What Next | Behind the Democrats’ Losing Strategy

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Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why the Democrats’ electoral strategy of “hire consultants to tell you which positions poll well enough to take” has run its course—and where they should look to start rebuilding. Guest: Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate senior writer and author of “How Strategist Brain Took Over the Democratic Party”. Cited in this episode: The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Robert D. Putnam) The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—And How the World Lost Its Mind (Dan Davies) Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:09.0	What are we watching?
0:09.7	Heads of state, that new action comedy with Idris Elber as the Prime Minister,
0:13.3	John Sina as the president, and Prianka Chopra Jonas,
0:15.9	as their only hope.
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1:12.3	I had this experience this weekend where I tried to totally work, but realized I couldn't escape.
1:18.6	I went to a comedy show, a charity thing. David Cross was the headliner. And the biggest laugh he got was for a joke about the Democrats. Cross was like, you know when you go to the dog park and there's that one dog that's totally terrorizing everyone else, biting puppies, chasing people?
1:35.3	And then you go to find the dog's owner.
1:37.3	And they're like off in a corner, scrolling on their phone, absent-mindedly waving their hand.
1:43.7	Like, cut it out, stop. Totally ineffective.
	...

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