In 2002, political analyst and commentator Ruy Teixeira co-authored The Emerging Democratic Majority. The book, published near the zenith of the Bush presidency in the aftermath of 9/11, gave beleaguered Democrats cause for hope. Demographic change, Teixeira and co-author John Judis predicted, would soon create the political conditions for Democrats to forge an enduring political majority.

When an emerging coalition of educated knowledge economy professionals, minorities, young people and women powered the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 and 2012, Teixeira’s optimism appeared prescient. But the big Democratic majorities of Obama’s early years were ephemeral. The country remained closely divided politically, yo-yoing back and forth between the two parties. Trump won narrowly in 2016, and then again, catastrophically, in 2024.

Teixeira, now a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, has spent the years since Trump’s first victory excavating what went wrong for Democrats. So we invited him to join us on the latest episode to dissect the current state of the Democrat Party and its future prospects. In our conversation we explore why the leading optimist about the party’s future fortunes two decades ago has today became one of its most vocal pessimists.

Why did demography not turn out to be destiny? We discuss the core findings of Teixeira’s more recent analyses, laid out in a string of articles published at The Liberal Patriot (the Substack site Teixeira co-founded) and in a follow up 2023 volume also co-authored with Judis.

He argues that, from Obama’s second term on, the party’s increasingly strident promotion of the cultural beliefs of the educated elites of blue urban America has caused the party to hemorrhage working class voters of all races. Teixeira further explains why he thinks the party continues to be in deep trouble in the mid-to-longer term, despite benefitting currently from public backlash to Trump’s authoritarian excesses.

We dig in with him into Democrats’ positions on immigration, race, and gender and why he believes they create a political anchor around the Democrats’ necks. And we close with a discussion of how the increasing polarization between the parties distorts our politics, with Teixeira arguing that the educated cosmopolitans who now comprise the Democratic Party’s vocal core need to stop treating politics as a self-ratifying moral crusade and focus on what matters: building a winning coalition.

“Politics is not supposed to be fun, It’s supposed to be about getting shit done, and that’s hard, typically, and you have to make compromises,” he tells us. “You don’t always get to stand on your soapbox and talk about how you’re on the right side of history.”

Robert Scaramuccia edited this episode.

Outside references:

John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002).

Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (2023)

Ruy Teixiera, "The Democrats' Common Sense Problem," The Liberal Patriot, March 24, 2022

Ruy Teixeira and Yuval Levin, "Politics Without Winners: Can Either Party Build a Majority Coalition?" American Enterprise Institute, October 2024

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com

We spoke with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan last year about his groundbreaking approach to municipal governance and the new directions he wants to take the Democratic Party. Now, he's running for governor of California, which makes this a good time to give this interview a second spin.

A Harvard grad who made his bones in the disruption-centered world of Silicon Valley tech startups, Mahan tells us he's put his focus on prioritizing results over ideology since becoming mayor of one of California’s biggest blue cites in 2023.

Along the way, Mahan has been more than willing to touch progressive third rails. Take Prop 36, a 2024 CA ballot measure toughening sentences for drug and theft crimes. Openly bucking Gavin Newsom and the Democratic establishment, Mahan went all in advocating for Prop 36. Fed up Cali voters backed it too, passing it by more than two to one.

He hasn’t stopped there. Mahan’s call for “a revolution of common sense” has led to breaks with public sector unions over pay raises and linking pay to performance, to prioritizing shelter over housing, and – most recently – to his controversial proposal to arrest homeless people who repeatedly refuse offers of shelter. So far, it’s working at the ballot box: Mahan was re-elected last year in a cakewalk, with 87 percent of the vote.

So we decided to go deep with one of the nation’s more unique blue city mayors. “Historically, cities have been engines of economic opportunity and upward mobility, and I think that's where we're struggling most,” Mahan told us in explaining his motives for broadly rethinking blue city governance.

Is Mahan a role model or a pariah? Listen to what he has to say and decide for yourself.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

About Blue City Blues

Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.

America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party.

But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming.

The Blue City Blues podcast aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them?

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com

While David is away, we are reposting some early days Blue City Blues episodes that many of our more recent listeners may have missed. We thought this one, with author and cultural critic Freddie DeBoer, was a great conversation on a topic that remains timely. We'll be back with fresh episodes shortly:

Freddie DeBoer knows a thing or two about mental illness. He’s been admitted into psychiatric hospitals five times; he was involuntarily committed in 2002. He has, as they say, lived experience.

Freddie is also one of our most original and independent commentators on American cultural trends. A self-described Marxist and a cogent critic of recent ideological turns within blue city progressive culture, he has written extensively, with clarity and passion and urgency, about why the idea of involuntary commitment of the severely mentally ill has long been a third rail in progressive blue city politics, and why that needs to change.

We asked Freddie on to make his case for reforming our laws and procedures, and also our attitudes, about how to address the problem of the mentally ill suffering on blue city streets. And to discuss why the disability rights community has gotten this issue so wrong.

"If the left does not have a vision for how to solve these problems, then the people will elect strong men who will come in and do it in a worse way," he told us.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Outside References:

Freddie DeBoer, "Psychotic Disorders Do Not Respect Autonomy, Independence, Agency or Freedom," Substack (Freddie DeBoer), May 24, 2023

Freddie DeBoer, "The Case for Forcing the Mentally Ill into Treatment," New York, June 20, 2024

Freddie DeBoer, "'Well I Don't Know About This Involuntary treatment Business!' He Said, Stepping into the Safety of a Closed Tab," Substack (Freddie DeBoer), July 3, 2024

Freddie DeBoer, "You Call that Compassion?" Substack (Freddie DeBoer), Aug. 5, 2024

Freddie DeBoer, "What Is Freedom for the Mentally Ill?" City Journal, Dec. 2, 2024

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com