Living in the USA

How the best Democratic candidates won - Harold Meyerson comments. Also, the inevitable announcement from Donald Trump. Plus: LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano on the defeat of sheriff Alex Villaneuva, Rick Caruso's campaign for Latino votes, and red-baiting in Orange County. Also: Joan Walsh of The Nation says Herschel Walker looks like a loser in the Georgia senate runoff.

Barack Obama lost 63 seats in his first midterm. Trump lost 40. Biden will lose 6 or 8. How did the Dems do it? Harold Meyerson has been thinking about that. Also, The Nation ‘s top political writers analyze the good, the bad, and the ugly of the midterm elections, and find keys to building a winning coalition for 2024: D.D. Guttenplan, Elie Mystal, Joan Walsh, John Nichols, and Chris Lehmann.

In the key swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, the union UNITE-HERE has the biggest ground game of any organization - Harold Meyerson explains what they do, how they do it, and why they are so good at it. Also: How can we save democracy from white nationalism and right-wing authoritarianism? Steve Phillips argues we need to organize and turn out the millions of non-voters – peop...

Election day is less than two weeks away. What should the Democrats' closing message be? Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect comments. Also: Mike Davis, author and activist, radical hero and family man, died on Tuesday, Oct. 25. After talking about his life and work, we play part of an interview with him on this podcast from November, 2016, one week after Trump was elected. Plu...

Latino voters hold the keys to Democratic victories in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, Harold Meyerson argues. New polling data highlights the possibilities - and the problems. plus: Joe Biden has just made marijuana legalization a campaign issue–the Democrats should run with it, says John Nichols. Also: Greil Marcus talks about Bob Dylan, from “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1962 to “Murder Most...

LA's political scandal is about the racism of some Latino politicians. Harold Meyerson has the big picture: Ethnic succession is the history of urban politics in the US. In America today, progressives need ethnic and racial alliances, and the participants in this taped conversation have to go. Also: Nurses have taken the lead in the wave of this year’s labor activism. The largest private-sector nu...

Should Bernie Sanders run in the Democratic primaries in 2024? Bhaskar Sunkara, President of The Nation, says “yes” IF Biden doesn’t. Sanders transformed American politics and, Bhaskar argues, he remains a uniquely important figure for Democrats and the left. Plus: can Republicans win control of the Senate? Trump’s candidates are the GOP’s biggest problem, starting in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgi...

To increase young voters' turnout, we need to appeal not only to abortion rights but also to economic issues, Harold Meyerson concludes after reading the polls. Also: Ken Burns’ new documentary on PBS, “The US and the Holocaust,” searches for heroes and happy endings - but there aren't any, Historian David Nasaw argues. Plus: "Bad Mexicans”—that's what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as th...

We’re still thinking about LA County Sheriff Alex Villaneuva ordering a raid on the home of Sheila Kuehl last Wednesday--she’s one of the county supervisors who has called for his resignation. He says she’s the target of an investigation of corruption in the award of contracts by the supervisors - but he says all kinds of things, many of which are lies. Gustavo Arellano reports - he's a columnist...

Republican moves on abortion continue to strengthen Democratic candidates, says Harold Meyerson--especially in Michigan. Also: Amazon workers organize in the Inland Empire, and nurses are on strike in Minnesota. Plus: The transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention into a powerful right wing political force developed over the last 50 years. Before 1973, when abortion became a constitutional...

The president and the governor of Calif arguing about who is more pro-labor - that's something new: Harold Meyerson comments. Also: the organizing that won that huge abortion rights victory in Kansas: Amy Littlefield reports. And we remember Barbara Ehrenreich, who died last week - we did this interview with her in 2002, when "Nickel and Dimed" had just been published.

Harold Meyerson on the labor breakthrough in California: a statewide panel to set standards for wages and working conditions for the 550,000 fast food workers in the state. Also: Republicans are making plans if they win control of the House in November--Chris Lehmann reports that their top targets include the NLRB and the Department of Labor. Chris is The Nation’s new D.C. Bureau Chief. Plus: Patr...

The fight for abortion rights and against a resurgent Donald Trump are mobilizing Democrats for the midterms; student debt cancellation helps. Harold Meyerson reports. Also: The Supreme Court next term will take up a case that could make Trump’s fake electors scheme the law of the land. Daniel Squadron explains the situation – and how winning majorities in state legislatures in swing states is the...

Liz Cheney's big loss in Wyoming marks the end of the traditional GOP, says Harold Meyerson; also: Amazon workers on strike in the Inland Empire. Plus: Some surprising abortion rights victories in red states: Katha Pollitt reports. And what is to be done about the gangs in Port-au-Prince - send in the marines? Amy Wilentz comments.

Harold Meyerson explains Biden's big achievement--it's mainly a climate change bill with a side helping of health reform and some additional taxation of corporations. Also: Liz Cheney is way behind in the polls leading up to next week’s Wyoming primary. John Nichols went to Wyoming to see her in action, and reports that she’s “fighting to outlast and replace Trump as the manager of the right-wing...

Pramila Jayapal is head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and represents Seattle in the House. She will explain how, as a young immigrant from India, she went from being an investment banker to a lifelong organizer. Her book, “Use the Power You Have: A Brown Woman's Guide to Politics and Political Change,” is out now. Also historian Eric Foner talks about about voting rights and voter suppre...

Jordan Peterson’s books of advice for men have sold five million copies – he says men should work hard, be responsible, demand more of themselves—and make their beds. Katha Pollitt has some comments about that. Also: The synergy between politics and popular culture has never been clearer or stronger than in the Age of Reagan. J. Hoberman, author of “Make My Day: Film Culture in the Age of Reagan,"...

Biden's clean energy plan was our best chance for addressing the climate emergency for the next several years; but Joe Manchin killed it, he says, because he's concerned about inflation. Harold Meyerson comments. Also: Addressing Climate Despair: how taking action is an act of hope. Thelma Young Lutunatabua and Rebecca Solnit talk about their new project @NotTooLate_Hope https://www.nottoolateclim...

On Tuesday the January 6 committee held yet another dramatic hearing, this one on the origins of the ‘Stop the Steal” rally and the events that provoked that 1:30 am tweet of Trump’s urging supporters to come to Washington, where it “will be wild.” Harold Meyerson has our analysis. Also: the people who say “America is a Christian Nation” had some big victories at the Supreme Court this term: on sc...

Biden’s weak responses to the end of abortion rights and the Supreme Court majority’s obstacles to gun control have been disastrous for Democrats. Harold Meyerson comments, and on the Georgia races with Rev. Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams. Also: The end of abortion in 26 states will be deadly for many poor women, especially poor women of color. Law professor Michele Goodwin explains, reviewing...

Harold Meyerson comments on Tuesday's historic testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson - and on the Supreme Court and abortion. Also: In understanding the January 6 insurrection, much of the focus has been on white nationalist militias like the Proud Boys. But white evangelicals also played a big part on January 6. Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presiden...

This week's hearings of the Jan. 6 committee have been powerful and devastating in laying out the evidence of Trump's crimes, first in pressuring state officials to alter election results, and then in pressuring the Justice Department to declare the elections corrupted. John Nichols comments. Plus: Republicans have opened another front in the culture war with the slogan “parental rights”--not just...

Harold Meyerson comments on the most striking revelation of the Jan. 6 hearings thus far, especially the Proud Boys going straight to the capitol instead of to Trump's speech at the 'Stop the Steal' rally. Also: The recall of Chesa Boudin, the progressive prosecutor in San Francisco, has been taken by pundits everywhere to require the Democrats to abandon their efforts to reform the police and the...

The results of Tuesday’s primaries in L.A. and San Francisco, according to the New York Times, were “a stark warning to the Democratic Party about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022.” Harold Meyerson disagrees. Also: our preview of the live TV hearings of the House committee on the January 6 insurrection. Plus: Also: Abortion and its opponents. Do opponents of abortion rea...

Harold Meyerson comments on the LA Mayoral race, where the police union is spending millions to defeat Karen Bass. Also: the coming end of constitutional protection for abortion gives us a lot of work to do–Katha Pollitt explains. And Lynn Garafola talks about "an Amazon of the Avant-Garde," the ballet dancer who went from revolutionary Russia to Kiev to Hollywood in the 1930s – "La Nijinska," sis...