565 | Daniel Squadron: Rebuilding American Liberalism from the States Up

The Realignment

Technology, News Commentary, National Security, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, News, Public Policy, Economics, Politics, Saager Enjeti, U.s. Politics, Policy

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Daniel Squadron, former New York legislator and Co-Founder of the States Forum, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Daniel discuss why the center-left and the Democratic Party lack the kind of coherent worldview of the MAGA right, why real political power and the opportunity to build and test new ideas lies in the states, not just D.C., the importance of ideas vs. "messaging," and the case for centering the themes of representative democracy, fair markets, effective government, and personal freedom at the center of the left-liberal project.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. So quick
0:05.8	news about the show in case you missed last week's episode. Today marks the first realignment
0:11.1	since I left the Foundation for American Innovation. Once again, huge thanks to FAI for supporting
0:17.8	the realignment with the past five years. Next month, I will be taking the realignment to the Niskanin Center, where I've been increasingly
0:25.8	featuring Niskanon's work, and I am super psyched for everything we're going to do there.
0:29.6	On to today's episode, I'm speaking with Daniel Squadron, a former New York State legislator
0:34.9	and co-founder of the States Forum, which is a new project
0:39.0	focused on rebuilding the Democratic Party from the state level rather than DC up.
0:45.3	I have been really interested in the ways that I believe this post-2020 moment is just like
0:51.5	the Republican Party situation post-2012 election. The way I kind of saw with this moment is just like the Republican Party situation post-2012 election.
0:55.1	The way I kind of sum with this moment is that the 2013 through 2015 period before Trump
1:00.3	was all about the Republican Party recognizing that the Mitt Romney version of the party had
1:05.4	reached its strongest possible position and had no future.
1:09.9	That then led to a realignment moment where you
1:12.0	had Trump and the populist right lead. After 2024, given the fact that Trump was able to win,
1:17.5	not just the electoral college, obviously, but also the popular vote, American liberalism
1:21.4	and the Democratic Party broadly faced their own similar moment now that the realignment
1:25.3	has come for their party as well too.
1:28.2	So on this show over the past few weeks and for the foreseeable future, I'll be platforming
1:33.0	a lot of the folks who are working in this rebuilding in the wilderness space.
1:37.6	Daniels New States Forum initiative kicked off in Philadelphia earlier last month.
1:42.3	And what's so interesting with their group is that they are not
	...

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