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.