I’m convinced that attention is the most important human faculty. Your life, after all, is just the sum total of the things you’ve paid attention to. We lament our attention issues all the time — how distracted we are, how drained we feel, how hard it is to stay focused or present. And yet, while there’s no shortage of advice on how to improve our sleep hygiene or spending habits or physical fitness, there’s hardly any good information about how to build and replenish our capacity for paying...

We recently did an episode on the strange new gender politics that have emerged in the 2024 election. But we only briefly touched on the social and economic changes that underlie this new politics — the very real ways boys and men have been falling behind. In March 2023, though, we dedicated a whole episode to that subject. Our guest was Richard Reeves, the author of the 2022 book “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It,” who recently...

On Thursday night, Kamala Harris reintroduced herself to America. And by the standards of Democratic convention speeches, this one was pretty unusual. In this conversation I’m joined by my editor, Aaron Retica, to discuss what Harris’s speech reveals about the candidate, the campaign she’s going to run and how she believes she can win in November. Mentioned: The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts...

Democrats spent the third night of their convention pitching themselves as the party of freedom. In this conversation, my producer Annie Galvin joined me on the show to take a deep look at that messaging. Why do Democrats see an opportunity in this election to seize an idea that Republicans have monopolized for decades? What’s the meaning of “freedom” that Democrats seem to be embracing? And how does this message square with other Democratic Party values, like belief in the ability of...

Is Obamaism making a comeback? Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention, Michelle and Barack Obama electrified the crowd with the most powerful speeches of the week so far, and seemed to anoint Kamala Harris as the inheritor of their political movement. For this audio diary, I’m joined by my producer Elias Isquith to dissect those two speeches. We discuss what Obamaism was in 2008 and 2012, and what it means to pass the baton to Harris in 2024. Mentioned: “Biden Made Trump...

I’m reporting from the Democratic National Convention this week, so we’re going to try something a little different on the show — a daily audio report of what I’m seeing and hearing here in Chicago. For our first installment, I’m joined by my producer, Rollin Hu, to discuss what the convention’s opening night revealed about the Democratic Party after a tumultuous couple of months. We talk about how Joe Biden transformed the party over the past four years, the behind-the-scenes efforts to...

A strange new gender politics is roiling the 2024 election. At the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump made his nomination a show of campy masculinity, with Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, warming up the crowd. JD Vance’s first viral moments have been comments he made in 2021 about “childless cat ladies” running the Democratic Party and a “thought experiment” assigning extra votes to parents because they have more of an...

Risk has been on my mind this year. For Democrats, the question of whether Joe Biden should drop out was really a question about risk – the risk of keeping him on the ticket versus the risk of the unknown. And it’s hard to think through those kinds of questions when you have incomplete information and so much you can’t predict. After all, few election models forecast that Kamala Harris would have the kind of momentum we’ve seen the last few weeks. Nate Silver’s new book, “On the Edge: The...

It’s been remarkable watching the Democratic Party act like a political party this past month — a party that makes decisions collectively, that does hard things because it wants to win, that is more than the vehicle for a single person’s ambitions. But parties are made of people. And in the weeks leading up to President Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, it felt like the Democratic Party was made of one particular person: Nancy Pelosi. Two days after Biden released a forceful letter...

In picking Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris is after more than just Pennsylvania. Mentioned: “Is Tim Walz the Midwestern Dad Democrats Need?” by The Ezra Klein Show Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of...

The economy is one of the biggest vulnerabilities for Democrats this election and, in particular, the issue of affordability. Many Americans blame the Biden administration for the past few years of high inflation, and housing costs have become a crisis in cities across the country. These are top concerns for voters, and the Democratic Party hasn’t articulated the clearest answer. But there are some Democrats working hard on this and trying to push the party in a new direction. Brian Schatz...

I’ve watched a lot of presidential campaigns, and I can’t remember one in which the contest for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination has played out quite so publicly. One breakthrough voice has been Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. Before last week, he didn’t have much of a national profile. But then he went on “Morning Joe” and said of Donald Trump and JD Vance, “These guys are just weird.” That one line has transformed the Democratic Party’s messaging, with everyone from Vice President...

Gretchen Whitmer is one of the names you often see on lists of Democratic V.P. contenders. She’s swatted that speculation down repeatedly, but the interest in her makes a lot of sense. Michigan is a must-win state for Democrats, and she has won the governorship of that state twice, by significant margins each time. She’s also long been one of the Democratic Party’s most talented and forthright messengers on abortion. So I think Whitmer has a lot to teach Democrats right now, whether she’s...

The Democratic Party’s rallying around Kamala Harris — the speed of it, the intensity, the joyfulness, the memes — has been head-spinning. Just a few weeks ago, she was widely seen in the party as a weak candidate and a risk to put on the top of the ticket. And while a lot of those concerns have dissipated, there’s one that still haunts a lot of Democrats: Can Harris win in Wisconsin? Democrats are still traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss in Wisconsin in 2016. It is a must-win state for...

An open convention or a coronation aren’t the only two options. Mentioned: “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by The Ezra Klein Show “What Is the Democratic Party For?” by The Ezra Klein Show Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at...

This year’s Republican National Convention was Donald Trump’s third as the party’s nominee, but it was the first that felt like a full expression of a G.O.P. that has fully fallen in line with Trumpism. And the mood was jubilant. Speakers even made efforts to reach out to unions, Black voters and immigrants — imagining a big-tent Republican Party that could be far more formidable at the ballot box. But if the Democrats were running a strong candidate right now, no Democrat would look at that...

The Trump campaign isn’t just expecting to win this election; it’s expecting to win it in a landslide. And top Trump campaign officials were feeling that confident even before Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance. So what’s their strategy to achieve the blowout they’re imagining? And is their confidence justified? Tim Alberta is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump.” He recently...

When Donald Trump on Monday chose Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate it excited populists — and unnerved some business elites. Later that evening, the president of the Teamsters, Sean O’Brien, gave a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention. “Over the last 40 years, the Republican Party has rarely pursued strong relationships with organized labor,” O’Brien said. “There are some in the party who stand in active opposition to labor unions — this too must change,” he...

It was once a fringe opinion to say President Biden should drop his re-election bid and Democrats should embrace an open convention. That position is fringe no more. But when the conventional wisdom shifts this rapidly, there’s always the danger of overlooking its potential flaws. My colleague, the Times Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, has been making some of the strongest arguments against Biden dropping out and throwing the nomination contest to a brokered convention. So I invited him on...

If Joe Biden steps aside for the Democratic presidential nomination — still a very big if — the favorite to replace him is Vice President Kamala Harris. In recently leaked post-debate polling from Open Labs, Harris polled better than Biden in matchups against Trump. In 2019, Dana Goodyear wrote in The New Yorker, “As a Black, female law-and-order Democrat, Harris creates a kind of cognitive dissonance.” The profile Harris inhabited then would be welcome in an election year where disorder is...

After President Biden’s rough performance at the first presidential debate, the question of an open convention has roared to the front of Democratic politics. But how would an open convention work? What would be its risks? What would be its rewards? In February, after I first made the case for an open Democratic convention, I interviewed Elaine Kamarck to better understand what an open convention would look like. She literally wrote the book on how we choose presidential candidates,...

Top Democrats have closed ranks around Joe Biden since the debate. Should they? Mentioned: “This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault” by Ezra Klein “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by The Ezra Klein Show “Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” with Elaine Kamarck on The Ezra Klein Show The Hollow Parties by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes...

I joined my Times Opinion colleagues Ross Douthat and Michelle Cottle to discuss the debate — and what Democrats might do next. Mentioned: “The Biden and Trump Weaknesses That Don’t Get Enough Attention” by Ross Douthat “Trump’s Bold Vision for America: Higher Prices!” with Matthew Yglesias on The Ezra Klein Show “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” on The Ezra Klein Show “Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” with Elaine Kamarck on The Ezra Klein Show Gretchen...

Donald Trump has made inflation a central part of his campaign message. At his rallies, he rails against “the Biden inflation tax” and “crooked Joe’s inflation nightmare,” and promises that in a second Trump term, “inflation will be in full retreat.” But if you look at Trump’s actual policies, that wouldn’t be the case at all. Trump has a bold, ambitious agenda to make prices much, much higher. He’s proposing a 10 percent tariff on imported goods, and a 60 percent tariff on products from...

The biggest divide in our politics isn’t between Democrats and Republicans, or even left and right. It’s between people who follow politics closely, and those who pay almost no attention to it. If you’re in the former camp — and if you’re reading this, you probably are — the latter camp can seem inscrutable. These people hardly ever look at political news. They hate discussing politics. But they do care about issues and candidates, and they often vote. As the 2024 election takes shape, this...