Trump won’t deliver for voters, but do Democrats actually want to defeat him?

Episode Summary

As Donald Trump’s second presidential administration takes shape with a host of controversial and unpopular executive orders and numerous unqualified and bizarre nominees like Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, it raises the question, is this what his voters asked for?

That question is actually a lot more difficult to answer than it may seem, because people voted for Trump for a variety of different reasons, some of which were even contradictory.

We'll get into that on today’s episode and also discuss why Democrats have been unwilling and unable to offer a different alternative to the politics of credentialism that they've been creating for the past several decades. My guest on today's episode is Chris Lehmann, the Washington bureau chief for The Nation magazine. He's also the author of the 2016 book, “The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream.”

The video of our December 17, 2024 discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Related Content

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--Why January 6th was the inevitable product of the Christian Right’s hatred of America

--How Pentecostal Christianity is taking over the world of religion, and why it matters

--Ezra Taft Benson and the tangled history of Mormon and evangelical extremism

--Lehmann article: Trump’s inauguration revealed whom he really serves: the billionaires and the crypto bros

--Lehmann article: A guide to the lesser-known movers and shakers of Trump’s administration

--Lehmann article: What happened to the Democratic Party?

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

06:09 — Ultra-libertarians and religious zealots think the same way

09:09 — Friedrich Nietzsche is the ultimate inspiration for today's tech oligarchs

15:51 — Democrats don't know how to advocate against religious zealotry

19:55 — Far-right people lost in the marketplace of ideas, so they're trying to overthrow the marketplace

24:38 — Hypocrisy isn't a vice to rightwingers, and the left should stop using it as an argument

27:58 — Democrats refuse to retire failed leaders

31:01 — Despite Democrats' problems, progressives have not learned to persuade

36:03 — Democrats want to win at politics, but hate actually engaging in it

40:25 — Democrats' dilemma with working class representation

41:56 — Have wealthy Democrats reduced race and class advocacy into symbolic gestures?

48:46 — Adlai Stevenson as a Democratic archetype

49:53 — Will the new Democratic National Committee chair shake things up in the party?

55:49 — The role of employers in immigration issues

58:42 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Your book, I believe, kind of prefigured the final form of Trumpism which is what we're seeing now, a cabinet of oligarchs, despite the fact that he ran on being a populist supposedly, and this is not at all what people thought they were getting. So, just give us a little synopsis overall of the book if you could, and then we can go from there.

CHRIS LEHMANN: The Money Cult is a sort of reinterpretation of American religious history. I won't bore you with the full sweep of the argument, but it's an argument that basically what we now see as the prosperity gospel, which is a Pentecostal tendency to equate wealth with Christian virtue is actually, it's long been sort of dismissed as a Huxley's grift, and the Elmer Gantry kind of, mode of fast [00:03:00] talking revivalists who take everyone's money, get embroiled in a sex scandal and then disappear.

And my view it's much more central to religious and political history in America. And we've seen over time very pronounced movement of first sort of ambivalence about market capitalism in the early settlement of the country. And then starting basically with the second great awakening, this massive drive to imbue the market with mystical properties. We see it in the revival work of Charles Finney. We see it actually in the rise of Mormonism, which is a story you know well.

And there's this tight equation of worldly success with divine favor. And there's also this tremendous imaginative effort to put America sort of at the forefront of Protestant virtue and success, to make it a prophetic nation, even though there obviously is no [00:04:00] mention of America in the scriptures.

That involves, again, Mormonism is a big, plays a big role in shifting the scenery around here. So by, the sort of later phase of American capitalism, The most popular preacher in the country is, Joel Osteen who significantly, has no theological training was a communications major at the Oral Roberts University and is a pure exponent of this, kind of model of faith where divine favor rains down on you In the form of wealth.

So Joel Osteen has actually written that God has found him great parking spots, and God engineered a deal in 2007 so he could flip his house and make a significant cash return on that and it's also a sort of. Healing [00:05:00] ministry, Osteen comes out of this seed faith tradition in Pentecostalism that involves sort of a mind cure model of spiritual healing. And yeah, we have, my book came out in 2016 ahead of the election and we've seen All of these forces converge around the figure of Donald Trump, and it's often a mystery to the secular sort of pundit class, which I live in the center of here in Washington.

Why Does Trump why is the most ardent faction behind Trump white evangelicals, he is, womanizer of serial sexual assaulter. A very erratic church.

SHEFFIELD: Nonbeliever.

LEHMANN: Yeah. And I do think, this larger story of how American Protestantism merged with American capitalism is that story how, people who are absolutely convinced they are four square true believing Christians can line up behind a figure like Donald Trump. [00:06:00] Capitalism is ultimately what explains that and the peculiar spiritualized version of capitalism we live among here in the U S

Ultra-libertarians and religious zealots think the same way

SHEFFIELD: Well, and so, and you don't talk about this in the book, but obviously Ayn Rand was a big figure in the present day cult of capitalism the money cult, but in a different form in, some ways, while she obviously was not a religious believer what she was doing was creating a religion of capitalism.

And I think ultimately that's what these more non religious people like Mark Andreessen have decided to join up with the religious cult aspect because, hey, it's a cult, they're both a cult, so might as well team up.

LEHMANN: And they, feed off each other symbiotically and in a way that, I mean, Silicon Valley is all about synergy. So, yeah, and I do think That figure like round is, quite pivotal and it. She's a reminder not to sort of [00:07:00] get bogged down and, conventional categories of secular and observant Christianity, because this is a much more fluid kind of popular faith that is very syncretic and absorbs all kinds of influences because, the one consistent through line and, Iron Man grew up in the Soviet Union and she was a devout atheist throughout her life, there is no hint of religious belief in her work.

And yet, yeah, she herself is the object of a cult. And she created this sort of imaginative cult of heroic, mogul driven capitalism. The Howard Rourke figures, like, The hero, of the fountainhead, her first breakout novel who are also, rapists. So, there's a lot going on there that does again fit in neatly with, the Trump moment.

And I think Rand is this kind of I don't know, you could say she's a John the Baptist figure [00:08:00] in the Trump prosperity faith. She's certainly prophetic in, putting forward this model of, kind of the Caesar businessman who is a solitary genius who, no social convention or conventional morality applies to him.

He, as Howard work does, he blows up his building at the climax of the fountain head. He's just that kind of a guy and all of these. People in Silicon Valley. I mean, I shouldn't say all, but a pronounced segment of them, the Elon Musk's and the Mark Andreessen's, the Peter Thiel's, they are steeped in this kind of fiercely anti statist, fiercely libertarian ideology where any, the end always justifies the means.

I think that's, the Randian morality that we, are seeing. Run rampant right now. As you mentioned, and in Trump's cabinet and, the oligarchic cast of Silicon [00:09:00] Valley and a media that is already sort of capitulating to a second Trump administration. It's it's a worrying time.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. It is.

Friedrich Nietzsche is the ultimate inspiration for today's tech oligarchs

SHEFFIELD: And, I, the other kind of, uh, let's say pre history person of this moment, I think also is the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche um, as well,

LEHMANN: We're really playing all day.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's where I mean, that's cause, and he's also interesting though, because not only does he sort of pre figure Trump ism and Randism.

But also, his innate reactionary authoritarianism because it was unbounded by, bourgeois morality or religion. It also explains why we've had this recent cast of characters who had for many decades, such as Matt Taibbi for instance, identified as leftists have now ended up jumping on the [00:10:00] Trump train because in fact they were, Nietzschean leftists is what they were.

And they just hated, they hated America. They hated bourgeois morality. And in some ways Trump is who they are.

LEHMANN: Yeah, I think there is a lot of overlap there. That hadn't occurred to me. And it's interesting because, Taibbi did, sort of come up journalistic age in post Soviet Russia, which was a playground of Russian oligarchs. And he was very cynical about all that, but yeah, it does seem, I was just reading today, he issued some statement or may have been a recirculated statement, why he doesn't cover Republicans as critically as Democrats.

And it's because. Democrats have this chokehold on all the cultural, it's the old refrain. I've been, on the left my entire adult life and I have, I must be very bad at my job because I have gotten none of these perquisites that people keep [00:11:00] talking about. I don't run a university. I don't, dictate coverage at the New York Times.

I'm just, here with my pet obsessions about American religion. Politics, but but yeah, I think the Nietzschean there's certainly a strong through line from Nietzsche to Ayn Rand, they're, both these kind of self styled iconoclasts who are, profaning the sacred, and both, dedicated foes of bourgeois morality.

And I do think, yeah, certainly again, if you go back to Silicon Valley, where a lot of the trouble in our world. starts. There, there are lots of aspiring and, failed Nietzscheans there. And they're, and what's, what's been, over at The Baffler, which was founded in the late eighties, we were constantly, um, shredding all the kind of social mythology that grew up around the Internet and saying, like, there's nothing [00:12:00] democratic about this.

This is going to end up, creating a accelerating all the inequalities in our lives. It's going to create a populist weaned on terrible information. I mean, The Baffler was actually much more prophetic than the money calls. I think if you go back And look at our coverage of, this particular phenomenon.

And, these are people again and again, you see it like, it's, not, the benign form, I guess, is like the Steve jobs, Bill Gates, people who are eventually guilted into doing some sort of giving back as they say, but the more representative type is Peter Thiel, who is, Just a a rank ideologue who has said, has written that democracy and capitalism are in incompatible and therefore democracy must go.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LEHMANN: and that is the hard stuff that is, yeah, I mean, I'm, not even sure Ayn Rand would probably go that far. I'm not sure Nietzsche would, he [00:13:00] went crazy at the end, so it's hard to surmise, but But yeah, these are people who do, they've been treated by a, kind of prostrate, prostrate.

federal government and by a whole culture industry that regards them as, sort of, Dionysian geniuses, right? To speak of Nietzsche, who can just sort of do their will and, markets will cower and obey and, the state will follow in their path. And And now we're reaping, the whirlwind from all, the three decades of propaganda about Silicon Valley.

And you wind up with Elon Musk, who is, I mean, I think he's too intellectually immature to be considered a fascist, but he has a fascist, he has an authoritarian personality, let's say.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, I think that's a good a good description. And that's also true of Trump. I think that [00:14:00] a lot of the criticisms that were made of, Trump as a person, saying that he was fascist or things like that. Like this guy has never read a book.

LEHMANN: No, I know. I mean, well, he did reportedly have a copy of Mein Kampf at his bedside during his first marriage. So, I mean, there are,

SHEFFIELD: but overall, you

LEHMANN: we get into this problem, especially, I've gotten into spats with various left intellectuals who say, Trump can't be fascist because he's too undisciplined.

And, fascists have always been buffoons, like

SHEFFIELD: well, that part is yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I guess the reason I'm saying that isn't that I don't think the label is appropriate because he doesn't have the characteristics. But why it's problematic isn't because it's not true. It's because his buffoonery makes it difficult for people, many people, to take him seriously.

And I, and that, and so, [00:15:00] and one, one crucial distinction in the 2024 election is that if you looked at people who had voted previously, Trump did actually not, so, so the exit poll asked people, did you vote before? And it was tied among the percentage. So Trump actually won among new voters who had never voted before, who didn't really know anything.

LEHMANN: A low propensity people, his campaign smartly targeted. So yeah. But yeah, there's

SHEFFIELD: oh, sorry. And, like, but those new, those low propensity voters, like that's the kind of people who do, who have kind of bought into this sort of mystical capitalism and his celebrity, that, you kind of do talk about in your book.

LEHMANN: no, it's, absolutely true. And it is, it's a striking moment.

Democrats don't know how to advocate against religious zealotry

LEHMANN: I, there are all kinds of election postmortem still swirling around in the air, but, you contrast, That [00:16:00] appeal that Trump was able to put forward, which is, just rooted largely in the power of his person, like Trump will fix it.

That was again, the refrain he is this kind of object of cultic worship and then you have the Democrats who are saying, think things first of all, that are largely contradictory. They're saying, they're going to stand up for the ordinary American worker and they have, Mark Cuban as a campaign surrogate, it's, and it's a very donor, both major parties are incredibly reliant on big donors.

So it's not a message that comes across super strongly and then you have the democracy message, which is, a very urgent concern and yet you're again addressing voters to whom the idea of democracy is either abstract or kind of a ship that sailed like they don't experience democratic control over their working lives over their, insurance coverage [00:17:00] over, it's, You need to put some meat on the bones to make that appeal really carry across.

So, yeah, this, past election, we had almost, the ideal types of each political tendency. We had a Democratic Party that was fixated on procedural agreements and bipartisan accord, the whole Lynn Cheney pitch to the electorate was bizarre. And, this, is cultic in its own way, in my view.

And then you had, the real cult of personality that was. And another thing, again, that Washington pundits tend to overlook is he, Explicitly religious character of the, Trump campaign this time out. The new apostolic reformation is the vanguard movement in the evangelical rights, and they are absolutely bought in to the idea that Trump, is literally an agent [00:18:00] of divine retribution, spiritual warfare, that he is going to conquer, the corrupt, the QAnon stuff overlaps with this enormously too, that he's going to rid out the, depraved pedophiles of the global liberal establishment.

So yeah, the American political system can't really accommodate. whatever, how we can describe it as fascist, we can describe it as sort of crypto religious. This, phenomenon, I interviewed a while ago a constant constitutional law professor about something. I don't even remember what Jack Rakoff, who's at Stanford.

And he said, basically the American political order or the constitutional System we have is most vulnerable to a mad king. There's, there's all this effort to create, guardrails around executive power to make sure that the separation of powers balances everything out.

But when you have someone in the position of the presidency, who's [00:19:00] just off the rails there's very, Little that can be done. So that's, again, the moment we're in. And I, think we're going to keep seeing the liberal opposition pratfall and fail to address the seriousness of the moment precisely because they don't understand what's happening.

This is not an aberrant tendency on the right, it feeds into longstanding tributaries of resentment, politics, racial politics errant populist politics. And it is, in a deep sense a fusion of sort of religious reaction and political reaction.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. And yeah, and I think you, you've hit that very well, that, the, Left establishment and I'm including broadly center left to all the way, socialistic, they all do not understand what they're up against.

Far-right people lost in the marketplace of ideas, so they're trying to overthrow the marketplace

SHEFFIELD: And the other thing is [00:20:00] that there is something to what, so that statement that you referred to from Matt it was an older statement that somebody was Yeah.

But, there, there is something to the fact that, reactionary Christians do not have place in academia or in, traditional entertainment or news media. That, is a fact. But of course that's not power of any kind. It just means that their ideas are not very good and people didn't like them. That's why

LEHMANN: The market is working. That's what you're saying,

SHEFFIELD: lost. That's right. Yeah. But the, marketplace of ideas that they constantly say they want to have. It existed and it and they lost and so

LEHMANN: They lost, but they also built really powerful counter institutions. the entirety of, if you go back to the history of radio, for example, like, it's not just Rush Limbaugh, it's the all time [00:21:00] gospel hour in the thirties, which was the number one show in the country. And there was a very concerted effort.

And there's this kind of myth that after the scopes trials, evangelicals retired from public life and we're not political and it took the Reagan new right to rouse them again. It's absolutely true that the post war evangelicals were not at the summits of American culture and consensus. They weren't running the New York Times or

SHEFFIELD: and they weren't running candidates. But they were they hadn't given up on changing the culture and

LEHMANN: No, absolutely. And they had all of these sort of outlets, from the, John Birch Society. John Birch was a Christian missionary killed in China and entire sort of counter establishment, places like Pepperdine University out in, your way, and A lot of private schools who were, galvanized in large part by the Brown decision in the South but [00:22:00] a system of religious schools that groomed and gradually prepared people for power and that's, that culminates in places like Oral Roberts University, Liberty University, televangelists, Found universities and then, become power brokers.

So, there's a reason that, you know, yes, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson sort of remade the relationship between evangelicalism and, politics, but they were building on models set forth long before them. So,

SHEFFIELD: Sure, yeah, that's true. Well, I guess what I'm saying is that. The, so in, in the actual marketplace of ideas, so, so, the, so called fundamentalist model modernist controversy of, American Protestantism, which was for those unfamiliar, that was the idea of once people discovered that the Bible could [00:23:00] be that the hebrew bible could be ascertained to be written by different groups of people I mean it became undeniable that was the case that literally the same vocabulary the same wording it was undeniable that it was true and so In the marketplace of ideas in like because fundamentalists were there in academia in the you know before this yeah, so And they lost though.

LEHMANN: They lost but in universities. I'm saying

SHEFFIELD: well, that's what I was going to say. Yeah. Well, so, so they retreated from intellectual spaces because they couldn't win there and instead have gone into political spaces so that they will force. their beliefs onto the public and because they cannot argue them. And you see this over and over again with so many different issues, whether it's evolution, whether it's racism, whether it's [00:24:00] sexism, whether it's, I mean, even, and then even on the economic stuff, as, you talk about, like it's, that's what they realized was that they could force their beliefs.

Through political organizing. And I think that the fact that their beliefs were shoddy and unprovable and oriented, in fact, disproven in many cases, it made it, that's part of what makes left intelligentsia and left political class leaders and donors. Unable to take it seriously because they look at it and they say these arguments are stupid.

Who could ever believe that the

LEHMANN: now

SHEFFIELD: 000 years old?

Hypocrisy isn't a vice to rightwingers, and the left should stop using it as an argument

LEHMANN: I've had numerous jobs where I will, get to the point where I can't take it anymore and say, like, spotting hypocrisy is not really going to advance anything. Like, yeah, I know. Like, Donald Trump isn't. A good Christian and he has committed all these crimes and sexual assaults, but pointing that out continually doesn't, it doesn't [00:25:00] matter to the opposition.

It simply does not matter. And there is this sort of, what I think of as a debate club model of politics in among liberals that if we can just like, have the right devastating riposte to a right wing contradiction, we will win. And.

SHEFFIELD: well, that's the West Wing mentality

LEHMANN: Yes, which I, wrote about in real time and got pilloried for in way back in 2001, I wrote a piece for the Atlantic about how awful the West Wing was.

And that was at the peak of its power. And man, did the liberals go after me for that. But I, think here, as in Trump history, I may have been on the right side of history. But,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, at least analytically but yeah. And so, but like that, I don't know that I do think that is kind of the fundamental problem between of [00:26:00] why the left. Is unable to actually, because I mean, we have to, go back and think, I, think that people sometimes, they look at the reelection, the successful win and reelections of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and there's a temptation to think, well, those candidates won because they had such great strategies and whatnot, but what if, they won just because the economy was in a good, a bad spot

LEHMANN: Now, I, well, Obama's reelection is really instructive because, I've also said this to like blew in the face at several jobs, but, the, myth, the mythic kind of blue wall of upper Midwestern states that, was the foundation of Obama's victory in 2012 and delivered for Joe Biden in 2020 that two things.

One is that just didn't emerge ex nihilo. Came about because Obama bailed out the auto industry, which was based in the upper Midwest and the whole auto [00:27:00] supply chain extended well beyond Detroit into, you had carburetor factories in Indiana or where, or Illinois rather. And and the other, I just wrote about this in a review essay for the nation.

David Axelrod, Obama's trust, most trusted political advisor in 2012, told him he or whatever it was when the bailout occurred 2010, I guess, that Obama should not have done it that, polls show that voters don't like bailouts. So, and, the only reason that Obama got reelected ultimately was he told David Axelrod to go suck an egg.

So yeah it's definitely not. Democrats have not won on the basis of, their greater rhetorical prowess or their ability to, summon a vision of a country that's less polarized and less divided. It's, about class.

Democrats refuse to retire failed leaders

LEHMANN: And, [00:28:00] that's the review essay I wrote for The Nation is two books that largely document how Democrats, decided to give up the white working class well before Trump came along back when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and, a whole generation of political consultants who, you know, because the Democrats never get rid of Old people, we just saw this in the house oversight fight today are still with us,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, actually, for people who didn't follow that gave us a little overview. If you don't mind, please.

LEHMANN: the house oversight stuff is Jerry Connolly, who is the senior member of the oversight committee is a Congressman from Virginia who has extensive experience. Investments in military contracting firms. Alexander Ocasio Cortez was challenging him to be ranking member on the House Oversight Committee and was positioned.

It looked like it was, might have been close, but [00:29:00] she might have carried the day, which I think would have been good in terms of generational leadership and policy leadership on the Hill. But Nancy Pelosi and the symbolism of this is hard to exaggerate, who is bedridden after a fall in Luxembourg.

So from her hospital bed. Mustard the troops to stand behind Jerry Connolly, who is now suffering from throat cancer who's 79 years old to best AOC for this spot. Now, this is, sort of inside baseball in a certain sense, but the oversight Committee is, a good bully pulpit for even a party that's out of power, like the Democrats and the vacancy was created because Jamie Raskin went over to judiciary and a sort of similar fight and

SHEFFIELD: won.

LEHMANN: which he won but Jamie had previously.

I've gotten to be ranking member on the oversight committee by [00:30:00] leaping over seniority rules. This isn't, you worked a long time on the right and you know this, but, Republicans have a basically three terms and you're out model of congressional leadership. And it's, I think it's smart. I think it keeps, people on their toes.

It brings new ideas and new leaders into positions of prominence and Democrats, have not only, yeah seniority governing Congress, but we just saw in the disastrous election that Joe Biden was determined to run at age 82, even after he pledged he wouldn't. And that was a disaster.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg stubbornly held on to her Supreme court. and directly created a permanent right wing majority on the court. So this politics of deference to seniority has to stop. And it's regrettable that the Democrats are still, they're, sleepwalking right [00:31:00] now, in my view.

Despite Democrats' problems, progressives have not learned to persuade either

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, I think they are. I mean, and that's because, I mean, ultimately, in a lot of ways, the American political system is in a lot of ways, they contrast, they contest between Conservatives and reactionaries and people who are, have a further left perspective are mostly left out in the cold as a was but at the same time, these more progressive policy viewpoints are more prevalent, popular, but people who have, who are progressive advocates are not able to translate that popularity to any sort of, well, maybe not any sort, but to, even, control of one part let alone get them affected. And some of that is because I don't think that they have a theory of change to to reference the podcast here that they don't understand that you can't just.

An election is not simply saying, well, my policy [00:32:00] views are more popular people don't vote on it.

LEHMANN: Yeah, no, we've seen this again and again. And yet there is this, and it is not only the the oldsters on the democratic side. We have, the Madden glaciers of the world who are have this idea of politics is basically rubber stamping preexisting polling numbers, which is, I go back to after Obama won reelection in 2012, the GOP issued this postmortem on what was then their catastrophic loss and had all of this, sort of poll driven council chief among them was, appeal.

We have to do more to appeal to the growing Hispanic electorate and we have to, advance more moderate models of immigration reform. True. Obviously just.

SHEFFIELD: He did. Yeah.

LEHMANN: And, and the punchline is he has, as of this election, I think has bested George [00:33:00] W. Bush, who previously had the highest quotient of Hispanic voters supporting him. So it's a reminder that, yeah, I mean, Democrats want to be in a position where they don't have to do politics, where they don't have to persuade.

Or they just say like, look at my credentials, look at these nice, pretty policies. We've ginned up for this occasion and that occasion. And again, you look at Trump and it's all about Trump. It's all about like, I'm, going to be the heroic. I'm not saying we should go down a full authoritarian path, but the contrast is striking.

And there is. A lot missing on the Democratic side that is not going to be, I often will say that Democrats bring a white paper to a knife fight, you know, they, just, they have an allergy to mass politics as it is now practiced. And I, think, You see it again and you saw it with the, I was cringing all throughout the final stages of the [00:34:00] campaign when, Beyonce did a big Kamala event in Houston and there was this parade of celebrity, Taylor Swift and, under conditions of rampaging inequality, that just looks like Versailles shit, that is not the democratic party, I'm old.

So I remember like after one presidential election. The Democrats actually had to run a telethon to pay their campaign debts. I kind of want that party back in the sense of, they didn't have big money donors. They didn't have, I mean, I guess they had the celebrities who did the telethons, but they didn't, they weren't part of these elites that, people justifiably distrust and dislike. So, as long as you have this party that is, so deeply invested in not just celebrity culture, but the ideology of the meritocracy, which is, again, we saw it in Obama's first term, like, he. His marching orders, because every democratic consultant [00:35:00] from, time immemorial was to get healthcare done.

And the ACA was not a great healthcare reform, but it was better than nothing. I would concede that, but he also had card check which was something he campaigned on, which was, A long overdue reform to getting collective bargaining rights in every workplace, and you can just as opposed to going through a union election, you can check a card after you're hired.

And he didn't very, little to advance out. And, it's easy, of course, to have 2020 hindsight, but if there had been that kind of You know, immediate and direct labor reform, combined with things like bailing out the auto industry, which was good, the democratic party would have been on a different path.

And this whole moment where everyone is wringing their hands and saying, what can we do to appeal to the white working class? And it's just like, give them stuff. [00:36:00] It's not hard.

Democrats want to win at politics, but hate actually engaging in it

SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's, well, and they also, there were, there was also some kind of demographic destiny type thinking that really took hold in the same era as well, where they thought that no matter what, The white working class was always going to be Democrats and also no matter what Hispanics were always going to be Democrats and black people were always going to be Democrats and they didn't understand that, the reason why these different groups were the way that voted the way they voted was in large part because of both that they did the Democrats did things for them, but also because that they did invest in local institutions.

And I talked about that on a previous episode, but you know, it's like, right. The, all the same things that they, all the same mistakes that they made with, white blue collar voters, they're now filtering down with Hispanics,

LEHMANN: it's true. And again, it's because they don't want to do politics. [00:37:00] They, want to just think, okay, well, we'll wait for Fox news viewers to keel over in their dens and then, this army of. Hispanic and African American and young progressive voters will take up the baton. And politics doesn't work that way.

You actually have to fight and persuade people. And give again give people things that they understand. Will materially improve their condition just today. The right wing Missouri center, Josh Holly and the opening faints of the, tax cut negotiations in Congress has put forward a proposal to double the earned income.

The child tax credit which is very, smart. Like that's gonna, right now the Republicans still have this working class constituency that they don't have any real interest in serving. But if Holly does stuff like this, if [00:38:00] Trump's labor secretary nominee who was one of the only people to support union reform On the Republican side in the house.

If she's does, and it doesn't have to be a lot cause they already have this big rhetorical and symbolic advantage over the Democrats, but once they start moving, things like the earned or the the child tax credit that's, yeah, they're smart and they're moving in this direction.

SHEFFIELD: Well, and the same thing, like Trump putting his name on the COVID checks that people

LEHMANN: Yeah, I know. And

SHEFFIELD: Biden didn't do that.

LEHMANN: now he wanted the. Yep. Yep. And the same thing happened under Obama too. There was a set of checks that went out as part of the stimulus and yeah. And again, this is what I keep saying. Democrats don't like politics. It's like unseemly to have your name on a check. It's like, people should just understand who their benevolent,

SHEFFIELD: Who,

LEHMANN: are.

Right.

SHEFFIELD: they, yeah, that [00:39:00] they would be paying enough attention to know how this happened. When in the reality, they're not paying attention. Well, yeah.

Fatalism among the far left

SHEFFIELD: And at the same, but just going back to maybe the, further left aspect of this so like there is this, also there is this kind of a fatalism I feel like that is falling in to place among a lot of further left people where they just think, well.

Nothing is possible. So we're just going to wait for the revolution. So I want Trump to be authoritarian. I want fascism. Yeah. And like, it's, it is a delusion and like stuff like this does not, go away by itself, especially given how much smarter. That far right Republicans are about marketing and about communications like there's, a difference between, let's say an Arab dictator or, Francisco Franco, who, was not even born in the 20th century, if I [00:40:00] remember right, uh, not, failing to engage in, in PR on his behalf, like, of course, they are not going to, but this, if you empower these right wing oligarchs, they're never going to give up power. And you need to realize that, that you're, you, believe in a fantasy just as insane as thinking that Jesus is coming back next Thursday or whatever. Okay.

LEHMANN: No, it's true.

Democrats' dilemma with working class representation

LEHMANN: And that's, I mean, the Democrats dilemma is, to be once again, the part of a working class party, forget the white part for now. Just, you actually need to materially represent its interests. And as, long as we are in this sort of both parties are deeply indebted to the plutocracy.

So there's, it's not just that the oligarchs on the right won't voluntarily give up power. The, donors on what we notionally call the left are in [00:41:00] exactly the same position. That's why, I often think we'd. We really need a class trader like FDR. That, that was, you know, Kamala Harris to her credit, did not grow up wealthy, but I think she has the insecurities of the sort of meritocratic are released.

You might say. And so when push would come to shove, like, she proposed these sound. Policies to combat price fixing in, the food industry. And, people like Mark Cuban came up to her and said, no, we don't need to do that. And she, obeyed. So to get, and this is the ad, the advantage they have with Trump.

They, he is both this, venerated rich guy, and he will tell people to go to screw themselves.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah,

LEHMANN: And we sort of need someone like that on the left. I don't know who

Have wealthy Democrats reduced race and class advocacy into symbolic gestures?

SHEFFIELD: yeah, well, now, what about so some of these [00:42:00] other, democratic super donors, if you will. I mean, I, think, there was a study that was done a couple of years ago, looking at some of their attitudes and they don't necessarily align with democratic voting base in some ways, but in, in other, but in other ways, they're more socially liberal than the Democratic voter is and like, and I think that's, like, there's been a lot of discussion about the term identity politics lately.

But, I think what it misses is that there is a way of, that identity politics is rhetorically A politics, a symbolic politics. And if it's that, then it's not good. But just saying that, well, we're not going to allow people to have pursue, a liberation for the group. We're not going to allow that.

Like, that's not that's. Sorry, saying that, women's rights should be protected or that racial discrimination should be stopped, like those, that's not identity politics if they were, that's a [00:43:00] different politics from the symbolic. Well, the, way that we can get. People who are, Hispanic to vote for Democrats is to say Latinx or is to, use Spanish in our speeches.

And like, that's not going to get anyone to vote for you. and so like, and that to me is where I think the donor class of the Democrats that they, think that's what, that the black voters, they want you to mention a black author in your speech. Thank you. That's not helping black voters or even doing anything meaningful.

LEHMANN: now. No. And I think there's, I mean, there are a couple of problems and we, we've seen this almost after every failed democratic election. There was. The Mark Lilla moment after Trump's first election, where he was saying the same thing, like we need to get rid of identity politics and, focus on these sort of universalist demands.

And I guess, look, every. sort of [00:44:00] political movement has excesses and things that ordinary people aren't going to like or warm up to. But I think the larger structural fallacy of, this whole, debate is somehow that if, Democrats just use their existing neoliberal political economy and, flick away the trans rights concerns or flick away, um, what's perceived or critical race theory or what have you then everything will be fine.

It's another messaging fix. And the problem is far deeper than that. I, don't think you're going to sell the country on A neoliberal political economy, regardless of the kind of yeah, rhetorical messaging around these other issues. I do think, the messaging can always be improved. I'm not dismissing it.

Out of hand, and I do think it is smart to have a [00:45:00] universalist kind of ethos that says, look, we are for trans rights, but, if you're not getting health care coverage for gender reassignment surgery. Trans rights are a non starter, like, there are ways to frame these issues as part of what everyone, justly should expect as baseline conditions of equality in a, society that's becoming radically unequal.

So. Again, the problem is for the, and this goes back to sort of the review essay I just published, like, for the past 40 years, Democrats have been running away from class based messaging and class based policies it started with NAFTA and GATT, but it, continued on through to Obama's failure to, do Downs in the wake of the financial crisis, his failure to prosecute bankers in the wake of the financial [00:46:00] crisis, him saying to the bankers that I am all that's protecting you from the pitchforks.

Like, that is not my idea of a democratic president. It just isn't my. The schematic view of American politics is Republicans will always be the party of business, will always be the party of money and oligarchy. Democrats have to be the party of votes. That's the only, in our system, that's the only effective way to fight money is with votes.

And you create votes by doing. Things like the New Deal or things like the Great Society, even though it's much maligned in many circles, but, it did give us Medicare and OSHA and a host of other I guess OSHA was Nixon, but

SHEFFIELD: well, but you and you also have to talk about the things while you do that because like that was because I thought Joe Biden did have, especially in his first couple of years, put forward a number of very positive policies that were for people, which Trump will take credit for as they materialize like the chips in science [00:47:00] act or like the I mean, obviously build back better would have been better than what we ended up getting with the infrastructure spending bill.

But, there, again, there's this, idea that people will just figure it out

LEHMANN: Right. And again, there's going to. no, And again, you need, to do politics. And as you constantly point out, you need a media ecosystem that will convey this message in a much, more direct, less, I don't know, intellectually dead and mainstream media, which, not only is, Both sides in, a fascist movement, but is now openly appeasing it.

So,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Well, and I mean, the other thing is that, I think the, way that like Democrats have to understand that there are percentage of people and it's, dependence on the poll, like, there are some people who have an authoritarian personality as Bob Altermeyer called it.

[00:48:00] And so, as such, they're not, you have to give them. Someone who they can see as a leader and, someone who has has authority in their

LEHMANN: well, I mean, it's. It is always worth remembering that the Liberty Lobby and the business establishment in the 30s, they depicted FDR as a fascist. They thought the NRA was a fascist movement. So yeah, I mean, this is mass politics and, it's not always pretty and it's not always maximally small d democratic. But it is, It is what the Democrats don't want to do. And I'm, I, honestly don't, I'm not sure where, and how they will find their theory of change

Have Democrats always been the party of Adlai Stevenson?

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean, in some ways it's like, I think the Democrats never really got out of their Adlai Stevenson. Like they have never not

LEHMANN: to a war [00:49:00] hero. And they had the, sort of platonic form of the, intellectual. Yeah. Yeah, and it's also, they're dining out on a consensus vision of politics that is simply dead, that's what the whole, again, not to belabor the, Ike, I was like yelling at my TV screen every time I would see Liz Cheney at a Kamala Harris rally, The Republican party has disowned the Cheney's.

Why are you embracing them? They, it makes zero sense just in terms of simple political math. And it is because they have this idea of, okay, well, we'll be bipartisan. That's the enlightened position, right? We're a party or country above party, which was McCain's slogan. Why, again, why are you rehabilitating a Republican presidential campaign slogan?

Like it's crazy me. To me

Will the new Democratic National Committee chair shake things up in the party?

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know, like, have you been following the race for [00:50:00] the democratic national committee chairmanship? what do you think? I, anything better transpiring there?

LEHMANN: I think Ben Whickler is a, he has fought back against one of the most ideologically rigid and deranged Republican state parties and successfully. And I think he is very much about grassroots organizing in a way that certainly Rahm Emanuel is, I guess, bucking for the job. Would not so, but my fear is we'll see a replay of the AOC versus Jerry Conley battle there.

The, end, I mean, state parties play a bigger role in electing the DNC chair. So there is a chance that the donor class won't get their wish, but we'll see. But yeah, I do think Ben Whickler's for party that is going to have to reinvent itself from the ground up. I, he would be [00:51:00] my choice.

SHEFFIELD: Okay, yeah, and also, allow people who are outside of well, where you live the SLA corridor. To actually have a say, because like the most bizarre fixation among Democratic elites is that, that they don't actually go out and know people outside of their social circles. Like the only way that they know them is through polling.

And, but polling only works if both sides understand what the question means. And you're even asking the right question at

LEHMANN: Yeah. And is your issue in particular is tremendously dicey, but but yeah, now that's absolutely true. And I. Do not come from this part of the country. I'm also a high school dropout. So I don't have, the credentials that everyone else in DC has. And I'm very mindful of that difference.

And it's not that I'm mystically more in [00:52:00] touch with the people, capital P, but it is that, I understand. I have access to a version of life in America that is very, different from, um, people who are matriculated Ivy League graduates who are, sort of see the political power as the ultimate resume entry.

SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, and that they, for them, if you come up in that environment what we're calling what they call meritocracy, which it really isn't,

LEHMANN: a joke. Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: credentialism like for them, but for them it works

LEHMANN: Yeah. Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: like they, they have these great networks of, family and friends that, that they're never without a job for a week or more whereas for the rest of America.

Especially those people who are over 40, like, people can go for years without, if they lose their job, they'll never get another one, unless it's like a Starbucks barista or something like that.

LEHMANN: Yeah. Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: cannot appreciate that. [00:53:00] They, and and so when you tell people that to what you were, you go back to what you said earlier at the beginning that, we have to protect democracy. We have to save our country. And it's like, my life sucks.

What so, at least I'm going to vote for the guy or, or I'm not going to, I'm not going to show up to vote against the guy who, says everything sucks.

LEHMANN: that's again, Hillary's message in 2016 was America's already great. And that's like the, that's like saying to the electorate, you're too dumb to know how good you have it. Again, it is not politics, whatever else it is. And, again, to go back to the 2016 moment the I grew up in Iowa in so my hometown was sort of the epicenter of the first round of what became the ritual sort of heartland coverage of the Trump phenomenon.

Davenport used to be the farm implement manufacturing capital of the world. Incredibly high union density. After the farm crisis in the eighties [00:54:00] just, went into freefall. International Harvester had major operations there. It went out of business. John Deere, which is the sort of mother company there still exists, but is in very, Reduce form all the sort of feeder industries like Alcoa, which had major operations all left.

So by the 90s, late 90s, Davenport was named the worst city in the country to live in by money magazine and also became the riverboat. It went from being. The farm and plum manufacturing capital of the world to the riverboat gambling capital of the upper Midwest. So when I was reading this first wave of Trump coverage, there was my hometown and there were all these sort of former auto workers who were, yeah, they were casualized.

They, would have been lucky to get barista jobs. They certainly weren't going to learn to code. Like I grew up among these people, like I, it's just not going to happen. So, so I wasn't, [00:55:00] as surprised, I think, as many in Washington were when, Trump elected and was elected, because again, I grew up among these people.

They're not bone deep racist. They're not, authoritarian just by, some mystic temperament or genetic inheritance. They're taught to think this way. And they're taught to think this way when people. Don't give them anything else that allows them to envision a viable future. It's easy then to go into scapegoating mode and say, all these immigrants are taking away your jobs, which, again, I'm The Iowa economy is overwhelmingly agricultural.

If you got rid of the immigrant population, it would be a complete collapse of the main source of revenue in the state. But yet that's that messaging has worked.

The role of employers in immigration issues

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and I mean, that's why Democrats I do think should go after employers who employ me. Yeah. Illegal [00:56:00] immigrants like that, should be how they respond to this issue and also to push for, some sort of legalization path for the law, abiding, but because like they do have, because it is the case that a lot of these jobs are out there but they don't pay enough for people to be able to afford to do them who

LEHMANN: no, I mean, obviously, right, right. You want. A, an equal workforce for everyone. And then you can sort of, make determinations on who, who are good faith actors within that framework. But yeah. Good faith actors among employers. I should stipulate

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LEHMANN: because, again, and I was back in my hometown four or five years ago when my mother was ill.

And I mean, this was the grim, this was before the 2020 election. And of course things had not improved under Trump. And I remember driving every day past a billboard that this was around this time of year around Christmas and the billboard said need holiday cash, turn in a drug [00:57:00] dealer and gave a phone number and, and.

Yeah, it's hard to recognize that this is the community I grew up and it's so radically it's been de industrialized. It's been, sort of subject to the literal casino economy and. Is now just been left out to dry. So yeah, of course, these people are desperate. Like, once you be and and yeah, for the vast majority of people in my profession in DC, talking about places like Davenport is like talking about the surface of the moon.

It's just not a place they would ever. Encounter

SHEFFIELD: No, it isn't. And, and that's a huge part of why we are where we are.

LEHMANN: Now. Absolutely. And yeah and the other, not to just doubt on my personal background, but the other noteworthy thing about growing up when I did in Iowa was at any moment. Iowa had [00:58:00] the most conservative and the most liberal members of the Senate. And this went back like generations, when I was coming up, it was Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley.

But before that was. Harold Hughes and Roger Jepson. And this is the phenomenon, that is now broadly caricatured as populist. And there was a left wing version and there was a right wing version. And the story of our time is like the left wing version is,

SHEFFIELD: yeah. Yeah, And it's got to come back because there will be, if you don't, if you leave a vacuum, you're just making it easier. That's.

LEHMANN: no, it's true. So

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

Conclusion

SHEFFIELD: we could do this for a lot longer, I'm sure. But both every everybody's got things to do, including the audience here.

So, um, you mentioned a couple of your articles, so we'll have those linked in the show notes. You have any other recent pieces you want people to check out and give us your [00:59:00] social media handles for people who want to follow you.

LEHMANN: we'll do. You want me to name an article now? No. Oh,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Any articles you like that you think are worth You want people to

check

LEHMANN: yeah. Well, I, have a Nat's attention span because I have to file two or three times a week. So, the latest thing I wrote was on the horrific, speaking of the media ecosystem, ABC's capitulation and the lawsuit. So there's that the essay I mentioned about the Democrats I think would be of interest to your listeners.

It's the web headline is something like what happened to the Democratic Party. And it's a long and gruesome story. And yeah, I guess I have another piece in the next print issue of The Nation on speaking of the oligarchs making up the Trump cabinet, the sort of influencers within the Trump administration, which is not all cabinet [01:00:00] appointees, but also, people like Curtis Yarvin, speaking of Silicon Valley, who has, like, directly informed J.D. Vance's intellectual

SHEFFIELD: And in each in himself,

LEHMANN: and an Itchian. Yes. So yeah that's, a rough sample of works in progress.

SHEFFIELD: okay, cool. And then for your social handles, which ones are you

LEHMANN: All right. I still am on the platform known as X and it's at Lehman Chris L E H M A N Chris. And then, I am on Blue Sky. Amen.

SHEFFIELD: Did you just sign up for that? Because I searched for you a couple of days ago, and you weren't on there.

LEHMANN: No, I've been on for about a year.

SHEFFIELD: Oh, wow. Okay.

LEHMANN: yeah. And that is,

SHEFFIELD: there?

LEHMANN: it's chrislayman. bsky. social.

SHEFFIELD: Okay. All right. Cool. Well, I guess I'll,

LEHMANN: Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: And then I know you're on mastered on you, but you're not active on there anymore.

LEHMANN: Yeah. I sort of, when it became clear that blue sky was sort [01:01:00] of the migration center, I, kind of, made the difficult, I'm not anti mastodon, but I, only want to spend so much time on social media a day, so, so it

SHEFFIELD: Well, that's a fair point. That's a fair point. Okay, cool. All right. Well, thanks for being here. And we'll,

LEHMANN: Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure.

SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion, and you can always get more if you go to theoryofchange. show with the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes and my thanks especially to everybody who is a paid subscribing member. Thank you very much for your support.

You are making this possible. Thanks a lot. And if you're watching over on YouTube, make sure to click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever there is a new episode posted. Thanks a lot for your support, and I'll see you next time.

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