The Ongoing Crisis of American Politics, Pt. 1

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In today’s episode, we talk with Sanjiv Gupta and Paul Heideman about U.S. politics, conflict within the Republican Party, and the current state of American democracy. We invited Saniv and Paul back onto the podcast as a follow-up to their 2022 presentation at the Socialism Conference in Chicago. 

Sanjiv Gupta is a member of the River Valley DSA chapter in Western Massachusetts and a sociologist at UMass-Amherst. 

Paul Heideman is a writer and high school teacher in NYC. He is the editor of Class Struggle and the Color Line, and his work has appeared in Jacobin, Dissent, and In These Times.

These two resolutions are mentioned in the discussion: No Votes for Genocide Resolution and Establishing a Mass Member Input Process for a Position on the 2024 Presidential Election Resolutions  

Transcript:

Luke: This is CLASS, the official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America's National Political Education Committee. My name is Luke Pickrell. In this episode, we talk with Sanjiv Gupta and Paul Heidemann, who I will introduce fully at the beginning of the show. Our discussions will be released in two parts.

Over the course of these two chapters, I asked Sanjiv and Paul to talk about the Uncommitted Movement and how DSA should relate to the 2024 elections. Paul explains the internal workings of the Republican Party and how Trump's rise to prominence has impacted the Republicans. We consider the challenges facing the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and particularly how the ongoing war in Gaza could be splitting the Democrats.

We conclude by talking a bit about the meaning of liberal democracy and how socialists should relate to the larger structure of American politics. Enjoy.

Today we're joined by Sanjiv Gupta and Paul Heidemann. I want to introduce, our two guests here to the, to the podcast. Sanjiv is a member of River Valley DSA in Western Massachusetts. And he's also a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Paul is a writer and a high school teacher in New York City.

He's the editor of Class Struggle and The Color Line. And Paul's work has appeared in Jacobin, Descent, and In These Times. You all might remember Sanjeev and Paul from episodes 6 and 7 of the podcast. We shared a recording of their presentation at the 2022 Socialism Conference in Chicago, and that presentation was called The Crisis of American Politics, Socialists, and Liberal Democracy.

And then I was just reminded that Sanjiv also appeared on several of our first episodes. we had an introductory series talking about what is capitalism more generally. So, two years later, give or take, after the Socialism 2022 conference, we wanted to have Sanjiv and Paul on the show to discuss a variety of topics, but mostly within the realm of the 2024 presidential elections, democracy more broadly, the Republican Party, And then also the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA, And then, of course, we'll release this discussion in two parts. So first off, Sanjiv and Paul just wanted to thank you both for joining us. 

Sanjiv: Very happy to be here.

Paul: Glad to be here. 

 Luke: Yeah, it's, it's great to have you both. So, I thought first we could start off with the U

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