What Can Progressive Voters Do to Help Fix Our Broken Political System?
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For decades, conservative organizations have poured time, attention, and money into state politics, and today, Republicans control the governorships and state legislatures of twenty-one states. But in recent years, grassroots progressive movements have begun to close the gap. Democrats have seen victories in formerly Republican districts in Mississippi, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maine. In two election cycles, Future Now, an organization that supports progressive candidates in state-level races, has helped flip three legislatures. Its co-founder and executive director, Daniel Squadron, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how progressive voters can make their voices heard on the issues they care most about.
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| 0:48.4 | This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about politics. |
| 0:54.3 | It's Wednesday, November 27th. |
| 0:56.6 | I'm Dorothy Wicenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. |
| 1:00.1 | I have one question for you. |
| 1:03.2 | Do you all like the color blue? |
| 1:05.9 | I said, do you like the color blue? |
| 1:10.1 | Because I'm here to officially declare today November the 5th, |
| 1:14.3 | 2019, that Virginia is officially blue. Congratulations. That's Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. |
| 1:24.3 | This November, for the first time in more than two decades, voters in Virginia elected Democratic |
| 1:29.7 | majorities in both the state senate and the state house of delegates. With Northam, a Democrat |
| 1:35.8 | in the governor's mansion, Democrats are driving the state's policy agenda toward more |
| 1:41.0 | progressive ends than in any other part of the South. |
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