Intraparties: From the Tea Party to the DSA

What happens when a party forms inside of another party? How is the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, affecting the Democratic Party? And how did the the Tea Party shift the GOP's platform back in 2010? Today, Ruth Bloch-Rubin from the University of Chicago walks us through intra-party movements. They've happened before, they'll happen again, and they tend to be a bellwether for significant shifts in party ideology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Nick Capodice?

  Hannah, you know when you're at a party and for some reason, I don't know if it's the music or it's the mix of work friends versus real life friends, but it ends up being just sort of a dud?

• 0:14Hannah McCarthy?

  Too many times to count.

• 0:17Nick Capodice?

  But then, and for me, this happens without exception, in the kitchen, you see a group in there and they're laughing and hooting and hollering and just having a time. And you say to yourself, I should be there in that kitchen.

• 0:33Hannah McCarthy?

  It's always the kitchen, Nick. Every party should just be a kitchen.

• 0:37Nick Capodice?

  Or another party scenario, that phenomenon where one of your friends brings a bunch of people that nobody knows and everybody's wondering, who are these people? Who invited them? This party metaphor relates to something going on right now in 2026. And it's happened a ton of times before in US history. It's when a political party develops a second party inside the bigger party. These are called intra-parties. And for today's episode, I am using the DSA as an example, the Democratic Socialists of America. But we are also going to touch on the Tea Party in the 2010 midterms.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  It's an interesting combination of people here in Hudsonville, and it has been at a lot of these Tea Party events, because it's not just about politics. That is, not just about electing a particular party.

• 1:26Nick Capodice?

  And maybe even the Free Silver Movement in the 1896 election.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  We will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns.

• 1:40Hannah McCarthy?

  As much as I would love to listen to you impersonate William Jennings Bryan all day long, I think we got to focus on the task at hand. Why does this happen, this intra-party thing? Why do parties develop within parties?

• 1:54Speaker 04

  In a two-party system, there's always going to be elements of a party that are not happy with what their party is doing.

• 2:01Nick Capodice?

  This is Ruth Bloch Rubin. She's a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  And so often those groups, the sort of nascent, like-minded members organize, and they come together and they start to identify as a group of people who don't like what's happening. And rather than just a bunch of sort of grumpy curmudgeons, which is sometimes what happens, right? Like people just unhappy, but they don't do anything about it. But having decided to do something about it, often what happens is that groups emerge and start to have what I think of as like an institutional scaffolding, right? Like they become an organization. They have a name. They have members. They meet regularly. They start to share or discuss and prioritize different policies.

• 2:43Nick Capodice?

  So what happens when this dissatisfied group forms within another group? What does it do to the larger party? How does it affect campaigns, fundraising, or even the identity of the party itself? It is an intra-party in the USA here on Civics 101. Stick around.

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• 4:53Nick Capodice?

  You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

• 4:57Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 4:58Nick Capodice?

  And today we're talking about a political movement, an organization, a topic that is so hot right now. Hot as in popular, or hot as in don't touch it. Both are accurate in this instance. The Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA. And before I get any farther, Hannah, I... Further?

• 5:17Hannah McCarthy?

  Further.

• 5:18Nick Capodice?

  And before I go any further, Hannah, I gotta get something out of the way. Small d, small s, democratic socialism is a political philosophy, which anyone can espouse at any point. And I'm going to get into that later. The DSA is, however, a club.

• 5:36Hannah McCarthy?

  And I know we're going to get to intra-parties, but first, can we do political parties generally? I know the framers were very concerned about parties, George Washington especially, who said they, quote, "distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration."

• 5:54Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, nobody hated a party more than G-Dubs.

• 5:56Hannah McCarthy?

  There ain't nobody like a George Washington party, because the George Washington party doesn't happen.

• 6:00Nick Capodice?

  Doesn't happen. That guy would see a balloon on a mailbox and he would tell his carriage driver, like, "Just keep going." And even though Washington wasn't a fan, James Madison wrote on several occasions that parties were inevitable in our newly created governmental system. Now, I want to be careful today with the word factions, because there is a debate as to whether parties are factions. Not going to get into that. But in Federalist 10, James Madison explained that we are a large country, we got a lot of disparate states, and to get anything done at all, people are going to have to work together. And he was right. We got parties almost immediately, and we still got them now. But to your question, Hannah, what are

• 6:45Nick Capodice?

  parties?

• 6:46Speaker 04

  Well, so let's take a step back. What are parties, right? Because the DSA, you know, is often thought of as a political party. And so for political scientists, we can think about parties as organizations that operate on like three different dimensions.

• 7:01Nick Capodice?

  Three dimensions. You know I love a list, Hannah.

• 7:05Hannah McCarthy?

  And a party.

• 7:06Nick Capodice?

  Taylor wrote, "Do you love parties?" And I was like, "I used to."

• 7:10Hannah McCarthy?

  I don't know if you do, actually.

• 7:12Nick Capodice?

  I used to be like the party-est party animal in the world. What happened?

• 7:15Hannah McCarthy?

  People don't have parties anymore.

• 7:17Nick Capodice?

  That's what happened. Dimension number one, parties as they operate in government.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  So those are the coalitions of office holders who sort of pre-commit to work together to advance a shared agenda.

• 7:32Nick Capodice?

  These are people in office, Hannah, legislators and their staff who govern. They write bills, they vote on bills, and most of the time, they support each other's work.

• 7:43Hannah McCarthy?

  And also, a lot of the time, oppose the work coming from the other side. Like when you watch the State of the Union and everyone is sitting in the House chamber, and they're either on the left or the right side, split into teams, as it were. I always sort of thought of it as the groom's side or the bride's side.

• 7:59Nick Capodice?

  It's a lot like that. And each of those sides have their own agenda, which they share with the rest of their party.

• 8:05Hannah McCarthy?

  The party platform, right?

• 8:06Nick Capodice?

  Exactly. And the party platform has myriad planks in it. What are we as Republicans or we as Democrats trying to achieve right now as a block? Okay, party dimension number two, parties as organizations.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  A network of candidates, interest groups, office holders, who channel resources and information and campaign assistance to each other. And you could think of it almost like a movement.

• 8:37Hannah McCarthy?

  Resources and assistance. So first and foremost, money, right?

• 8:41Nick Capodice?

  Lots of money.

• 8:42Hannah McCarthy?

  And then there's so much more, right? There are campaign workers, volunteers, you've got people knocking on doors, you've got pollsters and think tanks and lawyers and fundraisers. And then you've got the various committees that actually draft the platforms. The two main parties are big and intricate organizations, and a ton of people work within those organizations.

• 9:04Nick Capodice?

  Yes. Finally, the third dimension, parties in the electorate, which is you, and me, and everyone out there listening, we, the people who vote. How do we interact with the party?

• 9:18Speaker 04

  We're often thinking about the information that the party brand, the name that's associated with the organization, what that conveys to voters. And so we typically think that like one thing that parties do in the electorate is that for most voters, most people have, you know, we talk about politics as a sideshow to life, right? Most of us are not spending all of our time thinking about politics. And so what party brands or names do is they convey information about candidates or existing office holders, policy commitments, or values, or ideas, or our way to predict how they're likely to govern.

• 9:52Nick Capodice?

  And so to illustrate this third dimension, Hannah, let us say your Uncle Vernon stands up and calls himself a libertarian at the McCarthy family Christmas.

• 10:02Hannah McCarthy?

  Among all those JFK Irish candidates. I do not actually have an Uncle Vern in everyone, but I understand where you're going, Nick.

• 10:12Nick Capodice?

  All right. So what Vern means... Does he go by Vern?

• 10:15Hannah McCarthy?

  He does.

• 10:16Nick Capodice?

  So what Vern means isn't that he's literally a politician who's running for office as a libertarian, nor does it mean he got a job as the communications director for the local chapter of the Libertarian Party.

• 10:28Hannah McCarthy?

  Right. Old Vern means I like libertarian ideas and I intend to vote that way.

• 10:34Nick Capodice?

  Exactly. Thank you for sharing your opinion, Vern. So taken in the aggregate, these three-party dimensions, you have basically a party brand. And for a lot of folks, even the independents out there, that brand is a huge part of how they vote.

• 10:51Hannah McCarthy?

  As evidenced by people being a bit confused as to what to do in the voting booth when they do not see a capital D, or a capital R, or a capital I next to someone's name who is running for, say, Registrar of Deeds. Party affiliation is, I think, one of the most important factors for the majority of American voters.

• 11:11Nick Capodice?

  Absolutely.

• 11:15Hannah McCarthy?

  All right. So that's parties, all wrapped up with pretty pink ribbons on it. Let's talk about parties within parties.

• 11:22Nick Capodice?

  Factions within factions. Wheels within wheels. So Hannah, occasionally, we see the formation of factions, caucuses, and coalitions inside political parties. So take, for example, a recent wave of candidates who may be listed on the ballot as Democrats, but they distinguish themselves from their peers by referring to themselves as democratic socialists, and, in some cases, who have been endorsed by a different organization called the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA.

• 11:54Hannah McCarthy?

  The democratic socialists seem to be doing considerably better than they used to be, and they have the chance to knock off, in fact, democratic incumbents in Congress. And part of the reason for that, why we're seeing these democratic socialists, is take a look here, net favorability among Dems. Which does sound like a political party.

• 12:10Nick Capodice?

  It does sound like it, Hannah, but it is not. Even though it shares the same three dimensions that Ruth talked about, I mean, it has people in government who are members, it is an organization, and people recognize it as a brand, it is not a party.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  So, you know, if we're thinking about, like, what is the DSA, the DSA, and I think its current incarnation, is doing some of all of these things, right? Like, there are individuals who are getting elected to higher office, who presumably would try and work with other DSA members to advance a shared agenda. That's sort of the parties in government dimension. They're a alive and well organization that are helping to get candidates elected and distributing resources and sharing information about policy ideas and things like that. And then I think we have a fair amount of evidence that identifying as a democratic socialist conveys information to voters about how they are different from other candidates who are running with other party brands. And so they're telling voters by identifying

• 13:09Speaker 04

  as a member of the DSA, "I'm going to govern differently. There are different policy priorities that I have."

• 13:16Nick Capodice?

  And more on those policies later, Hannah, but first, I want to talk about one thing that this influx of DSA candidates has in common with previous examples of intra-party factions, and that is that it's happening at a time of dissatisfaction with the status quo. The upshot for those people who are dissatisfied is that when these happen, they tend to be a bellwether for significant change.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Intra-party organizations are usually really core players in major policy debates across congressional history, and that's certainly been true of the 20th century. So if we think about big changes and fights within Congress in the progressive era over tariff policy, railroad regulation.

• 13:57Nick Capodice?

  This was the internal feud over tariffs in the McKinley administration that, 10 years later, led Teddy Roosevelt to completely break off from the Republicans at the time and form the short-lived anti-corruption, "Tax the Wealthy Bull Moose" Party, which started as a sort of rebellion inside the party.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  I believe again that the American people are as a whole capable of self-control and of learning by their mistakes.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Progressive Republicans and populist Democrats were key foot soldiers in those battles within their parties and then often working together. In the mid-century, we think about, you know, the civil rights era, fights over passing civil rights legislation took place primarily between conservative Southern Democrats and liberal Democrats over the direction of the Democratic Party and used their respective organizations to either promote civil rights or try and delay civil rights through Congress's committee system or on the floor.

• 14:55Hannah McCarthy?

  And Nick, you and I know what happened after that intra-party fight. The country saw what political scientists call a realignment. The Democrats and the Republicans dramatically shifted their ideologies.

• 15:09Nick Capodice?

  And for a much more recent example of an intra-party taking shape, Hannah, let's take a little trip back in time to the 2008 presidential election.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

• 15:32Nick Capodice?

  Barack Obama had won the presidency, the Democratic Party had a unified government, which means they controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency. And after this election, Republicans were nursing their losses, trying to figure out what went wrong, and many of them were pretty unhappy with their own party. George W. Bush had left office deeply unpopular, and some on the right felt like their team had lost the plot. And that kind of a situation is ripe for an intra-party movement to gather steam.

• 16:05Speaker 07

  Congressman Paul, you voted against the war. Why are all your fellow Republicans up here wrong? That's a very good question. And you might ask the question, why are 70% of the American people now wanting us out of there?

• 16:17Nick Capodice?

  Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who had formerly been affiliated with the Libertarian Party, had also run for president in 2008. He lost the GOP primary to Senator John McCain, but Ron Paul's campaign sparked a group of disenchanted Republicans that evolved into one of the most politically influential movements in our lifetime, the Tea Party. Do you remember the Tea Party?

• 16:41Hannah McCarthy?

  Of course.

• 16:42Speaker 06

  You know, if media's not doing its job, if government is just taking over every single thing it can, and we now have an unfettered liberal, the radical left, has got control of the process.

• 16:54Nick Capodice?

  I remember when I first saw news coverage of the Tea Party movement. It was a video of people wearing Uncle Sam hats and Revolutionary War uniforms and wigs and ceremoniously throwing tea bags in a bucket?

• 17:07Hannah McCarthy?

  Because they were all about taxes, right?

• 17:09Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, that was their big thing. Tax reform, eliminating wasteful spending, with the end goal of reducing the national debt. They pushed for lower taxes across the board, for dramatically reducing the size of government. They were directly opposed to the Affordable Care Act, and they wanted to restrict immigration into the United States.

• 17:27Hannah McCarthy?

  And we should say, Nick, it wasn't like all of the Republicans were on board. Tea Party candidates deliberately ran against longtime Republican incumbents, particularly moderate Republicans.

• 17:39Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and Tea Party rallies were mocked on the air. One CNN commentator said that Tea Party coverage on Fox News was, quote, "a big story." On CNN, "a modest story," and MSNBC, "as a great story to make fun of," end quote. But the Tea Party grew and grew and became the deciding factor in the 2010 midterms.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  CNN is now ready to make a major projection. The Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives. Based on a statistical analysis of key seats, key races all over the country.

• 18:14Nick Capodice?

  Republicans won 64 seats in the House in that election, and 32 of those were from the Tea Party. And once they got into office, they ushered in a new era of conservatism by working as a block in the Republican Party. They led debates about the debt ceiling. They succeeded in shutting down the government. They infuriated then-Speaker of the House, John Boehner. And generally, they took a more confrontational approach to politics. Now, the Republicans were in the majority only in the House, not the Senate, but the Tea Party had strong enough numbers to force the entire Republican tent to swing in their direction.

• 18:53Hannah McCarthy?

  Would we call the Tea Party successful?

• 18:56Nick Capodice?

  Yes and no, Hannah. They're gone now. The name, the Tea Party, was pretty much abandoned by 2016, but their agenda, a lot of it has come to fruition. Not the reduction in the national debt, my heavens, but cutting down the size of the national government, greater immigration restrictions and enforcement, a more confrontational approach to tactics. Would you say that's happened recently, Hannah?

• 19:23Hannah McCarthy?

  I would. I would also say these are hallmarks of the MAGA movement.

• 19:28Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and in some cases, the GOP as a whole, which goes to show you, intra-parties may be short-lived in the year brackets of textbooks, but they have lasting impacts over time.

• 19:40Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, so now, in 2026, we have an intra-party movement bubbling up again, this time on the other side of the aisle. What is the DSA about? And what does that say, Nick, about politics right now?

• 19:53Nick Capodice?

  We're going to get into that right after a quick break.

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• 22:19Nick Capodice?

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• 23:22Speaker 06

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• 23:24Speaker 04

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• 24:14Speaker 04

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• 24:23Hannah McCarthy?

  You're listening to Civics 101. We are talking about intra-party movements, including the Democratic Socialists of America. So Nick, in the first half of the episode, we learned that intra-parties do a lot of the same things as full-fledged political parties.

• 24:38Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, they do. With one big exception, you're not going to see DSA on the ballot. So most members of the DSA are running as Democrats. There are like a scant few independents and Green Party members, but it is a capital D democratic movement. And I want to re-say here, Hannah, just because you believe in the tenets of democratic socialism doesn't make you a member of this club. Now, the DSA is obviously in support of this political philosophy, which is unchecked capitalism is an obstacle to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The word democratic at the beginning means that the people, not the state, dictate their government. This is in direct opposition to what we call authoritarian

• 25:23Nick Capodice?

  socialism, like we saw in, say, Stalinist Russia. And socialism, it's kind of a tough word to define in one sentence, but I'll give it a whack. This is a quote from labor journalist Sarah Jaffe. She said, "It is, quote, 'that the people who do the work are the ones who make the decisions about what gets produced and how.'"

• 25:41Hannah McCarthy?

  And how did this intra-party movement, the DSA, actually start?

• 25:46Nick Capodice?

  Well, the club started in the United States in the 1980s, but it didn't really grow in popularity until Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential election.

• 26:00Speaker 07

  Today, with your support and the support of millions of people throughout our country, we begin a political revolution to transform our country economically, politically, socially, and environmentally.

• 26:18Nick Capodice?

  And back then, there were around 6,000 members of the DSA, and today, there are over 120,000.

• 26:25Hannah McCarthy?

  You said Bernie self-describes as a democratic socialist. Is he a member of the DSA?

• 26:31Nick Capodice?

  He's not, ironically enough, he is not a member of the DSA. And anyone out there can say they're ideologically a democratic socialist, but that is a far cry from being endorsed by the DSA. So if a candidate is running for office and they want that endorsement, the DSA requires they fill out a submission form to be evaluated. This form is over 100 pages long, and the candidate has to prove their ideals are aligned with the movement.

• 27:01Hannah McCarthy?

  And what are those ideals exactly?

• 27:04Nick Capodice?

  Well, there are a lot, but the big one is shifting power from the wealthy to the workers. They advocate for unions, for Medicare for All, for tuition-free college opportunities, for affordable housing, and increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans. And another one, Hannah, and this one is big, especially as we are leading up to the midterms, the DSA has very strict rules about fundraising, i.e. no money from companies, no dark money from mysterious super PACs. If you are found to be taking that money, you are immediately expelled from the DSA. Now, I say this, I'm bringing this up, Hannah,

• 27:45Nick Capodice?

  because a ton of money from wealthy individuals has already poured into the midterms. A group of 20 people, 20 individuals, have given over $1 billion.

• 27:58Nick Capodice?

  All right, so there are some big DSA names out there, the most recognizable ones in government right now, being Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a US rep from New York, Rashida Tlaib, who is a US rep from Michigan, and Zoran Mamdani, the current mayor of New York City.

• 28:17Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, can we talk about the division that intra-parties can create? Because some of those things obviously overlap with Democrats in general, but not all of them. There are disagreements about supporting Israel, for example, or on whether to continue under the model of the Affordable Care Act, or to create a new Medicare for All system.

• 28:39Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, you see Democrats who have been in office for a long time saying, "I'm not really down for this rebranding. This is not where I want the Democratic Party to go."

• 28:48Speaker 02

  I am tired, tired, tired of a set of people on the very far left in the Democratic Party, my party, telling us that in order for us to be progressives, we now have to believe ideas and support ideas that are completely nuts.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  Prominent Democrat voices pushing back on the growing influence of the democratic socialist candidates, they say are ultimately going to hurt the Democrat Party. And so I think in that way, the work of the DSA is, fits well within this sort of battle for the soul of the party. What's interesting, I think, about the DSA is that a lot of the candidates have, I think, a more oppositional relationship to the main party that they are trying to change. I think, given our current politics, that makes sense. If you think about what we know about public opinion, Americans are disenchanted by both parties.

• 29:43Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, you know I like numbers backing things up, Nick. How disenchanted do we mean here?

• 29:48Nick Capodice?

  Well, there was a survey in April of 2026 from the Pew Research Center, which asked Americans if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Republican and Democratic Parties. And the numbers were nearly identical. 58% of people polled had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party and 59% of the Democratic Party. Now, you might want to just chalk this up to hyper-partisanship, but pair that with the fact that the public is pretty evenly split by those who identify as Democrats or Republicans, and the math bears out. There are a lot of people out there unhappy with both parties.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  And so to gain political power, you have to resonate with voters. And so having more oppositional orientation to the party that you would like to change makes sense. And in other eras where parties were more popular, having an oppositional approach to those parties would have been more costly.

• 30:43Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay, but if you think there's some tension in the Democratic Party, outside of it, the DSA is used as a sort of catch-all boogeyman.

• 30:53Speaker 06

  Hassan Piker is a top surrogate for DSA, so we'll be asking our guests about his statements and much more. We have Fidel Castro's daughter on as well to respond to this news.

• 31:03Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, she knows, she knows a thing or two about what socialists actually does.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  She may know a few things about what this, this may do in the history that we see.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  We do see candidates, officeholders of the opposing party try and characterize their own rivals by associating them with what they perceive to be the most unpopular elements of the opposition. Like, this is consistently something that smart, savvy candidates do, right? You paint with broad brushstrokes, you lump people in, you conflate policy differences, and you say they're all for X, Y, or Z.

• 31:39Nick Capodice?

  And honestly, Hannah, this is a really common tactic. You see members of the Democratic Party saying that any Republican is pro-Trump or MAGA, regardless of their voting record.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  So that's not a new tactic. I think what is, I think, so animating for people about democratic socialists is that the public opinion data we have about the public's perception of what socialism is, or what or who socialists are, is not particularly favorable. And so there are certainly folks who are concerned that identifying as democratic socialist or lumping democratic socialist in with Democrats, or lumping Democrats in with democratic socialists, runs a risk of alienating voters. And that whatever branding value you're getting from identifying as a democratic socialist creates a real risk, either to you or to other members of the party with which you are closely affiliated.

• 32:32Nick Capodice?

  And yes, Republicans have seized on that word, as well as other words, to campaign against DSA members. We are the greatest nation in history, world. We are fighting right now in

• 32:42Speaker 05

  Congress over whether we're going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic, or we're going to trade that in, dismantle the foundations and go down this dark road of death to communism.

• 32:54Nick Capodice?

  But then you got to ask, is that branding effective?

• 32:58Speaker 04

  I think an open question is how much attention voters are actually paying to all of that when they're getting into the voting booth and making their choices. And if we think that voters are often most attentive to their pocketbook and their own financial comfort and the cost of living, then this may just be a big sideshow to the bigger question that's going to animate how voters evaluate candidates, which is, you know, is this person going to make me and my family better off or not? And so, you know, you might say that a lot of the current consternation about democratic socialists is an attempt to distract from the bigger liability for the party in power right now, Republicans,

• 33:41Speaker 04

  which is that, you know, whether through their own policies or, you know, broader secular trends, folks are very concerned about the cost of living. Inflation is high. And so you need to talk about something and you don't want to talk about the economy. And so you talk about socialists instead.

• 33:56Hannah McCarthy?

  And Nick, like Ruth said, like you said, this kind of painting with the broad negative brush is par for the course. But what I find interesting is that you also see Democrats this year directly attacking members of the DSA using that same negative brush for their own intra-party. Some Democrats also attack the DSA over the socialism thing, which makes me wonder, what happens when you campaign as a radical? You want to make all of these big changes and then you get elected and you find out that politics is about a lot of negotiation and compromise, you know, just like the Tea Party had to work

• 34:38Hannah McCarthy?

  on some level with the rest of the GOP. If a wave of DSA candidates are actually elected, they're going to have to operate inside the Democratic Party. I mean, if you are an intra-party winner, are your hopes and dreams just dashed as soon as you take office?

• 34:57Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, this is something I asked Ruth about. How do you walk that balance of working inside of a system that you're maybe trying to change?

• 35:07Speaker 04

  I mean, one thing that I do think is interesting about folks like Mondani, or really any person who's running sort of outside the box, is they're going to have to govern with people who are operating inside the box. And so you, you create a potentially challenging situation where you promised voters, or maybe you haven't promised them, but you've sort of conveyed to voters that you're going to do things differently. And so you're committed to doing that, but you have to work with a bunch of people who are not committed to doing things differently. And so invariably, you're going to make compromises and you're not going to be able to do all the things that you wanted.

• 35:42Hannah McCarthy?

  Do you have an example of this?

• 35:44Nick Capodice?

  I do. So very recently in New York City, which is facing a very tight budget, I have to say, recently elected Mayor Zoran Mamdani, who supported teachers and unions in his campaign, sued to block a bill that would give $10,000 to teacher aides, an act of his that directly opposes the city council and the very powerful teachers' union. A spokesperson for the mayor said, quote, "We will not allow the political process to replace the collective bargaining table," end quote.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  And so then the challenge becomes conveying to voters that you are still serious and committed to the things you said you were, and that the whole system isn't broken just because you've had to do things that aren't exactly what you had promised, because that's any kind of collective decision-making system requires compromise. And I think, you know, this is important for students to appreciate that, you know, you're not always going to get everything you want. And I think in our current moment where it feels like some people are getting exactly what they want, it's hard to explain, you know, how do we know that that's happening? Or what are we not seeing? All of the things that they did want, that they couldn't get, that they took off the table. And so I think thinking through

• 36:59Speaker 04

  as educated political observers, what are the things we're not observing? What are the things that, you know, people have made strategic choices about to do, to not to do, and what should we infer from all of that about our political system?

• 37:15Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, what should we infer, Nicholas?

• 37:19Nick Capodice?

  You know, I don't entirely know, Hannah. We are in a very, very polarized moment in US history. And I think we can say that in such polarization, people are looking to do something, anything, anything that results in a change. And again, intra-parties blossom and gain power in moments where people feel powerless. People feel like they're forced to wear a red or a blue suit.

• 37:48Speaker 04

  So I've been teaching for a decade at the University of Chicago, and every time I teach a class on American politics, and there are students, usually a minority, who are very interested in third parties. You know, they come across the ideological spectrum. And so we get people on both the right and the left who are very interested in the possibility that we could break out of our existing party system. And I feel like my sad duty in part is to explain why that's really difficult. But I also think it equips people to think more creatively about ways to challenge the existing party system within the confines or constraints that we have. And so I think the DSA is

• 38:32Speaker 04

  actually a really interesting example of saying, well, maybe we're not going to run the same race as the two major parties. And maybe that's not the goal. And we can work both outside and within the system to promote the policies that we care about.

• 38:46Hannah McCarthy?

  You know, Nick, change is exciting to people, and it is far more likely to happen in a midterm election. Because during a presidential election, the parties tend to come together to rally behind the ideals of the person running for the big chair, you know? Midterms are where the parties themselves can be affected by, for example, a DSA, a Tea Party, a Bull Moose, whatever.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  And so I think there are students who are really intrigued by that possibility, even if they themselves disagree with what they understand the DSA to represent. They see these third-party movements or intra-party movements as reasons to think that our politics is more flexible than they've been taught, and that there is real opportunity to change the status quo, which I think is really important. One reason to study American politics is to understand the environment you're operating in so that you can get the change that you want. And it may not be by the path that you wanted, but having some real substantive knowledge of how the system has worked makes it possible for you to figure out how you

• 39:58Speaker 04

  might want it to work differently in the future.

• 40:24Nick Capodice?

  That is intra-parties today on Civics 101. This episode is made by me, Nick Capodice, with you, Hannah McCarthy. Thank you. Our staff includes Taylor Quimby. Music on this episode from Blue Dot Sessions, Epidemic Sound, and the party in my ears, Chris Zabriski. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 40:50Speaker 06

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