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The U.S. Economy: Rebounding or Breaking Down?

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Podcast: Breaking down the 2024 election

Opinion

Republican elephant and Democratic donkey
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The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumFeb 05, 2024
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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In the latest episode of The Bully Pulpit podcast, Democrats, Republicans and the media come together for a lively discussion breaking down the 2024 primary contests, the general election, and the presidential campaigns as hosts Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy continue their work toward political solutions that overcome partisan divides.

Shrum, a Democratic strategist, and Murphy, a Republican consultant, are co-directors of the USC Center for the Political Future. For this episode, they spoke to:

  • Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian and the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities at Rice University. Jane Coaston: “The Argument” Podcast Host, The New York Times; Spring 2024 Fellow, USC Center for the Political Future.
  • Ron Galperin, former controller and CFO for the City of Los Angeles.
  • Tim Miller: political consultant, writer for The Bulwark and campaign director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 White House run.

Each of the guests is a spring 2024 fellow at Center for the Political Future.

Remember to check out The Democracy Group Podcast Fellowship, where passionate individuals, especially college and high school students, can learn to launch their podcasts. Apply at democracygroup.org/fellowship. The fellowship is sponsored by the Bridge Alliance, which operates The Fulcrum.

You can explore more featured podcasts here.

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Forty-five years ago this month, Mothers Against Drunk Driving had its first national press conference, and a global movement to stop impaired driving was born. MADD was founded by Candace Lightner after her 13-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunk driver while walking to a church carnival in 1980. Terms like “designated driver” and the slogan “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” came out of MADD’s campaigning, and a variety of state and federal laws, like a lowered blood alcohol limit and legal drinking age, were instituted thanks to their advocacy. Over time, social norms evolved, and driving drunk was no longer seen as a “folk crime,” but a serious, conscious choice with serious consequences.

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When Amazon sneezes, the world catches a fever. That is not a mark of efficiency or innovation. It is evidence of recklessness. For years, business leaders have mocked antitrust reformers like FTC Chair Lina Khan, dismissing warnings about the dangers of monopoly concentration as outdated paranoia. But the AWS outage was not a cyberattack or an act of God — it was simply the predictable outcome of a world that has traded resilience for convenience, diversity for cost-cutting, and independence for “efficiency.” Executives who proudly tout their “risk management frameworks” now find themselves helpless before a single vendor’s internal failure.

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