On this episode of Start Making Sense, Celinda Lake on Biden voters who didn’t vote for Harris, and John Powers on a novel about the rise of Mussolini.
Kamala Harris pauses as she speaks at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco, California, on April 30, 2025. (Camille Cohen / AFP via Getty Images)
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Six million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. What’s wrong with them? Pollster and strategist Celinda Lake explains who they are, and what it would take to get them back to the polls in the 2026 midterms – and in 2028.
Also: a suggestion for summer reading: M: Son of the Century is a 750-page historical novel about the rise of Mussolini, by Antonio Scurati. John Powers, critic-at-large for NPR’s Fresh Air, says the book suggests some parallels between 1920s Italy and Trump’s America. The book is out now in paperback.
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Six million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. What’s wrong with them? Pollster and strategist Celinda Lake explains who they are, what they think. and what it would take to get them back to the polls in the 2026 midterms—and in 2028.
Also, a suggestion for summer reading: M: Son of the Century is a 750-page historical novel about the rise of Mussolini, by Antonio Scurati. John Powers, critic at large for NPR’s Fresh Air, says the book suggests some parallels between 1920s Italy and Trump’s America. The book is out now in paperback.
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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Last week was one of the roughest for Democrats since Trump won the election in 2024 – the Supreme Court ended Black congressional representation in most of the South and opened the door to the creation of several more Republican House seats – and then the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state’s initiative that created four more Democratic House seats was invalid. Nevertheless Trump is so unpopular that Democrats remain strong favorites to retake the House in November. Harold Meyerson comments.
Also: During the first part of the 20th century, 100,000 Eastern European Jews joined a socialist organization that opposed Zionism. Their organization we call the Bund, and they believed that Jews should fight for full rights wherever they were, not for a new homeland somewhere else. Their motto was “here, where we live, is our country”–that's the title of a new book by Molly Crabapple. Adam Hochschild comments.
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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.