Democrats Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

The Democrats and Immigration

Episode 10

July 30, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

However, the Trump administration has overreached. Even among Republicans, the change in sentiment is noteworthy. Can the Democrats can come up with a narrative and a set of policies that can appeal to a wide swath of the American public. But what should those policies be? And can the Democrats shed ...

Reviews

Can American Liberalism Reinvent Itself?

How obscuring the public side of public-private partnerships from FDR to Clinton rendered the liberal state politically precarious

June 27, 2023 • by Henry Tonks

The DLC, soon to anoint Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas as their chairman and presidential standard-bearer, were leaving the legacy of New Deal and postwar liberalism behind. They were, after all, “New Democrats.” Or were they? ...

Can American Liberalism Reinvent Itself?

Corporations

Election Day 2022: Good (and Some Bad) News for State Corporate Power Politics

Big tech antagonists did well, but so did megadeal boosters

November 14, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Big Tech antagonists won big in attorneys general races. So did all of the governors who have been promoting major corporate subsidy deals in recent months won their reelection races, lending more evidence to the already existing heap of it that massive corporate handouts can be potent political tools....

Politics

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Our contemporary conundrum

March 30, 2022 • by Sidney Tarrow

But how deeply have these recent developments disrupted the forms of the two main political parties? Are we still dealing—as the title of my book implies—with “movements and parties?” Or with movement-parties, hybrids that have added the passions of movements to the parties, while depriving the parties of one of ...

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Politics

In a Federal Infrastructure Bill, Waste Isn’t Pork

Politics may or may not be a sewer, but the fact is a lot of rural American backyards are: a Democratic Congresswoman from Alabama wants to fix that with tax dollars

July 20, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ There are two Americas, and of the many things that divide affluent Americans from poor ones, the one that we talk about the least might be the ability to take waste disposal for granted. But, of course, it isn’t always the case: tree roots growing into a fragile pipe, a ...

In a Federal Infrastructure Bill, Waste Isn’t Pork

Columnists

Conservative Democrats are Telling Stories About Republicans that Republicans Keep Blowing Up

Will being made a fool change Joe Manchin’s mind? Probably

June 22, 2021 • by John Stoehr

_____ The Democrats in the United States Senate will take up a procedural vote later today to debate of a handful of measures to overhaul the country’s voting laws. All eyes are on Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia, who has offered his own voting proposal in addition to ...

Conservative Democrats are Telling Stories About Republicans that Republicans Keep Blowing Up

Past Present

Minimum Wage and the Fight for $15

Past Present Podcast, Episode 269

March 2, 2021 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: House Democrats have proposed a federally guaranteed fifteen-dollar an hour minimum wage as part of their coronavirus relief bill. Niki drew on this New York Times piece about the effective minimum wage, and Neil referenced this New Yorker article about ...

Feature

The Shifting Class Politics of the Democratic Party

May 5, 2016 • by Lily Geismer

The battle for the presidential nomination has exposed ideological and class fault lines within the Democratic Party. The opposition to Hillary Clinton’s position on trade and other economic issues reveal the sense among many registered Democrats that the Party establishment has abandoned their economic concerns. The shift in the class ...