Host Scott Aaron Rogers welcomes Sheila Kennedy — emerita professor, former ACLU Indiana director, former Republican congressional candidate, daily blogger at SheilaKennedy.net, and one of Indiana’s sharpest voices on law, politics, and civic life — for a wide-ranging conversation about how Indiana and America got here, and whether we can get out. Using the Strauss-Howe generational theory as a loose framework, Scott and Sheila walk through eight decades of American political history: the incomplete promise of the New Deal era, the upheavals of the 60s and 70s, Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the slow-motion capture of the Republican Party by its worst elements, the unraveling of the 90s and 2000s, and the full-blown crisis of the MAGA era. Kennedy — who was a Republican for 35 years, served in the administration of Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut, ran for Congress in 1980 on the same ballot as Ronald Reagan, and led the Indiana ACLU — offers a front-row account of watching the party she belonged to transform from a big tent into what she calls a fascist, racist, anti-Semitic cult. She draws a sharp distinction between genuine capitalism and the corporatism that has captured American government, explains why Indiana is a non-competitive state rather than a genuinely red one, and makes the case that the emergence of independent candidates — 240 ran in the last two cycles, winning at a 52% clip — may be the key to breaking the gerrymandering-induced apathy that keeps Indiana voters home. Cautiously optimistic about the 2026 midterms, Kennedy closes with a call to show up at the No Kings rallies and a reminder that her apolitical sister, walker and all, had better spine than Todd Young.
WHAT’S INSIDE:
00:00:23 - Show Opening and Guest Introduction
• Broadcasting from Bloomington; HoosLeft Live podcast intro
• Guest bio: BS and JD with honors from IU (1975), managing editor of Indiana Law Review, Indianapolis corporation counsel 1977-1980, Republican congressional candidate 1980, ICLU executive director 1992-1998, IU SPEA faculty through 2020, author of 10 books, daily blogger at SheilaKennedy.net
• Tonight: a long life in Indiana politics, policy, and public service — how we got here and how we might make it through
00:04:09 - Welcome and the Strauss-Howe Framework
• Kennedy: born in Indianapolis, raised in Anderson (”they better not bury me there”), will die in Indiana
• Scott introduces the Strauss-Howe “saeculum” — 80-100 year Anglo-American historical cycles (via Thom Hartmann)
• Arnold Toynbee: “When the last man who remembers the last great crisis dies, the next great crisis becomes inevitable”
• Kennedy’s life neatly situated between the WWII crisis and the current one; invites her to describe post-war Indiana
00:07:18 - Growing Up Post-War: The World MAGA Wants Back
• Raised in Anderson; father fought in WWII; first political memory: House Un-American Activities Committee — scary even for a young child
• MAGA nostalgia targets “a time that never was” — post-war prosperity was real but exclusive: GI Bill only for white men, women expected in the kitchen
• Betty Friedan’s “disease with no name” — going to law school as a woman in the 70s was considered scandalous (”your children will all be on drugs”)
• What MAGA actually wants restored: the era when straight white Christian men ruled the roost — not the economy, the hierarchy
00:16:18 - Nixon, the Southern Strategy, and the Death of the GOP
• Nixon lured white Southern conservatives (Dixiecrats) from the New Deal coalition — they’ve since consumed the entire Republican party
• Kennedy was a Republican for 35 years; served in Hudnut administration, ran for Congress — “Bill Hudnut is rotating in his grave and so is Dick Lugar”
• “The party I belonged to no longer exists” — replaced by “a fascist, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-female cult”
• The opposite of liberal is not conservative — it’s illiberal; today’s MAGA doesn’t give lip service to the founding ideals the way even the worst actors used to
• Democrats now a sprawling tent of everyone from former Republicans to the left — herding cats; incoherent messaging is structural, not a failure of strategy
00:21:26 - Civic Illiteracy and the Collapse of Liberal Democracy
• Kennedy founded the Center for Civic Literacy at IU — “Americans revere the Constitution, have no idea what’s in it”
• The founders were liberal in the classical sense; even the worst actors in American history at least gave lip service to “all men are created equal” — MAGA doesn’t bother
• These people were always there — Kennedy always knew they existed — but she estimated maybe 15%; polling now shows it’s closer to 30%
• Son’s post-2016 assessment: two types of Trump voters — those for whom the racism resonated, and those for whom it was not disqualifying
00:26:25 - Kennedy’s Breaking Point: Leaving the Republican Party
• Left the GOP officially in 2000 over George W. Bush — “I thought this was rock bottom”
• Stonewall Democrats threw her a coming out party, raised $8,000
• Ran for Congress alongside Mike Pence — both lost that year; he’d periodically have her on his call-in show as “good friend Sheila”
• Led the ICLU while still a Republican — alternative paper headline: “ICLU taken over by card-carrying Republican”
• Her political philosophy is the same as it’s always been — the Overton window moved so now Republicans would label her a communist
• Now looks back at George W. “almost fondly” — that’s the measure of how bad things have gotten
00:30:05 - Indiana’s Political Seasons: Birch Bayh → Richard Lugar→ Evan Bayh → Mike Pence
• Birch Bayh as avatar of the New Deal spring; Dick Lugar as bridge figure — “brilliant, thoughtful, ethical” on arms reduction, even if she disagreed with him on choice; Kennedy got her start running Lugar’s mayoral campaign (the “71 Committee for Lugar”)
• Evan Bayh was nothing like his father — finger in the wind, no stable philosophy; Kennedy’s best laugh ever came at Andy Jacobs’ retirement roast: “I apologized for calling him a Democrat — in Indiana, we (GOP) have ours AND yours, like Evan Bayh”
• Evan Bayh as the prototype of politicians who put keeping their own ambition above the common good, their oath, and the public interest — Todd Young is cut from the same cloth; “Young knows better”
• Mike Pence as avatar of the unraveling winter — politely articulated Christian nationalism before it was mainstream; Kennedy credits him for refusing to overturn the election but doubts his successors would show the same restraint
• Fall of Soviet Union (early 90s) as the hinge point — unchecked capitalism, Blue Dog Democrats helping gut New Deal protections
00:38:10 - What Does the Democratic Vision Look Like?
• Scott: Project 2025 is horrific but at least it’s a vision — where’s the Democratic equivalent?
• Kennedy: we don’t have too much capitalism, we have corporatism — capture of government by the wealthy; antitrust unenforced; healthcare should never have been a market
• Need something like Nuremberg trials — an information event so overwhelming it breaks through the self-curated media bubbles people live in
• Structural reforms: end gerrymandering, kill the filibuster, pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act
• Nationally: expects an enormous blue wave in the 2026 midterms; lower courts are still holding and winning cases on vote suppression; cautious optimism
• Wants the national Democratic Party to clear out the old guard and elevate the impressive younger bench that exists
00:43:44 - Indiana Specifically: Non-Competitive, Not Red
• Indiana is not a red state — it’s a non-competitive state, thanks to extreme gerrymandering working as “sophisticated vote suppression”
• Why turn out if there’s no one on the ballot? One of Kennedy’s graduate students lived in Noblesville and found zero competition when he went to check his ballot
• 240 independents ran in the last two cycles across Indiana; 52% won — including mayors of Huntington and Bedford
• Greg Ballard running for Secretary of State as an independent; Independent Indiana believes rural voters will vote independent even if they won’t vote Democrat
• Democrats running someone in all 25 state Senate seats up in 2026 for the first time since 1974; 91+ contested state House races, up from ~70 two years ago
• The rutabaga rule: in rural Indiana, a rutabaga with an R next to its name gets elected — independents give people permission to vote differently
00:51:09 - The System Holds? Corporatism, Fascism, and Whether 2026 Matters
• Scott: political axis is shifting back from culture war to economics — far left and far right now share a critique of corporatism, disagree wildly on the solution
• Kennedy: “The new gilded age has gotten too big to ignore” — economic pain will only increase under Trump, raising the salience of economics further
• Corporatism = merger of corporation and state = Mussolini’s definition of fascism
• The Supreme Court’s corruption is what has upset Kennedy most — a court now “looking for ways around long-settled law”
• Lower courts still functioning; Kennedy believes elections will happen and will mostly hold — but the result will “tell us whether there’s a future for the United States”
• No Kings rallies (nationwide, March 28): Kennedy urges every listener to attend somewhere; Scott plans to catch the Cincinnati rally; her apolitical sister protested outside Todd Young’s office with a walker and a sign: “I may not have a good spine, but I have one”
00:56:36 - Closing and Where to Find Sheila Kennedy
