Bret Stephens on Why the Democrats Are Despairing

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.6 • 907 Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To listen to the full episode and support the podcast, please ⁠subscribe⁠ today! Bret Stephens is an opinion columnist for The New York Times and the founder and editor-in- chief of SAPIR, a new quarterly devoted to issues of Jewish concern. In this week’s conversation, Yascha and Bret discuss how Donald Trump has changed political culture, why moderates around the world are struggling, and what makes the United States uniquely innovative. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: [email protected] Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google X: @Yascha_Mounk & @JoinPersuasion YouTube: Yascha Mounk, Persuasion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Anna, I've got a new secret weapon for print.
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0:15.2	Political eras always present you with a unique set of challenges, but also a unique set of opportunities.
0:22.8	And there is a real opportunity in the United States for Democrats that right now they seem
0:28.6	to inept or divided or radical or something to seize.
0:35.5	And that is that many Americans are supporting Trump through gridded teeth.
0:42.6	And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.
0:50.8	My guest today is Brett Stevens.
0:53.9	Brett is a Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary,
0:57.9	and he is a columnist for the New York Times.
1:02.2	We tried to think about what it would take to get through this political moment. Donald Trump and other right-wing populists
1:16.1	are threatening the democratic system in serious ways, but part of what is striking about this
1:22.3	moment is the inability of the opponents, whether that's the Democratic Party in the United
1:26.7	States or other political movements around the Western world to put together a sufficiently compelling
1:32.2	political alternative that they look like they're able to withstand those attacks.
1:39.7	Why is that? Would it be enough to go back to an optimistic centrist, center-left politics of Barack Obama?
1:51.4	You have to go further back to the third-way politics of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair?
	...

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