John B. Judis: Populism, Realignment, and the Fight for America’s Future

Welcome to The Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. Before we dive in, a quick word about who I am and why we're here. I'm Jim Bier, corporate lawyer and restructuring professional. I've spent the last two decades helping companies navigate their toughest transitions. And about eight years ago, I found myself having fascinating conversations with clients and friends about everything from venture capital to the broader shifts happening in our economy and society.

Those discussions were simply too good, so the puck was born. Now while we started on venture capital, hence the podcast name, the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, We've naturally evolved to focus more on the and beyond portion of the title. Today, we explore how business intersects with the bigger forces shaping our world. I still run my restructuring practice by day, but now I get to host these conversations by night. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

Today's guest continues that tradition. We have a kind of default distrust of government that goes back to the seventeen seventies. Government is a necessary evil. The old Republican Democrats of Thomas Jefferson. Our initial impulse again is to blame government, but a lot of the changes that we're gonna have to make are gonna require government and require effective government.

But, you know, what Trump and Musk are doing are really making it very hard for any person of any skills and talent and ambition to wanna even work for the government. On today's episode of The Puck, I'm joined by the sharp and always insightful John b Judas, author, journalist, and editor at large at the Talking Points Memo and a former senior writer for The New Republic in the National Journal. We dig into the chaos of recent US elections, the swings between the left and the right, and what's really driving the country's economic and social divides. It's a smart, sweeping conversation, so let's get into it. So, John, welcome to the Puck.

Glad to be with you. So can you take a moment and just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Oh, I I'm a, author. I live in Silver Spring. I worked for many years for the New new republic, and I was part of, 16 or 17 people who quit in, December 2014 when the guy who was, Facebook, former Facebook executive decided he wanted to turn it all into a profit making vehicle.

And, since then, I've been mainly writing books. I'm historically, I'm on the left. I come out of the sixties in Berkeley and SDS, so keep that in mind, and I've never left it. I mean, I'm happy with, Bernie Sanders. I'm not so happy with some of the crazy stuff on the left.

So there you have it. I three cats, two children. The two how old are the children? Oh, they're in their mid they're middle age. Okay.

Well, no. That's that's cool. I I have three that are in their thirties. So, and I only have one cat. So he's he's an important part of the family.

Yeah. So on a more serious note, you've written extensively, I I believe, about political realignments in in American history. And we had Gary Gerstel on the show. He talked about political orders. And we talked about the new deal order, then the neoliberal order, and now whatever this is.

Do you think we're living through a shift? And if so, what are the defining features of this new alignment? We we're definitely moving in the middle of a shift, but, I am much less sure of where we're headed than I've been, in the last, ten, fifteen, twenty years. I mean, the two thousand sixteen election was critical. And, not the so much the Hillary Clinton part, but the Bernie Sanders and the Trump part of it, which represented a repudiation of the politics that we had for the previous, oh, I don't know, twenty, thirty years, which was mainly dominated by Reagan conservatism, but to some extent also by Democrats who bought into part of that, the free trade.

Capital can move wherever it wants, not open borders, but pretty porous borders part of it. And, both Sanders and Trump represented a a a a repudiation of that. And the question is when you have this kind of populist revolt, is is it going to give rise eventually to a, consolidation where people where the elites of the country, where the institutions adopt many of the institutions adopt many of the ideas, and you reach a certain kind of stability. So, you know, we had an enormous revolt in the eighteen nineties, and it's it's similar in some way to what's happening now because, you know, then you have the farmers who are being squeezed out of their jobs by the banks and the big companies. Now you have manufacturing workers, mining miners who are out of jobs, who are, again, susceptible to a kind of both left wing and right wing populism.

And it took twenty or thirty years, and finally, you get you get the new deal, and you get the consolidation of many of the things that people advocated then. So the question is, where is this gonna lead? Is it going to lead to a consolidation on the left, or could it lead to a consolidation on the right? And, you know, the latter scares me, to tell you the truth. Yeah.

It's it's funny. They both scare me, and I I I I debate this with my brother because I think extremism on the left or extremism on the right is dangerous, and if you look at what happened in Europe, you had an extremist on the right in Nazism and and the fascist movement, but you, I think, had extremism on the left with communism in Stalin. And so from my perspective, the middle is the where the sanity is. And if we don't coalesce around something that brings people together and these extremes keep growing, isn't that putting us in a dangerous position? Yes.

Though, you know, I parse the twenties and thirties different. The Russian revolution happens in 1917. The, the two crucial paths that are taken by the West in that period. And you had a very similar situation where the international monetary system starts to disintegrate. You had a gold standard then.

You had trading blocks, very, very similar to in that respect to what's happening now. And you do in the Europe and Central Europe, Southern Europe, you go, to the right fascism. In The United States, we're blessed with the New Deal. And that, again, which is a kind of center left, not a far left, alternative. And so I guess I'm agreeing with you, but I'm saying that that's really what I'm talking about when I'm talking about what happens when populist movements arise because an old order is breaking down, and eventually you get a consolidation.

But, you know, in The United States, I have to tell you the, the January 6 thing really scared me. I hadn't seen anything like that in my lifetime. Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence, person is gonna be looking into, election integrity. I mean, again, I worry about that. That's, those are all indications that we could move to the right in a very dangerous way where people start to screw around with our elections and with democracy.

And from your perspective, looking in historically, do you see any risk that somebody far left of Bernie Sanders could start to capture the imagination as well? And is any of the ways that people reacted to October 7 an indication that there is a real movement against the established order and the elites coming from the left as well? And is that something we should be concerned about as well, or is it only the right that you're concerned about? I'm only concerned about the right. I just don't see it on the left.

I don't see those I I don't see any major movements there. I see mainly kind of cult cultural revolts. Plus, you know, when the Democratic Party, I think there's a recognition now that they have to go towards, economics and steer away from the most extreme positions on whatever transgender rights, borders. So, no. I don't see it.

I mean, if you look at Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as an example, it it was very, significant to me that about halfway through her first term in office, she got rid of these guys from the justice Democrats who are part of their staff and who represented a much more in sec in insurrectionary kind of politics. And if you look at her, she's an example, again, of the left, but somebody who's, you know, to many extents moving toward the center and trying to find a majority politics in America. You know, the the group so the campus groups and stuff like that, I mean, I just don't see it. I don't see any consolidation there. There's no national leadership.

I mean, there's nothing, you know. So, yeah, I don't I worry more much more about the right than the left. Well, I mean, just the fact that the right has been successful in backing Donald Trump. And how do you explain the endurance of his appeal in this context? I mean, is it purely economic?

Is it cultural? Or do you think it's something deeper? Well, you know, you you have to think about him. I mean, this was true about Obama. He had this kind of freaky way of getting lucky in elections.

In his senate election, whatever, 2004, 2006, he got the guy, his his candidates got discredited, his opponents at the last moment. Trump had the advantage of running against Hillary Clinton in 2016, who was you know, ran a dreadful campaign. 2024, he had this situation where Biden drops out in, what, July and Kamala Harris, who was not certainly not a proven political candidate based on her past becomes a candidate. And both of them have a kind of cultural appeal that, again, polarizes the country. And it don't even look at working class versus professionals or things, but maybe maybe think of it in terms of the metro centers versus small town and rural America.

And I think that if you look at, again, Hillary Clinton and and Kamala Harris' candidates, they really had very little appeal there. And you get a kind of whatever, you know, two to one majorities for Trump there. And that's really, that's where, in my opinion, the election gets won. Small town Pennsylvania, again, Wisconsin, Michigan, small town. You know, it doesn't get decided in Detroit or Philadelphia.

So Trump has a lot of appeal in those, in in those places right now. And his positions on trade and immigration, spoke to them. And, a lot of the positions that were associated with the Democrats, you know, you think of that last crazy ad that Trump, put up. You know, that if you're watching football games at the time, you saw it repeat repeatedly about I'm, I'm not for they, them, I'm for us, referring to Kamala Harris supporting, whatever government surgery for transgender prisoners. There was Right.

Just some, you know, crazy thing, but in fact, it wasn't made up. It was true. So I think that the Democrats have have we our elections have have sort of swung on whose extremes become more salient. In 2018, 2020, the Democrats benefited from, running against, Trump. 2022, they benefited from the Dobbs decision on abortion.

2024, you know, the immigration stance, the transgender stance, things like that come to the surface. And if you add the inflation and if you add a pretty, not a very effective candidate, you get you get Trump. But you get, again, a 50, fifty fifty kind of majority in the country. So the country's very split. And, I would expect, given the way Trump has conducted himself in the in the first months in office, that unless they screw around with the elections in 2020 '20 what is it?

2026, You know, you'll get at least a democratic house. And if you get events like this tariff thing, you might even get a senate or democratic senate, although the, you know, the numbers are really against the democrats in 2026. So regardless of who wins, and I understand that that's what the Democrats are focused on, which is we wanna get back the house, we wanna get back some control here. But if I'm not mistaken, you've talked about how the Democrats have lost touch with the working class. And so if if that's true, how do the Democrats, you know, solve this?

Well, you know, some of them have lost touch with the the, working class, and that's been particularly true of our of some of our presidential candidates. And, you do it by speaking to what people care about and not going out on a limb on social and cultural issues. I think that that in the last, decade or so, that's been a killer for the, the Democrats. Again, this whole litany. The the other thing I'd add to it that's a problem for the Democrats, but something that, you know, again, I sympathize with the Democrats on this is climate change.

Climate change is an issue that I I believe is real. I it's a real problem, but it's very hard to do anything about it and to do anything about it without losing big swaths of the electorate who are scared to death about, you know, rising gas prices. Fertile, farmers are worried about their fertilizer going way up in price. States that depend upon the extraction of oil, natural gas, coal are worried that they're gonna lose jobs. So I think that that's been a huge problem for the Democrats, and it's been a huge problem with the working class.

The reason the Democrats, you know, West Virginia used to be so solidly Democratic. I think it went went, Republican once in, like, you know, forty, fifty years. Suddenly in 2000 becomes a Republican state is because of Kyoto and Al Gore and the, support for climate change. So that's an issue that's very tricky. And I again, the Democrats have to figure out a way to do it without really scaring the hell out of of people.

Because I think the way things have happened, they they have, but I don't blame them for them. I think some of their positions, like the you know, not being willing to say that biological males shouldn't compete in, women's sports, you know, in the NCAA are just ridiculous. I mean, I think that they should just ditch those positions, period. But, you know, on some positions, they're gonna have to thread the needle. And in order to, again, in order to to to win back a lot of these votes in small town America and working class America, I think that they're gonna have to really do that on the social cultural issues.

And and do you see a movement? Is there is there a, for instance, a healthy version of nationalism that could be integrated into a center left politics, or is nationalism by its nature exclusionary and reactionary? Well, you know, Nash nationalism is fine. It's not a I mean, we're all in a sense nationalist, and we're born to that way. And we think, you know, we celebrate Thanksgiving.

You know, we stand for the nationalism. And those are the things that are inculcated us as as kids. And, you know, the most important thing about nationalism is that I'm willing you know, let's say that you you can't you can't work anymore because you get some terrible disease or become crippled in some way. Even though I don't know you, I'm willing to pay taxes to help you. So that I mean, that's an it's that's that's part of what in what being a member of a nation or a citizen involved.

So there is a completely benign and important part of nationalism. Borders. You know, countries have borders. Again, it would be nice if we could pay for health insurance for the rest of the world, but we can't. But so it's a question of our own.

So those are all parts of nationalism that are, again, I think perfectly acceptable. What's not acceptable is when it becomes, a form of bigotry. And when we say, you know, certain kinds of people shouldn't be admitted to the country because they're dark or peasants or or whatever, when we don't have a reasonable grounds for for our immigration policies. So that's the I think that that's the difference. And what the populist right has thrived on is to some extent stigmatizing Muslims and stigmatizing, people from south of the border.

Though, again, I think that illegal immigration is a real problem. I don't think I I think we should have an immigration policy. Right now, what we have is a dysfunctional policy. So it's interesting. I mean, you're you're charting out some pretty moderate positions.

And yet from an economic perspective, my understanding is you're a little more liberal. So let's look at that for a second. I think you've been critical of the shift the Democrats have had towards the technocratic professional class. What would it take for the Democrats to really rebuild trust with the middle and working classes, especially those people, the 65%, who don't have a college degree? Well, the the shift toward the technocratic class was, a lot of that was on trade and immigration.

A lot of it was on the free trade, NAFTA, China. A lot of those positions are now, being tossed overboard. So, I think the Democrats' economic positions are not so bad right now. I think that they would be congenial to, again, a working class small town. You know, you have to realize in the metro centers, like where I live in Wash you know, Washington DC or Chicago, or where are you broadcasting from?

Los Angeles. Los Angeles. There isn't this enormous split between the working class and the so called professional class. You know, nurses are are in a profession. I mean, you know, elementary school teachers, X-ray technicians, whatever.

But it is really it's more of a geographic demographic split in America than it is a split in class. I mean, they're the two just superimposed upon each other. And, you know, on the minimum wage, on Medicaid, Medicare, all those kinds of things that democrats have had positions that are reasonable and that could appeal. But I I I'm they they've had two problems. They've had this or let's say three.

The these cultural social problems, immigration, transgender, things like that, and the climate change. And the third is when they've adopted big social problems, Obamacare, for instance, they've allowed people to think in the middle that they're they have to sacrifice for people below them. In other words, they're not universal programs. The Obamacare had this cutoff on the premiums. So people who were in the middle, who were I don't know at the time, it was maybe $6,070,000 a year, suddenly saw their premiums going shooting up and said, oh, you know, I'm having to pay so I I think this was, again, a virtue of the new deal approach was universal programs.

So people don't feel that one one part of the population is having to pay for another. And that's been a problem with, Democrats. That was a problem with they got into welfare, and it was a problem they got that's why Obamacare was initially very unpopular, though it's more popular now because people realize the alternative is not paying for existing conditions and things like that. So I wanna make sure I heard something you said properly before we kind of focus on some of these economic issues. You you you said that trade historically was an issue and the border was an issue.

Aren't ironically those two issues issues that the current administration is is is responsible for? In other words, Trump's the one closing the border, and he's the one that has gotten out of NAFTA and is negotiating, quote, unquote, whether or not he's successful, different story, but he's working on trade. Those seem to be issues that were ignored by the Democrats and that the Republicans ran with. Well, they were worse than ignored. They they went the opposite direction.

Okay. Fair. Okay. Yeah. I mean, when Biden came into office, one of the first things he did was to widen our asylum policies so that, somebody who could said they were the victim of domestic violence or they lived in an unsafe neighborhood, you know, could claim asylum.

And smugglers then took advantage of that and brought, you know, millions of people into the country under that aegis. So Democrats have screwed up that issue. And, you know, true again, my experience with Trump is that in most of the things he does, there's a kernel of justification, but there's just a rotten surrounding it. So, you know, you get I'm gonna do something about illegal immigration, and you get some, you know, gay barber or something gets sent off to, El Salvador to a prison, and people get taken off the streets at night. And and, you know, it's crazy stuff like that.

So, again, I think that on trade, absolutely, we have to do something about it. We did get taken to the cleaners by, China in the early two thousands, and to some extent, continued to be so. But I think that if you just do tariffs the way, Trump is doing it without, on the one hand, getting some kind of alliance among our friends, among the people whom we do business in order to pressure countries that have a kind of mercantil mercantilism trade policy as China does. And if you don't couple tariffs with some kind of industrial policy to make sure that we revive the industry that we're protecting, then you get then all you're gonna get is inflation. I mean, it's not, I don't if you think about what the what the two of the industries that are gonna be really important in the twenty twenty first century to come, one is biotech, medical technology, all that kind of stuff, drugs, equipment, what what have you, research, vaccines.

So the second is, green technology, and I I include nuclear power in that too. And it's not necessarily a question of our being able to save the planet by, you know, not doing bad thing you know, driving certain kinds of cars rather than other, but of providing the kind of in the industry and technology. That's where the exports are gonna come. That's where the industry is gonna revive, batteries, things like that. Well, if you think about what Trump is doing, on the one hand, he's putting these big tariffs.

On the other hand, he's screwing the, you know, the National Institute of Health, eliminating all these research programs upon which our biotechnology has depended. And, he's get he's trying to, abandon the, what was positive in the inflation reduction act, which was, again, subsidizing green energy and green technology. We're, you know, we're gonna have okay. So we're gonna have, tariffs on, big tariffs on, auto imports. Fine.

But, you know, to compete in the global car industry, we're gonna have to produce electric cars. And what are we doing for that? Ending, you know, again, ending subsidies, ending subsidies for battery technology. So great. You know?

What we're gonna have is very, you know, we're gonna have we're gonna specialize in gas guzzlers that nobody outside The United States is gonna want. So I think, again, colonel colonel of truth in what he's doing, absolutely. We have to to do something about trade. But surrounded by all this goofy stuff that is not gonna help us. I I mean, I'll add one more thing.

I, you know, I don't like the the, DEI stuff. I was not I supported the, students against Harvard because I think what was happening there was not discrimination against whites or something, but it was the Asians were getting screwed. They were getting taught you know, they were they're getting their applications rejected on some spurious grounds of personality. So, you know, affirmative action in that sense was was not a great policy. And it's good that, I mean, I think the Supreme Court decision made sense.

And it makes sense for, you know, that we shouldn't encourage those this kind of industry of, people who insist that, you know, women who are pregnant are pregnant people and all this nonsense. But let's take their armed forces and the police. They should be subject to affirmative action. They should resent rep represent in their leadership America because they represent America. So, again but what does Trump do?

It's, you know, the defense department. The first thing is, you know, women and blacks are suddenly losing their jobs. That's that's that's terrible. So, you know, again, I think that he is a response to a lot of the problems we've had in our country, But it's a response that has tilted things toward, a right wing extreme that I I certainly don't, support, and that's gonna take the country in a very dangerous direction. Not just socially in terms of, bigotry and splits among people and hatred, but, also economically.

So when you're looking at what's going on today and the concern that you have because of the disruptions you're talking about, whether or not it's the new right and it's anti globalist rhetoric, you know, or it's figures like JD Vance and Josh Hawley. Where do you see a movement really coalescing around a coherent plan to actually address these issues that you're talking about? I don't. Right. I mean, you know, the big hope and and my friend Michael Lynn has written about this is some kind of combination among the kind of Sanders Democrats typified by Ro Khanna, the the congressman from Silicon Valley, and Republicans like, let's say, Hawley Rubio when he wasn't, Rubio, Vance when he was Vance.

In other words, people who who advanced programs for to to help the working class, who had this kind of economic Nash, benign economic nationalist outlook. They're really getting driven in opposite directions right now. I mean, I don't I don't see that kind of cooperation that you sort of began to see in the end of the Biden years between, let's say, Sherrod Brown and Vance in Ohio over that, rail disaster. So that would be the that would be the hope that there would be some something there. But what what I see is most likely in the country is this kind of seesaw between the parties, where each party gets to run against the other's craziest, elements and wins on that basis.

So, you know, in 2026, republic Democrats will take power. And I they you know, they'll have a good chance in 2028 if they're judicious about their nominee. But, you know, I I don't see the seesaw ending right now. I don't see this the, kind of consolidation that I talked about in terms of what Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal brought to, twenty, thirty, forty years of tumult in the country. Well and you talked about the eighteen nineties and the nineteen thirties.

And I've also been reading about, like, the either the like, the sixteen hundreds with the printing press and the the the challenges that that brought about. I mean, AI algorithms, the the rate of change Yeah. The robotic industry. A lot of people were saying bringing these jobs back is a fantasy because most of these factories are gonna have to be automated anyway. So is part of this just a real evolution that we're going through because change is happening so quickly?

Well, yeah, we're gonna have to deal with the extremes of automation. And what's happened in the past in the over the last hundred years is when you we've gotten automation in manufacturing or in farming, we've got an explosion of services and people go into services. And I I expect that will continue to happen, and we'll have to find a way though to, support people who go who work in services. Because to some extent, you know, if you think of home care workers, that's gonna be a that that's a huge industry, and it's not gonna go away. You're not gonna be able to, take care of of, old people in nursing homes with artificial intelligence.

So God help them if that's the case. Right. But, you know, those people have to be able to live decent lives. So what one would hope is the the surplus created, that is to say the the you know, our ability to produce more and more goods and services with a lower a less labor will result in a better life for all of us and, you know, and decent jobs, not the a kind of, situation where we have kings and lords and dukes and then serfs below them who do the, you know, who screw in the, the circuit boards and or whatever it is. So how do you I mean, in terms of where you think we're going right now, when you look at the Democratic Party, when you look at the discussions taking place, what what gives you hope?

You know, I I again, I I hate to put it this way, but I think what gives me hope is turn Trump is so bad. I think that it'll it will awaken people to the need to do things that he's addressing, but in a much better way. So, you know, you had Gretchen Whitmer, the the governor of Michigan, who's being, criticized, I see, by people on Twitter for this. But, you know, saying that, yes, tariffs are are a good idea, but he's doing it. He's not doing it the right way.

So I think that that in general, that's the approach that I that I'm hoping for, and that I I think you see that in the governors. Our governor, Wes Moore is pretty good. And, he he in his state of the state speech, he talked about how Democrats have to understand the problems that young men are going through. This is a big issue in, 2024. The, again, something that Trump spoke to that the Democrats simply ignore ignored for that you know, for a lot of the Democrats.

And here again is we're talking about a cultural issue. The big issue was toxic masculinity, of which, you know, Trump himself, you could use as an example. But, you know, there's a lot of kids who were lost in their lives now. The, rate of suicide is the highest among young men. So, again, that's a big issue.

So in his state of the state, you know, Moore talked about it. So I think you have a lot of Democratic politicians who are recognizing that. Whether the groups, the, that I mean, that's been the other problem is the the organized groups, human rights campaign, whatever, ACLU, the foundations, whether they also do recognize that the Democrats and they have a problem, that they're not speaking to to a majority of Americans. That's that's another question because to to some extent, they make their money by and especially the groups by taking more extreme positions. But, you know, I've been cheered by the fact that the ACLU is suddenly back to defending free speech and not defending, the, you know, the guy in Pennsylvania who swam and did very well as a woman.

So that's I think that's positive. So I I that's what I'm hoping is that the Democrats will move back on a lot of those social and cultural issues and and focus on the kinds of economic issues that appeal to, middle and the working class. Well, you know, and Scott Galloway also, by the way, talks a lot about this issue with young men to your point. And so I do think that that discussion is taking place. But coming from California, for instance, you know, Ezra Klein recently talked to Gavin Newsom, and they were talking about, okay, Gavin, you know, what is California gonna do about homelessness?

Building more houses and building high speed rail. And so I think the gauntlet has been put down to the Democrats. Okay, guys. As you said, Trump's doing some things that are not particularly popular. He didn't win with a 70% mandate, but the American people are asking real questions.

What are you going to do to fix these economic issues? And do you see room for optimism there that there are other states that are tackling things like homelessness, building houses, and or high speed rail that for whatever reason, California seems to have failed at? Well, homelessness, that's an issue I really can't speak to. I don't know enough about it. Sure.

I I live in, most one of the three or four most prosperous suburbs in America. But, I I think you will find I mean, what I admire about, both Wes Moore, Whitmer and Shapiro, those three governors, Shapiro, Pennsylvania, Whitmer, Michigan, Whitmer, is that they have positioned themselves as Mr. And Mrs. Fix it. And I think that's where, you know, again, fix the damn roads.

That was the so, as far as as our clients think about the rail in California, again, I don't it's gonna be very hard to change our, railroads because people do really do depend on cars in the country, and you'd have to tear up all the rail lines, which are designed for freight rather than passengers. So, I I I agree with, again, a lot of what they're saying about that, but I think that there's much more obvious kinds of questions about bridges and and roads. And, you know, inflation was the big thing that Trump went on. I'm gonna fix it. Again, that has to be the posture of the Democrats, whatever the big issue is.

But I I think, again, I think that that Ezra is dealing with more arcane deals, details that don't necessarily come to the surface, nationally in elections. So as we're trying to navigate through these challenging times and the issues that you brought to bear, are there lessons that we can learn from the 1890s and the 1930s that will help us navigate this in a more successful way? Well, I I'll I'll tell you something funny that I found. I and I don't know whether this is true, but I think it might be. And I was just reading about it.

There there a political scientist did a study of the nineteen thirty two election. There weren't polls then, but he found ways to to well, I think it was mostly by looking through newspaper newspapers and things like this, things like that, to try to figure out what was the big issue then. Because, you know, the what would you assume was the big issue? Right? It was the depression, 25% employment.

The big issue was prohibition. Interesting. And Roosevelt's, and the Democrats' repudiation of prohibition. So, again, the cultural issues are enormously important now in the country, and they really are splitting the parts parts of the country. So I, again, I would focus on that as a very important first step for the Democrats.

Plus, again, mister fix it, how are we gonna solve the existing problems that people have? Climate change, finding some kind of a middle of the road position that will accomplish something that people will accept, but, you know, is not going to we're not going to be able to solve it all. Industrial policy focusing on things that are really going to help the country reduce its trade deficit and that people want and that people need. So I think on all those kind of issues, there there is an opening, for an, an opposition. And, you know, Trump Trump is clearly providing it right now.

From from your perspective, when you look at how these big changes have taken place, does it take a crisis for people to really be willing to make the changes necessary to to deal with these really challenging problems we're having? Yes. Okay. That's There's a book by a guy whose name I keep forgetting about the new new d New Deal in America. I mean, we have a kind of default distrust of of government that goes back to the seventeen seventies.

Government is a necessary evil, the old Republican Democrats of Thomas Jefferson. And the our initial impulse again is to blame government, but a lot of the changes that we gonna have to make are gonna require government and require effective government. In that sense, again, I think that that, Ester Klein and Derek Thompson, and there's another guy, Dunkelman, who's written a book too about things that don't work that's, along the same lines. I think that that's that's a really important contribution. But, you know, what Trump and Musk are doing are really, making it very hard for any person of any skills and talent and ambition to wanna even work for the government.

I mean, that that's a huge problem we have. But in The United States, the only time when people have looked to the government to really solve problems and have been willing to countenance big programs are wars and depressions. So, you know Yeah. Even going back to, again, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, that was in the wake of the eighteen nineties depression. Roosevelt, so World War two And, the 2008, I think Obama had a bigger opportunity than he took for making changes then.

But we did do something to our, our banking system and to our health care system. Yeah. But you you raise an interesting point, and I I I do think that we are heading for a little bit of an economic debt crisis personally. It's been one of our subjects we've dealt with a lot. And I do trace it back to Obama and and his failure to allow Simpson Bowles when they had a deficit reduction plan.

The last person that balanced our budget was Clinton, and Obama basically came out even after Simpson Bowles said, here's our plan to balance the budget. He said, I'm not gonna do it on the back of the middle class, and he backed away from it. And since then, we've gone up $20,000,000,000,000 in debt. And so, I mean, ultimately, somebody's gonna have to tackle how we are gonna to get our economic house in order. Well, that's a you know, again, we have one solution to that.

And I'm not saying it's the whole solution, but it's part of it is our tax system is totally irrational. It's become more and more aggressive over the years. I mean, in the World War two, we were up to, what, 90% top marginal rates. We have these huge billionaires. So, again, our tax system is nuts.

And, if we have budget problems, we should be raising taxes to try to resolve them. Simpson Bowles, again, was gonna cut Social Security and things like that. Not not needed and, disastrous. That's something that a civilized country in our at our age should not be dealing with. We should mean making things better for children and old people.

That's always the, you know, the test of a, of a good society. So I'm not I'm not for that, but, you know, ob Obama, to to a great extent, just gave in on the on the tax issue. The the tax issue is like, again, the distrust of government. It's very hard to do that in America unless it's a crisis. Yeah.

Well and and and we're gonna figure that out. I mean, I I debate again, I'm I'm for changing our tax system and raising taxes and and making it more progressive for sure. But my brother, who's much more conservative than I am, points out to me that a 100,000,000 people are now registered for Medicaid. And I said, John, that's insane. He said, no, Jim.

Go look at the numbers. So I went on chat g p t. We went from 60 million to, like, a 100,000,000 from 2019, and we're not back down. Those numbers are terrifying because it's free medical care for a 100,000,000 Americans with an aging population. And at the end of the day, how the heck do you pay for it?

The answer is Trump's running the largest deficit we've ever run. I mean, we are taking our debt up, and it's and and interest rates are going up. The long bond went up because it's not sustainable. So you you you can actually raise taxes for sure, but I don't know that you can have a 100,000,000 people getting free medical care. You don't you're not on Medicare, I bet.

I am on Medicare, but I'm not on Medicaid, and that's You pay premiums every month. Do you know that? Medicare, yes, but not for Medicaid. His point was a 100,000,000 on Medicaid. Oh, Medicaid.

Yeah. Well, Medicaid is perfect for us. I was I fell out of my chair. He said no. Because I have a friend who's in land who had a stroke.

Yeah. He's 65. And his family was wealthy, but he's not. At the end of the day, he had a stroke, and he is in Lancaster, California getting full time care paid for by Medi Cal, California's Medicaid program. Yes.

And when you look at this so when my brother said, Jim, it's it's it's a 100,000,000 Americans now. And that to me is a is a staggering number, you know, and it seems to be true. Yes. I can't speak to the truth or the falsity of the numbers. But, again, here's another part of the Trump kernel of truth.

Troops overseas. Europe. Europe should defend itself. I'm not saying that's true in terms of the Ukraine. We should help the Ukrainians, but help them to to the extent that they're able to, and we are able to make a deal with the Russians to end that terrible war.

So Right. But what again? The to a great extent, we're overextended economically on our defense. That's a lot of money is at stake there. Taxes.

Again, the reason it's hard also for the parties to, take reasonable positions on this is because of our campaign finance, which is crazy crazy and gives an inordinate amount of power to the wealthy and to people who don't want to, again, see any kind of, tax increases. But, you know, the population problem, Medicaid, all that, you know, nursing homes, that's a huge problem. And, I'm sure you've had guests who've talked about what's happening to our population, which, United States is less stagnant than, Europe or Japan. Japan's gonna be, what, like, two two thirds old people soon. And, so you have a smaller base of people paying taxes and paying for the Social Security that's gonna provide for them.

So, yes, that's a huge problem. I'm not denying it, and we're gonna have to have to figure it out. But we've basically taken off the table ways in which we could at least address it. So, John, as we get to the end here, I I wanna give you a chance to kinda get the last word here in terms of where the puck is going. Because we do like to say, you know, and and try to prophesize a little bit about where the world's going.

And I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but you did mention that typically typically change comes after a crisis. So if you wanna prognosticate looking forward, where do you see us going over the next few years? I I see the most danger on the right, and I see it in Europe and The United States. I I'm a, I I've been very influenced by the writings of a guy named Carl Polanyi who talks about the great transformation and the kinds of problems that the world faced in the twenties when their international monetary system fell apart and when they faced a lot of, a lot of economic dislocation and unemployment. Right now, if you looked at both Europe and The United States, if you look at, again, at at the rise of China, things are headed tow towards a more authoritarian, politics, toward a politics that is, to some extent, stigmatizing certain people in order to win over other people.

So, yes, I worry about that. And so you're looking at it from the perspective of a rightward movement. But from the looking under the hood, is it the economics that drive us into that situation? Meaning, as the as the economics get harder for the middle class and people are struggling more and more, they're gonna want change. And you think that the direction that they're likely to lean based on where we are today is they're gonna lean towards more of these populist authoritarian type people.

I worry about that. I mean, I'm again, I'm not a great genius on this stuff. But if you look at Europe, for instance, migration, that's not gonna stop. You have a you have a climate crisis forcing people, from the South northward. You have wars as well.

United United States, again, we have a economic system that's peculiarly creating great inequality. I mean, we didn't have you know, when I was growing up, we didn't have this thing about we had millionaires, but we didn't have people with the kind of extraordinary power that these, the Zuckerbergs and the Musks and people like that have. And we didn't have the enormous power of finance over the rest of the country. So I don't see that. I mean, I got again, to the credit of some some of the Trump people, I think they understand understand this problem about the balance between goods producing and and, finance.

But I I don't see it ending, and I see that continuing to produce extensive inequality of wealth and power in the society, which leads to unrest. And, you know, maybe, again, there'll be a there'll be a revolt on the left. I hope so. But, right now, things in Europe and The United States are not tending in that direction. And is there any thought to the fact that when you look at some of these new labels that they're the new right or however you wanna describe it, it it seems to me at least that some of the statements that come out of people's mouths like JD Vance are very kind of progressive in the sense of saying that, you know, we are going to bring back jobs for the middle class.

We're going to, you know, close the borders to try to push wages up for Americans, and we're, you know, we're going to try to bring back these, quote, jobs. It it seems to me at least that there is a movement. I mean, I don't I don't see the Republican Party as the Republican the traditional three legged stool Republican Party anymore. They're they're morphing into something. Yeah.

I I I mean, again, there there is a possibility, of some kind of common ground. But, you know, JD Vance was a guy who's talking about Haitians, what, eating their pets in some city in Right. Absolutely. In in Ohio. Hawley, supporting the January 6 thing.

So, again, it's which side wins out. And, you know, my my greatest hope would be that, you know, somebody if somebody like Vance or Hawley got elected, you'd see the positive parts of them, and they would slough off the, you know, the the MAGA Trump bigotry nonsense about, you know, Haitians eating pets or whatever. So, yes, that's a that's a hope I have, and and that's a pot possibly a positive development for the country. But right now, I'm more pessimistic. If you wanted a model of something where the parties kind of came together to fix this Right.

You the two Roosevelts, Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican and went after the Yes. Monopolies and went after the wealthy in a certain way. And then Franklin Roosevelt from the left went after, you know, the the wealthy as as well, so to speak. And so you you have models or examples where both parties recognized a need to go after the, quote, super wealthy to try to bring them back a more balanced approach. I I think that it's it's absolutely true.

You don't even think about about Teddy Roosevelt, but, you know, the the New Deal was peopled by people who were former Republicans. Henry Wallace, who was the secretary of agriculture and then the vice president, was from an old time Republican family in Iowa. So all through the Midwest and the and the Iraqis, you had progressive Republicans who joined forces with Democrats. My hope again, I think it would have to come, more likely from the Democrats than the Republicans, that kind of consolidation where people cross lines. But I I could be wrong.

The the Republicans have been dominated to to a great extent by, more reactionary business elements that won't condone unions, for instance, than the Democrats. That's an that would be an important part of a new consolidation. And, so I'm not sure whether it could happen under the Republicans, more likely the Democrats, and I hope it does. But but for the time being, I think we're stuck in this kind of, seesaw between the parties and each of the parties' extreme positions. Well, this this listen.

This was a real, real pleasure. I love your perspective. I I'm look. I'm I'm optimistic. I think we're we are gonna get through this, but I think it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

And as you said, unfortunately, people's human nature, it it often takes a crisis for us to be willing to kind of make the sacrifices that I think we have to do. And we can only hope that our institutions hold and that we do get a Franklin Roosevelt instead of a Mussolini or a Hitler. Yes. Agreed. That is the choice.

Exactly. Well, John, thank you so, so much for your time. The POC Venture Capital Beyond is produced by CMG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation today and haven't yet subscribed to our show, you can find us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Feel free to leave a review while you are there and maybe even a five star rating.

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