Kudzu Vine

Dr. John Sides

John Sides is Professor of Political Science and William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair at Vanderbilt University. He studies political behavior in American and comparative politics. He is an author of The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy, Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and The Battle for the Meaning of America, and The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Election  He helped found Good Authority and its predecessor, The Monkey Cage, both of which are sites about political science and politics. He has also written for such outlets as FiveThirtyEight, the Boston Review, Bloomberg View, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times. He serves as Research Advisor to the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. He received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He previously taught at the University of Texas-Austin and George Washington University.

Jon Michaels, co-author of Vigilante Nation

Jon Michaels is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. His scholarly and teaching interests include constitutional law, administrative law, national security law, the separation of powers, presidential power, regulation, bureaucracy, and privatization. Michaels is a graduate of Williams College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and Yale Law School, where he served as an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal. Michaels clerked first for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court. Immediately prior to his appointment at UCLA, Michaels worked as an associate in Arnold & Porter’s National Security Law and Public Policy Group in Washington, DC. A two-time winner of the American Constitution Society’s Cudahy Award for scholarly excellence in administrative law and an elected member of the American Law Institute, Michaels has written essays for the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Foreign Affairs, Time Magazine, and the Guardian. He is a frequent legal affairs commentator for national and local media outlets. His 2017 book, Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic, was published by Harvard University Press. Michaels’s second book, titled Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy will be published by Simon & Schuster/Atria in October 2024.

Steve Singiser

Steve Singiser will join to discuss what happened in the 2024 election and where the Democrats go from here with a special emphasis on Steve's home state of California.

Jeff Singer of the Downballot

Jeff Sinnger will join us to discuss the election results from the 2024 Campaign

Tom Jensen

Tom Jensen will join us on our last season before Electtion Day 2024 and share with us what the latest polling is telling us about Tuesday's election.