Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm

me and Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the soul searching underway as the traditional party of the working class,

the Democrats, try to grapple with the recent defeat, having lost an increasing number of

working Americans who voted for Trump twice.

Joining us to discuss a party described as, quote,

a vision-starved blob made up of candidates, non-profits, billionaire donors, and super PACs,

all connected by data-addled consultants, is Max Kieffel, a fellow at the Center for Labor

and the Just Economy at Harvard Law School.

A political economist, he is writing a book on Social Democratic Renewal that evaluates three

Anglo-American parties, the U.S. Democrats, the U.K. Labor Party, and the Australian Labor Party,

and he has an article we will discuss at the Baffler,

the consultant con.

Then we'll examine Trump's success with voters as he continually says the system is rigged,

something the Democrats, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, refused to say,

even though clearly MAGA's solutions will make things worse.

Joining us to talk about this and the brutal crackdown on demonstrations in the former Soviet

state of Georgia in favor of joining the EU is Lincoln Mitchell, who teaches at the School

of International and Public Policy and the Department of Political Science

at Columbia University. He has written numerous books and articles about international affairs,

American politics and baseball, and is the author of the popular substack Kibbetsing with Lincoln,

where his latest article we will discuss is the truths that facilitate Trump's lies.

...