Andy Beshear Has a Plan for the Democratic Party
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.2 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the damage that President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will cause in rural America. Beshear paints a picture of how Democrats can win back voters without compromising on issues such as abortion or trans rights, what the party can learn from Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral primary, and the importance of communicating with the public using everyday language.
This week’s reading:
- “Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, and Posting as Politics” by Kyle Chayka
- “The Texas Floods and the Lives Lost at Camp Mystic,” by Jessica Winter
- “Is There Still Time to Be Hopeful About the Climate?,” by Daniel A. Gross
- “The War on Gaza’s Children,” by Isaac Chotiner
- “4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment,” by Bill McKibben
To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Democratic Party is in crisis. |
| 0:05.0 | But while polls show that the party is historically unpopular with Americans, |
| 0:10.0 | Kentucky Governor Andy Bashir is the exception. |
| 0:13.0 | Despite presiding over a red state, |
| 0:15.0 | Bashir has become the most popular Democratic governor in America. |
| 0:19.0 | This is something that he attributes to focusing on a |
| 0:21.5 | cost of living platform, while also standing firm on social issues like trans rights and abortion. |
| 0:27.6 | Because of all of that, he's generating serious buzz as a potential presidential candidate in |
| 0:32.6 | 2008. I wanted to talk with Bashir about what Trump's big, beautiful bill will mean for rural America. |
| 0:39.0 | Why he thinks the Democratic Party is struggling, what he thinks the party can learn from the New York City mayoral campaign of Zoran Mamdani, |
| 0:45.6 | and how Democrats can recapture voters by speaking like regular people. |
| 0:50.5 | This is the political scene. |
| 0:52.4 | I'm Tyler Fagget, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. |
| 0:59.0 | Hi, Governor Bich here. Thanks so much for being here. |
| 1:01.7 | Happy to do it. So I want to start by talking about the latest for Donald Trump. |
| 1:06.7 | My guess is that Trump is probably feeling pretty good right now. He signed the big beautiful |
| 1:11.0 | bill into law last week on July 4th of all days. His decision to strike Iran did not result in a |
| 1:16.7 | wider war, or at least not yet. He's had some major Supreme Court victories, and even the |
| 1:21.9 | jobs numbers have defied expectations. So what do you make of the fact that his big gambols, |
| 1:27.3 | at least so far, seem to have worked out for him? |
| 1:30.2 | Well, if Donald Trump is feeling good today, it's because he's more focused on himself and what he |
| 1:35.8 | perceives as his victories versus what he is doing to the American people. His big, ugly bill, is an |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 27 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.