The Trump era inspired a wave of reckonings with the history and trajectory of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party often takes a passive role in these narratives, forever crafting an agenda in response to the actions of a more aggressive, emboldened Republican Party post-Reagan. Amid the erosion of organized labor, the dismantling of social welfare programs, and the deregulation of corporations in the latter half of the twentieth century, Democrats’ failure to defend or repeat their most ambitious projects, like the New Deal or the Great Society, seemingly testifies to their relative powerlessness in the face of Republican governance.

Historian Lily Geismer’s new book Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality is a comprehensive and critical look at the development of the Democratic Party, from the Watergate Babies to the neoliberal turn under Bill Clinton and beyond. In Geismer’s account, the Democratic Party has not simply been playing defense for half a century; instead, Democrats actively undermined New Deal–era social programs as they sought to marketize public goods for maximum efficiency.

Jacobin’s Daniel Denvir sat down with Geismer to discuss how the story of the new right can only be understood alongside the past fifty years of neoliberalization in the Democratic Party. You can listen to the episode here. This conversation has been edited for clarity.