It's the Brian Laris Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Let's focus in on the debate within the Democratic Party, or more broadly, the political left in this country, over why the

Democrats lost the election and what they need to do to win. They just lost the presidency and the

Senate, and Republicans are probably, though we don't know, on their way to retaining a slim

majority in the House. You've been hearing some of the theories because every Western leader who saw a

pandemic inflation on their watch has gotten slaughtered in their next election. Harris only did as

well as she did because Donald Trump is so unpopular, because Biden dropped out too late,

leaving Harris too little time to introduce herself to voters, because the racism and sexism tax on a black and

South Asian woman candidate was too steep to overcome, because the Democratic Party is too

identified with censorious and extreme-sounding identity politics, or because the Democrats

fail to offer a true populist economic alternative to Trump's economic populism on the cost of living, even though Trump's is probably going to make inflation worse.

As business and economics reporter, Greg David, said on yesterday's show, it's why long-term interest rates have been going up since the election.

Greg told us long-term interest rates rise

when Wall Street investors anticipate inflation. But Trump sold the idea that he's better for

working class wallets than the Democrats because the Democrats didn't really counter it with much

of substance. That's that theory. And we have a guest today representing mostly that

point of view. It's David Serota, among other things, a former presidential campaign speechwriter

for Bernie Sanders. So before we bring him on, let's set this up with a clip of Senator Sanders

discussing his own election postmortem on CNN State of the Union program on Sunday,

Sanders had said the Democratic Party abandoned the working class. That was his phrase,

abandoned the working class. The host, Dana Bash, quoted DNC chair, Jamie Harrison, who said

Joe Biden has been the most pro-worker president of my lifetime, and Sanders responded.

Look, Joe Biden is a friend of mine. I've been proud to work with him on an agenda which has been very strongly in favor of the working class.

...