589 | Danielle Lee Tomson: When the Story Breaks: MAGA, Liberalism, and the Battle to Define Reality

The Realignment

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

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2026

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Danielle Lee Tomson, author of the Failure to Communicate Substack and the forthcoming Under the Influence: What's Real When America Feels Fake, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Danielle revisit her concept of the "authenticity gap": the growing mismatch between our expectations and lived reality, and its defining role in America's turn to populism, why technocratic campaigning and politics crowds out meaning, culture, and first-order questions, why effective storytelling is a critical candidate and movement skillset, and why the next phase of left-liberal politics will require fusion between feuding camps, not factional warfare.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. Today's episode
0:06.1	is a sequel of sorts to Last Fall's conversation with Dr. Daniel Lee Thompson, where we discussed
0:13.6	her concepts of the authenticity gap, word of a building, storytelling, and a lot of the big
0:19.5	themes that the realignment wants to cover.
0:21.9	Moving forward as we look at a center-left, liberal, progressive politics that finds itself in
0:28.0	the place the right found itself after the 2012 election.
0:31.3	We're going to rehash some of that fall conversation, but in terms of directing people
0:37.3	where the show is going and where a lot
0:39.5	of my editorial focus is going to be, the themes we cover, everything from fusion in between
0:45.0	feuding factions on the center-left to the left, and the broader conversations about where
0:51.1	the American people are, relative to the ideas, policies, polls,
0:54.9	and sort of procedures and tactics that come out of D.C. are really at the center. So I hope
1:00.0	you all enjoy the conversation. And if you haven't listened to the previous episode of Danielle,
1:05.6	it's number 573 and it came out in mid-September. Hope you all enjoy the conversation.
1:12.1	Danielle Lee Thompson.
1:13.6	Welcome back to The Realignment.
1:15.5	Thank you, Marshall, and happy New Year.
1:17.7	Happy New Year.
1:18.7	This will be the second episode of the Relignment this year.
1:22.3	And this is episode I'm actually really psyched to put together.
1:26.1	So you and I spoke in August, and I released our first episode back in September.
1:33.9	And not to gas you up too much, but out of all of the episodes I've done over the past,
	...

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