Jul 9, 2026 · 34 min · 9 segments
Send us Fan Mail Why does everything feel so broken — housing, healthcare, the sense that the economy works for everyone but you? It didn't happen by accident. As season 2 begins, I go back to…
Because here's the thing about that fight.
It's old, older than this country, as old as human history itself.
And every time real progress gets made, those same forces go to work to undo it.
That's exactly what we're living through right now.
The combination of a decades-long project to undo the real progress that had been made in this country.
This is the story I've wanted to tell.
And lately, for the first time in a while, I've had a real reason to feel hopeful about where it might lead.
Because that old fight is being picked up again.
Right now.
Today.
Progressive candidates running on the very ideas we've been told for decades are radical, unrealistic, un-American, are winning.
In New York, three congressional candidates backed by Zoran Mamdani all won their primaries, beating incumbents endorsed by the party establishment and the House Democratic leader himself.
In California's Central Valley, Randy Villegas, a political newcomer backed by Bernie Sanders, beat the party's handpicked moderate, even after more than $2 million poured in to stop him.
And in Sacramento, Mai Vang, a 41-year-old city councilwoman, overtook an incumbent whose family has held a seat for decades.
She ran on a simple charge, that we are not living in a democracy, but an oligarchy, and that the Democratic Party had to reckon with its role in maintaining it.
And they're not alone.
Across the country, candidates running on economic justice are outrunning the establishment of both parties.
Not everywhere, but in enough places to matter.
For the first time in a long time, it feels that there might be a light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
Not a way back to how things used to be, but a way forward.
And that way forward isn't something I'm dreaming up on my own.
There are people who have spent their entire careers studying what ails this country and our planet and thinking hard about how to fix it.
My goal is to take that work, which lives across a lot of different books, each making its own cohesive argument, and bring it together.
Organize into distinct arcs about what's gone wrong and what it would take to make it right.
Because here's the thing about that fight.
It's old, older than this country, as old as human history itself.
And every time real progress gets made, those same forces go to work to undo it.
That's exactly what we're living through right now.
The combination of a decades-long project to undo the real progress that had been made in this country.
This is the story I've wanted to tell.
And lately, for the first time in a while, I've had a real reason to feel hopeful about where it might lead.
Because that old fight is being picked up again.
Right now.
Today.
Progressive candidates running on the very ideas we've been told for decades are radical, unrealistic, un-American, are winning.
In New York, three congressional candidates backed by Zoran Mamdani all won their primaries, beating incumbents endorsed by the party establishment and the House Democratic leader himself.
In California's Central Valley, Randy Villegas, a political newcomer backed by Bernie Sanders, beat the party's handpicked moderate, even after more than $2 million poured in to stop him.
And in Sacramento, Mai Vang, a 41-year-old city councilwoman, overtook an incumbent whose family has held a seat for decades.
She ran on a simple charge, that we are not living in a democracy, but an oligarchy, and that the Democratic Party had to reckon with its role in maintaining it.
And they're not alone.
Across the country, candidates running on economic justice are outrunning the establishment of both parties.
Not everywhere, but in enough places to matter.
For the first time in a long time, it feels that there might be a light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
Not a way back to how things used to be, but a way forward.
And that way forward isn't something I'm dreaming up on my own.
There are people who have spent their entire careers studying what ails this country and our planet and thinking hard about how to fix it.
My goal is to take that work, which lives across a lot of different books, each making its own cohesive argument, and bring it together.
Organize into distinct arcs about what's gone wrong and what it would take to make it right.
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