Is It Time to Break the Two-Party System?

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2026

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We have entered a world of maximum gerrymandering warfare. Any guardrails that once existed, from the Constitution or the courts, have been bulldozed over the last decade – most recently in the Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and made it harder for minorities to challenge racially discriminatory voting maps. Red and blue states alike have been aggressively trying to redraw their congressional maps in response to all these developments. And there is no sign that will end in 2028; legislatures will just continue trying to tweak their lines to squeeze out advantage for whatever party is in power. And competitive districts in this country – already an endangered species – now teeter on extinction. That is, unless something dramatic changes. Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the political reform program at New America. He’s one of the most persistent and thoughtful advocates of selecting House members through proportional representation – a system used in many other countries that would make gerrymandering much more difficult. He’s the author of the 2020 book “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America” and writes the newsletter Undercurrent Events. Mentioned: Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop by Lee Drutman “Undercurrent Events” by Lee Drutman Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein “How one country stopped a Trump-style authoritarian in his tracks” by Zack Beauchamp Book Recommendations: Tyranny of the Majority by Lani Guinier American Politics by Samuel P. Huntington The Recognitions by William Gaddis Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Julie Beer and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Go back a couple of weeks, and Democrats thought they were drawing nearly even with Republicans in the gerrymandering force.
0:38.6	Yes, Texas had tried this aggressive mid-cycle redistricting, but California had countered them.
0:43.3	And that was the pattern we were seeing.
0:45.3	For every red state that was doing a big redistricting, there was a blue state now trying to match it.
0:49.9	But then in the past couple of weeks, Democrats caught a series of very bad breaks.
0:54.2	One was a Supreme Court decision in Calais, which gutted the Voting Rights Act,
0:58.7	gutted one of the last boundaries on what you could do in terms of partisan and racial redistricting.
1:05.7	And the second was that Virginia, which had paused their commission and drawn new maps,
1:12.6	had its new maps thrown out by their courts. And so now Democrats are going to be down, depending on who you talk to,
1:17.9	something like seven to ten seats from these redistricting fights. So I think there are two questions
1:23.2	here. One is what this means for this midterm and the fights over gerrymandering that will come after
1:28.5	it. And the second is how can we actually put an end to this? Because this is a disaster for our
1:35.9	democracy. This is exactly how our system is not supposed to work. Lee Drupman is a senior
1:41.0	fellow in the political reform program in New America. He's the author of the 2020 book Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop,
1:46.9	The Case for Multi-Party Democracy in America.
1:49.3	He writes a newsletter under current events,
1:51.5	and he is one of the most persistent and thoughtful advocates for something you see in a lot of other countries,
1:57.3	something that might be an answer we need to turn to here, which is proportional representation.
2:02.2	As always, my email, Ezra Clineshow at NMITimes.com.
2:15.2	Lee Drupman, welcome to the show.
2:16.9	Hey, it's a real treat to be having this conversation, Ezra.
	...

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