Beyond Politics

Matt joins legendary West Virginia radio broadcaster -- and expert Senator Joe Manchin analyst -- Howard Monroe to talk about Manchin's weekend stunner, what was really driving it, and whether it's the best thing that could have happened to Democrats.

The recently concluded COP 26 summit in Glasgow was supposed to shine an international spotlight on global warming and charge up the next stage of commitments from countries to reduce carbon emissions. There were only two problems. One: it’s unclear how much progress was actually made. The conference did end with a new consensus about the need for action, and some analysts called that a substantia...

More than five and a half million Americans out of work in January found jobs by November. In the same period, the jobless rate fell from 6.3 to 4.2 percent , a drop of one-third. Jobless claims in November hit a 52- year low . Real GDP growth for 2021 is expected to be 5.9 percent. (Between 2000 and 2019, real GDP growth stayed lower than 3 percent.) President Biden’s temporary child tax credit,...

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money takes stock of the biggest trends of 2021 for business, the economy, and investing, and the biggest questions ahead for 2022.  He awards CEO of the year (there were three), business story of the year, and a nice piece of good news for investors ahead. 

Av Harris of the national fiscal responsibility advocacy group The Concord Coalition joins the show to share insights from his experience working for some of the most colorful -- and colorfully named -- politicians in America, and to explain the new Concord Coalition report on why immigrants will be so vital to maintaining economic growth in the future. Also, what's up with the Congressional Budge...

On today's show, we highlight the complicated legacy of Bob Dole. For Americans of a certain age, basically age 35 and over, Bob Dole was an avatar of the Republican Party.  After his losing presidential campaign, he went through a transition from a taciturn, gruff politician known as Dr. Gridlock to a much more genial and vulnerable public image cultivated on late night TV, as a spokesperson...

Or Rush Limbaugh? Or the same media echo chamber that exists on the right.  Longtime West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe and Matt Robison dive into where the right wing dominance of slanted media comes from (and make no mistake, the right wing does dominate), and whether it is ultimately fixable. 

Today, we're thrilled to welcome back two friends of the show, Mario Broussard and Alex Ivey, who are Senior Vice President and Vice President of Research respectively at Global Strategy Group, one of the premier polling, research, and public affairs companies in America. They have been running an absolutely fascinating research project, Global Strategy Group’s bi-annual series, The Melting Pot: G...

In the last few months American politics has become a little mysterious, if not downright confounding. By almost every measure, President Joe Biden and the Democratic party have had an extremely successful year. Remember we started this year with an insurrection in the very heart of our government, with armed vigilantes roaming the halls of Congress. We also had a brand new set of vaccines but alm...

Markets have been spooked by Omicron news in recent days.  And Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are down year-on-year.  So which of these is a bigger concern, or are either of them really a bad sign at all?  Also, Dorsey is OUT at Twitter, Amazon is taking over the shipping market, and what can we learn for business from the Patriots? Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money weighs in. Photo...

In 2016 the Democratic Party lost control of every branch of government. Countless explanations and excuses have been offered, and despite an anti-Trump backlash in 2018 and eking out the Presidency in 2020, Democrats have been on a continued downward slide down ballot. And now, facing the midterms, their prospects don’t exactly look rosy. The news media is full of doom and gloom, the President’s...

By most measures, the economy is doing great. The country's economic output is way past where it was before the pandemic. In October alone, the country created 531,000 jobs and set a record for the number of people leaving their jobs, which is a sign the people see a hot job market and want to take advantage of it.  Unemployment is way down, wages are way up, and the average American has 50%...

Matt joins legendary West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe on his show to talk about his Alternet article describing the government's massive bias toward the old over the young, and why it needs to end. Then, a discussion about Republican infighting and growing threats of violence, what it means, and why it's happening.

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money explains what to make of the very different things people are saying about the state of the economy / their personal finances, and how they are actually acting. Right now, Americans tell pollsters that the economy is bad and that they are worried. But they are spending, seeking new job opportunities, and investing like things are great. So what does that mean, and w...

Josh Schwerin is a communications veteran among Democrats, and it sure seems like they need one right now. A former press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he served as the National Spokesman for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and as the Senior Strategist and Director of Communications for Priorities USA, the biggest Democratic outside advocacy group and political action com...

The degree to which President Biden can sell his agenda to the American public maybe the single most important factor in driving the politics of the coming years.  Many analysts have compared President Joe Biden's legislative plans for America to the Great Society program of President Lyndon Johnson -- widely regarded as the most ambitious set of social investments in American history. With t...

Matt appears on The Watchdog with Howard Monroe to run through what actually happened in the elections last week and whether it was really all that surprising. Also, what will it take to win in 2022, how much will passing BBB matter, and Weird Al Yankovic!

Adnaan Muslim is one of the most sought-after campaign consultants in America. A top counselor to Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Raphael Warnock and Boston mayor-elect Michelle Wu, Adnaan joins the show to explain what happened last Tuesday, how Dems can fight the CRT and education messaging from Republicans, what the path to a fighting chance in 2022 looks like, and what his favorite Elizabet...

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money, the #1 stock investing radio show in America, returns from a summer break spent dominating the airwaves on his own show to talk about the biggest moves and most puzzling questions in the business world.  What's driving the Meta shift?   Why on Earth is Microsoft back on top? And has anyone figured out the new Hollywood model? Plus, wing-chef robots??...

Today, we’re going to take you on a journey down into some of the most insidious, infuriating, and un-American skulduggery that has gone on in this country. And then, we’re going to talk about how we’ve started to turn the tide, and how maybe, maybe we can finish the job. Our guide on this trip is David Daley. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post,...

I do a regular show with financial advisor Mike Morton about personal financial planning.  Today, he and I got into a bit more of a politics, policy, and tax discussion around the idea that we could tax the ultra-rich to pay for social investments. It's a conversation about practical politics, how hard t is to come up with a rational tax policy, and how the ultra rich avoid our best efforts t...

Far more than the high-profile antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan—and yes, even bigger than Donald Trump’s "Big Lie”—our guest today says that it is anonymous, often corrupt politicians in statehouses across the country who pose the greatest dangers to American democracy. Our old friend David Pepper is the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Born and raised i...

The way we run political campaigns has changed drastically in the last two decades. Today, political campaigns spend three times more money and leverage far more sophisticated data and media tools, paired with an unnerving amount of information on voters. But those extraordinary powers have mostly been used not to have a more nuanced, persuasive public conversation, but to stoke outrage and electi...

Matt talks about his recent Newsweek op-ed with West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe of The Watchdog.  Will Trump run in 2024 (yes!), if he does are there any good outcomes (no!), and if the threat to America is so big, is there anything that can be done about it right now (yes!)

Congressman John Yarmuth has served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee since 2019, and was one of the key architects of the $1.9  American Rescue Plan that is lifting 5 million American children out of poverty, saving millions from losing their homes, and saving lives every day by getting people vaccines. He's also the hidden force behind trying to wrangle Democrats together on Build B...