Transcript

Why Democrats are Afraid of Power

From Pod Save America · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 5 min · 11,481 words · 112 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Why Democrats are Afraid of Power", an episode of Pod Save America published February 1, 2026 (1 h 5 min, about 11,481 words). It mentions 13 people, works and ideas, including John Lovevet, Why Nothing Works, Mark Dunkelman, New Deal, Tennessee Valley Authority.

What this episode is about

The main topic explores the challenges faced by the Democratic party in gaining public trust and effectively wielding power, particularly in the context of upcoming elections and the current political landscape. It emphasizes the need for Democrats to demonstrate their capability and effectiveness in governance to win over voters, while reflecting on the ideological divides within the party and the historical shifts in progressive governance.

Key takeaways

  • Democrats need to redefine success: it’s not about winning, but preventing the worst from happening.
  • Trump's brutal efficiency highlights a stark lesson: power used well can garner public trust—if only Democrats could do the same.
  • With only a third of voters favoring Democrats, it’s clear: apathy isn’t just for Trump supporters, it’s bipartisan.
  • Progressivism's mission must evolve; it's not just about opposing power but constructing effective institutions that empower the vulnerable.
  • To demonstrate effectiveness, Democrats must turn government from a bureaucratic labyrinth into a delivery machine for the people.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: John Lovevet, Mark Dunkelman, Why Nothing Works, New Deal
  2. – 20:00: New Deal, Squarespace, Wild Grain, Franklin Roosevelt
  3. – 30:00: Senator Elizabeth Warren
  4. – 40:00: Elon Musk, Blinds.com, HIMS
  5. – 50:00: New Deal, Tennessee Valley Authority
  6. – 1:00:00: New Deal
  7. – 1:05:19: Why Nothing Works

Notable quotes from "Why Democrats are Afraid of Power"

  • Hey everybody, welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovevet. Obviously, right now for national Democrats, success is defined by what we can stop.
    about John Lovevet · at
  • Go from here, whatever happens in the midterms. That's why I wanted to have the conversation we had today. I spoke to Mark Dunkelman. He wrote a book called Why Nothing Works.…
    about Why Nothing Works · at
  • Both black and white. And so Franklin Roosevelt hired a lawyer from Wisconsin essentially to build the Tennessee Valley Authority, which by itself had the power to build dams…
    about Tennessee Valley Authority · at
  • The better part of a century later, President Biden in the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes 7.5 billion dollars to put electric vehicle chargers in the places along the network where it.
    about New Deal · at
  • That they were temporary relief wound them down quickly. And so by certainly by the end of the Second World War, most of the alphabet soup of programs that we remember from seventh grade social studies had been undone.
    about Franklin Roosevelt · at
  • And you know just the other day Elizabeth Warren gave a speech where she spoke in a projorative way about the abundance agenda and obviously your separate your book is a separate kind of argument from that but it's connected to.
    about Senator Elizabeth Warren · at
  • Choices like unabated and on this other end allowing anyone with an objection to stop anything. It's got to be some sort of process that allows everyone to have a voice and no…
    about Mark Dunkelman · at
  • That would have been a useful thing for Doge to have done. Instead, what we know Elon did is that he took the approach in Doge that he took when he took over Twitter. Just fire…
    about Elon Musk · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • John Lovevet — Person · Host · 3 mentions · first at
    Introduces the episode’s premise about Democrats’ governing credibility and conducts the interview with Mark Dunkelman.
  • Mark Dunkelman — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at
    Explains the thesis of his book about why progressive governance struggles to deliver and how institutional design and process constraints slow outcomes.
  • Franklin Roosevelt — Person · Referenced historical leader · 2 mentions · first at
    Serves as the key historical comparison point for New Deal-era state capacity (e.g., TVA, CCC) and fast program delivery.
  • Beau Biden — Person · Referenced recent president / policy example · 1 mention · first at
    Cited for the bipartisan infrastructure bill’s EV charger funding (NEVI), used to illustrate how modern process constraints impede delivery versus New Deal-era discretion.
    The better part of a century later, President Biden in the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes 7.5 billion dollars to put electric vehicle chargers in the places along the network where it does not make economic sense to place EV.
  • Elon Musk — Person · Referenced business leader / case-study figure · 3 mentions · first at
    Used as a private-sector contrast (Tesla Superchargers) and as an example of ‘DOGE’ style disruption (Twitter layoffs) versus governance reform.
  • Senator Elizabeth Warren — Person · Referenced politician / intra-party critic · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as criticizing the ‘abundance agenda,’ illustrating how governance-capacity debates get mapped onto ideological factionalism.

Books & papers

  • Why Nothing Works — Book · Primary recommendation · 3 mentions · first at
    Central book discussed in the podcast, focusing on the challenges of progressive governance and how to make government more effective.

Concepts & topics

  • New Deal — Concept · Core topic · 8 mentions · first at
    Historical reference point for effective progressive governance, contrasted with current challenges.
  • Tennessee Valley Authority — Concept · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at
    Example of a New Deal program that was able to act quickly and effectively, contrasted with modern bureaucratic inefficiencies.

Sponsors

  • Squarespace — Product · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast, promoting their website building platform.
    All-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform.
  • Wild Grain — Product · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast, promoting their subscription box for artisanal baked goods.
    This episode of Podsave America is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisal pastries, and fresh pastas.
  • Blinds.com — Product · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast, promoting their custom window treatments.
    Their orders are backed by their 100% satisfaction guarantee. If you're not happy, they'll make it right. Blinds.com has been around for 29 years and has covered over 25…
  • HIMS — Product · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast, promoting their online healthcare services.
    Restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details. Pods of America is brought to you by HIMS. HIMS can't help you fold a fitted sheet, but it can help with your performance in…

Full transcript with timestamps

Hey everybody, welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovevet. Obviously, right now for national Democrats, success is defined by what we can stop. It counts as some kind of good news when the president walks back his threat to use military force against Greenland or removes a petty tyrant and a fascist outfit from the streets of Minneapolis. And our job over the next year is to use what little power we have to stop the administration's worst successes while winning what will ultimately be a referendum on Trump's cruelty and failures. But regardless of the outcome in 2026, the Democrats are in a massive hole. The country may be turning against Trump, but that has not corresponded to any newfound love for his opposition. In recent polls, barely a third of voters have a positive view of the Democratic party. And so, one thing we're trying to do is have conversations about where we go from here, whatever happens in the

midterms. That's why I I wanted to have the conversation we had today. I spoke to Mark Dunkelman. He wrote a book called Why Nothing Works. And it is a story about what happened to progressive governance and uh the changes in the way progressives think about power between the New Deal and today and what we need to do to prove to people that Democrats not only uh deserve power, but Democrats know how to use power once we have it. And uh a lot of times this gets framed as a left center left debate. it kind of falls into the usual grooves of our kind of ideological uh fights over the last uh 10 or more years. Uh sometimes it feels like people like to bring their old baggage to a debate because it's easier than packing a new suitcase. But I I think it's worth listening to this a a as an opportunity for everybody in the pro-democracy movement to understand what we have to do to demonstrate to people that

democracy can actually deliver for people and the progressives can actually deliver on the promises that we make. Whatever you believe uh government should be trying to do for people, whatever vision you believe the Democratic party should have. It was a great conversation that uh will kind of help put in context some of the fights we're having right now about the role of government and uh some of the reasons that uh uh Trump uh is able to make a lot of kind of political hay out of him being able to do things that other people couldn't do and why Democrats need to uh carefully uh learn some lessons from that while understanding that we should also listen to people and follow the law and respect basic values and the the role of institutions. So, uh it was a great conversation. Uh it was a book I really enjoyed. Uh and I I think you'll like it. Welcome to the show. Nice to meet you.

Great to meet you. So, I'm a huge fan of your book uh Why Nothing Works. Thanks.

And then there's a subtitle. You wrote an oped for the Times called What the Left Could Learn from the From Trump's Brutal Efficiency. Uh, and I think that's a great way in to the debate uh uh around the book. So, what can we learn from Trump's brutal efficiency?

The thing that I want those of us on the left to think about is the degree to which our primary zeitgeist for the last 50 years has been to speak truth to power. We see big institutions. We see powerful people and our instinct is to say there's something wrong there. They're doing something wrong. They're somehow smooshing little people and we need to

out with the bad things they're doing. Figure it out, call it out, stop it. And that is largely at odds with what progressivism began as a mission, which was how do we create big powerful institutions that will do big things for people who can't do for themselves. Those are two totally different missions.

Mhm. and Trump has come into office and he's got control over this huge bureaucracy and he's done things with it like you know the sort of the the quintessential thing just to it's not the most important thing that he's done. It's not something that I particularly like but he just knocked down the east wing of the White House. He just did it.

Yeah. Uh and uh that is sort of a sort of a powerful example of a guy who sort of said I'm not going to go through the process. I'm not just going to I'm not I'm not going to bow to the whims of all the boxes I need to check, all the tees I need to cross, all the eyes I need to dot. I'm just going to do things that progressives in many cases don't think to do. Uh I think that in order for us to be popular again, we need to show that government can work. I think we are already by default the party of government. Our movement is the one that wants government to work. And so that if we're going to try to glean a mandate from the people, we need to make government work in the first place. And that means that they need to have a sense that when they want things to be done, government is going to actually deliver. So obviously uh Trump uh manages to move quickly, knock down east wings, destroy bureaucracies because

he's breaking law in a lot of cases or ignoring uh regulations uh wherever it suits him. Uh how much are we limited because we wouldn't do that? Like h how much could there be a democratic version of that um that is bound by law uh that does have respect for institutions but also wants to move quickly? like how like it feels like we're kind of the two options which is the the kind of a a democratic style of leadership in which you're kind of like in Guliver's travel travelers kind of tied down and then you have Trump who's uh uh

lawless right like I I don't know I can't I don't how do you decide where that line is where a Democratic president would be able to move quickly and uh uh get things done quickly while being respectful of those institutions.

Yeah. Well, I think it's a terrific point and a terrific distinction. The point I want to make here is that when we are creating programs, when we are thinking about the reforms that we want to do next time we're in office

if that ever happens and that's something we just do hope will happen. Yep. Continue.

Yes. Well, I'm going to presume that until proven not, I'm going to presume that it will happen.

Great. Um, we should be thinking not only about the things that we hope to do, but we should be thinking about how we plan to design those programs in a way so that we can actually deliver so that we are building the sorts of programs which we used to build which gave a fair amount of discretion and power to bureaucrats who made decisions and were able to get things done expeditiously. So let me can I give you an example

please? So at the beginning of the New Deal I'm going to ask you. Yeah. There was a region of the country that was fly over country before we had the term. It was the upper south, the area around the Tennessee Valley. Mh.

It was an area um that the local utility had chosen not to wire up because the farmers were so poor that they didn't believe that they'd get any return on the investment of building poles and wires to these poor farmers who were both black and white. And so Franklin Roosevelt hired a lawyer from Wisconsin essentially to uh build the Tennessee Valley Authority, which by itself had the power to build dams, build wires, reforest whole countryides, uh and through just pure public power hire both black and white workers who like, let's be honest, were put up in different encampments like it was a southern institution. It was segregated.

But they miraculously in almost no time built a huge power infrastructure that wired up these farms and you know really brought enormous benefits to people who were living at you know 19th century standards when the rest of the country was well into the 20th century. incredibly fast, incredible power with uh Lillenthal making these decisions. No real concern about local objections, no real input, no environmental impact statements, no sort of considerations like this. Uh the better part of a century later, President Biden in the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes 7.5 billion dollars to put electric vehicle chargers in the places along the network where it does not make economic sense to place EV chargers. He realizes that the reason that people aren't buying electric vehicles is because they are worried that if they want to drive far, there are going to be places on the interstates where there is no place to

recharge their car. So, they're worried the day before Thanksgiving when they're driving to grandma's house that they're going to be stuck. There's going to be no place. So, he's going to uh subsidize the construction of those EVs. There's no federal workforce to build those EV chargers. So, he's going to have to uh build a rule that will uh then uh put those dollars in the hands of state highway departments. Those state highway departments have never worked with EV charging companies. They're going to have to figure out what sort of equipment they're going to have to find places to lease to put those EV chargers that aren't places where the EV charging companies would otherwise want to put the EV chargers. They're then going to have to competitively bid to the EV charging companies, you know, so they compete with them. They're they're going to have to convince the utility companies that uh they should sort of

set aside all the work they're doing to, you know, power up these various data centers that are demanding more and more electricity and instead take some time to wire up these remotely placed EV charging facilities that very few people are going to want, right? Like it's I mean that is a very long process. I think that the people who were working on this program, the the Nevi program were like working really hard. Like I think like they made lots of really hard dec like like like Andrew Rogers like you can name the people who were involved. Pete Buddha Judge's whole team like like I think they were really working hard and diligently at the end of the administration three years later $7.5 billion only 58 charges were out. It looked embarrassing. There were lots of negative stories. It was one of Trump's attacks on the Democratic party. That wasn't laziness. It wasn't the bureaucracy gone wrong. It wasn't like

it wasn't anyone's fault per se, but it was the way that the government has been structured. Something that happened between when the TVA was able to do things expeditiously and the period where government looked incompetent. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a government got lazy. It was that we had inserted so many process checks into the system that we Democrats and progressives and reformers who were afraid of government working too fast and in in many cases doing things that were bad made it so that government couldn't work effectively.

Well, I I want to just challenge that a little bit. This is a bipartisan infrastructure bill, right? And if we had wanted as Democrats to pass, say, a proposal that would have created a national core of federal clean energy workers to go across the country rapidly installing these things, you wouldn't have had the Republican support. Isn't part of the problem here that in order to get something like this through, the kind of big fastmoving uh New Deal style programs you would want are just not politically possible without more democratic control. Like I I'm I I hear you on once you put it into this system, once you don't just sort of federalize it and have it done at the federal level, uh yeah, you're going to enter into the buzzsaw of private companies and contracts and local governments and all these rules, but what is isn't the alternative just needing a bigger majority?

I wonder. I mean, it's a it's an excellent counterfactual. I'd want to ask the folks who are involved. What would the electrical workers think? What would our allies as the state levels think about being preempted? What would the

And we require fighting those groups. It requires a democratic president or a democratic uh policym apparatus that understood it had to kind of push through and kind of drive things to a yes to get things done quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean even by the time you get to the Johnson administration, you know, the war on poverty, there is a proposal for a jobs core program

which would have trained lots of young people to work in the building trades and like the unions that are allies of the Johnson administration kill it in the process of negotiation. They don't want a bevy of new supply of labor to come in and compete with them. So like yes uh I mean Franklin I mean those are that's an interesting question. It at this point the notion at the moment of creating a huge new federal workforce to do this

or anything for anything is sort of beyond the pale of imagination. But it's a it's a worthwhile thought experiment that I haven't I haven't considered and and definitely something that I should think about.

The reason I asked is this because in the in the book and and maybe it's another example I think it's worth sharing. Could you just talk about how quickly in the New Deal

uh uh a uh a program for people out of job out of work uh to begin work? How quickly it was stood up and I think almost as importantly what happened when it was stood down? like how what was the time horizon for some of these New Deal programs uh to get off the ground?

Yeah, months like the the Civilian Conservation Corps is matter of months for you know hundreds of thousands like the the CWA came in together and something like some huge portion of the nation was hired uh under that program with it with in less than a year like something like 5% of the country. I mean I mean it was

just incredibly fast. Yeah. Um uh and then and then yeah, you're absolutely right like like but but Franklin Roosevelt also recognized these were temporary relief programs. th those programs got off the ground very quickly and then Franklin Roosevelt recognizing that they were temporary relief uh wound them down quickly. And so by certainly by the end of the Second World War, most of the alphabet soup of programs that we remember from seventh grade social studies had been undone.

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what it means to have an active uh progressive government trying to quickly solve problems uh and of produce broad-based economic relief and prosperity. And yet is there's this strange phenomenon where uh uh whether it's your book or or the abundance book that's gotten attention, it somehow has managed to find kind of our usual ideological groove. And uh you know just the other day Elizabeth Warren gave a speech where she spoke in a projorative way about the abundance agenda and obviously your separate your book is a separate kind of argument from that but it's connected to it. Uh you see a lot of people frame a debate as sort of left populist economics versus kind of reformoriented uh uh uh sort of pro-govern um reform agenda as being uh kind of at at odds with each other. And I'm wondering why you what happened like why do you think this has taken on sort of an ideological veilance?

I don't I think habit for the most part like I like I I don't find much of it to be totally compelling. Yeah.

Um uh you know there's something cultural that happens like the moments that you're talking about in the New Deal. Progressives really do have a cultural affinity for centralized power, right? Like you see a big public problem like there aren't enough wires to keep these poor people in the Tennessee Valley uh above like really abject poverty. There isn't enough uh irrigation to stop the dust bowl. Um you know there isn't enough relief in big urban centers. Um, and so what you want to do is create these big centralized bureaucracies that are going to fix these problems. So, you know, there's a guy named Mike Strauss who runs the I think it's Mike Strauss who runs the Bureau of Reclamation.

Like, it's a bureaucracy that's inside the Department of Interior like most Americans who aren't in agricultural places that depend on dams have never heard of that bureaucracy. um uh he he's succeeded by a guy named I think Floyd Dominy in the you know in the 1950s and60s um uh they are figures who are a piece like Robert Moses who runs the triber bridge and tunnel authority and David Lillenthal who runs the TVA and um you know Austin Tobin who runs the port authority in New York City and you know you can These sort of really powerful figures are just sort of run across America and they are generally revered.

Now they wear, you know, they wear charcoal suits and fedoras and they cross their arms like this and they frown like the world, you know, like like the they hold the weight of the world. But but generally Americans having seen what George Marshall did uh to to defeat you know the the the Nazis and right to just to make the world safe like generally revered these figures. Um and like they they are they are willing to accept their wisdom. And then something happens in the 60s and 70s and uh it turns out we discover that like these guys aren't you know the wise sages that we presume them to be in all circumstances. That they threw DDT on our crops and that caused birth defects.

that they uh they let, you know, pollution flow into the Kyhoga River so it lit on fire, that they did urban renewal and they did interstate programs that destroyed minority neighborhoods and that they sent us into Vietnam, right? Robert McNamera, like so by the time you get to the 70s, like these guys are like generally seen as bad. like the power broker, which is the takedown of Robert Moses in New York City and reveals that this guy who had remade the landscape of New York City during between the 30s and the 60s had like strangled the city with interstates and like driven the cross Bronx Expressway across a burough of New York City and like you know left it to be like just sort of a the epitome of urban blight and despair.

like like that was a that book came out right during Watergate, right? Like it was like it was just sort of sort of a a symbol of how the great establishment that had been vested with so much uh we we as the American people had vested them with so much uh respect for all these decades was wrong. And like you get to the 70s like we get like these people are are epitomized by like boss hog, right? Like I mean like like that's the view and we need to take them down so that you get I mean all the cultural references you know like uh in network it's you know like I'm mad as hell and I we're not going to take it anymore right like like like um that's the sort of the notion or even that that famous Apple ad from 1984 where right where do they take a a javelin and someone comes in and there's a bunch of bunch of Robert Moses Richard Daly looking figures sort of speaking out into the audience sort of controlling

people and someone comes in and throws like that becomes the ethos. How are we going to break down the establishment and that became the central sort of pillar of progressive thought and that downstream of that thinking became a whole series of legislative maneuvers designed to box in government. the Guliver's Travels image like that. I considered that or someone suggested that to me is for a cover image of my book, right? Which would this sort of notion that that that there's that there's government can't move um that it that that you say you want to put up a an electric transmission line that would connect clean power to uh to the city, you can't do it. You want to build a highspeed rail line, you can't do it.

you want to build more housing, you can't do it. Like it seems to me that like the Neorandesians, left liberal Elizabeth Warren, uh, Lena Khan world, like I think that they're fundamentally sympathetic.

They they they want to do that. Yeah. And and like I don't think that the abundance people like don't think that we should take on

monopolies. Monopolies. So, so, so like it actually feels to me like this should be a topic on which we can all agree and like just the sort of sense that we uh we we're Democrats so we're going to find stuff to, you know, circular firing squad and and ever. But but but but anyway, I I I don't I you probably have a better explanation for me than why we're fighting about this stuff. I well I I I think part of it is a a feeling that a lot of what politics is right now it's defined by making sure you have the right enemies. And I don't say that in a borative way, right? Like people are critical of those who suggest that bureaucracy or progressive governance is the source of styied clean energy projects when it's actually Republicans and corporate interference that plays a role as well. But also, I think part of this is it wasn't just a um a cultural reaction uh to the sort of best and brightest style suitwearing

white men uh that made these decisions. It was a policy reaction. You know, I'm from Long Island. We have the Long Island Expressway and the uh Grand Central Parkway and the and the uh um which is start starts as the Northern State Parkway through Long Island. And like kind of a trivia fact about the Northern State Parkway that the uh overpasses were low because Robert Moses uh didn't want uh buses filled with black people to get to the beach. And then there are turns in that expressway because of the like kind of personal egotistical interests of of these these men. And you know we're here in Los Angeles. you drive the 101 uh is a scar that runs down uh the center of uh Hollywood and through the city around which the uh uh the the um like the value of the land went down, right? Like that like there's just uh all these implications for what happens when singular figures are in power to make

decisions because a communities aren't heard and b they have their own biases that they bring to the table. Like I went to uh uh Lake, you go to Lake me or Lake Powell. You're like, "How does this exist? How did they fill this canyon with water and nobody stopped them? I'm glad it's there. I had an enjoyable time on the boat, but what the This is crazy." So, it is a little bit of a correct reaction to to what happened. the great challenge that I feel like I'm facing now and that I would hope all progressives would engage in a like a really productive discussion about because clearly we don't want to go back to the Robert Moses, Lloyd Domin, Robert McNamera era where like singular figures could make decisions entirely on their own and without consideration of the effects on individual communities.

Like that was bad news bears, right? Fair enough. We've now gone, I think, to the other extreme where uh we've created all sorts of mechanisms for those communities that would otherwise have been bulldozed by the Robert Moses or Dominees or whomever to speak up. We've created environmental laws and in in you know historic preservation statutes and community uh community requirements for communities to have voices and we've created rights of action in court and we we've created all sorts of mechanisms and uh now like we know that people are using excuse like they don't want the housing to be put up near them.

They're afraid that a black family is going to move in or a poor family is going to move into the apartments. So, they say, "I think that I once saw a bald eagle." Right. Or right. Or they are afraid uh that that the train line they're there's is going to come and bifurcate their little neighborhood. So they create some sort of I think this this this home was historic or I think like this is actually a brown field that there was that there was you know oil and right like they create all sorts of barriers such that now we can't build the things that we know that we need now between these two extremes of allowing one like powerful dude to make the choices like unabated and on this other end allowing anyone with an objection to stop anything. It's got to be some sort of process that allows everyone to have a voice and no one to have a veto. I don't know exactly how that would work, right? That's what

I'm working on now. I like I'm trying to figure out like how do corporations do this? Now, I was looking at the Nevi program

at one point and someone told me this story sort of have was sort of interesting. I was thinking about just as a private as a private sector example when they were doing the Navy program. Elon Musk had uh the supercharger program for Tesla and uh already people were buying Teslas not only because they like Teslas but because if you bought a Tesla there were already lots of superchargers all over the country. Mhm.

And the people who had inside Tesla who had the supercharger program like they were running those were like we could license this to Ford and to the other companies and we could get some of that $7.5 billion and that that'd be like that would significantly augment the overall size of the EV market. Maybe we should do it. The people inside Tesla who were selling Tesla cars were horrified that anyone would suggest it because well that was what they were selling their cars with. Right.

Right. It was it was an advantage. It was advantage for Tesla's as a as a as a a value proposition.

Correct. So so the question for Elon Musk as the CEO is do I want to have a larger slice of a smaller pie or a smaller slice of a larger pie? That's a hard decision. and whatever he chooses, he's going to be pissing off some portion of his, you know, of his of his company of of his of his employees. But it's a hard decision. He could have come into Doge and said, you know, I understand what this is like. I'm the CEO. I want to make it so when you are the head of Noah, right, the National Oceanic Administration, right, the the the bureaucracy that is regulating offshore wind animals, right? Right.

Right. And you are faced with a dilemma, right? where you have some some burden where you some people want to put offshore wind and some people are worried about the animals that are going to be interfered with that you have more discretion to choose more expeditiously between these choices understanding that there are costs that you know they're going to be some animals or some flora or fauna like I don't know what that what

there are trade-offs in every policy there are tra trade-offs that you can make that choice more expeditiously. That would have been a useful thing for Doge to have done. Instead, what we know Elon did is that he took the approach in Doge that he took when he took over Twitter. Just just fire a bunch of people less less less useful uh in the but but but like there is like there is like that that's something for us as progressives to think about. Are there ways that as we are thinking about the next time we are in office that we can write legislation in ways that give uh more authority to people to make choices more expeditiously.

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unions in Spain or it's environmental protections. They have environmental protections in Italy or it's because we're so overbuilt they can build subways in Rome. uh and and sometimes what it does seem to boil down to in part is a kind of habit and expertise and and I I do wonder part of this is like we've made being a city administrator or a or someone kind of in charge of uh parts of these bureaucracies just a a less fulfilling and kind of empowered role. But that also means we don't have kind of the people in place who kind of were the kinds of people that in the past might have gone into that that work because they were excited about the possibility of using government to do good. And I and I I do wonder how much of this is going to take even if we had the right policies a lot of time to to get ourselves out of.

So that that may be true. I'm working, this is not in the book, but it's something that I'm working on now, and it I've just been thinking about it for now a month or two, and it's on my mind perpetually, and I I can't exactly figure it out.

Great. Um, that's pitball, you know. Okay, keep going. Absolutely. Um, there's a new line that's opened, a new railroad line that's opened between Boston and New Bedford, uh, Massachusetts. New Bedford is a historically sort of a beaten down old industrial city on the south coast of Massachusetts that has not had rail service. It's one of the few cities that has not been connected to Boston. And it took them 35 years, but they finally opened the the rail line. And uh there was a meeting that I've heard about in 2007 where mass dot the department of transportation uh which would intended to build this line called a meeting of all the stakeholders who were involved and they called a couple of Indian tribes and they called the Massachusetts environmental groups. They called the uh uh army corps of engineers who are responsible for water quality and they called the environmental protection agency. So it's a Massachusetts has

called the meeting. They're sitting at the ed, but they've got these two federal agencies. And one of the routes that was under consideration was a route that was most direct and it went through the uh a a swamp and a swamp that had vernal pools. I didn't know what a vernal pool a vernal pool is a pool that only is wet during the spring and they're important because you can uh turtles can lay eggs in the water during the spring and they are then protected from predators in the water. uh and those turtles in this case the eastern box turtle is endangered and so those vernal pools are uh uh uh important ecologically and uh the the guy from the EPA is very worried about these vernal pools and if you were to run this train through and um this became I I learned like a real issue of contention is the EPA really wants to protect these vernal pools and these and these turtles and like I remember hearing this story for

the first few times and people sort of rolling their eyes about the turtle guy and like like like really like like these poor people in New Bedford don't have access to these great jobs in Boston and like it's going to be a much longer commute if you avoid this swamp and like like there's sort of like a real frustration that like the EPA are you really gonna like force these like like that's great housing for people in Boston who are starred for housing like like like how much are these turtles really birth. And then I began thinking about the guy from the EPA who's sitting there like I think he's an older guy probably took the job at the EPA maybe like not long after the power broker came out like like right in this age where like America has woken up to the degree to which the country has just totally destroyed much of the country's environment just to you know in every case we've chosen economic expediency

over the environment like we've just just destroyed whole, you know, forests and deforest just done terrible damage. And his he'd taken this job and like probably like had joined the EPA because he was going to speak up for these animals who couldn't speak up for themselves. He was going to protect

speak up for that turtle. He was he was the turtle guy and he was proud of it, right? Like and he was going to stand up. Moreover, like like he's sitting at that meeting. If he had said, "All right, I'll let you run run that train line through my turtle habitat." Right? He'd gone back to the EPA and told his boss like I can only imagine that like they would have been what do you like our mission is to protect the you can't just unilaterally and then if news got out that the EPA had given up on their turtles they would have been subject to a lawsuit from the friends of the wilderness who would want right like like there are whole series of interventions that would have made it almost impossible for this turtle guy to actually come to some sort of collaborative solution with the Massachusetts transportation folks who want to do it. Now, there probably was some way to fix it where he could have

said, "Listen, I'll let you take this this little portion of the turtle habitat if you buy me a bunch of private land and we'll make that a new turtle, right? That's why things are so expensive here, right? Is that we not we we will buy it off, right? like the why are things expensive in the US is because each time you find a barrier there is a way to have it all but it's it's expensive right like like oh it's an old Indian burial ground we need to avoid that or we need to properly move the uh move the the the site to a to a have it rear I mean there are all sorts of things that we are trying to be conscious of we're not making tradeoffs.

Um, and we don't have a great system for that. But but between just allowing Robert Moses to run rampant through the South Bronx and destroy a burrow of New York City and on the other hand doing nothing so that we are, you know, millions and millions of units short of housing and unable to take advantage of the clean energy revolution so that we have more affordable clean electricity. And you know the Asella train is you know running at a third the pace of the TGV and running between Paris and you know we're way behind China and Japan. I mean like we we can get this stuff going but it at root this is a question of are we willing to make the tradeoffs and are we willing to create systems that allow us to do that?

Yeah. That sounds like part of what you're circling is the idea that people need to have their voice but not a veto and that at different points along their way there needs to be individuals empowered to make final decisions. Maybe not one person at the top but individuals making decisions. You know, here in Los Angeles right now there was this debate in the city council. So, uh a couple years ago, uh Los Angeles passed measure ULA. I don't know how familiar you are with this, but it was a uh a a transfer tax for uh when properties over a certain amount were sold roughly. I'm going to get the number slightly wrong, but it's like a a roughly uh 4%. It's there's a tax that kicks in at $5 million, a c tax that kicks in at $10 million. I think it's roughly 4% and then 5%, but it turns out it also applied it was called the mansion tax, but also applied to multifamily apartment buildings. And so,

uh, a lot of researchers looked at the data and they said it is pretty clear that the, uh, the application of the tax to new apartment buildings has probably cost the city far more in affordable housing units than the revenue has allowed the city to build. And so, in the city council, there was a proposal. The proposal was to uh uh uh postpone to to uh uh uh delay the tax on new family uh apartment new apartment buildings uh for uh that have been constructed in the last like 15 years. Uh and it would cut revenue that the city wants and needs by 8%. That's a trade-off, right? in order to allow the construction of multif family apartment buildings, you would lose 8% of revenue uh on what the tax had been collecting. An extremely contentious debate and it is now, as of right now, tabled uh because it would need to be passed by the city council so that it could be put to a vote by the city in order to be ratified as a um

citywide ballot measure. And the amount of consternation in both directions that this is a gift to developers, the the infighting about it has basically left Los Angeles kind of where it is right now with a measure designed to create more affordable housing in all likelihood preventing the construction of vast amounts of affordable housing. And there are so many people who want to fix this, but they live in the system that they are in. And forget passing a small reform like this. the system, even if everybody involved wanted to have a version of what you're describing with a a person who could be empowered at some level to address some of this, uh the system itself now has so many points of failure that the vetos that exist would prevent that from happening. And I just don't know how we get out of this kind of uh uh uh dune loop.

I mean, what's so interesting to me I I I I hear that and like certainly you you feel that on the federal level as well, right? how I mean it feels super weird to me to be a progressive who sees what Donald Trump is doing and like finds it horrifying and then is like writing on his little computer like I think that we should give the federal government more power and more discretion to make this like I like I hear myself seeing what's h like I I I hear what I'm saying and I can hear people being like what the are you talking about like like the guy's like look what he's doing in Minnesota. Like what do you mean you want to give more discretion to the federal government?

And um and of course like my answer is like you know in order to have more faith in government you need to see that government works. And like so like in the scheme of things, the reason that we have Trump is because people have seen government not work so they went to a like you know an orange madman to like to to fix things, right? like like the worst things got like they finally just wanted someone to break all the rules

or or another like people just given how little government changes or does they don't really think of government having a big impact in their lives and so this feels like a TV show

but the thing that I do say which I I hope provides some sort of comfort you know when the progressive movement was born at the sort of the turn of the 20th century it was at a moment when the federal government was small when almost Everything felt broken. Like the there were trusts and like railroads and steel baronss and like like private industry was huge and government like was not built to handle it. Government was corrupt like like you know like the federal government was like the US postal service and like a really corrupt pension system for people who like hadn't fought in the civil war but were collecting pensions. Like it was a it was a mess. And people realize that and the progressive movement was born essentially to say like we've got all this sort of scientific knowledge. We know that like we need better sanitation systems and transportation systems and electricity systems and regulatory

systems and like we need something better. And so like from this like mishmash of incompetent bureaucracy like we created what became the New Deal. Like there's no way in like 1906 you could have imagined the breadth and depth of the bureaucracy that was the New Deal or that existed in the 1950s, let alone like Robert Moses and the Tribal Bridge or the Tennessee Valley Authority. Like the idea that government bureaucracy could be this competent, efficient, like powerful or that like Robert Moses could be unimpeachable, right? Like like to to to think that in 19 You know, in the first decade of the 20th century, there would eventually be the man that Robert Carroll would describe, you know, in the 1950s as like this this I mean the the this powerful 50 years later unimaginable to read the power broker in 197374 and this sort of idea of an establishment figure who's so unimpeachable who who you know who Jerry

Rubin and Abby Hoffman and Chicago 7 like when they were protesting these sorts of characters on the outside of the 1968 DNC and like talking about the man and the establishment and you know up against the wall and right like like this this sort of notion in the Porton statement and see right like this sort of notion that there was this uh this establishment uh uh that that sort of hovered over American life and that was impossibly large and beyond our uh uh be beyond anyone's control. Um that that that that powerful institution would 50 years later like be completely incompetent.

That like there's no establishing a right right like like like we we can't we can't build any like we can't build housing, we can't build clean energy lines, we like like think of the things that we can't do then there's no one to turn to. like we go through these periods in American life where the sort of the broader structure of power just completely changes. So right now it feels like nothing can get done. There's no one to turn to. There's no way to make decisions. I think that 20 30 years from now we will have completely rebuilt some sort of governing mechanism that makes it possible for us to do things. I don't know exactly how it's going to happen, but I feel pretty confident that like people aren't happy with this. They're not like they're not going to be happy with what we've got now. And like we will figure out a series of ways organically through reforms. Like ideas are popping like the fact that Ezra and

Derek's book did well and Yoni Applebomb has a book and Jen Pula has a book and Nick Bagley's coming out. There there's lots of literature coming out.

The books are The books will save us. The books will There you go. The books will save us.

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Yeah. Well, though it's interesting because then the other side of this is an effective govern governing bureaucracy like effective institutions. Those are not an end. They're a means to an end.

And part of why the New Deal was able to be um stood up so quickly is because a democratic party had a vision for what the role of government needed to be in an emergency. And that built not only public enthusiasm and legitimacy and support, it created a failance of people at every level who wanted to be a part of it. Intellectuals, experts, uh um uh uh managers all the way down to people who just wanted to to to work as part of these or who needed work by the way as well. But but that momentum around the goal, the the mission of what the government was meant to do made it more possible for the government to be effective. How much of what we're dealing with here is a need for a Democratic party, a progressive movement to have a clear understanding of what the goal is, whether it's highspeed rail or wind or a better education system or better healthare system. Like how much of of this could follow a kind of

broader, more enthusiastic democratic mission? Uh, I think mission is a huge part of it. I also think like to the point you made earlier, lots of people graduate from college and imagine that they're going to go into public service, take a job at one of these agencies and like do great things. I think that if you had gone to engineering school in the 1940s and gotten a job as a Moses man uh inside, you know, the Triber Bridge and Tunnel Authority in New York and like spent years working for Bob Moses who was imperious as a boss, but like gave you a great deal of, you know, freedom to design parks and like you could in your retirement like you probably wouldn't have made as much if you'd gone to a private engineering firm, but you could show your grandchildren like I built that playground or I you know designed that bridge or what what like like that would have been very satisfying. I think that people today

who go into public service and go work at a what seems like a very important bureaucracy spend their days frightened. They're frightened that they're going to get their boss in trouble. They're frightened that they're going to get, you know, their boss is going to get yelled at by an appropriator because they did something wrong or that they're going to they're going to make a decision that's going to get them subject to a NEPA lawsuit or that right that the that someone in the office of management and budget is going to screw that that they don't have real authority to make the change that they want to do and they come out after a bunch of years and like I was just pushing paper around like I wasn't really given the sort of uh leash to make the positive change that I wanted to do. I think like that is an extension of the changes we made after the Robert Moses era and that we o overdid. I think we want to reempower

people who go into public service to be able to make those sorts of changes and you'll get different kinds of people who go into service that way. Well, we're going to make mistakes like government is going to make mistakes. it's going to be controversial like people are not going to like it uh in all cases but like I I mean I think that there's like there's so many things that we need to do and that only government can do. Um but I I think a very hopeful I think it's a very hopeful moment for all that that that we're all sort of a gasast at what's happening in Washington right now. The sort of the level of potential is really remarkable. It's interesting because I, you know, I read your piece on sort of lessons from the way Trump operates and and I feel the same conflict that you describe there and and describe here. Um, but there is some part of me that takes from it that that one thing we need elected officials to

do sometimes is to tell the lawyers to off and just say, "No, no, I I off and we're going to try this. we're going to push the bounds a little bit and then get stopped a little more frequently because I do think that part of this is a style of consensus leadership, a kind of like front of the classroom style of Democrat that doesn't want to seem like they're breaking the rules. But I say that I think am I describing basically something that if it were towards a policy goal I would hate, I'd be disgusted by. But I'm I I wonder if there was something in the middle here where we need to somehow um uh uh uh you know we have to sometimes we need to uh go out to want to leave the house. You know, we have to like start acting as though we live in a world in which things can happen. Um pretend as if things can happen and then suddenly they might.

I mean I I Yes. And I've heard that several, you know, people saying, you know, uh in order to uh plan a new subway line, we need to study the alternatives. How many do we really need to study? Like we know in the end that we're not going to dig up this particular street. We're not going to go through, you know, we're not going to dig up downtown, right? So, so like I I understand that that is a theoretically a possibility, but we're not going to spend $100,000 doing and six months looking at, you know, which streets in which order we would dig up to do that possibility. We're just going to set it aside and we're actually only going to study these three alternatives, right?

Like like that was something that someone maybe would sue saying, "Well, you didn't look at all the alternatives." But we we could expedite that, right? Like there's an example of where a bureaucrat could tell a lawyer to f off, right? Maybe there there's a mild example um of where something like that, yeah, I think probably could work and we don't do it.

Are there any Democratic politicians that you think are saying interesting or smart things about how this uh can work? Are are there places where you think people are pushing this forward and pointing to way uh for how we uh make progressive governing work? Again,

I I'm going to say yes. You want me to name a bunch of politicians? Like I just I just think that like lots of them the new Dems I mean I I I think Dems left, right, and center are trying to do this. You're putting me on the spot here. Uh

well, Mom Donnie, would you say Mom Donnie is doing it? I think mom Donnie is trying to do it. Yeah. Absolutely. I agree with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I've absolutely I mean, you know, I I think like the way that that Rahm has looked at like what's happening in schools, right? Like there's there's sort of an obvious thing like we've been having this stale conversation about charters and vouchers and uh bathrooms and and like like and he's like he's focused on like what are kids how are kids learning in schools? Like like that's the stuff that matters. That feels to me like trying trying to push through the sort of arcane BS that we tend to talk about in our political dialogue. I don't know if it's if it's right in line with this conversation, but like that feels like a real conversation. Uh I mean, you know, Shapiro's identity nationally at the moment feels like it's really tied up in that 95.

Hey, he got that thing up so quick. That was cool. I like that. And I feel like Newsome has a similar story that

he's going to build something even faster. He's not going to get take he's not going to get he's not going to lose in the road competition to to Shapiro.

Whitmer fix the damn I mean anyway they're trying they're trying. Yeah, everyone I think people are catching on to this stuff. Um, and I do hope that this becomes like I really do hope that this conversation can be a way for uh for people on the left and the you know sort of in the pro more progressive circles and more modern circles to come together you know um those you know if I'm I'm not a singlepayer guy but if I were a singlepayer person. I would think to get there you have to believe that people will need to have faith that government is going to administer health care better than Etna or CVS or whoever Blue Cross Blue Shield like who whoever you're right and like right now like is your is your experience with government such that like you feel like you go into the DMV And like that's a happy place like like like are are those the people that you trust to do things uh in an expeditious

way like like that like you know the Rhode Island DMV. I'm from Rhode Island. I love those guys. Like my my license has come up for renewal and I just want to put that on the record. But uh but like generally I I like I I'm not sure that people have the experience in seeing like if if if these guys can't successfully accomplish the things that are already within their mandate, why are we going to expand their mandate? So let's get these things done and then let's have a discussion about whether government bureaucracies are better poised to accomplish for ordinary people the things that they can't attain for themselves in the current environment.

Yeah. I also think part of it too is having the confidence in a a worldview in which you can uh uh fight Trump's efforts to undermine the government without viewing it as a concession to on in another conversation talk about government's failures. needs to need need ways it needs to improve, right? Ways you could save money. And I think part of this too is there's a um a credibility gap. You know, M Donnie this week uh uh obviously he's like, you know, he's uh the socialist menace that's, you know, going to drive the billionaires to Florida, I suppose, but then at the same time, he's signing an executive order to find ways for government to save money. And he has the kind of credibility to do that because he has the trust over here. And I sometimes do think that mainstream Democrats because they lack that kind of clear mission of what they're trying to achieve sometimes are a bit squeamish

about saying something that might sound like they're inviting a criticism from the left, which is I think a part of our problem, our kind of kind of our uh our kind of soft uh uh uh Democratic establishment does not have the kind of aggressive toughness that might make it more palatable to have them kind of pick some fights. I don't know. Yeah. I I don't I don't like to call into the establish the establishment to me is like this old thing like there is no Democratic establishment. We've got we've got we've got sort of

well it's all the mainstream centerleft democratic officials would be the group I be talking about that um I think sometimes feel a little bit unsure of what of who they're supposed to be.

Okay. Well, take out the word establishment and I will and and and we're on the same page.

Mark Douglman, thank you so much for talking to me. I genuinely really enjoyed the book. It is called why nothing works, who killed progress and how to bring it back. I think anybody who has either dipped into the abundance discourse or decided to avoid it. I think it's a good history to help you through it. Even though I will say and I will say it to your face cuz I s the pod, how many times you going to hammer the Hamiltonian Jefferson. We're smart people. We're in the book. You got us. You got us. Stop selling us so hard.

Yeah. Well, I I I sometimes I got confused. So, I was just I was just guiding myself. Uh but thank you so much. Thanks.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Why Democrats are Afraid of Power"?

John Lovevet (Host), Mark Dunkelman (Guest).

What is "Why Democrats are Afraid of Power" about?

The main topic explores the challenges faced by the Democratic party in gaining public trust and effectively wielding power, particularly in the context of upcoming elections and the current political landscape. It emphasizes the need for Democrats to demonstrate their capability and effectiveness in governance to win over voters, while reflecting on the ideological divides within the party and…

What is mentioned in this Pod Save America episode?

13 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including John Lovevet, Why Nothing Works, Mark Dunkelman, New Deal, Tennessee Valley Authority, Franklin Roosevelt. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Why Democrats are Afraid of Power"?

The episode runs 1 h 5 min; the transcript is about 11,481 words in 112 timestamped sections.

More from Pod Save America

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 1, 2026.