Brian Laird on WNYC.

We'll get some thoughts on the state of the country now from the journalist, essayist, and commentator, Anand

Giridardis.

We'll largely get his take on the debate taking place within

the Democratic Party and more generally on the American left right now about how to respond to

the Trump administration's, you know, shock and awe campaign of multiple highly charged actions

every day, the specific policies and the larger underlying questions of oligarchy and authoritarianism.

To set this up before Anand comes on, every time we have a Democratic member of Congress on the show

lately, one of the most common calls we get is do more than you're doing, sound more urgent,

show more fight, right? On the other hand, maybe you saw

the op-ed in the New York Times that's gotten a lot of attention by the Bill Clinton era Democratic

strategist James Carville, urging the Democrats to play possum, as he called it, because as he delicately

put it, quote, the Republican Party sucks at governing, unquote.

And if Democrats lie low for a little while and don't make themselves the issue,

Americans will very quickly reject most of the Trump and Musk project.

We heard another argument like that on all things considered this week,

maybe you were listening,

from Matt Bennett, Executive Vice President for Public Affairs at Third Way, the centrist

Democratic think tank. He did not think it was smart, for example, for Congressman Al Green

to get himself thrown out of the chamber on national television on Tuesday night by shouting

responses during Trump's address to Congress. Or if they were... himself thrown out of the chamber on national television on Tuesday night by shouting responses

during Trump's address to Congress, or if they want to convince, convinceable voters of

...