In Conversation with Heather Cox Richardson

Friends,

Here’s my conversation today with Heather Cox Richardson, in which we examine the origins of Trumpism. Professor Richardson is, of course, a major resource to all of us on substack. She’s also an historian who has specialized in 19th-century United States history, with a primary focus on American politics and economics.

We started our conversation with Heather’s reference to my 1994 talk to the Democratic Leadership Council, and then discussed the decline of the Democratic Party as the party of American workers — starting with Lewis Powell’s memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1971, the Supreme Court’s first money-in-politics case Buckley vs. Valeo in 1976, the House Democrat’s embrace of corporate money in the early 1980s, and my frustrations in dealing with the corporate (“moderate”) Democrats in the 1990s when I was secretary of labor.

Now, finally the working-class Democratic Party appears to be making a comeback.

We also talk about how the demonization of women by rightwing Republicans has been utilized as a means of aggregating power.

My thanks to Heather Cox Richardson for joining me.

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(By the way, for anyone who may be interested, here’s a clip from my 1994 speech, with which Heather and I began today’s conversation:

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