who actually don't like the DSA either. But what they would share with the DSA though is you people on the center are so pragmatic that you don't actually believe in anything. And we saw this after the election when your response to the election was not to sort of sit down and reckon with. To your point and my point, like the lack of an authentic story or worldview or all those different things of like, wow, no one wants our ideas, no one truly likes us at a deeper level. Instead, we just sort of saw, okay, here are the polls and look at the polls and here's the focus testing. And you just don't see in left or right spaces that type of instinct. So I think both sides have suspicions and might ask in any sort of like, what's a fusionist convening? If I were to sort of declare something, which you got to be careful of declaring things in these settings is I want the left to not interpret pragmatism as cynicism. And I want the center to believe that you should believe in things. And by saying pragmatism is not cynicism, there are plenty of people in the center who are like, oh, we're pragmatic. That's why we're taking Wall street money. There's a weaponization of pragmatism. But I'm sorry, like, I just still know smart people far to my left who are still ambiguous on the stakes of 2028. Or I think of Brianna Joy Gray, Bernie's press secretary in 2020. It's insane that Bernie hired her. NPR did a story like, establishing the stakes of 2016. This is a famous tweet that goes

[A]

viral all the time.

[B]

Did a story on the stakes of the Supreme Court in terms of the 2016 election. And Brianna Joy Gray tweeted, the Supreme Court doesn't matter. This is fake establishment news to force you to vote, vote blue no matter who. I'm like, that's what I think. Very like. That is just like the opposite of like, what a good pragmatic left should be thinking about things. So that's, that's the sort of origin there. But in terms of why it's actually happened, like, someone gave me this. This isn't my thought. This is someone else's answer. Their answer was, when your side wins, you have no reason to think ideologically. So think about it this way. Like, if we're telling the story of like, centrist center left consensus or and this actually includes the never Trump center right, too right. The like, spectrum of people who felt very comfortable in the post Cold War days. Why would you think about deeper questions of like, what does it mean to live a good life? Which sounds like vapid, but actually it's a really important question that conservatives ask themselves. Why would you ask yourself like, does the system actually work for people? Is actually the college for all model not just from a policy technocratic, but is that a society we want to live in. Because this is where like I come to this, where it's like we've come up with a society and this is what I mean, like versus the policy. But like thinking deeper. My whole critique of like the university system isn't just the vapid we need to take dirty jobs. I hate that one because people have been saying that for 15 years. Hasn't changed anything. It's very vapid. The deeper one is. And this is actually how I trend. This is how I came up to this when I. How I had to translate anti meritocracy to centrist. I said, think about it this way. We've designed a society where who is in charge is determined by how well you did Taking a test at 16, the SAT. That's basically if you actually like there's going to be exceptions, but that's actually kind of like basically it. And the other reason way I kind of explained this is everyone, everyone always like dunks on JFK's like Harvard admission essay from the 30s. There's an Atlantic piece always goes wrong with it goes, my father would very much like me to be a Harvard man, so let me into Harvard. And he didn't get good grades at cho. And everyone's sort of like. And sort of just like, yeah, it's almost as if there are metrics for talent and leadership and intelligence that are not just his GPA or his SAT scores and we're sort like missing something there. So like that's a way of talking about ideas. But like, why would you on the center think about the ideological nature of our university system? If the system just sort of works and there's nothing challenging that system. So there was just no incentive to do it. What I think makes post 2016 so frustrating and why resistance politics was so I think both it was accurate in terms of its understanding of the stakes, but ultimately like a huge problem. Is it convinced people to not think deeply about like, wait, is there something else here beyond just the obvious? Some people did do the wow, NAFTA was a mistake. But like, even that one is kind of in the policy centric category. Because the way I tell it is there's a way that you just go, you know what? If only we hadn't entered into the WTO or signed it after the way we did, America would have turned out fine. And I actually don't think that's true. So I'd be curious, what do you think about that?

[C]

I think that there's something to be said said. I really want to go back to this centrist thing and the pragmatism question, which is, you know, there is a suspicion that centrists just don't believe in anything. But I think even worse, there is this fear that they're lying or deceiving or being inauthentic, that it's just a Trojan horse for some outdated neoliberalism. And I know, like, that's the kind of accusation that even get thrown and lobbed at the abundance movement sometimes from the left. Right, right. And so even though, like, I would say, like Mamdani's New York is leaning on a lot of abundance policies, but I think that there is like a really deep suspicion of not naming what you stand for. So that in that 2016 moment, because you're like, quote, unquote liberalism, neoliberalism was being attacked from maga right, populist left. And they just got super defensive and didn't know what to, what to seed and say. Yeah, you're right. I guess tpp. Right. Like, remember that. But what to cede and what to defend. And it just turned into this really difficult reckoning and also a kind of like, you know, like ugly leaning into some of the, just the safest parts of the culture war for the Democratic Party in a weird way, like, leaning into, okay, we'll talk about the identity stuff, but we're not going to necessarily touch the administrative state. We're not going to touch, like class. We're not going to touch capitalism. Like, those are, those are hard questions to. We don't have the language for because we haven't really had to have that conversation in a long time. But I guess, like, I do want to think now about like, actually what is the story? And now I. Look, I know a lot of folks are asking, why didn't you, or you say, okay, Marshall, why You talk about this need for story filling the liberal void, acknowledging this authenticity gap which you cite me. You know that feeling where the story and the reality aren't working anymore. Like, you, you talk about the need to embrace story as an essential thing. Not just a, a, a child's book thing, the, the Derek Thompson quote. But so why didn't you give the story and what are your hunches for what that story could be?

[B]

Yeah. So. And this is where I want to go back and forth with you, particularly in this one, a training from my time on the New Right. Right. Like, I was in the rooms 2014, the rooms, the group chats, et cetera. 2014, 2015, 2016. That period where if any one person had showed up. So, and this is why I'm admitting I could be vulnerable to like over extrapolating from like my training in terms of policy and politics. But if someone had showed up to a meeting and just been like, so here's the thing, this is the new right. They would have been actually. And sometimes people did try to do that and they were laughed out of the room, like, very clearly because it's like, ooh, not only like, who do you think you are? But like, actually you're trying to control everything and there's just a deep suspicion of those types of people. And B, I also think that, and this is me sort of building upon your work, you gave me this, this is why I think it's so important. And I just want to note this for people, but like, I don't see you as like a policy first person and we're incentivized to talk about policy. Like, you forced me into a more like cultural sort of like frame of things. I, I've actually just been convinced of the fact that if Wyoff Buckley was like, it's 1955, this is the fusionist consensus that actually wouldn't have worked. And like actually what you had. And I think the difficult. And this is where I'm not overstating fusionism, but like the real challenge, if you are at all liberal or on the left and you're in this, let's say, anti liberal coalition in terms of the future of the country, is we're basically going to have to speed run this process of like, how you're going to have to make this process happen much, much, much, much quicker and in different ways than it's done before. So my actual thing here then is I do not believe that like I can just say in a piece, here's the story. I actually think on a podcast though, because like, we're just kind of going back and forth. People were like listening to us during their commute. I can say to you, Danielle, hey, and we actually kind of started here earlier. Here's where I think part of the story is we actually unironically, in the glow of like the post Cold War era, designed a society that actually doesn't make any sense. And there are ways that we can make that society make more sense and be better that do not require us to concede everything to the right populace and the left populist. Because this is me speaking to the centrists. And that's why I love the first example I ever came up with that broke through really was the 16 year old SAT example of okay, actually that certain even that example too in terms of these things emerging. I say that message to Silicon Valley coded and Wall street coded people. Some of these people are people whose children have skipped college to go work at an AI startup and sf. So even within their story that makes sense, they're like oh yeah, like it would suck if like in 15 years people were just sort of like well your, you know, children work at this like really like interesting company or they had this really crazy 5 year experience but you know, you didn't go to generic Ivy University so we're just not going to take them seriously. They viscerally understand that. But even that understanding of how an SF you could just drop out of college or not go to college and go to work, that starts in the 2010s when Peter Thiel starts doing the Thiel Fellowship and normalizes that and then Y Combinator to make it more centrist friendly, they start funding companies that are college dropouts or didn't go to college. So even like me saying, part of the story is we designed a higher ed system and if we understand and everyone knows, knows for example too. But the diploma divide is in many ways like bigger than even the class divide. How like you could be a person who makes $60,000 a year as an adjunct so. But also there could be half the country who still hates you and saying but no right wing person who didn't go to college, that person makes the same wage you do. And they would unironically say yeah. And they probably wouldn't have this language, but they would still say us paying fairer taxes would not actually adjudicate the beefs I have. So everything is about not everything, but so much is about this higher education divide. Even that narrative only makes sense through the lens of 10 or 15 years of things that have also been happening. So that's emerging. And if I had sat down in 2013 and tried to say, you know, because think of George Packer. George Packer is like work that we really, really, really enjoy. So his book the Unwinding, it came out that year. If you actually asked, talk to George Packer, the book has no conclusions. I asked him before the episode, sort of what was your sort of thesis? He was sort of like I just felt like the vibes were off, I'm using modern language. But he was like, everyone was telling me like Obama got reelected, everything was great. And he was like, I just felt like I couldn't quite name it. But the vibes Turned off. So I did a reported book describing people and stories and issues that demonstrated these different vibes being off. And that's how we got Peter Thiel saying a bunch of people on the right think the successor to Romney is going to be like a happy talk sonny Reaganite. And he's like, I actually think the successor is going to be darker. That presence Trump, he's saying that in 2013. That's an example of how this just sort of emerges. So I think of what you and I are trying to do at a project level in some ways is sort of like an updated version of what George Packer is trying to do. Or it has to be like a lot more forward facing because we know more now. But I'm sort of just like, I can tell the vibes are off, but I want people to engage with that idea that something's wrong and you to focus your time and attention on that. Beyond just sort of doing what too many people call themselves liberal, which also includes a lot of people who are really, who are really classically liberal libertarians. So frankly had nothing to do with this story in terms of this broader coalition. These are people who are sort of like, no, no, no, like free trade was actually the greatest thing ever and I'm going to sor. Making up the center of my identity. And actually Social Security is taxation. It's bad. It's. There's a we, we. You and I need to have a whole episode on what do you do with the classical liberals. Because it's this like really interesting example of people who see themselves as anti illiberalism. And I think that's good. But my question is, why are you anti liberal? And a bunch of those reasons are going to be about like, they're not pluralistic free. They're going to offer like, you know, a third of the portfolio is going to be very reasonable and the type of thing that would be like lend itself. Lend itself well to like fusionism. I know people on the center and the liberal side and the left who want pluralism, but the two thirds are like, oh yeah, we need to go full speed on globalization. Oh yeah, I love abundance. And abundance for me, isn't Zoron saying, hey, it's bad that there's so much regulation that we can't build the public bathrooms we want to build, so we're going to fix that regulation. That's bad. That's Zorin's abundance versus the right wing abundance. People who are like, oh yeah, we're. They all say they're Classical liberals, they're like, I'm a classical liberal. And that means I want AI to just go full bore when all of America hates that. And that is what the good version of. I think it's actually very important.

[C]

I don't know what any of these terms mean anymore. It's just the gosh darn truth. And I think that's where we need to lean in. And you know, recently for my book, someone read the prologue and said, oh, Daniel. And for those who don't know, I'm writing this book based off of some years I spent observing conservative media influencers who worked adjacent to Steve Bannon. It was a doctoral project. And it's very ethnographic. It's, it's very visceral. And one thing at the beginning, when I talk about them, someone asked me, well, Danielle, like, what do you believe? How can I trust you as a narrator if you don't say what you believe? And I was really thinking back to that period of like, Danielle circa 2013, who was reading the Unwinding, and Danielle in 2017, who was thinking about Trump and saying like, yeah, like he's saying a lot of things that are really validating to folks in my world. And I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, very close to Butler, where he got shot, right, which who really felt he was resonating. And words like classical liberal kind of just was more of a identity code for weird college Republicans who wore polyester suits and bad bow ties. And you know, so I wasn't that, but I wasn't like rah rah Obama. And maybe that's because I saw the consolidation of executive power and I was just raised as this sort of like transgressive, like, farm girl who just really like, was suspicious of that kind of thing. So I was very suspicious of, of that. I was also really suspicious of, you know, I, I like the word socialist. Like, I, I, I'm not allowed to say those words in my parents household, you know, so I couldn't really identify the words meant nothing. They were empty. And I think in moving forward, yeah, sure, you have to cue a vibe. You have to cue a sense of belonging. And you don't do that using language of the 20th century. You use that using symbols, stories, esthetics and basic language. Like, hey, I actually do believe that this state governments should be able to hold corporations accountable to the pain and suffering they cause. And in the farm bill this week, right, like, there is actually provisions that are taking that very right away. And I can say, oh, well, you know, you're you're. We need like nationalism, we need this and that. It's like, no, tell me plain what is happening? What do you believe on a very first order thinking level, which is a very common phrase in the conservative movement that like liberals, I feel sometimes freak out about. They're like, what does it mean, first order thinking? But so, so that's what I'm saying is where can culture come from? And I think, or where does story come from? And it comes from being very specific, specific about what's happening and what's going on without using jargon, which is actually really hard to do. So then when I did have to go back to that intro in the book and say like, what I believed without using jargon, without using, you know, some sort of like political philosophy thing, it's. It was actually quite hard and really, really instructive. I invite everyone to write down what they believe without using jargon. And I. I guess maybe that's a place for you to begin. Marshall.

[B]

So two things. So one, I really realized I need to. My focus on the word liberal also comes down to the story that I want to tell about this project that I'm undergoing. So, like, the story that I would tell is, I think New Deal liberalism, FDR to LBJ is responsible for most of the things in terms of an accomplishment perspective that I really care about and love about this country. And in terms of telling the story. So 32 to 68, you had this liberal hegemony, did so many amazing things. And then though you get Vietnam, you get the assassinations of MLK and rfk, American liberalism itself falls apart. If you actually read These books about 20th century American liberalism, 1968 is the real origin story of a lot of the different problems. And then what happened is after 68 and like the liberal consensus fell apart, you saw a bunch of attempts to renew liberal ideology. So like in one of the books I have this scholar Henry Tongs on to talk about this, McGovern was actually not like a traditional leftist. He was actually more of the. These are people who like went to college. Think of like the base of his party is the people who went to college and weren't primarily motivated by economic issues and saw the New Deal. Their version of the New Deal liberal story that I told was actually, you're basically saying we should support our party on a bunch of racist union members. And actually I went to college and I've been more educated and I know we need to do something different. The dunk on them was that they were liberalism for the late leisure class was like the sort of like, dunk on them. So that with McGovern, didn't go anywhere. And then you sort of saw attempts during the 1980s to do something new. And then this finally then led to Third Wayism, which is what liberalism giving up on ideology doesn't mean. So it's like, wow, conservatism is just so strong that all we have is a Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party wins the degree to which it steals conservative ideas and reframes them in ways that could still appeal to people who vote for Democrats. So you give up an ideology. So I am using liberal in a very. And this is. Thank you for asking. See, this is why you, you talk and ask questions. So the story I'm trying to tell here at a project level is American liberalism died in 1968, tried to reboot itself for the next two decades, and then we just gave up after 1992. And now in the same way that the right realigned itself by thinking ideologically because Donald Trump did not come down the escalator saying, let's save the Republican Party. Here's my polls that show how we can appeal to young black men. He said, hey, we're going to make America great again. And then there are other people who are thinking like, there was a new Right. So I think Trump speaks very ideologically, and I just think it's a convenient way of just telling the story. But, yeah, you look skeptical if that's something.

[C]

Yeah, I think a lot of people would argue and I would say I don't think Trump's ideology is clear. And like, it's not like, oh, he's, he's capitalist or he is neoliberal or he has a national, you know, he likes nationalist economics. Like, I don't think that Trump has that kind of ideological valence, even if the New Right that preceded him did and other people around him did. I think that he was really good at threading a needle. And also there is an authenticity to Trump in a weird way that is this man is sort of like honest in his deception, he's honest in his lying. He's. To get Trump to do something, you have to appeal to his vanity or his ego, his drive for power, which is he's, as Steve Bannon says, a blunt force instrument. And that's very honest. And you can hitch a lot of different ideological projects on Trump. He's sort of like, MAGA is a shape shifting mean. It can mean a lot of different things, which I think for listeners, they might be confused and think that ideology or worldview is like a fixed thing that is like a kind of staid belief system, when in fact, it's actually like worldview is something that's really dynamic through time. And so I would just problematize that and say there were a lot of different ideologies around Trump that were outcast by liberalism or by the old Republican Party that found themselves a champion that they could potentially throw their ideologies onto, or their. Their objectives or their policies or their beliefs. And whether that's like, you know, the national economic, nationalist, economics, nationalist populism, Right? Closing the borders, this sort of fixation on immigrant, a very specific vision of immigration, or bringing conservative Christian nationalism back to the forefront of people's minds. Abortion. Right. There's so many different ways of, like, showing how people should live that they hitched on to Trump, but Trump himself is not one of any of those things. Right? So I would just throw it back to you and say, like, is that ideology or is that actually something different? Let's call it worldview, or just kind of authenticity, like raw authenticity.

[B]

I smiled slash smirked when you said that, because I forgot the takeaway with my own piece, which I, like, worked with you on, is, you're right. Trump did not have an ideology. He had a worldview. Like, and the whole thing that. That I said and that, like, we collaborated on in terms of the actual piece was worldview, ideology, policies. So Trump has a worldview. And it's really funny, I did an episode with Sager where I asked if Trump striking Iran was a betrayal of America first. And I actually said, within Trump's worldview, it's actually really not. And we shouldn't have been surprised by this, because there's a great article in the Atlantic about this. Trump was really shaped by the Iranian host, his crisis, and he's talked about it for 40 years. And Trump never actually said, and he freaking assassinated Soleimani. So he's been very clear that he is willing to punch people in the face and kill people. What he is not interested in is, hey, we're going to make the world a democracy, or we're going to invest in the global order. That's not his worldview, but his worldview coming. And also, a lot of this is real estate. This is why he loves getting the deals together. It's like, hey, Iran came, they punched us in the face and they humiliated us, and I'm going to punch them in the face. And that is America first, like Trump could articulate. And this is why, like, Iran is a specific problem for the, like, isolationist or to use the pejorative or the restraint. Right. Because you could actually totally make a coherent America first case for they killed 800Americans in Iraq in the 2000s, and they got away with it. And they just will not respect Donald Trump. And the world thinks we're weak. And you know what? We're going to teach them the lesson, because we're America first and America is not going to hold back like Obama did. So, like, I'm not saying I believe any of what I just said, but, like, you could very easily, within Trump's worldview, get there. And there's just, like, a real example of how, once again, to your point, this illustrates the, like, worldview, then ideology. What the America first ideology people run into is their worldview is a little different than Donald Trump. So Kurt Mills of the American Conservative, he did an episode with Ross Douthat talking about this dilemma. And you could just tell that Kurt is just not personally motivated by animus towards Iranians. Like, I don't mean in a racial sense. I mean, just sort of like the Iranian government. He's sort of like, we could probably never be friends. But, you know, like, that is not Trump's worldview. So even though they would technically. So this is just proving, like, the point of your question, which is that even though they technically would be within the MAGA ideological camp, the reason why there's, like, less and less coherence is there's actually a significant, significant gap between, like, the worldviews. And also at a generational level. Right. Like, you and I weren't alive during the Iranian hostage crisis. We just look at Iran differently than someone of Trump's age would be. So I'm just really fascinated by that.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, like, that goes down to this thing about the relationship between story, culture, authenticity. That one's personality is not enough. Like, you can't force someone to say something that doesn't sound like it's coming from them. And I think that, generally speaking, the party first, as opposed to worldview or ideology first, politics on the left generally, or like the Democratic Party, it's like, they really want to appeal to this idea of popularism or, like, what the people want. And if what the people want is against people who you are, like, it's not gonna sell. You're not gonna be able to to thread that needle unless you're just a character that has been in the American imagination as long as Trump has been. And. And that's A really difficult thing. And so I think that this is why having conversations outside of the policy frame, outside of even the ideological frame, which has a lot of jargon, and getting down to tell me a story about how the world works and how it should work without that jargon, and coming together as different groups or factions or communities and really getting down to those brass tacks, that's actually how you create a superordinate, you know, sense of worldview. Maybe there's like a lot of different versions of it. And you tell that in different, you know, lingo to your community or in a different style or even different, like, aesthetics, aesthetic, like it could, it can happen in different places, in religious communities and ethnic communities, in geographic communities, across the diploma divide. But, like, get to me on that story. And I think, you know, to just sort of think about this is a big moment for anyone who isn't really buying the Trump worldview. And that includes a lot of maga and that, that includes a lot of conservatives right now, to say nothing of everyone else who's been opposed to him for a long time. And I'm not saying, oh, you have to appeal to them and change your story from them, because that's not going to work either. What I'm saying is this is a really big moment because that authenticity gap, like the story that is being told versus what is happening is also breaking open. And that's an interesting moment. Like, we don't ne. We don't have to react necessarily anymore and defend the New Deal or the neoliberal or the Obama order or the whatever. We've all agreed, like, it's. Trump has done a lot to destroy that stuff anyway, that you can't even defend it and bring it back. So if you're a lot's wife, you will, you will turn into a pillar of salt. Like, you're, you're not going forward. So there is this big opportunity to think, not, like, okay, like, if we're in a moment where there is a government that is increasingly taking power up to the federal level, this increasingly taking power up to the oligarchist level and money and resources and vision as well, then what does that do for the rest of us? And like, what would it look like if we retook that power or, or blocked that in some ways and for, in geographically, in different communities, in every different space, and be really brutally honest about that. And when we disagree, at least we can have that, like, honest disagreement in service of heaven, you know.

[B]

So, yeah, I wanted to offer some quick last conclusions so that really crystallized as you were giving kind of your last response. So, one, I'm realizing I care about the word liberal in this project so much because it doesn't mean anything. And because everyone agrees it doesn't mean anything, there's an opportunity to turn it into something. So I love when you basically said 20th century language, outdated models and modes and debates. I'm like, because everyone agrees the term liberal was abandoned for 40 years and then they tried to do the progressive offshoot and then they tried to do these other things that didn't quite work. We have this empty term that really, you know, people have heard of the term. It means something, we could do something, what we want for it. People would disagree with me on that. But that's. You got me to the core of like, why am I attracted to it? I'm like, it's a open field and that means you could build a project. Two, to your point about people who may have voted for Trump but are also like, oppositional to it, you're also getting at the core of a question people ask me, which is like, what are the conditions for fusionism? The conditions for fusionism are when there is a set of different factions, groups, people, whatever, who share opposition to some other big thing. So you couldn't do fusionism in many ways during the 1990s. Right? There was no way you're going to get a WTO protester. And a third way is to think of themselves as working towards a coalition because like, like moderate coded Texas Governor George W. Bush, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, it just, like, doesn't work as well. The stakes did not appear to be as high as they were. However, when you're describing the sort of bros I meet at the gym who, like, find themselves weirdly freaking out about ice or are unhappy with RFK Jr. Or don't want to get drafted to go fight against Iran, they actually oppose something. And I'm not saying that this means at a project level that like, every single possible actor and factor is going to get wrapped in. But as a starting point, there is some broad illiberal, quickly fading hegemony where if we don't seek to build something else that's fresh and new and moving forward, we just repeat Biden 2020 to 2024 all over again, where it turns into, like a status game for power between niche, inside baseball, D.C. people. A quick last anecdote I'll share and then I'll get to my third and final point is I was talking to a very, very. Let's just say a famous person within the progressive world. So in the sort of progressive left world who said, we already have fusionism, look what happened during the 2020 campaign after Biden won. And this is. I see how he got there. He said, Warren and Bernie, people got a lot of big jobs in Biden's administration. And we negotiated that. And once again, this is how everyone becomes a technocrat institutionalist, even if you're on the left. I'm like, dude, I literally said this to them. And this person was convinced by this argument. So I was very. I was like, that's actually why the administration failed. Because when you were letting. So for example, everyone's like, why was Biden talking about the care economy? Why was Biden who sort of signed up for the Lina Khan agenda? Because Biden didn't sign up for the Linacon agenda. I'm not saying he shouldn't have campaigned on it, but when you basically turn different factions working together to produce some sort of whole into this inside baseball. We all went to Yale Law school or have PhD work on econ projects because you have versions of that personality on the center, the sort of liberal side of things. And the left, it just doesn't make any sense. And I was like, so that's why. And by the way, you know who aren't in those meetings or Cabinet secretaries, so that's why the cabinets were. What if you had said, hey, like, Cabinet Secretary Blank, could you explain the care economy? They couldn't have explained it because this was a thing that Heather Boucher, who was this like, think tank person on the left, got the job on the National Economic Council because this thing with Warren, everything I just said is gobberly gook. And that doesn't translate. So that is what bad fascism looks like. So, yeah, this is just why. This just like, fuels a lot for me. And I don't know, I'm just like, I just enjoy this conversation because, like, I don't have a lot of answers. But I think if I'm sort of understanding my own personal story, then you could close on your response or anything you want to say. I have been drawn to spaces where there are no answer, where there are a lot of open questions and there are no answers, which means that you could sort of step up and do things right. So I was interested in the right in 2013 because, like, oh, wow, Obama is forever. That's boring. That wasn't interesting to me. Oh, here's my actual last thing. Oh, I remembered my. I'm not going to do A Rick Perry and forget my third thing, but I wanted to highlight something you said that people may have, like, jumped over. So you were talking about how if we just talk about policy, we miss the different ways that things like don't cohere together. And the thing, the thing, the thing I'll add on this is with all these people, there's real cultural gaps and differences. So something that Elizabeth Wilkins, who's the head of the Roosevelt Institute, she was Lena Khan's person during the Biden White House. She said, my big objection to the center is that it just refuses to name enemies. And FDR named enemies win. The left named enemies. And I want the center to name enemies. And at first that didn't really resonate with me other than Trump. And then like, at first I was sort of like, eh, I don't know, things are more complicated than that. But then as I sort of saw the center be juiceless and not mean anything, I was like, no, wait, this is a huge flaw for us. But I was only thinking of it in political and policy terms because after I sort of dunked on the not naming things, I got like a really helpful. And this speaks to your point about culture and personality, not just policy. I got a Note from a 22 year old who was like, hey, love the show. But I actually really reject how dismissive you were of how not naming enemies is just this like, blah, centrist thing. Because he was like, oh, I believe in things. But part of the reason why I'm reluctant to name enemies is ever since I was in middle school, Trump has been the president. And when I hear naming enemies, I hear Kabuki Theater DC Christine Noem. And once again, we could, like, quibble with this, but the point is he had a different cultural and personal valence that a, you know, that two millennials who are inside baseball and are in the systems of power that meant different things to different people. So what's so key? That's why I just wanted to highlight what you said, like, respecting that he's not a centrist squish. When he goes, that makes me uncomfortable because he sees it through a different cultural lens. He didn't say any policies. He was like, that just sounds like a bunch of hacks going on YouTube and screaming at each other. Because we were talking about this in the context of abundance. And I was like, and you know what? Like, he reminded me why I originally was into abundance, because he said I was attracted to abundance because it was the first thing in my sort of like, political consciousness where People were like, you know, all this stuff of everyone punching each other. We can actually do things in this country. And that was how he interpreted it. So I just want to remember that. Like, I just love, like, you're. I'm just like, so excited right now because you just reminded me of, like, that's what he was really saying to me, which is that I'm purely thinking in terms of, are you voting for the CFPB or are you not voting for the cfpb? If you are, if you're not voting for it, it's because you refuse to name Wall street as the enemy of the people. That's like a policy lens. But there's also just sort of like, that's. By the way, that's. Isn't that so depressing? His story of like his entire political lifetime is this bullshit.

[C]

It's like, basically he grew up in Twitter brain, and so he's. I don't want to Twitter brain. I want to talk about other things. I want to do things in material reality instead of 140 characters. And I think that is very interesting because both you and I remember, like a world where there was a different kind of relationship to politics. That wasn't Twitter brains.

[B]

But one last story that I want to share for you in terms of praise, since you came on my show to talk about my own writing and I really appreciate you sort of helped me make my thoughts more coherent. It's not a shocker that my first actual writing came after you and I started hanging out and working together. So I would really appreciate that. But I had this funny thing. So as people know, you are the coiner of does not fuck. This is everyone's favorite sort of thing for me. And this is our once every four weeks reference to it. But this is also something you said about speaking clearly and plainly. That's another sort of cultural coded. That's not policy lesson I want to make for people. And my anecdote that I want to share for you, but also signal to people this is why this matters is. And I should also note, by the way, I delayed Danielle's episode. This is me speaking to the audience because I was like, oh, she said the F bomb. And I'm a public policy think tank guy. I'm. I don't know, I published it and people resonated with that. But I have a long running beef with national service as like an idea, as just like this sort of centrist, elite, bullshit depolarization thing that doesn't actually fuck in terms of. Doesn't actually depolarize and would just instead be like a bunch of right winger forced to do BLM stuff at NGO in 2020. And I'm like, this wouldn't go the way you think it is. But the way I typically explain this beef is I just go through that and give the think taken for a version. But I was interviewing this person who was pro national service and a centrist, and I just said, you came into my mind like Obi Wan Kenobi speaking to Luke as he's doing the Death Star trench. I had to millennial age myself when I said that. And I just went, I have a way of saying this. This is much more complicated, but I'll speak plain with you. I said this to the guest, but national service just kind of sucks. I don't like it. I think it's this like, elitist, like, annoying centrist thing. And there's a reason why you've been saying this for 40 years and it hasn't turned into a thing. So I just, like, spoke plainly. I got outreach. I'm not going to say who this was, but by some people who are working and they were like, thank you so much for saying that. They were like, thank you for us for just like, they were like, we just had this feeling that that was true even though we work in the space. So I just think it's just like, because you just referenced. I'm trying to, like, sort of put a pin in things you said earlier in the episode that I really want to, like, amplify. You just talk about the importance of. By the way, everyone I'm talking about IV educated inside the Asela quarter, they just benefit from speaking plainly. So I have to get out of think tank mode and I want to keep pushing myself to do that, but I just want to give that as an example of, like, to the policy part of my audience. Like, you could still make a substantive point and not gussy it up in unhelpful language. So take us out however you want, Danielle. This is your show for the day.

[C]

Yeah, no, thanks, Marshall. It's interesting sometimes because I don't, you know, as someone who's not a policy person coming on your show, it. I don't get a lot of the references you say sometimes, but I know, like, it's your audience. Like, you have policy people, you have think tank people. You play the inside baseball DC thing. And as a new DC resident, I'm still trying to make sense of that culture and get into that culture. And one of the things that I Noticed I was talking to a friend and we had this like really intimate conversation over lunch about like our lives. And she like, wow, thank you for that. That was so nice. And I said like, don't, don't. Doesn't everyone have these like conversations in D.C. and she's like, no, no ever. It might turn up on someone's like, you know, national security clearance or whatever. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

[B]

It's also about what happens when a culture is optimized around not making people uncomfortable. Right. There's a whole industrial complex around funding, democracy, work and national service and it. And because none of it actually works and like, I mean it literally doesn't work, it'd be awkward to be like, hey wait, what if what we're doing here is all just kind of bullshit? And it's sort of an excuse for foundations to throw nice conferences and throw money to us who make like nice livings before we go work in the private sector. That'd be an incredibly uncomfortable thing to say. And if you say that to someone, then someone could say that to me in a different way. And so it's. You have a culture of optimizing for not being uncomfortable. And I think the key next step is every single objection or so many of the objections to like fusionism are rooted in. But this is gonna be uncomfortable. And actually this is going to be that. And this is only going to work as at a values level of a culture level. If you are at all in the sort of anti illiberal side of things, after 2024, we're out of the world where there's an outcome where you are not going to be made uncomfortable at some point. That. And that is, that is something you have to buy in. Like that's what the. That's 2014America, not post 2024America. So I just want to like say

[C]

that culturally, politics, policy and all of this over avoid in a weird way those deeper issues because they are vulnerable and the language is kind of scary and squishy and like, and, but that's indicative of like a larger problem of getting back to real friction in the world. And so like, you know, I would love personally national service, like I wish that we could talk about it in a way that it would fuck so hard that people could do it. Like, I would have loved to have something like that as a young person to experience a different part of the country and meet different kinds of people. But sometimes I think like people throw it on the table in the same way that they Throw out, like, oh, we just need more like participatory democracy. We just need more people to participate. And I'm like, have you ever been to a community board meeting or, or for that matter, have you ever lived in like a co op? Like, very quickly you decide you don't want to go to those things or live that way anymore. Very quickly, because then next thing you know, everyone's having this like, weird consensus problem about who let the tofu sit in the sink so long that it started sprouting. And so that's what I mean about getting really real about, like, describe to me the feeling, the vision, the story of this, like, jargon that you just used to, of, of something that you want. And maybe if you actually get into the meat of that, you'll discover a way to make that idea or emerge that idea down the line of something that is resonant. But if you're just staying in that really high level thing and avoiding the friction of actually describing what it is, which is way harder, by the way, then you're, you're actually doing yourself a disservice. So that's like, for, for those of us like myself who just moved to D.C. you know, maybe y' all policy people can talk to me a little more. And I, I, I used to say, like, oh, I feel like I'm just asking these really stupid questions because I, I would ask, well, well, what is that? And actually the answer isn't often that people are looking down on me, it's that they don't have an answer. And so I think at the end of the day, I would just say, like, what I loved about your piece so much is in its own way and its own language to its own audience, this missing liberal story piece was able to articulate the first steps of that effort of like, really bringing it down to a place where we can actually begin to see, use kind of some common language, make some new language so that we can actually see the ways in which our ideas, our worldviews, our ideologies, our stances, our pain, our desire is actually where it overlaps and where it doesn't. So, you know, good first step. Thanks for letting me interview you, Marshall.