You know, the conservative movement, they got Nixon in the White House in 1968,

but they were really kind of frustrated with his real inability to reverse how politics had been going

and reverse the post-World War II liberal consensus, especially around domestic policy.

So the Chamber of Commerce asked future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell to basically analyze

situation for them and how they could ultimately become the dominant political movement in the country.

And Powell came back to them with three main recommendations. One was taking over the judiciary,

and that's why you have the Federalist Society. The second is building alternate institutions,

both media and academics. So that's why you have Fox News. That's why you have the Heritage Foundation.

And the third thing that Powell really focused on was taking over state governments,

specifically state legislatures. And that's why you had Alec, the American Legislative Exchange

Council, and other groups are founded by people like Paul Wyrick and Grover Norquist that really

popped up in the 70s and the 80s to really drive state legislatures rightward and make them

basically save for corporate special interests and do the bidding of those.

What was the left doing? Were they watching this happen? And just we're like,

ah, we don't need the states or, you know, is it just kind of Dems or the left asleep at the wheel?

I think it was a misallocation of priorities. We just talked a lot about kind of

stretches of the new right. Well, there also was a new left. That new left, it was very

kind of litigation focused and very DC focused. And there was this theory of change

that you could build and during political power by basically turning everyone into a litigant.

They wanted to change the country through litigation, though right wanted to change the judges

who were deciding that litigation. Guess which worked out better.