The

The Hello and welcome to politics theory other. My name is Alex Doherty and my guest today is

Natasha Leonard. We talked about Natasha's recent writing on how the Democrats

are making sense of their electoral defeat in November, and how the mainstream of the party is

adopting conservative social policy while flirting with far-right activists and influencers.

We also talked about the enduring and ever more bizarre Democrat obsession with civility and bipartisanship,

and we also touched on the Palestine Solidarity Movement and the response to the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil.

Natasha Leonard is a columnist for The Intercept.

She's the Associate Director of the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism Graduate Program

at the New School for Social Research in New York.

She's the author of Being Numerous Essays on Non-Fascist Life and is currently working on a new

book on how we might better conceptualise uncertainty and certainty.

So, Natasha, for good reason, most political commentary on US politics has lately been focused

on Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the various extraordinary actions taken by the administration,

especially domestically, some of that will probably get into.

But as well as writing on the Trump administration, you've also written recently about

the Democrats and how they're responding to the situation and how they've attempted to make sense of their electoral defeat

in November. So far, at least, it doesn't seem like anything the Democrats are doing is serving

to make them more popular. According to the polls, a record low of just 21% of voters are

satisfied with the job the Democrats are doing in Congress, while

40% of voters apparently approve of the Republicans. In your article for The Intercept back in

November of last year, you wrote that it's too early to tell whether the Democrats will learn

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