Left Anchor

If a Democrat wins the White House next year, they will almost certainly not have 60 votes in the Senate, or perhaps even a majority. New bold legislation like a Green New Deal will face a near-impossible uphill struggle. But hang on -- it turns out there are gigantic reams of statutory authority just waiting to be picked up. We've got David Dayen , executive editor of The American Prospect, on to...

In this excerpt we discuss how Republican electoral cheating reveals their lack of power in an Arendtian sense. Subscribe now to hear the full episode!

Today we've got on Liza Featherstone to chat about her article on the families of 2020 candidates. From there we move onto a broader discussion of the merits of Bernie vs. Warren, how FDR became a class traitor, whether Lincoln was any good, and more! Also links to her books:  Divining Desire and Selling Women Short .

We've got writer David Klion on to discuss the freshly updated magazine Jewish Currents , Center for American Progress chief Neera Tanden's decision to bust the ThinkProgress union, the prospects for imperial rollback after 2020, how far the new Koch- and Soros-funded Quincy Institute should be trusted, and the evolution of Bernie Sanders' foreign policy thinking. Here are his Nation articles: on...

We bring on Dr. Jamaal Green -- otherwise known as the Surly Urbanist -- to talk about the ongoing debate about the role of slavery in early capitalism. Was it necessary to get capitalist development started, or did it actually slow down economic growth? Moreover, why is this an important question, and what does the gruesome history of slavery tell us about the nature of capitalist institutions? T...

Listen to Ryan's petty rant about how Bret Stephens has the easiest job on the planet, but can't even enjoy it. Subscribe here to hear the full episode!

We've got a gen-u-ine lefty preacher, Rev. John Thornton Jr., on the podcast to talk about what it's like participating in organized leftist Christianity in 2019. We discuss " The Class Struggle and Christian Love ," by Herbert McCabe, plus two of John's articles on the failure of "compassionate conservatism" and why there has so far been no appearance of a serious religious left .

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Today former press secretary for Hillary Clinton and spokesman for Chuck Schumer Brian Fallon jumps into the Left Anchor lion's den to advocate for his proposal for all 2020 Dem candidates to promise the following: "[no] more corporate lawyers on the federal bench during the next Democratic administration." We discuss the plague of corporate lawyer logrolling, how Brian came to believe in the need...

Something is happening in the Texas legislature's Republican delegation ... but what it is ain't exactly clear. We bring on Chris Hooks to talk about his Texas Monthly article explaining how the state's GOP Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen punched himself directly in the dick through the medium of a loony right-wing crank, and how that bodes for the political future of Texas.

Adam Gaffney is the president of Physicians for a National Health Program and a doctor at the Harvard Medical School. He talks to us about the prospects for Medicare for All, whether moderate Democrats are serious about reform, and the best way to cut down America's ludicrously high health care costs.

Svalbard is a huge island about halfway between the north coast of Norway and the North Pole, which has the unusual characteristic of being accessible to anyone in the world without a visa (with some exceptions). Atossa Araxia Abrahamian joins us to talk about her trip there for an article in The Nation , as well as her book The Cosmopolites . The article in The Intercept about the late Jimmy Alda...

Harris County (home of Houston, Texas) recently entered into a consent decree to overhaul the cash bail process in its courts -- which among other things makes it much harder to lock up poor people for minor offenses. Famed Judge of the Harris County Criminal Court No. 8 Franklin Bynum joins us for the second time , together with his friend, adviser, and fellow organizer Bryan LaVergne , to tell u...

In this excerpt , we've got  Professor Rob Larson on the podcast to talk about his new book Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom. Subscribe now to hear all bonus episodes! 

This time we have some actual breaking news on the podcast! After discussing the Pelosi/Squad dispute ( TNR article here ) and the Mueller testimony today ( NR article here ), we turn to Senator Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) speech at the National Conservative Conference a few days ago. We discuss the deeply anti-Semitic overtones of singling out 3 Jewish academics (out of 4 mentioned) to blame for "cosmo...

For the free episode this week, we are UNLOCKING a bonus episode from back in April on Ilhan Omar and Patriotism.  We are doing this for unfortunately timely reasons, in light of Trump's bigoted, xenophobic attacks that then were amplified by a chanting crowd at his rally soon thereafter.  In this discussion from the bonus episode archives, we discuss the ongoing conservative hate campaign against...

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This time we've got Jeff Spross filling in as guest host to chat with Chris Arnade , author of Dignity , a Studs Terkel-style ethnography of American poverty. We talk about what inspired him to leave Wall Street and start writing about poverty, the varied characteristics of broke Americans, and the real problem with the top 20 percent (hint: it's not their incomes, but their politics). The intervi...

Subscribe here to hear the full episode, and you can find Tomorrow without Fear here .

This time we've got David Sessions on to talk about the extraordinarily weak tea contained in Adam Gopnik's new book A Thousand Small Sanities . Are liberals responsible for all the good things that have happened in the last 300 years, or is penny-ante moderation the appropriate response to all problems? Tune in to find out! (Read David's review of Gopnik here .)

Max Alvarez joins us again to talk about his experience navigating the treacherous waters of higher education this time. We discuss how he came to end up in graduate school, how the logic of markets has penetrated the university, and the political function thereof. Find some of his writing on this here , here , or here .

For once we've got a timely episode! Today we're talking with Carl Beijer , whose People's Policy Project paper on the international financing of climate change policy came out today. Tackling this problem is going to require an eye-watering quantity of international subsidies, and it's worth thinking about how that might happen.

Here we discuss a section of Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous essay on why America should support right-wing dictatorships. Subscribe now to hear the full episode!

This time we've got historian Greg Grandin on to talk about his new book The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America , about the history of the American frontier, how it has functioned politically over the years, and how Trump is drawing on that legacy today. (Also listen for an interlude about whether it was appropriate for Bernie Sanders to oppose Reagan's de...

In this excerpt we talk about some strengths and blind spots in Warren's foreign policy ideas. Subscribe here to hear the full episode!