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The Good Fight

Are America's Institutions Broken?

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7963 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2022

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam Koppelman is a Democratic strategist who served as director of surrogate speechwriting on the Biden campaign. He is the author, with former Attorney General Eric Holder, of Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote—a History, a Crisis, a Plan.  In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Sam Koppelman discuss the history of voting rights, how and whether to reform institutions from the electoral college to primary elections, and why Democrats are in such a weak position as they head into the midterms and 2024. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

At Barclays, we're here for every goal.

0:06.4

We're here for the Premier League,

0:09.0

and the Barclays Women's Super League.

0:12.0

We're here for the football chance for giving more girls a chance.

0:18.0

We're here for the grassroots and all the muddy boots. From schools to stadiums we're here for it all.

0:27.3

Barclays here for every goal.

0:31.1

You know a friend of mine who's long worked in American politics said it's easier for Democrats

0:36.2

to imagine losing our democracy entirely or fundamentally changing all of our institutions

0:42.8

that it is to imagine winning a Senate race in Indiana.

0:46.2

Like that is the fundamental problem,

0:48.1

is that you do fight politics

0:50.9

with the institutions that you have, not the institutions that you wish you have.

0:55.3

And given that, I think Democratic leadership has been an absolute calamity.

1:02.0

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

1:07.0

As you know, I have been summarizing some of the main themes and ideas and suggestions from my new book from the great experiment, why diverse democracies fall apart and how they can endure.

1:23.0

Two weeks ago I talked about the basic relationship between the state, the group, and the individual,

1:31.0

how philosophical liberals should think about the kinds of freedoms that we should guarantee to citizens in a free society.

1:40.0

Last week I made a defense of patriotism. I argued that we should embrace both a

1:48.2

civil constitutional patriotism but also an everyday cultural patriotism. There's also a third kind of question which I think it's helpful to think through

1:57.4

when we talk about the vision that we should embrace for how to make

2:02.2

ethnically and religiously diverse democracies work.

2:06.0

And that is what kind of metaphor can help to guide us in thinking through the amount of commonality or the amount of difference

...

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