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This is right now with Perry Bacon presented by the DSR Network.

Good afternoon. I'm Perry Bacon. I'm the host of New Republic Show right now. I have two great guests today. Seth Mascett is a professor at University of Denver on political science. Mark Smith is the director of the political reform program at New America. But I know they both have some interesting projects going on. So, Seth, talk about you've got a book and a sub-stack. So tell everybody about what you're doing first. Yeah, a couple of things going on. It just started a new sub-stack newsletter that's called the Smotis Report. That's S-M-O-T-U-S- S-M-E-Maskett of the United States.

And we just had a big launch earlier this week.

I'm looking for supporters, so I'm hoping people will be interested.

But basically, the focus there is a lot about U.S. politics, parties, campaigns, and a lot of other things, all with an eye toward the health of American democracy,

which is obviously under a lot of strain right now. And on that topic, I have a book coming out next month called The Elephants in the Room. The book is a look at how Republicans ended up

nominating Donald Trump for a third consecutive time in 2024, how a lot of people

in the party's leadership were actually quite uncomfortable with that decision, but had no way

to move voters in a different direction. And Mark, talk about what political reform, is it still

called that I'm forgetting now, what you guys do? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have like layers.

So now there's like a section called Democratic Futures.

And I still want to keep.

I like a nice straightforward name like political reform, even though it always makes people say, well, how's that going?

Yeah, we're still doing our thing. I think we're putting out a lot of material right now about why proportional representation is a timely response, particularly with

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