Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Decades ago, the conscious decision was made to exacerbate inequality for the sake of economic growth that would supposedly lift all boats.

What probably wasn't understood at the time is that the logical conclusion of that choice would be to break

democracy and usher in oligarchy. Now, working people are left with only bad choices and

empty promises. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top

takes in about 50 minutes today includes confronting capitalism, the Majority Report, pitchfork economics,

lever time, the Mark Steiner show, and The Dig.

Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there will be more in four sections.

Section A, party reckoning, section B, neoliberal stranglehold, section C, cross wires,

with a focus on the reorganization of the Republican Party, and Section D, Solutions.

One thing that you really point out in your recent Jacobin article is a huge contradiction that this wing of the

party is going to have to confront or potentially continue losing. So you write in your article

that the Democratic Party is kind of putting an increasing amount of distance

between itself and the working class. And the interesting thing that happened compared to 2016,

there were some roots and signs of it there, but this dynamic really manifested in this

election in 2024 is that now this working class alienation

is not just with the white working class that was so heavily demonized in 2016,

but that working class alienation is extending across racial lines now.

What do you think are the roots of the

Democratic parties increasing alienation from the working class? I mean, some of these roots,

I think, are not specific to the United States. They're specific to the political economy of

advanced capitalism generally. And what that particular dynamic is, is that on the one hand, all the parties of the left,

...