The morning after a historic midterm, Richard and Zach ask what Democrats actually learned. Their answer is bigger than a blue tsunami: working- and middle-class voters moved sharply, cost-of-living proved powerful, and candidates who connected economic policy to everyday life broke through. But, as Republicans just learned the hard way, winning those voters once is not the same as owning them. The harder governing question is whether Democrats can turn affordability into durable gains in voter trust through paychecks, worker power, and broadly shared prosperity.
Browse Episodes
Why Bosses Get Away With Stealing Your Wages (with Terri Gerstein)
If you steal from your employer, you could end up in jail. But what happens when your employer steals from you?
Every year, employers steal billions of dollars from American workers through unpaid wages, overtime violations, and other illegal practices. Yet the consequences for employers are often little more than the cost of doing business.
On Election Day, we’re revisiting our 2024 conversation with labor law enforcement expert Terri Gerstein about one of the most widespread and overlooked crimes in the American economy. Why is wage theft so common? Why are employers so rarely held criminally accountable? And what would it take to change that?
Because building an economy that works for working people isn’t just about passing better laws. It’s about having a government willing to enforce them.
BONUS: Pitchfork Politics: Who are the new swing voters?
Working-class voters are now the most volatile bloc in American politics, and they are judging both parties by a simple test: are paychecks rising faster than costs?
Hosts Zach Silk and Richard Trent connect decades of change elections to economic dissatisfaction, explain why the old “soccer mom” model of the swing voter no longer fits, and assess what the coming election will reveal in places including Alaska, Texas, Kansas, and Maine. The takeaway for campaigns is direct: earning power requires a credible economic agenda that voters can feel at the kitchen table, and governing power requires delivering on it.