Happy new year and welcome to season six of Digging a Hole! We’re kicking this season off with a bang as Sam welcomes one of his former students – Timothy Shenk! Tim Shenk is an Assistant Professor in History at George Washington University and a prolific public writer who you may have read in the New York Times, Jacobin, or Dissent. More importantly for us, Professor Shenk is the author of the recently published book Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy.
In this episode, we dive into Realigners. What is a realigner? Who is a realigner? Can we understand the development of American democracy without realigners? The answer to the last question, says Professor Shenk, is no. From Madison to Obama, DuBois to Trump, and especially FDR and the New Deal Coalition, we talk about American history and the history of its greatest political actors as the history of realigners and realignment. And along the way, we discuss what it means to do presentist history and if there’s any hope for majority-making, self-government, and democracy in America.
Referenced Readings

Inventing the People by Edmund Morgan
The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter
Fear Itself by Ira Katznelson
“A Lost Manuscript Shows the Fire Barack Obama Couldn’t Reveal on the Campaign Trail” by Tim Shenk