In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk, Elaine Kamarck, and William Galston explore why the Democrats aren’t building long-term coalitions, how the Democrats lost the working class, and how centrists in the party can create a compelling offer for voters.

Mounk: I’d always read about this famous paper, “The Politics of Evasion,” and I’m obviously well acquainted with both of your work, but I must admit that I hadn’t read it until yesterday, and I just fell out of my chair reading the paper, noticing how similar the situation after Democrats lost to George H.W. Bush in 1988 was compared to how you might analyze it today. Take us back to that moment and explain to us what the problems were that you were analyzing in “The Politics of Evasion.”

Kamarck: We’d lost several presidential elections in a row, even though the party was still quite strong at the congressional level and at the local level. So we were living in a sort of a myth that really nothing was wrong. It was just that Ronald Reagan was so charismatic, et cetera. Then we lost to George H. W. Bush, who was anything but charismatic. We really had to have a “come to Jesus” moment, as we say. And we had to look at the party and say something’s really wrong here. Of course, what was wrong was something that we’ve seen since, which is that the Democrats were fundamentally out of step with most of the country on values. And they were turned off by the national Democrats, even though at that point in time, they continued to elect Democrats to the House and to the Senate. So there was this need for the party to take a hard look at itself.

The Model

While explosions in small-dollar contributions have been working wonders supporting federal candidates in certain swing states in recent years, almost no money flows to most statehouse candidates.

And since it’s statehouses where most of the attacks on democracy and extremism have been doing the most damage, the lack of meaningful support for most statehouse candidates turns out to be a huge problem for democracy. Even worse, that lack of support is leaving huge numbers of these districts (the very districts where the most damage is being done) not contested at all. (Because why run if no one cares enough to support your candidacy?) And that, of course, makes the problem even worse. A downward spiral of extremism and anti-democracy, wholly uninterrupted by the other side or even a modicum of accountability.

In my book Saving Democracy, I equate the situation to a soccer game where one team is always on offense (extreme statehouses are the forwards, shooting at the goal non-stop). And the other team hardly plays defense against them:

The new pope won’t. He’s a sensible liberal who, three weeks ago, retweeted a post slamming Trump’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?” He also retweeted a post reading: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

When FDR was later asked for the roots of his political philosophy, he replied: “I’m a Christian and a Democrat.” There’s no question that the new social contract he struck was connected at a deep, instinctive level to the moral and social values articulated by Leo XIII.

Now the magnanimous spirit of the New Deal is under attack as never before. But help is on the way, courtesy of a South Side guy who may end up serving as the conscience of his country and the world.

The new pope won’t. He’s a sensible liberal who, three weeks ago, retweeted a post slamming Trump’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?” He also retweeted a post reading: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

When FDR was later asked for the roots of his political philosophy, he replied: “I’m a Christian and a Democrat.” There’s no question that the new social contract he struck was connected at a deep, instinctive level to the moral and social values articulated by Leo XIII.

Now the magnanimous spirit of the New Deal is under attack as never before. But help is on the way, courtesy of a South Side guy who may end up serving as the conscience of his country and the world.

In a little noticed interview, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg offers a host of exceptionally creepy comments.

Lots of important monopoly-related things happened last week. Now that Apple’s app store monopoly is broken, developers are cutting prices and building cool stuff. The tariff shock is about to hit in force, but the stock market has recovered all of its losses since April 2nd. Plus a lot more.

But before getting to the full round-up, I want to focus on the social future that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building for all of us, whether we like it or not, and how reliant it is on the firm’s market power.

Take a recent viral clip about a future of AI friends, therapists, and girlfriends, from an interview he did on the Dwarkesh podcast. Zuckerberg talked how Americans on average have only three friends, but want fifteen. He then explained that though emotional connections with AI bots are socially disfavored now, eventually society will “find the vocabulary” to understand that people who use AI to fill a hole of loneliness in their lives are “rational.”

The new pope won’t. He’s a sensible liberal who, three weeks ago, retweeted a post slamming Trump’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?” He also retweeted a post reading: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

When FDR was later asked for the roots of his political philosophy, he replied: “I’m a Christian and a Democrat.” There’s no question that the new social contract he struck was connected at a deep, instinctive level to the moral and social values articulated by Leo XIII.

Now the magnanimous spirit of the New Deal is under attack as never before. But help is on the way, courtesy of a South Side guy who may end up serving as the conscience of his country and the world.

The new pope won’t. He’s a sensible liberal who, three weeks ago, retweeted a post slamming Trump’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?” He also retweeted a post reading: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

When FDR was later asked for the roots of his political philosophy, he replied: “I’m a Christian and a Democrat.” There’s no question that the new social contract he struck was connected at a deep, instinctive level to the moral and social values articulated by Leo XIII.

Now the magnanimous spirit of the New Deal is under attack as never before. But help is on the way, courtesy of a South Side guy who may end up serving as the conscience of his country and the world.

The years of my youth must have been such a disappointment for sci-fi fans of my parents’ generation. They were raised on stories of spaceships soaring between the stars, and they grew up to see the space shuttle explode and humankind abandon the moon. They grew up expecting flying cars and robot servants, but as they reached middle age they were still trundling along the ground and doing their own laundry.

Though I’ll still go back and read some stuff from the 80s and 90s, I stopped reading new cyberpunk about a decade ago. Around that time it became clear that the pace of real technological change had overtaken authors’ imaginations; newly written cyberpunk fiction began to feel retrofuturistic, like someone writing about the present and getting it wrong. Meanwhile all I had to do to see fantastic techno-futures unfold around me was to read the news.

There are plenty of other ways in which new technologies might lead to dystopian outcomes. Beyond the obvious ones — rogue AGI and bioterrorism — there’s the possibility that modern technology might make replacement-level fertility impossible, leading to a grim, gray, shrinking world where working people have to toil ever longer and harder to support vast armies of the aged. Smartphones equipped with social media might also be leading to an epidemic of depression, loneliness, and reduced cognitive skills.

Why should those who aren’t scientists care? In the 21st century, science isn’t some esoteric intellectual affair. It’s the foundation of social and economic progress. And no, we can’t expect the private sector to fill the gap left by loss of government support. Basic research is a public good: it generates real benefits, but those benefits can’t be monetized because everyone can make use of the knowledge gained. So government support is the only way to sustain science. And that support is being rapidly ended.

But why do our new rulers want to destroy science in America? Sadly, the answer is obvious: Science has a tendency to tell you things you may not want to hear. Medical research may tell you that vaccines work and don’t cause autism. Energy research may tell wind power works and doesn’t massacre birds.

How do you know when you have too much going on?

The two clearest indicators: either a decline in objective performance or subjective experience. The numbers go down, the stress increases, or some combination of both. But these are end games you want to avoid. Ideally, you spot the issue in advance. It is easier to prevent overload than to escape or reverse it.

Cooking well—literally or metaphorically—means deciding how many burners you can have going, what should be boiling, and when it does so.

Make this metaphor work for you by reflecting on how many burners you’ve got going and the heat of each. You can check in at the beginning of every week to prioritize which burners need to be actively boiling versus which you can keep on a simmer. You could even put this visualization on a whiteboard in your office. If you start to feel like the entire kitchen is getting out of control, that’s a sign to turn down a burner or two, or perhaps, even eliminate some altogether.

We all want to cook, but none of us want to burn down the kitchen. Hopefully, this helps.

Why Humanity—and Dignity—Shouldn’t Surrender to Technological Inevitability

The effective accelerationism movement (e/acc) presents itself as an enlightened embrace of technological progress, especially artificial general intelligence. Led by figures like Guillaume Verdon and embraced by venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen, the movement claims humanity faces a binary choice: “accelerate or die.” Those who question this narrative are dismissed as “decels” or “doomers” standing in the way of humanity’s cosmic destiny.

What’s actually at stake in this debate isn’t just the pace of innovation but whether humans meaningfully shape their own future. E/acc’s seductive simplicity—its promise that surrendering to technological inevitability will solve humanity’s problems—can slide quickly into authoritarian governance justified by “inevitable” technological imperatives. We’re already seeing these dynamics at work in real-world contexts, as when the Trump administration uses tariffs as leverage to force countries to accept Elon Musk’s Starlink—a fusion of technological and political power that bypasses democratic accountability.

The center must be held against this technological determinism. Two plus two equals four means we must always insist on seeing reality clearly, not through the distorting lens of inevitability narratives that conveniently serve those already in power. Human dignity and democratic legitimacy aren’t obstacles to technological advancement—they’re its moral foundation. Without them, technology inevitably becomes not a force for liberation, but merely another form of authoritarian control—no matter how brightly it smiles.