Politics in Question

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Julia and Lee talk with Stephanie Ternullo about the political shift among white working-class Americans. Ternullo is an Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University and author of How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics (Princeton University Press, 2024). How do people grow partisan attachment...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, James, Julia, and Lee discuss political dysfunction and how our perceptions of politics influence our views. They discuss Lee’s Substack piece  We Need More (and Better) Parties  and Julia’s Substack piece  The Odds vs. The Stakes: In 2024, They Don't Seem to Be Related. How should media cover elections? In what ways is power being used to shape poli...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Lee and Julia talk with Zack Beauchamp about how we make sense of democratic threats. Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox and author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World (PublicAffairs, 2024). What are the risks to American democracy? How do social and economic hierarchies influence the fu...

In this week’s episode of  Politics In Question , Lee talks with Kevin Morris about demographics, voting rights, and elections. Morris , a Senior Research Fellow and Voting Policy Scholar at the Brennan Center, is the co-author of the report  Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022 . How have voting rights laws, policies, and practices evolved over time? How has the  Shelby County v...

In this week’s episode of  Politics In Question , Julia talks with Scott Mainwaring about multipartism and presidentialism. Mainwaring is the Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the co-author, alongside Lee Drutman, of  The Case for Multiparty Presidentialism in the U.S.  (Protect Democracy, 2023). How do institutions impact coalition fluid...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Julia and Lee talk with Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman about the evolution of political parties in the United States. Rosenfeld is an is Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University and Scholzman is a Joseph and Bertha Bernstein Associate Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University. They are the authors of The Holl...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Lee and Julia talk with Chloe Nicol Thurston and Emily Zackin about the United State’s relationship to debt and debtors. Thurston is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and Zackin is an Associate Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University. They are the authors of The Political Development of American...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question Lee and Julia dive into the latest from their Substack newsletters, Undercurrent Events and Good Politics/Bad Politics . They delve into how negativity bias, nostalgia bias, identity, and messaging all shape the current state of our democracy. How do we think of the present and the past? How do emotion, identity, and community shape the way we perceiv...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question Lee talks with Jocelyn Kiley to discuss the Pew Report, Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation . Kiley is a Senior Associate Director of Research at Pew Research Center. What are the most important demographic groups within each party? What is the correlation between age and partisanship? How are partisan divisions reinforced by...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Lee and James explore the role of the Senate and the dysfunction we see today with Sean Theriault. Theriault is a Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin and the author of Disruption?: The Senate During the Trump Era (Oxford University Press, 2024). Do we need the Senate? What has caused gridlock in the Senate? W...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Lee and James explore America’s reliance on direct primaries in federal elections with Nick Troiano. Troiano is the Executive Director of Unite America and the author of The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes (Simon & Schuster, 2024). What are direct primaries? Why do Americans rely on them? When did they first start using dir...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Lee discusses the history of primary elections and options for reform with Robert Boatright. Boatright is professor of political science at Clark University and the world’s leading expert on the American primary system. He is also the director of research for the National Institute of Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona. His most recent boo...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Ari Berman joins Julia and Lee to discuss voting rights in the United States. Berman is Mother Jones’ national voting rights correspondent. He is the author of numerous books, including Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024). Why is American politics dysfunctional? Is it because the Constitut...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Rachel Porter joins Lee to consider the consequences of political amateurs in Congress. Porter is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. Her research interests include American political institutions and political methodology, with a particular focus on Congress, elite behavior, and methods for computational social science. Most recently, her...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Jake Grumbach joins Lee and James to consider whether American democracy is in crisis. Grumbach is an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He studies the political economy of the United States, with interests in democratic institutions, labor, federalism, racial and economic inequality, and statistical methods....

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Congressman John Sarbanes, D-Md., joins Lee to talk about the health of American democracy. Sarbanes has represented Maryland’s third congressional district in the House of Representatives since 2007. He serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and is chair of the Democracy Reform Task Force. Sarbanes was born and raised in Baltimore and...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Thomas Schaller and Paul Waldman join Lee and James to discuss the urban-rural divide in American politics. Schaller is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Waldman is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in numerous publications, including MSNBC. Their new book is White Rural Rage: The Thre...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Matt Glassman joins Lee and James to discuss the right way to do politics. Glassman is a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. Before that, he worked on congressional operations, separation of powers, appropriations process, agency design, and congressional history at the Congressional Research Service. He also s...

In this week's episode of Politics In Question, Lee and James ask Representative Chip Roy, R-Texas, if the House of Representatives is broken.  Roy  is a devoted husband and father of two, serving his third term in Congress representing Texas's 21st Congressional District. He serves on the House Judiciary, Rules, and Budget Committees and is the House Freedom Caucus Policy Chair. Roy previously se...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Jonathan Rauch joins Lee and James to consider why Americans can’t compromise. Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program and the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer of The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equ...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Lee and James talk about Bonnie Tyler, Tina Turner, and Americans’ views of democracy. What is democracy? How do Americans view it? Do they think about democracy differently when it gets in their way? Does that make them “democracy hypocrites?” Why are Americans holding out for a hero in such moments? And does democratic self-government need another...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Julia, Lee, and James discuss what happened in 2023, and what could happen in 2024. What did we learn in 2023? Was American politics less fluid and surprising than it was in 2022? Will the 2024 presidential election be a rematch between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump? What are the consequences of divided parties? Why is Congre...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Jonathan Rodden joins Julia and Lee to discuss the challenges presented by urban-rural polarization in American politics. Rodden is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. His work focuses on the comparative political economy of institutions. He has written on various topics, including federalism and fiscal decentr...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Lee takes a big picture look at political polling with Michael Podhorzer. Podhorzer is a senior fellow at the Center for American Process where he writes weekly on election data and political strategy. He is the former political director of the AFL-CIO. Podhorzer founded the Analyst Institute , the Independent Strategic Research Collaborative (ISRC)...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , James discusses the importance of political leadership with Daniel Stid. Stid is the Executive Director of Lyceum Labs. He previously served as the founding director of the Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. Democracy Program. From 2013-22, Daniel led $180 million in grantmaking to shore up U.S. democracy in a time of polarization. Earlier in his career, he...