Friends,
I’m sorry about the hiatus for the pod so many of you have graciously endured while I launched Strike Pac, prepped my house for my exodus back out West, and dealt with my appendix trying to murder me. That so many of you suffered in silence was not lost on me, and is massively appreciated. Y’all are some really good humans!
Also, before I get into the summary of the pod, I am now at a place where I can start to incorporate some of Strike Pac’s work into the paid subscriber only content/opportunities and start paying you guys back for all of your support (and patience).
I happen to owe my paid subscriber crew a special preview opportunity. SO, I am going to host a paid-subscribers sneak preview at our next ad that includes a panel discussion with some of my Strike PAC team mates. Watch for that in your inbox in the coming days.
Now, with no further ado, I hope you enjoy my fiery conversation with the great Kurt Anderson, a multiple New York Times bestseller and author of Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America.
As I tell Kurt in our conversation, his book pulls together two of the most important elements that drive my work. The first is that nothing that happened to move our economy from post-New Deal Keynesian economics to a redux of Gilded Age economics was accidental. The GOP came to dominate economic policy, regulatory policies, and other core policy areas because they created short and long term strategic plans created by smart people to do so. AND they executed them.
I want to highlight that because that is, of course, lies at the heart of what I am trying to build for Democrats. One of the largest disadvantages Democrats face in the polarized era is the belief that there is some inherent inability for Democrats to centralize their strategy to compete with the GOP. Not only can we, we must!
The second point ties closely with my economic branding strategies. Kurt’s work in Evil Geniuses clearly explains how and why the Republican Party’s “Reagan Revolution” ended up decimating the American middle class, killing social mobility, strangled Johnson’s Great Society in infancy, and yielded American infrastructure and research superiority to pay for tax cuts for their billionaire donors.
My job is to distill the above indictment of the Republican Party’s failed economic policies into hard-hitting, emotive ads and hopefully, get all Democratic candidates hammering this message. Your job is to listen to this pod & read Kurt’s book.
How the GOP's "Evil Geniuses" Destroyed America