What is the relationship between the Democratic Party and Liberalism

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Julia discusses the Democratic Party with Lily Geismer. Geismer is a professor of history at Claremont McKenna College. Her teaching and research focus on 20th-century political and urban history in the United States, especially liberalism and the Democratic Party. Geismer is the author of Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality (PublicAffairs, 2022) and Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton University Press, 2015). She is also co-editor of Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century. Her work has appeared in the Journal of American History, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and Dissent.

What is the relationship between liberalism and the Democratic Party? How has the party’s shifting electoral base transformed it? And what are the consequences of the Democrats’ reorientation for its policy stances moving forward? These are some of the questions Julia and Lily ask in this week’s episode.

This episode is also available on Amazon Music, Apple, Audible, Spotify, and Stitcher.