Heather Cox Richardson

speaker

448 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 20 Jul

Heather Cox Richardson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Best People with Nicolle Wallace · Heather Cox Richardson on America’s Vibe Shift · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

I didn't have any and would not have any MAGA supporters working with me. matched

And then I looked at the list and realized that some of the people on that list were quite staunch former Republicans who are now, funnily enough, to the left of a number of people in the Democratic Party. matched

And what it reminds me of is, again, the 1850s. matched

What happens is, as the Democratic, in that case, party becomes more and more beholden to a very small group of elite slave owners, less than 1% of the American population. matched

As that happens, the Democrats who were involved in the party for other reasons—and there were a number of reasons that people joined the Democratic Party in that period— matched

They formed their own organizations. matched

They come up with all these different ways of engaging with politics, but they leave behind the extremists. matched

And so what you end up finally getting, and I think we are not at this point yet in the United States, is they make the connection. matched

between a very small group of people running the country, running the government, and the fact that they are losing economic prosperity and economic mobility. matched

And one of the things the Democrats really have not done yet, or those of us who are articulating the problems with our country right now, is linking that corruption to the price of lettuce. matched

Because they really are the same story. matched

And that same story is also the story of democracy. matched

If you have a country that works for the good of an authoritarian or of an oligarchy, they're going to concentrate wealth and power among themselves, and they're going to charge you more for the products that they produce that you need. matched

Mm-hmm. matched

And at the same time, you're going to lose clean water and clean air and health care and the ability to make rent and educate your kids and so on. matched

But you're also going to be watching them revel in extraordinary corruption because they have all the wealth and the power and they've gotten rid of the rule of law. matched

And one of the things that was so genius about Abraham Lincoln was, and the people around him, not just him, but the people who were articulating a vision in the late 1850s, was they brought all these things together and said, if you want to be able to get a job or to be able to work your way up in the new state of Illinois, matched

You need to make sure that the enslavers don't come in and buy up all the great property, and then you're just going to have to work for them, and you're going to work for pennies, and you're not going to be able to say in your government because you're going to have to do what they say. matched

And as you do that, all of your hard work is going to go into their pockets. matched

And that's what they articulated in such a way that the majority of Americans got behind the idea of getting rid of the elite enslavers. matched

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