Hello, listeners, and welcome to confronting capitalism.

On April 6th, we spoke with Matt Karp and Crystal Ball in Brooklyn, New York in front of

a live audience about the left's electoral strategy.

The following is a recording of that conversation, where we try to unpack what the left

strategy has been, where it's taking us, and what some of our challenges are.

Enjoy the show.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for coming to Confronting Capitalism's first ever live recording.

My name is Melissa Nashick, and I'm the co-host of Confronting Capitalism.

We could not be happier to be here with all of you. First off, we have Matt Karp. He is the author of this vast southern empire.

He's an associate professor of history at Princeton University. He's a board member at the Center for Working Class

Politics, and he is a Jacobin contributing editor.

Next up, we have Crystal Ball. Crystal is the author of the Populous Guide to 2020, host of the Crystal Kyle and Friends podcast, and host of Breaking Points with Crystal and Sager.

And then finally, we have Vivek Chibber, author of multiple books, including The Class Matrix,

Professor of Sociology at NYU, editor of Catalyst, a journal of theory and strategy,

and the host of the Confronting Capitalism Podcast.

All right.

So tonight we're here to talk about how the left can continue to build a powerful working class movement.

There are a lot of different components to left political strategy, but tonight we're going to focus primarily on electoral politics. So we're here in Brooklyn right now, and I don't think I need to really explain to this audience how

important electoral politics can be for the left. But I was someone who, you know,

probably like many others in this room, became politically active after Trump's first presidential win and Bernie's 2016 primary bid, which unfortunately didn't work out.

Bernie would have won.

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