Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast

Claire Potter
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Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast

Where contemporary history and politics meet the challenge of today. clairepotter.substack.com

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    Episode 69: No More Girl Bosses

    Image credit: Cookie Studio/Shutterstock On October 12, 2020, Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was sworn in for her testimony before the Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee. If you were a Democrat and a feminist, it was a galling moment for so many reasons. First, the United States was on the brink of an election, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had denied Merrick Garland a hearing in the final year of the Obama administration—had contradicted himself, handing President Donald Trump his third Supreme Court nomination, one that would bend the Court to the right for decades. But it was also galling because it was our seat—one occupied by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a pioneer of feminist jurisprudence, and a woman who had carved a narrow path of rights for women in the 1970s by building case law around the idea of gender discrimination. So many women like me had careers and economic security because of Ginsberg and others like her—in fact, Ginsberg became a law professor and then a civil rights litigator at the ACLU because, despite her stellar credentials from Cornell, Harvard, and Columbia, she couldn’t get a job at a law firm. Amy Coney Barrett was where she was because of Ginsberg—but also because, like Ginsberg, she had a husband, Jesse, who supported her career. Barrett then went on to say a few sentences about each of her seven children. It established her credentials as a mother. But she failed to mention that she, as part of a power couple clearly had lots of household help. Instead, she attributed her success to her strong belief, inculcated by her father, that girls and boys were intellectual equals. Confirmed to the Court, Amy Coney Barrett then voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, stripping the right to reproductive freedom from millions of working-class women—many of whom are doing care work for the children and parents of other white women, conservative and liberal. Because let’s get real: the vast majority of women who are held up as exemplars of the feminist meritocracy, from the executive who works down the hall from you to Sheryl Sandberg, have squads of well-paid, moderately paid, and poorly paid people caring for their homes, children, and elderly parents. Door Dashers shop for them. Amazon warehouse workers stuff clothes, toys, and nutritional supplements into boxes to be shipped to them. Grub Hubbers deliver dinner made by line cooks. What does girl boss feminism has to say about this? Not much. And now that Donald Trump is back in power, we’ve got more White conservative women telling us that women are full members of the meritocracy—and Republicans have Barrett, Ivanka Trump, and Pam Bondi to prove it. That’s why I wanted to talk to feminist philosopher Serene Khader, the author of Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop (Beacon Press: 2024.) Khader wants us to revisit the question of which women succeed, and which ones are forever invisible, what feminism is—and what it could be, if weren’t so very white. Show notes: * Serene mentions an earlier publication Claire wrote, a blog called Tenured Radical. The archive lives on at The Chronicle of Higher Education. * Claire mentions her upcoming biography of Susan Brownmiller, a radical feminist who was a radical feminist journalist, anti-rape activist, and anti-pornography activist. Until the book comes out, you can read about her here. * Black feminists began to theorize their own position early on: listeners may wish to read Toni Cade Bambara ed., The Black Woman: An Anthology (New American Library, 1970.) * Claire mentions Joan Wallach Scott’s important book about Muslim women in France, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton University Press, 2010.) * For conservative feminism, Claire points to Faye Ginsburg’s book about women who oppose abortion, Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (University of California, 1998.) * The clip where Donald Trump vows to protect women is from an October, 2024 campaign stop in Wisconsin. * A critical text for Serene’s work is Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review (1991.) You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content and watch me indulge my slightly perverse sense of humor on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. Would you prefer to read this interview? Become a paid subscriber! Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication, and interview transcripts are a paid subscriber benefit. Transcripts go out a few days after the episode drops. If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 37, Black Resistance, Black Joy: A conversation with political theorist Christopher Paul Harris about his new book, "To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care." * Episode 21, A World To Win: Talking with socialist feminist Nancy Fraser about her book, "Cannibal Capitalism: How our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet – and What We Can Do About It." * Episode 22: Hit Them in The Pocketbook: A conversation with Annelise Orleck about her book, "Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty." And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    40 min

  2. FEB 11

    Episode 68: Arise, Ye Workers From Your Slumbers

    In 1938, philosophy professor Edward I. Fenlon testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that that professors and students at Brooklyn College were "deluged" daily with communist propaganda. Photo credit: Harris & Ewing/United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division (Wikimedia Commons) For years now, those of us who are paying attention have heard a range of political positions, from those held by moderate Democrats to socialism, described by MAGA Republicans as something called “the Left.” Sometimes “the Left” is simply invoked by the shorthand “they,” as in: “They tried to assassinate Donald Trump;” or more commonly, “They want you to believe,” followed by some caricature of an idea about women, race, gender, or sexuality. But I’ve noticed something else: warnings from Republican politicians and pundits about a growing cadre of Marxists and Communists who are hostile to the United States and seek to destabilize the nation with things like “gender ideology” and “critical race theory” and “DEI.” To the MAGA partisan, the term “Marxist” can describe anyone, from former Vice President Kamala Harris, to an anti-Israel activist, to the local librarian who steers readers to Judy Blume, to a Girl Scout troop leader who doesn’t discriminate against trans children. For example, on Saturday, June 28, 2023, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump made a pledge to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” event in Washington D.C. that he would secure the nation’s borders against Communists and Marxists clamoring to destabilize our society. In 1947, Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan described to the House Un-American Activities Committee his success in purging massive numbers Communists from the organization. However, there had never been more than 100,000 CPUSA members, and in 1947, as Maurice Isserman’s Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism (Basic Books, 2024) explains, the party was already in trouble, a fracturing that would intensify over the next decade, aided by government harassment and industry blacklists. When news of Stalin’s crimes erupted at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February, 25 1956, disillusioned Americans fled communism, and networks of activists that had sustained them for decades. Today, Trump almost seems to be invoking Communism and Marxism as part of that fictional Cold War world where America was supposedly great. So, what better time to point out that Communists, although their movement failed, also did a lot of good? Despite their flaws, blind spots, and sometimes harsh internal discipline, the CPUSA fought for a just society in America. Members organized powerful industrial unions, protested racism, and moved the nation towards reforms and small revolutions: the New Deal, Black civil rights, the Great Society, the movement to stop the war in Vietnam, and even feminism and gay liberation. Show notes: * Claire begins by mentioning that radical feminists often came out of Communist Party, or CP-adjacent, backgrounds: she name checks Susan Brownmiller, who she is writing about now, and Maurice mentions Betty Friedan. You can read about Friedan now in Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2000). * Two books Claire mentions that dovetail with Maurice’s critique of the CP are Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism (Verso, 1977) and Bettina Aptheker, Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel (Seal Press, 2006). Listeners might also be interested in Jane Lazarre, The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter: A Memoir (Duke University Press, 2017). * Claire and Maurice discuss the importance of Communism to Black workers and intellectuals; you can learn more about this in Robin D.G. Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990). * Maurice mentions his experience in SDS, or Students for a Democratic Society, a left-wing student movement that emerged in the 1960s from the wreckage of the CP and later spawned the more revolutionary group, Weatherman. Listeners who wish to learn more may wish to read Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (William Morrow, 2010). * Communism has, over time, been attractive to Black American intellectuals; there are a lot of good books on this, but listeners may wish to start with Harry Haywood’s memoir, Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). * Claire asked Maurice who his favorite character in the book was: he picked Dorothy Healey. The two collaborated on an earlier book, Dorothy Healey Remembers: A Life in the American Communist Party ()Ford University Press, 1990). * Readers interested in learning more about Mary Heaton Vorse can consult Dee Garrison, Mary Heaton Vorse: The Life of an American Insurgent (Temple University Press, 1989). You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content and watch me indulge my slightly perverse sense of humor on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 37, Black Resistance, Black Joy: A conversation with political theorist Christopher Paul Harris about his book, "To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care." * Episode 25, Lavender and Red: A conversation with historian Bettina Aptheker about her book "Communists in Closets: Queering the History, 1930s-1990s" * Episode 21, A World To Win: Talking with socialist feminist Nancy Fraser about her book, "Cannibal Capitalism: How our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet – and What We Can Do About It." Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    38 min

  3. JAN 28

    Episode 67: The Great American Crack-Up

    Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who transformed the use of television to drive partisanship, speaks to reporters in Washington, D.C. after a 1995 appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” Photo credit: Mark Reinstein/Shutterstock Back in 2016, like about a million other fans, I was listening obsessively to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show, “Hamilton: The Musical.” Unlike a lot of stage door Johnnies, I am a historian of the United States. So, when my friend and colleague Renee Romano called to suggest we edit a collection of articles that would help teachers, students, and Hamilton fanatics think critically about the show, I jumped at the chance. The result of Renee’s brainstorm was Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University press, 2018). The Hamilton story was compelling, at least in part because it spoke to the optimism of Barack Obama’s presidency. For example, Hamilton and his pal, the Marquis de Lafayette, were portrayed as ambitious immigrants—even though neither really was an immigrant. Never mind. After an openly racist Republican, Donald Trump, was elected president in November 2016, the line “Immigrants—we get things done!” would incite a cheerfully partisan New York audience to leap to its feet in show-stopping applause. But that moment was also a symptom of a deeply divided country. Trump and his allies excoriated liberals, women, foreign nationals, people of color, and even Republicans who balked at extremism. We see the distant origins of that partisanship in “Cabinet Battle #1,” when Hamilton, now President George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, has to learn to make deals rather than force others to his will. At the end of the song, Hamilton explodes, while Thomas Jefferson and James Madison taunt him with his inability to move legislation without their help. “Figure it out, Alexander,” Washington snaps. Miranda portrays, however imperfectly in some historians’ minds, an important transition. The Founding Fathers, having originally seen political parties as a source of dangerous factionalism, changed their minds. Governing required that partisanship be disciplined and contained in political parties willing to negotiate with each other. This isn’t a progress narrative, listeners. Those negotiations bargained away the rights of many Americans for centuries, and they have also worked to restore those rights. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. One party, the GOP, began to toy with breaking the norms that had emerged over two centuries. In 1964, Arizona Senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater openly mused about using nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia. In 1974, President Richard Nixon was found to have used the tools of government to cover up his own crimes and punish his political opponents. And in 1995, Newton Leroy Gingrich, a Congressman from Georgia, steered House Republicans to a majority and seized the Speaker’s gavel. For three hair-raising years, Gingrich spoke about liberal policies in extreme, and often inaccurate, terms; used government shutdowns to force spending and tax cuts; and presided over an impeachment inquiry against President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual relationship with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In one exchange between Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank and Republican committee chair Henry Hyde, Frank accused Hyde of masking a partisan attack on Clinton by pretending the committee’s work was merely procedural. Hyde responded that, because only a bipartisan Senate could convict, an impeachment could never be partisan. After reading Princeton historian Julian Zelizer’s new book, In Defense of Partisanship (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), I would say: both men were right. Yes, the attack on Clinton was partisan, and the impeachment was one chapter in the GOP’s strategy to accelerate and harness hyper-partisanship. But also, yes to Hyde’s insistence that effective partisanship ultimately required bipartisanship to succeed. It is, perhaps, that last truth that explains the MAGA-fied Republican party’s determination to govern from the White House in Trump’s second term. After the 1990s, a partisanship that no longer brooks compromise, and narrow margins regardless of which party is in the majority produced an increasingly frozen, not to mention uncivil, Congress. Does it have to be this way? No, Julian argues; not if Americans understand that partisanship—responsible partisanship—is integral to democratic governance, not a path to domination. Show notes: * Claire and Julian discuss hyperpartisanship in the early national period: interested listeners should consult Joanne Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (Yale University Press, 2002.) * Claire mentions Lyndon Johnson’s rise in the Democratic Party, partly through his distribution of campaign funds: Robert Caro writes about this in The Path to Power (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.) * Claire mentions Phyllis Schlafly’s iconic conservative crie de coeur, A Choice, Not an Echo (Pére Marquette Press, 1964.) * Claire mentions Julian’s earlier book about Newt Gingrich, Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich and the Rise of the New Republican Party (Penguin Books, 2020.) * Listeners interested in the transformed media environment, and how it benefitted the late 20th century conservative project, may wish to read Nicole Hemmer, Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s (Basic Books, 2022.) Paid subscribers will receive a transcribed version of this post tomorrow. If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 65, Baby Trump: Political scientist Dan Drezner talks about his 2020 book, "The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency." * Episode 60, When We Lose, We Win: Talking with historian Brenda Wineapple about civil rights, culture wars, the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial and her new book, "Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted A Nation." * Episode 55, The Ten-Dollar Founding Father: Chatting with historian William Hogeland about Alexander Hamilton, debt, taxes, visionaries, and his new book, "The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding.” You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers receive edited podcast transcripts and other premium content And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy, either of today’s featured book, or my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    41 min

  4. JAN 3

    Episode 66: You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

    Gift Shop in Trump Tower, New York City, September, 2022. Photo credit: Suiren2022/Wikimedia Commons In the 1939 movie, “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” W.C. Fields played a role familiar to Depression-era audiences: the grifter. Rotund, alcoholic—but nevertheless, quick witted—Fields’s character, Larsen E. Whipsnade (Get it? Larceny?) is the owner of a virtually bankrupt circus staying afloat by cheating his employees and the public. In one scene, he shorts a customer on his change, and then mocks the cheated man relentlessly. Whipsnade’s daughter tries to save the circus with her own grift (marrying the son of a millionaire), but her father’s inability to contain his fraudulence undermines the plan almost immediately. Sound familiar? The Con Man, or “confidence man,” is an American character born out of early nineteenth-century urban life, when middle-class Americans became uncomfortably aware that appearances could be deceiving. As historian Karen Halttunnen wrote in 1982, before the Civil War, advice manuals warned that confidence men and so-called painted ladies “prowled the streets of American cities in search of innocent victims to deceive, dupe, and destroy.” In 1859, Herman Melville wrote a novel, The Confidence Man, about just such a mysterious character. In the decades after the war, average Americans became aware that there was a bigger problem: from banks, speculators and the federal government to patent medicine salespeople and card cheats, scam artists saw every American pocketbook as an opportunity. In other words, separating chumps from their money is an American tradition, and by the mid-twentieth century, political campaigns became another way to do that. A system that began in the 1950s with mailing lists and newsletters wheedling money out of registered voters evolved into what we have today: endless text messages asking us for $5.00, sweepstakes that promise a meeting with the candidate for one lucky donor, and hysterical emails scolding us about failing to protect democracy—or, alternatively, keep men out of women’s bathrooms. As my guest, political reporter Joe Conason, points out in his recent book, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), while the political style of these campaigns are similar, it is the American right that has persistently used politics to fleece their followers. If a sucker is born every minute, it seems like a conservative sucker is born every 30 seconds. So, who was surprised that, having run every grift imaginable—cheating investors by declaring bankruptcy, failing to pay workers and vendors, creating a fake university, slapping a label on items as mundane as steaks and water, and reinventing himself as a success on reality TV—Donald Trump would jump into politics? You can read this story in New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s book about Trump titled—you guessed it—Confidence Man. But as Conason explains in this episode, the con is so much wider and deeper than one man. It’s a way of life on the right. And when things go sideways? Well, you can always blame the victim. As I promised in my New Year’s message, paying subscribers will receive a full transcript of my conversation with Joe no later than tomorrow. For access to that transcript, consider: It’s only five dollars—and you can cancel whenever you like. Annual subscribers ($50) can choose to receive a book mentioned in this podcast (mine or anyone else’s) as a welcome bonus. Show notes: * Joe mentions the 2019 documentary about fixer Roy Cohn directed by Matt Tyrmauer, Where’s My Roy Cohn? * Claire discusses the emergence, and political impact, of organizations like the John Birch Society as modern pioneers of the conspiracist grift. You can read more about this group in Mattthew Dallek, Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right (Basic Books, 2023.) * You can read more about Richard Viguerie and Paul Wyrich in chapter 2 of my own book, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) * Joe explains the importance of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in elevating the far right. You can read more about Falwell’s connections to the present in Keri L. Ladner, End Time Politics: From the Moral Majority to Qanon (Fortress Press, 2024.) * Joe notes that Trump’s Stop the Steal movement was merely a vehicle for raising money for Donald Trump’s discretionary use. You can read more about that here. * Claire and Joe discuss the rise of the Tea Party: for an in-depth dive on this populist movement, try Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Oxford, 2012.) * Claire quotes Jamelle Bouie’s assertion that Donald Trump’s first debate performance was a “firehose of lies. Bouie actually said “stream of lies.” You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content and watch me indulge my slightly perverse sense of humor on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 65, Baby Trump: Political scientist Dan Drezner talks about his 2020 book, "The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency." * Episode 61, How the GOP Killed Dissent: A conversation with historian Marsha Barrett about her new book, "Nelson Rockefeller’s Dilemma: The Fight to Save Moderate Republicanism." * Episode 51, MAGA Is the Newest, and Oldest, American Myth: A conversation with American Studies scholar Richard Slotkin about his new book, "A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America." And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Thanks for reading Political Junkie! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    39 min

  5. 12/17/2024

    Episode 65: Baby Trump

    A Trump baby balloon at the third Womens March, Los Angeles, January 19, 2019. Photo credit: betto rodrigues/Shutterstock Near the end of Donald J. Trump’s first year in office, the New York Times ran a story about his typical day. It began at around 5:30 am with a frenzy of television watching and channel switching. After a few hours of this, Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Peter Baker wrote, Trump would start Tweeting. “Sometimes he tweets while propped on his pillow,” the reporters wrote, citing anonymous aides. “Other times he tweets from the den next door, watching another television. Less frequently, he makes his way up the hall to the ornate Treaty Room, sometimes dressed for the day, sometimes still in night clothes, where he begins his official and unofficial calls.” Trump had very little interest in policy, couldn’t focus, and wandered off the teleprompter for minutes at a time when giving speeches. For the first time in history, anonymous aides began referring to the President as a child who had to be humored and cajoled. The people around him—at least, the ones who were not delusional or crooked—were referred to in the press as “the adults in the room,” who maintained “guardrails.” What frustrated the President—now, we are talking about the same man who went to his office in his pajamas—was his belief that he wasn’t being taken seriously. And yet, if that was true, even family and close friends had reasons for that. There were abundant rumors that Trump flew into petulant rages when he was thwarted, and that there were favorites, like 20-something aide Hope Hicks, whose main job seemed to be to soothe him. Then there was Trump’s narcissism. He didn’t read anything but complimentary stories about himself, stories provided by a staff anxious that he stay in a good mood. White House sources explained that the President liked to think of himself, not as the leader of the free world, but as a character in a television show. Who knows—maybe he thought that the 1998 Jim Carrey movie, The Truman Show, was really about President Harry S Truman? I’m just kidding. I’m sure Trump was speaking metaphorically--a word I have never heard him use and that has lots of syllables. But there were other things about Trump that the fishbowl of the White House revealed: that he guzzled dozens of Diet Cokes a day, was a picky eater when he couldn’t have his favorite foods from McDonalds and found it impossible to focus for more than a minute at a time. He flushed documents he didn’t like down the toilet, causing epic clogs—and, incidentally, violating the 1978 Presidential Records Act. Then, things got crazier. In December 2020, Trump was having an epic meltdown from having lost the election--the one that resulted in an armed mob storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021-- Comedy Central produced a sketch that put a Trump impersonator in a room with a dozen toddlers, an aide, and a bunch of bouncy balls. Well, he’s back, more incoherent and impulsive than ever; and this time, we are told, there are no more adults in the room. It’s going to be just a big White House full of impulsive, grandiose, lying children breaking s**t. I’m not taking this lightly, listeners, but I do need to take a minute and be straight with you: our best-case scenario for the next four years is that our government is so labyrinthine and complex that these folks won’t be able to find a paperclip, much less make what might, under other circumstances and in other hands, be welcome reforms. That’s why I invited international relations scholar Dan Drezner on the show. In 2017, Dan started to notice the large numbers of people—journalists, anonymous aides, other politicians—who openly compared Donald Trump, a man in his seventies, to a toddler. He started threading tweets on the platform now called X and started reading up on toddler psychology. The result was his 2020 book The Toddler-In-Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us About the Modern Presidency (University of Chicago Press.) Dan is the first in a series of guests I will have in the coming months who published books about Trump’s first term I want to revisit or, in some cases, read for the first time. We know what’s coming, and we need help thinking about it. Show notes: * CNN commenter Van Jones argued that Donald Trump had grown into the Presidency on March 1, 2017, when he honored the widow of a Navy SEAL; Washington Post journalist Fareed Zakaria got on board a month later, when Trump launched missiles into Syria. * Dan mentions a September 5, 2028 opinion piece in The New York Times alerting the public to Trump’s bizarre executive style, and how aides across government were attempting to thwart him. * Dan reminds Claire about some of Trump’s odder, first-term ideas. On August 25, 2019, Axios’s Jonathan Swan and Margaret Talev reported that “President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States.” A year later, he suggested swapping Puerto Rico for Greenland. * Dan’s research included the American Academy of Pediatrics, Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5, now in its eighth edition. * Claire notes that, ten years after his emergence as a politician, journalists still seem unsure how to cover him. * Women who have complained of being sexually assaulted by Trump often report that he grabs at and paws them like child might; here is a collated list of those charges by Mariel Padilla at The 19th. (October 26, 2023) * Claire floated the idea that Trump can’t read, while Dan says he probably can—but can’t focus long enough to read seriously. David A. Graham wrote about Trump’s “indifference to the printed word” in The Atlantic (January 5, 2018.). * Dan recommends · Elizabeth Saunders, “No Substitute for Experience: Presidents, Advisers, and Information in Group Decision Making,” International Organization (April, 2017). * Claire mentions Mary Trump’s psychological portrait of her Uncle Donald, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020). * Claire notes that, in retrospect, the White House media knew President Joe Biden was failing and did not report the story: then-New York magazine political reporter Olivia Nuzzi called it a “conspiracy of silence.” Dan notes that owners of major publications have an even greater incentive to not cover any age-related decline that Donald Trump may suffer.. * Asked to recommend more readings for our listeners, Dan suggests his own The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas (Oxford, 2017), Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy In America (1835, 1840), and Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States (W.W. Norton, 2018). You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content and watch me indulge my slightly perverse sense of humor on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. You can follow Dan on his podcast with Ana Marie Cox, The Churn, or at his Substack, Drezner’s World. If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 55, The Ten-Dollar Founding Father: Chatting with historian William Hogeland about Alexander Hamilton, debt, taxes, visionaries, and his new book, "The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding.” * Episode 51, MAGA Is the Newest, and Oldest, American Myth: A conversation with American Studies scholar Richard Slotkin about his new book, "A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America." * Episode 41, Heather Cox Richardson Believes In You: A conversation about Richardson's book, "Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” Substack, and the importance of popular history. And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    35 min

  6. 12/02/2024

    Episode 64: How We Fight

    Competing reproductive rights protesters outside the Supreme Court on March 26, 2024. Photo credit: Philip Yabut/Shutterstock On October 28, 2023, the morning of her baby shower, 18-year-old Nevaeh Crain was nauseous, running a fever, and in pain. Soon, the Texas teenager began to bleed and she started to vomit. Nevaeh’s mother, Candice Fails, took her to the hospital, where Nevaeh was diagnosed with strep throat and sent home. A second visit also resulted in no care. Both times, ER staff ascertained that the fetus she was carrying had a heartbeat. That was a problem—for Nevaeh. Texas operates under the strictures of a fetal heartbeat law, passed in 2021 and in full effect since the summer of 2022, when the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Dobbs has since activated abortion restrictions in 41 states; 13 states make no exceptions for rape, incest, non-viable pregnancies, or sparing the life of the mother. But a few states, like Texas, also rushed to criminalize anyone who participates in terminating the life of a fetus, no matter how non-viable, and no matter how close a woman is to death. Let me be clear: no one in an emergency room wants a woman to bleed to death or die of septic shock. They are just too afraid, and in some cases, too ignorant, to touch her until that fetus’s heart stops. In the podcast, Candice remembers their third, and last visit to the hospital, as Navaeh died from miscarrying a baby she wanted. Those of us who grew up in the pre-Roe v. Wade era tend to think about abortion as being about choice: that a woman has a right to decide whether to be a mother, and an equal right to a safe, professional termination. Roe, decided in 1973, was always a compromise in that regard. Under that decision, women could not be denied an abortion until the third trimester, when a fetus is technically viable. That made 99% of all abortions legal. Fewer than 1% of abortions were done in the third trimester, usually when fetuses died in the womb or could not survive outside it; or other medical needs were overriding. Since Dobbs, there has been a rolling reproductive care crisis in the United States. Sometimes it looks like the pre-Roe world—women and girls who are pregnant, don’t want to be, and will do what they can not to have that baby, whether it is legal or not, and no matter how far they must travel. Yet, it also looks like Nevaeh Crain. Or Amber Nicole Thurman, who obtained a legal abortion in North Carolina, and got sepsis back in Georgia because no doctor would touch her until it was too late. It looks like women who are forced to carry dead fetuses until they get sick, and their bodies expel them. It looks like women in all the Dobbs states who just want pregnancy care—and can’t get it, because the local OBGYN specialists have closed their practices. It looks like women who ask to be sterilized because they don’t trust medical professionals to let them live. As women die and become infertile for lack of care, president-elect Donald Trump continues to brag about appointing the Supreme Court Justices who are responsible for this catastrophe. For this, and many other reasons, it’s going to be a long four years, and the harm from treating women separately and unequally will be lasting. There will be more Nevaeh Crains, more Amber Thurmans, and millions more women who will enter what should be a joyful time—getting ready to have a child—with all the protections and safety their great-great-grandmothers had in the 19th century. So, it’s time to fight, my friends, and fortunately there are feminist activists, community organizers, lawyers and health care providers all over the country who are showing us what that looks like. That’s why I invited sociologist Krystale Littlejohn and historian Ricki Solinger on the show to talk about their edited collection, Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe v. Wade (University of California Press, 2024). The authors of these essays are angry, but hopeful. They point out that Roe was never enough, and that we don’t want that world back—we want a better one. One where women aren’t just allowed to live, but also given the resources and care they need to thrive. Show notes: * Ricki says that she knew that right to abortion rights would be reversed when Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020. Eight days later, President Donald J. Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a judge with known anti-abortion views, to replace Ginsburg on the Court. * Krystale points to her earlier work, Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics (University of California, 2021). * You can see other titles in Ricki’s series, Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century, co-edited with Krystale and three other feminist scholars, here. * Claire refers to “the leak:” a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked by persons unknown on May 2, 2022. * Claire mentions Ricki’s foundational history of the debate over women’s sexual autonomy, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade (Routledge, 1992). * Ricki mentions the escalating birth rate in Texas since Dobbs: according to the Texas Tribune, 16,000 more babies (or 2% more) were born in 2022, after that state passed its own restrictive law. Births rose again in 2023. * Claire and Krystale discuss the role of, and impact on, men when the law reduces reproductive rights and degrades institutions devoted to women’s healthcare. For example, Planned Parenthood is a leading provider of men’s healthcare, including vasectomies, STD testing, and gender-affirming care. You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content and watch me indulge my slightly perverse sense of humor on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. You can support my work with only a click: If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 49, Without Mothers, There Is No War: A conversation with political scientist Cynthia Enloe about her book "Twelve Feminist Lessons of War." * Episode 45, Why Abortion Alone Does Not Make Women Free: Historian Felicia Kornbluh and I mark Roe v. Wade with a conversation about "A Woman's Life Is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Freedom." * Episode 17, Abortion On Demand: Feminist journalist Katha Pollitt explains why we should treat ending a pregnancy as normal. Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    32 min

  7. 11/18/2024

    Episode 63: To The Constitution, With Love

    As a freshman representative from Texas, Barbara Jordan sat on the House Judiciary Committee hearing the Watergate case in 1974. Photo credit: United States House of Representatives/Wikipedia Commons In the summer of 1974, I was glued to the television for most of the day. For the first time in my life, my parents didn’t insist that I shut it off, go outside—do something useful. That was Watergate Summer, the weeks that a national drama played out all day on public television, with coverage hosted by Robert McNeil and Jim Lehrer, and interspersed with experts who explained the ramifications of testimony by White House staff for President Richard M. Nixon’s possible impeachment. Then, on July 25th, a first-term Representative from Texas’s 11th Congressional District, a large African American woman with a commanding voice and demeanor, used her introductory fifteen minutes to express her love for a Constitution that had also permitted and protected American slavery. That woman was Barbara Jordan. I cried as I listened to her speech, not just because it was so beautifully written and delivered, but because it expressed the love I also felt for my country—for its history, and its laws—at a time when Nixon was being held to account for his crimes. Presidents weren’t above the law, Jordan argued. It was not just the right, but also the duty of the legislative and judicial branches to apply the checks and balances that the Founders intended—those same Founders who ensured that slavery endured for almost another century after the Constitution was adopted, and a legal, racial caste system for almost another century after that. This is, of course, also the same Constitution and nation of laws that President Donald J. Trump, just elected to a second term, as well as the entire Republican Party, plans to wipe their collective asses with in the next four years. And it is up to us to stop them. This is why I wanted to bring Mary Ellen Curtin, Associate Professor of Critical race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University on the show. Curtin is the author of She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan’s Life and Legacy in Black Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), a book I have been looking forward to reading since I heard that it was in the pipeline. As you can probably tell, Jordan is one of my heroes. Her service in Congress was short by any standards: only six years. But it was the penultimate stage of a career in which Jordan used every public platform she had, from childhood on, to make the promise of the Constitution real. A slightly informal note: listeners may recall that the last episode featured David Greenberg’s biography of Congressman John R. Lewis. I had hoped that the Lewis episode and this one would bookend the election of our first woman president. As a precaution, Mary Ellen and I taped two endings. We had to use the wrong one. But, although it is going to be a hard fight, as Barbara Jordan famously said on July 25, 1974, my faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I still believe in freedom. And I believe in you. Show notes: * Mary Ellen cites a previous biography, Mary Beth Rogers’ Barbara Jordan: American Hero (Penguin/Random House, 1998.) * Mary Ellen mentions Leon Higgenbotham’s early impressions of Jordan: for those who do not know him, Higgenbotham (1928-1998) was a prominent jurist: you can read more about him here. * Claire and Mary Ellen discuss the importance of excellent, if segregated, Black schools for boosting Black men and women into professional and leadership roles: for a case study on this topic, see Vanessa Siddle Walker, Hello Professor: A Black Principal and Professional Leadership in the Segregated South (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). * One of the court decisions that paved the way for Jordan’s career was Smith v. Allright (1944), a Texas case organized by Jordan’s pastor and decided by the United States Supreme Court that abolished the white primary. * Claire mentions Bella Abzug’s published diary of her first year in Congress, Bella! Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington (Saturday Review Press, 1972.) * If you want to read more about the famous “Class of 1974” that bolstered the progressives elected to the House of Representatives in 1972, check out Claire Potter and John Lawrence, “The Watergate Babies: What the Congressional Class of 1974 can teach us about political change,” Public Seminar, August 15, 2018. * You can read more about the life that Barbara Jordan and Nancy Earl made together in Lisa Moore, “Looking Back at Barbara Jordan,” QT Voices (LGBT Studies, UT-Austin, July 7, 1972) You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content and watch me indulge my slightly perverse sense of humor on Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 62, We Shall Not Be Moved: A conversation with historian David Greenberg about nonviolent resistance, the legacy of an iconic civil rights organizer, and his new book, "John Lewis: A Life." * Episode 37, Black Resistance, Black Joy: A conversation with political theorist Christopher Paul Harris about his book, "To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care." * Episode 34, We Demand Equality--NOW! A conversation with historian Katherine Turk about her book, "The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America." Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    40 min

  8. 10/31/2024

    Episode 62: We Shall Not Be Moved

    Georgia Congressman John Lewis at the Lincoln Memorial at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, August 24, 2013. Photo credit: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock There is no question that Donald Trump, a former President who is on the ballot next Tuesday, November 5, is not only a man in love with violence, but one who also understands violence as a way to get what he wants. On May 1, 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Daily News demanding that New York State execute five Black teenagers who were (as it turns out, falsely) accused of beating and raping a woman in Central Park. In fact, Trump has, himself, repeatedly been accused of sexually assaulting women. Although she later retracted it, Trump’s first wife, Ivana, accused him of raping her and pulling her hair out; and on January 26, 2024, a civil jury convicted Trump of raping journalist E. Jean Carroll. Trump has, over time, seen extremist militias as allies, and on January 6, 2021, those militias attempted—at his urging—to overthrow a legally constituted election which he lost. He has incited violence against those he perceives as political enemies, particularly immigrants and protesters. He has promised—if he is elected President again—to violently deport 11 million undocumented people living and working peacefully in the United States. He has promised to use the United States military against peaceful protesters. As Vice President Kamala Harris pointed out last week, as she prepared to face voters in a CNN Town Hall, Trump promises to rule violently, something his rally goers and right-wing media supporters have repeatedly cheered. But the use of violence against political enemies is, unfortunately, not unprecedented in the United States. Although it is illegal to deploy the military against American citizens as Trump has promised to do, police, hired security, and Ku Klux Klan mobs have assaulted strikers, protesters, and civil rights activists since the 19thcentury. On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard troops murdered four peaceful antiwar protesters at Kent State University. Perhaps the most sustained use of political violence against American citizens has been the deployment of police and deputized mobs against Black Americans. This violence intensified in the 1950s and 1960s as a Black-led, interracial coalition of students and activists across the Jim Crow South organized and demonstrated nonviolently for the right to vote, and to desegregate public accommodations, transportation, and public schools. Politicians unhesitatingly deployed armed men against these brave souls, and refused to intervene when vigilantes beat, murdered, and raped activists. One of those activists was John Robert Lewis, born in Pike County Alabama in 1940, and the first in his family to attend college. While attending a Nashville seminary, Lewis became involved in sit-ins organized to desegregate restaurants and other public places, and he quickly rose to a leadership position. Lewis eventually became the Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, an organization committed to nonviolent protest that organized the Freedom Rides in 1961 and helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963. At the March, Lewis—like many young people today who protest Israel’s War on Gaza—expressed his disillusionment with politics, and the failure of either party to deliver racial justice. Yet, Lewis’s social revolution bore fruit as politics, and he himself—like many movement activists--eventually became a politician. After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, President Lyndon Johnson used his political capital to pass federal civil rights bills in 1964 and 1965. Lewis then took his activism into government itself and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1986, where he became part of the Democratic Party leadership and served the people of the United States until his death in July 2020. It's hard not to think of Lewis, his fight for justice and against violence, as voters in the United States face their most consequential election in 150 years. I think Lewis’s spirit is watching over Vice President Kamala Harris in this last week of the campaign, and that’s why I invited David Greenberg, the author of John Lewis: A Life (Simon and Schuster, 2024) to come and talk to us about a civil rights icon who helped to transform the Democratic Party that Harris now leads. Show notes: * There are many secondary sources on Lewis’s branch of the movement, but the best contemporary account of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is Howard Zinn, SNCC, The New Abolitionists (Beacon Press, 1964.) * David and Claire discuss why the Nashville student movement was both part of, and distinct from, the larger civil rights movement. To get a sense of the dynamism of that local activism, take a look at Kathryn E. Delmez, ed. We Shall Overcome: Press Photographs of Nashville during the Civil Rights Era (Vanderbilt University Press, 2018). * Claire asks David why Lewis became so committed to Israel. David believes it was partly because he was aware of antisemitism from an early age, and partly because Jewish activists were so deeply committed to the movement. Listeners who want to pursue this may wish to read Deborah Schultz, Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York University Press, 2001). * Claire and David talk a lot about Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin. Listeners who want to follow up may wish to read Jonathan Eig, King: A Life (Farrar, Straus, % Giroux, 2023) and John D’Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (Free Press, 2003.) * Claire raises the question of how John Lewis came to understand LGBT Atlantans as part of his coalition. Listeners interested in how LGBT voters became part of the Democratic coalition may wish to read Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (St. Martin’s Press, 1982) and Timothy Stewart-Winter, Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). You can download this podcast here or subscribe for free on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Soundcloud. You can also keep up with Political Junkie content and watch me indulge my slightly perverse sense of humor on X, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok. If you enjoyed this episode, why not try: * Episode 58, Picturing Asian America: A conversation with historian Mae Ngai about "Corky Lee's Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice. * Episode 48, “The Bright Sunshine of Human Rights: A conversation with journalist and historian James Traub about liberalism and his book, "True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for A More Just America." * Episode 43, Where In the World Is Merze Tate? A conversation with historian Barbara Savage about freedom, independence, and her new biography, "Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar." Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.) Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe

    41 min
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Where contemporary history and politics meet the challenge of today. clairepotter.substack.com

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