In the latest episode of “Fireside Chats,” Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal talks with David Frum, Daily Beast writer and author of the new novel Patriots. In the clip below, they take on why Democrats have had trouble gathering support for stimulus programs during the current recession. “We’ve gone from Speaker Pelosi and the new Obama presidency and the idea of this wave of progressive energy to really trying to fight between the center and the center right,” Konczal notes.

As Konczal explains, “The real New Deal that we think of – the core economic security and managing the business cycle and so on – occurred in ’35,” when the economy was expanding. Meanwhile, “the conservative agenda to roll back the Great Society and the New Deal” unfortunately becomes more feasible in tough economic times like ours. The public becomes more risk averse and prefers austerity policies to big and potentially risky spending programs. Major liberal reforms, however necessary and beneficial they may be, are just very hard to pass during bad economic times.

The current grim economic condition, as well as the increase in media culture and accelerating ethnic change, have caused a transformation of American politics. Watch the full conversation below in which Konczal and Frum discuss this transition, what a Romney budget would look like, and the future of Obamacare.