"American democracy has weathered these cycles before, and we'll get through them again." - Jack Balkin

 

Politics: Meet Me in the Middle is back for 2021: a new administration, another impeachment, and the same old politics.

 

Legal scholar, Yale Law Professor, and author, Jack Balkin, joins Bill Curtis, Jane Albrecht and Professor Ed Larson for a discussion about the constitution, political polarization, impeachment, and The Cycles of Constitutional Time, to explain, and help us weather, this waxing and waning of political polarization.

 

Episode Timestamps:

3:26 Why Jack wrote The Cycles of Constitutional Time

4:19 Jack explains how we got here, politically.

4:53: The shifts between political parties over time.

6:18: What causes a party to die-off

6:52: Republicans are in the middle of a civil war

7:27: Political Polarization’s history

9:09: What is constitutional rot?

10:02: The Rough Framework or Outline of the Constitution

11:50: Checks and Balances

14:30: Political reform and renewal of party

16:04: What is constitutional time and outlining the cycles?

18:16: How are party coalitions the victim of their own success?

19:00- The Great depression

19:20- The impact of the media “Yesterday and Today”

20:30: 1930’s newspaper & radio polarization

22:20: The Gilded Age

23:30: A second progressive era and the insurrection

24:23: The issues of impeachment

25:40: 14th amendment Section 3

27:13: Republicans will not behave

29:45: Believing the election was stolen is political rot

31:00: What did the mob want with the Capitol?

32:00: Lunatic Fringe (radical and lunatics)

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Follow Us on Twitter: @politicsMMITM

Hosted by: Bill Curtis, Jane Albrecht, and Ed Larson

Produced by: Joey Salvia

Theme Music by: Celleste & Eric Dick

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