The Realignment

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Latest Episodes:

577 | Steve Teles: Why the Realignment Has Made Think Tanks More Relevant Than Ever Oct 07, 2025

Show notes

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Giselle Hale: Moving Abundance from Op-Eds to Action - Why Local Elected Officials Are the Missing Piece of the Puzzle Oct 02, 2025

Show notes

https://abundanceelected.com/about-us/

https://www.axios.com/2025/09/03/democrats-abundance-movement-group

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Giselle Hale, Managing Partner at the Abundance Network and former Mayor of Redwood City, CA, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Giselle discuss Abundance Network's newly announced Abundance Elected Network, a community of local elected officials in city and county government interested in abundance and state capacity. They discuss why the local government version of the abundance discourse is completely different than the national level, think tank and pundit debate, how local officials are operationalizing abundance ideas, and what an outcomes-centered politics could look like.

575 | Doug Most: Pragmatism in Action - WWII Shipbuilding, the Arsenal of Democracy, and Today’s Challenges Sep 25, 2025

Show notes

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Doug Most, author of Launching Liberty: The Epic Race to Build the Ships That Took America to War, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Doug discuss the untold story of the construction of Liberty Ships, the massive cargo vessels that carried tanks, jeeps, food, and ammunition to allied forces in World War II. The conversation explores the parallels between World War II problem-solving and contemporary debates about infrastructure, industrial policy, and the private sector's role in government, the importance of bringing a "problem-solving" approach to government, and how the pragmatic choice of emphasizing "ugly duckling" ships over Hitler's obsession with engineering marvels made all the difference.

574 | Nancy Scola: The Anti-Monopoly Summit, Abundance 2025, & National Conservatism - What D.C.’s Conference Season Really Revealed Sep 18, 2025

Show notes

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Nancy Scola, reporter and journalist focused on the battle of ideas in Washington, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Nancy discuss the three big ideas-focused conferences in DC in September: The new right National Conservatism Conference, Abundance 2025, and this week's Anti-Monopoly Summit. They cover the competing stories and ideas discussed at these events, the degree to which each convening contradicts the others, the difficult task of holding bipartisan gatherings during a time of polarization and factionalism, and how politicians can use ideas to build their political brands during an era of anti-establishment and voter skepticism.

573 | Danielle Lee Tomson: The Story & Authenticity Gap - Why the Center-Left Keeps Losing the Plot Sep 16, 2025

Show notes

Failure to Communicate Substack: https://failuretocommunicate.substack.com/

Danielle Lee Tomson: https://failuretocommunicate.substack.com/p/beyond-messaging

Danielle Lee Tomson: https://failuretocommunicate.substack.com/p/the-authenticity-gap

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Danielle Lee Tomson, author of the forthcoming Under the Influence: What's Real When America Feels Fake, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Danielle discuss the right's multi-decade project of participatory, oppositional media, and why the effort culminated in President Trump's 2024 election victory. They unfavorably contrast the center-left's post-2024 response, with its focus on top-down marketing, "ideas" disconnected from a broader story and understanding of the country, highlight the importance of storytelling when it comes to creating the "common sense" that oppositional movements require, and compare and contrast the worldviews and stories of the left, right, and center.

572 | Season Premiere: Steve Teles on The Realignment's New Home at Niskanen & Where Abundance Goes Next After Last Week's Conference + A Note on Charlie Kirk Sep 11, 2025

Show notes

Must-Read on Political Violence in America: Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence

Jerusalem Demsas in The Argument on Abundance vs. National Conservatism: A Tale of Two Ballrooms

Steve Teles on "The Varieties of Abundance: Varieties of Abundance - Niskanen Center

New Cascadian Abundance Substack: What is Cascadian Abundance? - by Kelly Jiang

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Steve Teles, Niskanen Senior Fellow and Johns Hopkins University Professor, returns to The Realignment. After a brief note on Charlie Kirk's assassination yesterday in Utah, Marshall and Steve discuss their takeaways from last week's Abundance 2025 Conference in DC, tensions between the left-liberal wings of the Abundance project and the right-wing, "Dark Abundance" crew, the contrast between the dueling Abundance and National Conservatism conferences, and where the broader effort goes next after the previous week's events.

571 | Steve Teles: The Varieties of Abundance - Why Abundance Isn't Left, Right, or Center Aug 28, 2025

Show notes

Varieties of Abundance: https://www.niskanencenter.org/abundance-varieties/

PDF Version: https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Varieties-of-Abundance.pdf

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com
Steve Teles, Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, returns to The Realignment. Ahead of next week's 2025 Abundance in DC, Marshall and Steve discuss his new Niskanen Center paper on "The Varieties of Abundance." In Steve's telling, despite broad agreement within the Abundance movement on the need to increase supply, challenge existing incumbents who benefit from scarcity, and the critical role of enhanced state capacity in addressing America's challenges, there are existing and potential varieties of Abundance across the ideological and geographic spectrums. Just as the late 19th- and early 20th-century Progressive Movement held a shared critique of the industrial-era American state, different actors took the project in different directions. Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Woodrow Wilson were all progressives, but operated in separate camps. In Steve's telling, abundance is already operating accordingly. In the paper, he identifies six varieties of Abundance: Red Plenty, Cascadian Abundance, Liberal Abundance, Moderate-Abundance Synthesis, Abundance Dynamism, and Dark Abundance. The aim of the paper is not to be overly inside-baseball, but to offer readers and listeners a framework for understanding the diversity of actors, institutions, and ideologies that have positively engaged with the Abundance framework.

570 | Dan Wang: China's Engineering State, America's Lawyerly Society, and the Competition for the 21st Century Aug 26, 2025

Show notes

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email the Show: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Dan Wang, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover History Lab and author of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Dan discuss China's quest to become a techno-industrial superpower, how China's "engineering state" contrasts with America's "lawyerly society," why China has successfully built megaprojects vs. America's stalled efforts at industrial policy, high speed rail, and electrification, whether both countries have entered into a cold war, and the downsides of the engineering states top-down control.

569 | The Shah's Fall, Khomeini's Rise, and What It Means for the U.S. and Iran Today Aug 21, 2025

Show notes

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: realignmentpod@gmail.com
Scott Anderson, author of King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Scott discuss the historical legacy of the rise and fall of the Shah of Iran, how the rise of religious fundamentalism reshaped America's relationship with Iran and the broader Middle East, President Carter's misread of the Iranian Revolution in the context of the Cold War, and survey the aftermath of the joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran's nuclear program this past June.

568 | Jon Lee Anderson: Was Afghanistan the Graveyard of America's Empire? Aug 19, 2025

Show notes

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/

PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Email Us: realignmentpod@gmail.com

Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker Staff Writer and author of To Lose a War: The Fall and the Rise of the Taliban, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Jon discuss the legacy of America's 20-year war in Afghanistan, how policymakers and the military struggle to define "victory" during wartime, why post-WWII conflicts and the end of the norm of "total war" has made it harder to "win," and why, despite achieving the goal of ending the country's status as a safe haven for terror, eliminating Osama bin Laden, and initially removing the Taliban from power, the U.S. still lost the war.

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