My guest on the show this week in Timothy Shenk, assistant professor of history at The George Washington University and author, most recently, of Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics, which I reviewed for Air Mail some months back.
Both the book and a recent article of Tim’s from the Boston Review that we discuss, “The tent really does need to get bigger,” fall into the over-arching category of ‘Why did the left loose its groove and how can it get its groove back?’ It’s a conversation I’ve had before in various ways from various angles, but usually with more of a focus on the leadership — activists, elected officials, intellectuals — who are trying to do the persuading. Tim’ interest is much more on the people we’d need to persuade to get our groove back.
He has thought a lot about who the swing voter is, who the working class voter is, what it is the…
