Left Anchor

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Today we've got UC Davis Professor of History Eric Rauchway on to talk the history of the New Deal, particularly the transition period in the winter of 1932-33 covered in his book Winter War. We take apart the common false belief, held by both Republicans and Democrats (including Barack Obama) that FDR deliberately refused to help Herbert Hoover fix the Great Depression so he could get the New Deal passed, when in fact it was Hoover who refused to help in an effort to get Roosevelt to abandon all his campaign promises. We then take down the liberal idea expressed by Jonathan Chait and Jonathan Alter that FDR was really a secret moderate, and talk about how ideological the 1932 campaign really was. Enjoy! Rauchway's other book The Money Makers can be found here, and his essay in The Presidency of Barack Obama can be found here.

Today we've got two professional union organizers on to talk about the state of labor organizing in 2019 -- the tactics of the union busters, the hostility of the Trump administration, and the brushfire labor militancy that has sprung up across the country.  Read more about Google's union-busting tactics here, and find the essay about progressive union-busters here. 

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We've got Professor Nicole Fabricant from Towson University to discuss what's going on in Bolivia. We talk about Evo Morales' flawed but decent record, the source of right-wing authoritarian sentiment, and the military coup that displaced him. Enjoy! Her book Mobilizing Bolivia's Displaced can be found here.

Today we've got Ezra Levin, co-author of the book We Are Indivisible (along with his wife Leah Greenberg) to talk about how he fell, by his own account, ass-backwards into leading a national political movement. We discuss the nature of political organizing in the online age, what objectives Indivisible is focusing on, and what lessons others might learn from them. Enjoy!

We have on Nicholas Buccola to talk about his book The Fire Is Upon Us, which is a history of the famous debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley. We discuss why Baldwin whipped Buckley so handily, how Buckley's rhetoric of racial resentment and anti-democratic views continue to hold sway on the right, and more! You can watch the debate here, and find Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation that was mentioned here.

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We've got Professor Matt Karp of Princeton on to discuss his new Catalyst article on "The Mass Politics of Antislavery," his first preview of a new book on the history of the 1850s that is in progress. Then we turn to the debate about Bernie, Warren, and the upper-middle class, starting with another article: "A Socialist Party in Our Time?" by Abbott and Guastella. Check out his book This Vast Southern Empire here.

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