Losing Dogmas, Winning Elections: Adam Jentleson on How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Supermajority

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. It is Saturday, September the 12th, 2026 Yesterday, we had the UVA historian, William Hitchcock, on the show, arguing that we got the 30s wrong, he suggests in his new book, A Shadow Over the World, Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Rise of Fascism, and The Making of America's World War II, that the great man FDR manipulated public opinion to such an extent, in such a sophisticated way, that we think that American in the 1930s was isolationist, and of course, FDR managed the supermajority, controlled politics in the 1930s to such an extent, that we need to perhaps revise the historical records. The issue of supermajorities is the subject of today's show, only not 90 and not 20th century supermajorities, but 21st century ones. Adam Jentleson is one of America's leading political analysts, particularly on the left, and he has a new book out, Supermajority, How Democrats Can Build Lasting Power. He's joining us from where else? Washington, DC. The book is out on Tuesday. Adam, congratulations on the new book. Do we need to go back and look at FDR to remind ourselves of how Democrats could once control politics and establish supermajorities?

Adam Jentleson (2:01)

Well, I think we do, actually. And first of all, let me say thank you for having me here. I'm a big fan of the pod.

I think we do need to look at FDR because I think there's several examples we can take from him that are not often the conventional things that we think of when we think of him. Part of what I point out in the book is that FDR succeeded in passing the New Deal, not simply by bowling his opponents over with the force of his progressive rhetoric and viewpoints, but also by building a deeply heterodox political coalition that featured factions that today we would try to expel from a Democratic coalition and by weaving in themes and appeals that are not traditionally associated with liberalism like fiscal responsibility and continuations of traditional American values in the way that he sold the New Deal to the American people. So when he pitched Social Security to the nation, he pitched it not as a radical departure with the American past but as a massive expansion of the government even though it was. He explained that it was a pragmatic response to the crisis that they were facing, that he was emphasizing the fiscally responsible nature of Social Security, that he was requiring every American to pay into the program and to earn their benefits. He would rail in cabinet meetings against the dole. He thought welfare was demeaning to human nature. So I think this aspect of how the New Deal was constructed, how FDR assembled a Supermajority political coalition, and then how he sold it to the nation are not the sort of things that we tend to tell ourselves when we tell ourselves the story of FDR and the New Deal, but they reflect more successful lessons if we want to apply to today and try to figure out how we can break out of these areas of narrow majorities and actually build Supermajority coalitions. Once again, we need to see the full picture of how FDR achieved his and his time.

Andrew Keen (3:58)

Yeah. We talked about that with William Hitchcock. We talked in particular about FDR's ability, if that's the right word, to cobble together this remarkable coalition of American blacks and Southern racists.

Hitchcock argued that whilst he's a big admirer of FDR, he doesn't admire the way in which he mostly FDR avoided the question of race. There are people, of course, and Adam, you know this better than I do, there are people on the left now who will look back at FDR and say, he copped out on race and he's not a guy we should admire. Race is, of course, historically the third rail in American politics. What does that teach us today about FDR's ability to bring racists, overt racists, segregationists into the Democratic camp?

Adam Jentleson (4:54)

Well, the first thing that it teaches us is that when Democrats have to sort of consider the trade-offs that they're being asked to make sometimes when it comes to politics, the scale of the compromises and the trade-offs that we are forced to reckon with today pale in comparison to the nature of what FDR had to reckon with in his time, even what LBJ had to reckon with in his time, another example I've discussed in the book. You know, so when Democrats consider whether they are willing to, you know, embrace different points of view on a relatively limited number of usually cultural issues in order to build a supermajority coalition, you know, this is a far cry from what FDR did of, you know, actively working against every civil rights bill that came before him in order to keep the Democratic Southerners who were, you know, white supremacists by their own declaration. This is not me describing them that way. They were proud about it. You know, this is the compromises that we face today are on a much different scale. I think you can sort of start there and say, you know, is it okay for Democrats to, you know, say that there can be some candidates, if you're running in a deep red state, if you're running in a state like Kansas or Iowa or Nebraska, you know, we will allow candidates into the tent who say, look, maybe I have some questions about whether there are fairness issues when it comes to trans kids playing sports. You know, maybe I favor a strong border security program. These are the kind of compromises we're being forced to reckon with today. And whatever you think of them, even if you think that that's an unconscionable compromise for Democrats, they certainly pale in comparison to what Democrats were forced to reckon with in the past.