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Lily Geismer

Lily Geismer

Historian and Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College, author of Don't Blame Us (2015) and Left Behind (2022), focused on 20th-century liberalism and the Democratic Party.

Sep 16, 2026

31:02
So
31:02
I think I grew up in that environment that like, this is like, that's the mecca, like, that's the kind of solutions you turn to is like, the law is right, this is there.
31:10
So like a traditional liberal idea, then to things like unions, and like, I didn't know.
31:14
I mean, so and this is also, you know, I'm positioning myself in my like, class environment.
31:19
standing um i knew of unions as a historical relic probably um and my mom has talked about this like she worked in she's in um she was a uh she's a tv producer for public television and she was like encountering a lot of things with unions i would often talk about like some of the frustrations like we were like my i think my understanding was like my mom had to work late because of like union break like it was basically like what i understood of like unions as like a small child um so it was not part of my worldview that they were like i don't and i wasn't from a family that was like telling me that unions were like the solution to all problems or anything like that they didn't grow up in that i mean it wasn't what they knew so i think they were ideologically like you know, sympathetic to unions, but not to the same way.
32:05
And I always say this, like, I think the suburban liberals I studied were, like, oblivious to unions.
32:09
Like, they worked in law.

21 MINS LATER

53:31
Because he did veto several versions of it, right?

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