Month: September 2022

Briefings

Background Briefing: September 27, 2022

On By gram

 

Are the Democrats Too Timid Playing Defense While the Republicans Dominate With Illusion?

We begin with remarks by Governor Newsom of California that the Democrats are “getting crushed” by Republicans because they are too timid and are playing defense while the Republicans “dominate with illusion.” We will look into why the Democrats are not fired up for the midterms like the Republicans are, particularly in the face of a Republican push to capture the electoral machinery to create a one-party state in which the Democrats will be a permanent minority no matter how many votes they get. Joining us is David Faris, a professor of political science at Roosevelt University in Chicago and a regular contributor to The Week. He is the author of Dissent and Revolution in a Digital Age: Social Media, Blogging and Activism in Egypt, Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics and his latest book is The Kids Are All Left: How Young Voters Will Unite America. He has an article at Newsweek, “Democrats Must Stop Republican Sadism at the Border.”

 

Highlights From the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas

Then we look into Saturday’s Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas at which Pete Buttigeig, Karl Rove and Gavin Newsom spoke with Liz Cheney the keynote speaker. Joining to discuss the highlights is Zach Despart, a politics reporter for The Texas Tribune. He investigates power — who wields it, how and to what ends — through the lens of the Texas government. He previously covered Harris County for the Houston Chronicle, where he reported on corruption, elections, disaster preparedness and the region’s recovery from Hurricane Harvey. His latest article at the Texas Tribune is “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tells court not to trust Biden in Trump records case.”

 

Why Does Hungary Have Such an Outsize Influence Over American Politics?

Then finally we get an assessment of why a small country of 10 million in the middle of Europe has such an outsized influence over the US having provided the anti-woke ideology and electoral autocracy strategy that has captured Trump’s GOP to want to imitate the regime Victor Orban has installed in Hungary. Joining us is Peter Kreko, a Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis and the Director of the Political Capital Institute in Budapest. A social psychologist and political scientist, he is the author of The Hungarian Far Right Social Demand, Political Supply, and International Context and Mass Paranoia: The Social Psychology of Conspiracy Theories and Fake News.