Marshall here, welcome back to the realignment.

Hey everyone, we'll go back to the show.

Today's episode is all about the actual topic of the show, the realignment.

I have returning guest, Frank J. DeStefano, who is really the realignment OG.

In May of 2019, he wrote a book, The Next Realignment, Why America's Parties Are Crumbling, and What Happens Next?

Should be noted, the Realignment, the podcast actually came out in July of 2019.

And now that we have former Time magazine in Wall Street Journal, Molly Ball, reporter writing her book on the realignment itself. I thought this is

a perfect time to sort of level set the realignment topic and really sort of chart the course

of where the show is going next. It should also be noted that Frank is now the author as well of

the Renewing the Republic Substack, and he has a article out on the intersection of the abundance agenda

and the realignment in the Scanand's Policy Journal hypertext linked in the show notes.

It's specifically focused on the title of abundance is asking the wrong question, getting at,

once again, the intersection of the abundance agenda topic from

the Ezra and Derek perspective, but also zooming out to a broader issue of legitimacy in

American politics. I think what I love about talking with Frank is he always does an amazing job

of getting to the bigger question that people, for a variety of reasons we get into,

where he's struggle to focus on.

And in this case, he really defines this real-in-period from 2015 onwards as centering on

a real crisis of legitimacy.

In our institutions, in our way of lives and the stories, we tell ourselves and use to

understand our world, all of that is illegitimate, especially

from the public's perspective, and it's really tough for politicians, whether they're populace,

...