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This isn’t Joe Kennedy’s grandfather’s Democratic Party, and he knows it

This isn’t Joe Kennedy’s grandfather’s Democratic Party, and he knows it

FromThe Gray Area with Sean Illing


This isn’t Joe Kennedy’s grandfather’s Democratic Party, and he knows it

FromThe Gray Area with Sean Illing

ratings:
Length:
67 minutes
Released:
Mar 5, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

When you’re sitting in front of Rep. Joe Kennedy, it’s clear that you’re sitting in front of a Kennedy. The face, the jawline — it’s all uncannily familiar.

But Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, is rising in a changed Democratic Party. In the 1950s, the nonwhite share of the Democratic vote was about 7 percent. In 2012, it was about 44 percent — and that number is ticking upward.

Kennedy is navigating it smoothly. Tapped to give the Democratic response to the State of the Union — and you’ll want to listen to him tell the story of how that came about — he delivered a powerful performance in a speaking slot that usually buries ambitious young politicians. And he did it by reminding Democrats that their rhetoric can be bigger than their divisions, that a party built on difference can still see its way to a national identity.

In this conversation, Kennedy and I talk about the vision and the policies that lie behind that speech. Where should Democrats go on health care, on economics, on drugs? Is the divide over identity politics and economic populism really a “false choice,” as Kennedy argues? And how do Democrats talk about unity when Trump keeps driving the national conversation into divisive issues?




Further Reading:

Matt Yglesias' piece on Rep. Kennedy's SOTU response

The Ezra Klein Show episode with the authors of How Democracies Die

Books:

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Released:
Mar 5, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Winner of the 2020 Webby and People's Voice awards for best interview podcast. Ezra Klein brings you far-reaching conversations about hard problems, big ideas, illuminating theories, and cutting-edge research. Want to know how Stacey Abrams feels about identity politics? How Hasan Minhaj is reinventing political comedy? The plans behind Elizabeth Warren’s plans? How Michael Lewis reads minds? This is the podcast for you. Produced by Vox and the Vox Media Podcast Network.