Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Sean Westwood - What's Really Driving the American Political Crisis & Polarization?

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Interview Only w/ Sean Westwood - What's Really Driving the American Political Crisis & Polarization? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace,
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  Speaker 1: so use that code well. Joining me now is Sean Westwood.
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  Speaker 1: He is one of the founders of the Polarization Research Lab,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: basically a joint project of Sean Westwood at Dartmouth. He's
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  Speaker 1: also a fellow at the Hoover Institute. Penn and Stanford
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: are also a part of this. I'm sure he will
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  Speaker 1: tell me more than are a part of this research lab,
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  Speaker 1: and the lab's mission is simple, simply what it says, right.
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  Speaker 1: It is to try to diagnose the roots of polarization
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  Speaker 1: in America, all this animosity that we have and trying
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  Speaker 1: to see if we can measure this, see if there
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  Speaker 1: is a data driven way to answer this question rather
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  Speaker 1: than a vibes way of answering this question, and I
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  Speaker 1: was intrigued when I wrote about Bridge grades, a new
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  Speaker 1: project of a gentleman on substock. I put this on
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  Speaker 1: a column a couple of week Grind and he's trying
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  Speaker 1: to find the most essentially the members of Congress who
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  Speaker 1: try to work across partisan ways and those that don't.
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  Speaker 1: And he uses the polarization lab as one of his
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  Speaker 1: one of his metrics, and I wanted to get to
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  Speaker 1: know more about the polarization lab. Sean Western joins me. Now, Sean,
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  Speaker 1: it's nice to meet you.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pleasure to have this chance to talk
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  Speaker 2: with you today, Sean.
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  Speaker 1: So let's give me the origin story of the polarization
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  Speaker 1: research lab. What was the was this? Say? Tell me
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  Speaker 1: when the brainstorm became a reality. So this week goes.
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  Speaker 2: Back to about twenty ten in California, and I was
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  Speaker 2: noticing friends avoiding contact with people who disagreed on political issues,
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  Speaker 2: and I really wondered, is that something that's more of
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  Speaker 2: a global phenomena in the US or is that just
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  Speaker 2: a peculiarity of PhD students at Stanford. And it really
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  Speaker 2: started my engagement in this literature that built over time
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  Speaker 2: to twenty twenty. When we saw the attack on the
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  Speaker 2: Capitol and a lot of narrative around that attack that
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  Speaker 2: I didn't think was grounded in data from there, we decided, well,
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  Speaker 2: you know what, if we think that there were measurement problems,
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  Speaker 2: maybe we should enter the arena. Maybe we should do
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  Speaker 2: the measurement. So we started collecting weekly survey data of
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  Speaker 2: American in the United States to try and understand the
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  Speaker 2: extent to which they hate the other side of the
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  Speaker 2: extent to which they support democratic norm violations, and the
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  Speaker 2: extent to which they're willing to endorse or support political violence.
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  Speaker 2: That then elevated a key question in our mind, which is,
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  Speaker 2: why do Americans hate each other so much?
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  Speaker 1: Why are they willing.
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  Speaker 2: To support democratic norm violations? Why are they willing to
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  Speaker 2: say that they support political violence? And I think the
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  Speaker 2: key explanation for us was political leaves. Artisanship is one
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  Speaker 2: of the few spaces in American culture, but there's actually
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  Speaker 2: an incentive to be negative. We have cultural norms that
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  Speaker 2: suggests that if you're racist, you should suppress those racist thoughts.
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  Speaker 2: If you're sexist, you should suppress those sexist thoughts. But
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  Speaker 2: in partisanship, it's the exact open say, you should be
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  Speaker 2: as negative as you possibly can. To be a good
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  Speaker 2: Democrat or to be a good Republican, you have to
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  Speaker 2: denigrate as much as you can. You have to signal
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  Speaker 2: that you're a good member of the n group. We
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  Speaker 2: really wanted to understand how that pressure, how that rhetoric,
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  Speaker 2: how that infitrail from elites is diving American artisan disdain.
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  Speaker 1: So are we sure this is a new phenomenon.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think it is a real phenomenon. I think
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  Speaker 2: that is the biggest mistake that folks in this space makes.
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  Speaker 2: So we have survey data going back to the nineteen sixties,
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  Speaker 2: but the reality is that the most toxic parts of
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  Speaker 2: American history are much older than that. Right, I who
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  Speaker 2: look at threats to democratic norms, we just have to
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  Speaker 2: look to the alien.
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  Speaker 1: And sedition X Right.
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  Speaker 2: If we want to look at political violence, we have
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  Speaker 2: the entirety of the post reconstruction era. So we certainly
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  Speaker 2: do have a lot of purchase on the extent to
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  Speaker 2: which there's anger at the moment. But it is really
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  Speaker 2: wrong to suggest that we're more polarized or more willing
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  Speaker 2: to tolerate democratic backslending.
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  Speaker 1: We've ever been before. So I have a theory, and
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  Speaker 1: theories are just that right. You have a thesis and
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  Speaker 1: you test the premise. The farther away we get from
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  Speaker 1: the Cold War, the more I'm starting to believe the
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  Speaker 1: Cold War was an outlier period in American history. And
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  Speaker 1: if you look at the makeup of American politics in
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  Speaker 1: the twenty first century, if you look at the competitiveness
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  Speaker 1: between the two parties in the twenty first century, looks
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  Speaker 1: an awful lot like the nineteenth century. Whether you want
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  Speaker 1: to go from eighteen sixty six through the turn of
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  Speaker 1: the century, or whether you want to look between Jackson
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  Speaker 1: and Lincoln and they and the seven presidents that we
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  Speaker 1: had in twenty four years, is it possible this is
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  Speaker 1: our natural state than think you.
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  Speaker 2: One of the things that goes really underappreciated is the
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  Speaker 2: fact that democracy is inherently competitive. It's inherently conflictual. For
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  Speaker 2: one side to win, the other side must lose. You're
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  Speaker 2: exactly right in noting that the Cold War gave us
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  Speaker 2: a common enemy that we unite against and that may
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  Speaker 2: have given up all sense of stasis or also calm.
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  Speaker 2: The reality is that most democratic nations are intensely intllectual
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  Speaker 2: are intensely polarized. The fact that we or many Americans
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  Speaker 2: saw a period of calm may just have miscalibrated expectations
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  Speaker 2: from what is really the baseline level of conflict and
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  Speaker 2: animosity that finds a democratic system.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's funny. It's like I like
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  Speaker 1: to remind people within three years of the Berlin while
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  Speaker 1: following the Republican Party of pre World War two showed
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  Speaker 1: back up in the form of Pat Buchanan, Right, So
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  Speaker 1: it was it was, you know, we It's almost as
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  Speaker 1: if everybody you grow, oh, the pause is over, Let's
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  Speaker 1: go back to a more partisan times, a more uh.
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  Speaker 1: And so knowing that is there is there is there
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  Speaker 1: a good answer to polarization. Is there a point where
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  Speaker 1: you just accept that this is and you have to
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  Speaker 1: operate in a system that, hey, we're always going to
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  Speaker 1: be a little bit polarized.
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  Speaker 2: I think it's a mistake to think that there is
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  Speaker 2: a singular fix. That There's been a lot of research
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  Speaker 2: attempting to band aid on a bullet runk, so to
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  Speaker 2: create public service announcements where elected officials talk about how
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  Speaker 2: they respect individuals of the other party, or to share
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  Speaker 2: messages on how we have a common national identity, and
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  Speaker 2: those are effective for the moment. They will shift attitudes
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  Speaker 2: by a few percentage points for a few weeks, but
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  Speaker 2: those aren't long term remedies. The reality is that we
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  Speaker 2: have to deal with the world that is polarized. But
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  Speaker 2: we should question the extent to itch stuff read and
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  Speaker 2: that's something that my work is focused on in the
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  Speaker 2: last decade or so. So it is the case that
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  Speaker 2: we're more polarized than most of our peer democracies, but
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  Speaker 2: it is not the case actually that that actually leads
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  Speaker 2: to negative effects. So polarization does not cause us to
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  Speaker 2: abandon bipartisanship. Polarization does not cause us to support democratic
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  Speaker 2: norm violations. It does not cause us to support violence.
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  Speaker 2: It does not cause us to question democratic institutions. These
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  Speaker 2: are co occurring events. So it is a mistake to
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  Speaker 2: say that polarization in and of itself is a threat.
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  Speaker 2: What is a threat or the structural changes that have
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  Speaker 2: led to polarization, or the behavioral changes that have led
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  Speaker 2: to polarization, because those things are also causing support for
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  Speaker 2: democratic backsliding. It's not that there's this intermediary stack where
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  Speaker 2: elites behave badly, That leads to polarization. That polarization leads
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  Speaker 2: to us push back against democratic ones. It's elites behaving badly,
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  Speaker 2: causing polarization and simultaneously pushing Americans to question democracy.
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  Speaker 1: Do we have Look, I will contend that we have
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  Speaker 1: some structural things that we've led atrophy that have contributed
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  Speaker 1: to the to the to what feels like we have
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  Speaker 1: no choice but to be polarized? And what do I
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  Speaker 1: mean by this? So I'm obsessed about expanding the House.
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  Speaker 1: I think that it's a a relief valve, not the
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  Speaker 1: relief valve, a relief valve in that I think that
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  Speaker 1: that we've the congressional districts are too big, it's too
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  Speaker 1: easy for one faction to essentially hijack the district, control
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  Speaker 1: the district. You know, the bigger these districts are, the
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  Speaker 1: easier it is to gerrymander the you know, the smaller
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  Speaker 1: in population, the harder it would be to do it,
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  Speaker 1: and it would be less necessary. Is do you view
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  Speaker 1: so that that you know there's that there's open primaries,
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  Speaker 1: getting rid of partisan primaries. That's another potential relief valve
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  Speaker 1: that that that folks advocate in all of this So
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  Speaker 1: is it it's just having new pipes for this energy
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  Speaker 1: to flow through? It is are these durable things worth pursuing?
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  Speaker 2: So I'm actually writing a book now on electoral reforms,
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  Speaker 2: and the core argument is that when you implement a
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  Speaker 2: reform like rank choice voting or proportional representation, or you
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  Speaker 2: create open primaries, on some measures, you'll see improvement. On
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  Speaker 2: other measures, you'll see negative effects, You'll see negative externalities.
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  Speaker 1: And the main example on some of this where something
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  Speaker 1: that we thought was going to be a positive turned
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  Speaker 1: into a negative.
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  Speaker 2: So I think that the most pressing threat that I've
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  Speaker 2: found is election denihilism. So with ring choice voting, it's
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  Speaker 2: very possible that you could go to bed the night
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  Speaker 2: of election seeing that your candidate has secured the most votes.
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  Speaker 2: A few days or a few weeks later, now maybe
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  Speaker 2: the candidate who had the fewest votes on Tuesday night
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  Speaker 2: as won the election. That can be very destabilizing in
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  Speaker 2: a country where a large gyps of Americans are already
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  Speaker 2: unlikely to trust outcomes.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I have I like the I like the premise
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  Speaker 1: of ranked choice voting. I think the practice is very
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  Speaker 1: hard to convince the public that it's on the up
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  Speaker 1: and up, and I think that's exactly right.
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  Speaker 2: So if you even look at the expenditures in twenty
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  Speaker 2: twenty four, I think Oregon is a good example of this,
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  Speaker 2: where the individual supporting ranked choice voting outspent the opponent
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  Speaker 2: six one hundred and forty six to one and still lost.
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  Speaker 1: By double digits.
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  Speaker 2: Right, the American public hasn't bought into a lot of
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  Speaker 2: these reforms. That isn't to say that they're not valuable,
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  Speaker 2: that isn't to say that they couldn't function as a
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  Speaker 2: pressure release valve. But I think we already have mechanisms
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  Speaker 2: in place that we're abandoning. So for a long time,
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  Speaker 2: the parties were much more powerful in the House. Party
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  Speaker 2: leadership was much more powerful in the House. They could
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  Speaker 2: utilize individuals who are stoking conflict, who are abandoning their
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  Speaker 2: responsibilities for their constituents, which some from powerful committees discipline
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  Speaker 2: them from within the chamber. That kind of behavior is
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  Speaker 2: kind of why. So I certainly think that there are
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  Speaker 2: long term plays like open primaries or proportional representation are
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  Speaker 2: expanding the size of the House that could be effective.
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  Speaker 2: But ironically, I think stronger party control within our existing
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  Speaker 2: House and Senate is probably the easiest most realistic critics.
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  Speaker 1: I actually just had that. I mean, look, McCain fine
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  Speaker 1: Gold was the massive unintended consequence of McCain find goals
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  Speaker 1: that took financial power away from the major parties?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely, And now the control of the House
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  Speaker 2: is so tenuous that leaders are in a position where
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  Speaker 2: they can't hold back, they can't amalize lest they totally
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  Speaker 2: lose control of the chamber.
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  Speaker 1: Are we trying to fit a country of three hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifty million people into two parties that don't want
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  Speaker 1: to be in two parties?
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  Speaker 2: I think that's probably right. The trick is that moving
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  Speaker 2: from two parts to a multi party system is a
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  Speaker 2: very very hard thing to do.
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  Speaker 1: Really. The only example, especially because of our structure, I
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  Speaker 1: mean it's.
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  Speaker 2: Especially because of our structure exactly.
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  Speaker 1: That ballot and you know, I always say, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the only reason the two parties are surviving is ballot access.
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  Speaker 1: That's exactly great.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, probably the best askwards deflating the control the
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  Speaker 2: two parties had would be proportional representation, but that would
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  Speaker 2: require an Act of Congress, so it would require the
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  Speaker 2: individuals would be disadvantaged as a result of the reform,
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  Speaker 2: to acquiesce to the reform, and I don't think that
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  Speaker 2: we're going to have a South Africa like moment here
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  Speaker 2: in our country. I think so that it's also just
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  Speaker 2: historically unlikely to move from a two party system to
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  Speaker 2: a multiparty system with a singular reform. Really the only
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: country we have where that's happened is New Zealand, and
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: even then New Zealand did have minor parties, it just
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: weren't very powerful or very influential before.
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  Speaker 1: I always have an answer to this. You know how
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: many teams play in the NBA Finals, I honestly have
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: no idea, the point being there's only two teams. How
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: many teams playing the super Bowl? There's only two teams? Like,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I do think that even when you look at multi
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: party systems, there's usually two right. There's usually a leading
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: left and a leading right. So I think there's always
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: going to be this gravitational pull two to two. Sure,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the question is what do you so? For instance, the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: fastest growing party in America is no Party Right, particularly
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: among voters under the age thirty five. For me, that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: looks like a total protest against the two party system.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: But I don't know whether it's a protest against the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: two party system or a protest against these two parties.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: And I guess that's what would your lab say, How
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: would you research this?
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: I think would be a bit of both. So one
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: of the more interesting things that we've observed in the
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: period after twenty sixteen is that not only have we
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: seen anger toward the other party growing, but we've seen
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: individuals become less positive towards the bear party. So it's
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: not just that you have.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: The negative, they're they're negative, un right, I mean I
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: always Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer have the same problem.
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  Speaker 1: Their own party is unfavorable on them, and the other
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: party doesn't like them, which is why, like Schumer joined
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: McConnell in that, Why is McConnell's so unpopular because his
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: own party doesn't like him and the Democrats don't like him?
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  Speaker 1: Well that's now Chuck Schumer exactly.
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  Speaker 2: So there are there's a subset of America. There are
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: some set of Americans who just don't see anything good
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: or not over the two parties. And then there's a
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: subset of the American electorate that remembers the Democratic Party
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: as it was ten years ago. Or remember it's the
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Republican Party as it was under the control break and
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: are just trying to see a way back to I
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: guess those more healthy in days, right, But it's not
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: clear how that happens. It's not clear in a system
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: with our primaries where you allow a third party to
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  Speaker 2: become competitive and the attempts that we've seen, cults of personality,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: the ross bro crossed rows in the world just haven't
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: been able to leverage the American public in the way
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: that Nagel Karaj has, or that.
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  Speaker 1: I would argue Pero did until he flaked out, right,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: he became he kind of got flaked, but he he
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: had done it, he was about to and then he
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: went through his You know, I would argue his own
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: ego got in the way, right, he got he got
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: paranoid about you know, he didn't become a cult of personality, right, sure,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: but he had captured something, and you know, his candidacy
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: did force both parties to look inward in different ways.
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  Speaker 1: And even though he lost, he succeeded and he moved
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  Speaker 1: the Democrats to become more focused on the debt, and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: certainly Clinton arguably focused more on deficit issues. You could
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: you could say because of the pro candidacy, and I
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: think over time he got the Republicans to sort of
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: take another look at their free trade practices. It is
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  Speaker 1: he was a relief valve a little bit, no, is
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: is it that we could use a temporary relief valul
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: ref Yeah, I.
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  Speaker 2: Think that's the problem. He was a relief valve, but
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  Speaker 2: so brief that I don't know if most Americans would
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  Speaker 2: even remember who he was, or what he did or
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  Speaker 2: what he advocated for. So in the modern era, I
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  Speaker 2: guess I would support any relief right. I would support
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: anyone who can lower the temperature, who can move the
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: two parties closer to I guess a point of moderation.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not so delusional as to say that we need
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: a perfect fix, But at the same time, I am
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: hard pressed to imagine someone who have that rolite role today.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: If you look at the polling, it's not really clear
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  Speaker 2: that we have someone with that kind of financial resources
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  Speaker 2: who with appealing to a segment of both the Democrats
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  Speaker 2: and the Republicans.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Well, this episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you by Quints. This time of year always makes me
• 19:19
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  Speaker 1: use that code. The rich guy is going to have
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a hard time getting uh getting getting appeal right now
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: right the the the dream businessman mindset like that ain't
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: cut in it with I think today's independent voter.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: I think the only person who's even remotely close would
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: be Mark Cuban. But it's not clear that he has.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: In yeah no, I I oh, I think he has
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the interest. He doesn't want to. I think he thinks
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: it's going to be very hard on that front. Let's
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: go back to open primaries a minute, because in some
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: ways you you do have the state laboratories to measure things.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Let's and actually this isn't a state that has opened
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: prime well, I guess it kind of does because there's
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: no party registration. Let's take Texas. Texas had a state
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: House that had cross partisan control. It's something that actually
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: many people And it's amazing how often I have to
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: remind people in Washington literally this. It hasn't been that
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: long ago. It was just a cycle ago that that
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: you had a group of Texas Republicans who sort split
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: off from Abbot and a group of Democrats and they
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: were controlling the House. Well, you could argue they were depolarizing,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: So why did that work at a place like Texas?
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: So I think that Texas was an outlier. So if
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: we look at a lot of the places that have
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: implemented alternative voting rules, open primaries, ranked choice voting, there
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: are places that are overwhelmingly controlled by a single party.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: So in Berkeley, for example, with ranked choice voting, you're
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: still going to have a liberal Democrat win that election.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: It's just now a question of which of the liberal
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: room crats is going to win that election. I think
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Texas was special because Texas does have very blue urban
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: centers and very red rural communities where there is a
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: need to actually compromise with one another. In a way
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: that doesn't manifest in the Utah legislature or in the
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: California legislature. The California legislature is so overwhelmingly controlled by
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Democrats that Republicans are more or less window dieration. That's
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: not the case in Texas, or wasn't the case in Texas.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Right, But I could argue if you told me that
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the I mean, there is a divide inside the Democratic
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: majority that at some point you could see sort of
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: that trust, that sort of where there's a in the
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: same way with what happened, like Texas, Democrats had very
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: little power until there wasn't you know, until there was
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: this splinter group.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Right, Sure, sure, I mean it's certainly the case that
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: what works in California with Republicans and what works in
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Texas with Democrats is that you're not running the prototypical
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Republican of the prototypical Democrat.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: You're running a California.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Republican or a Texas Democrat. So a Republican who perhaps
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: is willing to discuss abortion or a Democrat who's willing
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: to discuss gone on our ship and done rights. Again,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: it's the case that we're not seeing a lot of
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: the alternative forms manifesting in places that are truly confected,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: in places where they might be a not too all
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: control from one party to the other. It's not as
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: we're looking at truly moderate states. We're looking at the
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: states that had very special, very odd dynamics.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Well, one could argue, though, that we've got a pretty
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: clean test of how states with all party primaries that
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: had Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach Trump.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: You know they you too, You know you could survive
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: in Washington State, you could survive. In California, valideo and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: new House survive. And we'll see if Valadeo survives this cycle.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: He's got a tougher, much tougher district, but that only
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: is because there wasn't partisan primary, So that I guess,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I guess. My question to you is that proof that
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: all party primaries are a a not the cure for polarization,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: but an antidote.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: I think it's proven that they can rape the two
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: party chokeold. I think that they can, in certain districts
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: with certain candidates, deliver outcomes that would otherwise be impossible.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: But it's not clear if they would generate competition across
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: the board in all districts and all states. So maybe
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: that's too lofty of a goal. Maybe it's too delusional
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: to say that there's a single reform that we can
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: implement that will make all house racism more competitive or
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: more fare. Maybe it's enough to say that we're allowing
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: candidates to survive in a few districts. I think at
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: this point in our political landscape, that might be the
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: best that we can oucour.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: That's a so, I mean you're sort of you're have
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you come to that conclusion or is what more would
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: you like to test to see before you came to
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: that conclusion.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: So the potal problem with all studies of elections is
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: that we have a very small and we're looking at
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: the presidency. For example, in the modern era, we have
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: maybe ten residential elections with house races because we redistrict
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: every ten years. It's also hard to generalize. So there's
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: a certain there's a certain need to try and read
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: across districts or to inject your own qualitative assessment, just
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: simply because the data aren't deep enough, the data aren't
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: robust enough. I think in this instance, I'm guilty of
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: injecting my own personal assessment on the data guiltiest.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Charge, right, No, I mean I think we all want
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: It's hard to not apply your own belief system here, right,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Like I ultimately believe we should be trying to get
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the democracy closer to the people. Sure, so that for
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: me is uncapping the House. That for me is getting
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: rid of partisan primaries. I think taxpayer funded primaries are unconstitutional.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I think the idea that I have to join a
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: private club in order to participate in a taxpayer funded
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: election seems like a violation of equal protection. So you
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: can I think, I think there's some case, potentially some law,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: But that's a theory, right, And it's my own bias
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: on that that believes that, But it's it does feel
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: like we have to change the incentive structure that that
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: we're our natural I guess I go back to this.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I think our natural state is polarization, and if we
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: don't want it, we actually have to legislate it out.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You have to, we have to. We are not this
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: is not going to norm its way out.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: So I think it's important to draw a distinction between
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: ALTI polarization and unhealthy polarization. Right, So it's important for
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: us to have divergent views. In many instances, compromises can
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: be destructive. They've led to some very dark moments in
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: our history. It's important to not achieve or not to
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: seek out copper as the only goal. It's important to
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: disagree on policy. It's important to very strongly disagree on policy.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: What's not helpful, though, is when that disagreement becomes just
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: at all consuming need to denigrate the opposition, where if
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I disagree with you on policy, I must also view
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: you as less intelligent, as less sophisticated, as less moral,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: as less ethical. Having strong policy disagreement it's absolutely normatively
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: required democracy. It's the inherent structor of democracy. I think
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: repolarization has become destructive. It's when it's entered into our
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: social decision making, when it's entered into our personal lives,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: and it's when politicians have decided that they're going to
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: turn disagreement on an issue into a source of mockery,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: into a source of denigration, and into a source of caricature.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: So you can certainly have principled policy disagreement without that
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: more answerus source of interpersonal conflict. It's just in the
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: modern era we haven't been able to separate the two.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Now it gets it just you know, it's really interesting
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: with negative polarization and how that is such a that
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: can be a motivator or a driver. There was a
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: couple of poll findings about two weeks ago that sort
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: of convinced me that there's a greater number of Trump
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: voters who are not big fans of Trump, but they
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: really hate the lips. Yeah, and what Trump is is
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a vehicle to tell the left wing elites to f
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: off right like that's and because and what led me
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to sort of like it was there was something like
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: only ten percent of Republicans thought it was a good
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: idea for Trump to name stuff after himself. And it's like, yeah,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: these folks aren't in love with Trump. What they love
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: is how he owns the left and that feels like
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: and I think it's what drives some of you know,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the popularity of say, you know, Stephen Colbert or the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: popular right that they just love to embarrass the right.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: And I guess how do we weed that out of
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: our politics?
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: I think we're already accidentally reading that out of our politics.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Local newspapers are dying, table news is becoming irrelevant. I
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: think we're in a very short order going to exist
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: in a world where if you are not opting into politics,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: you're probably not going to be exposed to it. If
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: you're not actively seeking out political information on X or
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Blue Sky, or actively seeking out the CNN stream or
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: the Hawk's news stream, you're not going to be part
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: of the discussion. The inadvertent audience has driven political coverage
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: in this country since the nineteenth fifties is going to vanish.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: The nightly news is going to become on our own.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: What's the other intellity consequence of that?
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that the fundamental problem
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: is that that's going to be destructive and helpful. It's
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: going to be destructive in that it's going to make
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: it so that those individuals who exist on political conflict
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: less relevant. It's going to make it so that the
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson's or the Hassan Pikers of the world are
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: going to maintain their own audience. But it's going to
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: be containerized and it's going to be something that individual
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: talk into. But it also means that Americans are not
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: going to have the information necessary in order to hold
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: elect officials accountable. So on the one end, it might
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: make altics less relevant, but on the other that lack
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: of awareness might make it easier for individuals who are
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: bent on destroying basic democratic institutions able to do so
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: without the pesky journalists pointing out what they're doing to
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: You know, you point out something. So my obsession with
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: reanimating local news and starting frankly with sports and youth
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: sports is sort of the foundational coverage to my thesis
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: on this is, you know, it can be that, it
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: can be what, you know, what classified revenue, classified ad
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: revenue was, But the point is trying to restore accidental information, right,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: which is what the local newspaper did. There's this great study,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and I think it's about fifteen or sixteen years old now,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: where there was a correlation and now it's a useless correlation,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: but there was a correlation between getting the newspaper delivered
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to your house and voting, and a couple of academics,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: in order to prove to see if this was just
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: sort of correlation or causation, did an experiment where they
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: found people who did not subscribe to the newspaper force
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: delivery for it and did increase voter turnout, and it
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: just turned out it was just simply awareness, right. That
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: part of it was if you didn't get a you
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: didn't know when the election was, But if you got
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: it delivered to your house, you were more likely to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: accidentally remember find out when election day was. And it
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: in just that little thing. Now, we're not rest oring
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: newspaper deliveries and all of that. That that ship has sailed.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: So do you think do you think it's a worthwhile
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: effort to continue to try to develop news organizations that
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: that maybe their main driver, and like in local news,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to me, it's about, you know, how are you helping
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: people live their lives? So you're helping them find cheaper chicken,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: or you helping them tell you where they're where, what
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: what what the school events are this week, and what
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: time the games are and all those things that in
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: that form of what I call service journalism. Right, you're
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: just sitting there here helping the community. You're not there,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: you're not you're not necessarily doing accountablity journalism. But you
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: might have a piece about the city council men who's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: ripping off taxpayers. But nobody paid attention to that piece.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: But maybe they stumbled across it because they were checking
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: something else out. I mean, if we don't have news
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: organizations that are doing that, are doing both of those things,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: which is what the previous sort of iteration of media did,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: it does seem like we will just make this worse.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty cynical. So there have been efforts to reconstruct
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: local news Atch, which was a pretty major initiative, maybe
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: about fifteen years ago from what was AOL at the time.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: As I I still see net positives out of the
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: patch idea, I think there's some true.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Night Foundation has invested really quite heavily in
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: trying to reconstitute local news, and the funner little problem
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: that they face, as I understand it, is that after
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: the initial seed money disappears, they don't have the eyes
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: and revenues to keep going. Now, that isn't to say, though,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: that there is no real alternative. It is certainly the
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: case that most government action is live stream on YouTube.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: You can see school board meetings, you can see town
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: hall meetings. AI makes it very easy to search that,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: to find in information that might have otherwise been buried
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: in a newspaper article, and to amplify it on TikTok
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: or reels or other social media platforms. But that's not
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: substitute for journalism. That's the kind of thing where someone
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: says something that sowed out loudish or so illegal or
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: so immoral it becomes viral. That's not going to help
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: anyone understand local school board policy or state budget issues.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: It's just not possible. So I guess I don't think
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: that there is empirical evidence to suggest that there is
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: a way to reconstruct local news without a strong public option,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: And there's just no culture elevent. In the US and
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: in European countries, public news is a main source of news,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: and it's led over the years to much higher levels
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: of political knowledge and much higher levels of political sophistication
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: and engagement. But in the US, public media is seen
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: as a mouthpiece of left that's not seen as universal news.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: It's not seen as unbiased news. So if it's not
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: going to be a rebirth of local news at the
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: market level, it's not going to be public news. I
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: really don't know what it will be. It's very depressing.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: It is. I mean, you know, look, I when you
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: know the fact that the the Democrats are basically pledging
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: to fight fire with fire and Jerrymanry it feels like
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: whatever little progress we were making on the idea of
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: fair districts, which I'd argue before twenty twenty, we were
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: making some progress, right short, states were passing it. Florida
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: was I think the most recent. You had one in Michigan,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you had one in Ohio. I mean there was some
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: where you could there was. It's it polls really well, right,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: this is one of those Yeah, it should be done fairly,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: we should get the policy, you know, so the concept
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: polls really well well. But now it's just a straight
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: up fight for power, and you're watching partisans. I'm seeing
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: it like both parties are divided on this question. Right,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: You really have sort of half that just want to say, Nope,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: this is a this is existential, and the other half going,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: this is uncomfortable. But it feels like we took a
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: big step back.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: It's hard to understate just how in democratic Bacsiloni is
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: so just this is going to sound like an insane comparison,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: but there's a direct connection between Barbara Boxer denying the
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: presidency of George W. Bush and Donald Trump deny the
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: election in twenty twenty. And I don't mean to say
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: that they're equivocal.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: They're not.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: But if you're a Republican and you've seen a prominent
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Democrat deny an election before, that is an excuse to
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: perhaps understand why a prominent Republican might be doing that.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Now it comes to your mission, do you is it
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: a full on permission slip? Yeah?
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: I think it is a full on permission slip. Right,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Like they've already done this, we have to respond in kind.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what we're seeing on Gerrymanderate. That's what
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: we're seeing on competing court I guess, competing lawsuits on
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: what should or should not be allowed in terms of
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: early balloting or mail in voting. It is the case
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: that everything has kind of degenerated to related something bad.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: We have to respond with that same bad thing, but
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: marginally worse. And that's how you end up in a
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: world where, after a few rounds of iteration, democracy is
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: really under threat. And there's empirical scholarship to suggest that
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: this is exactly what happens in voters' minds. They see
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: democratic pull back from one party and use that as
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: a justification for their own party responding kind.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Well, give me a couple of countries where you would
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: say we're we look, we might be emulating this more
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: than we realize.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I think that there are countries that we're emulating, but
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: those countries might also give us some hope. So Poland
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: to Hungary, for example, they were both dealing with very autocratic,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: orderline fascist governments. Both were voted out of office right
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: with piss and Hungary and Orbond. And I'm sorry piss
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: in Poland.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: And Orbond and Hungary.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a if there's a country
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: that we can point to and say we are headed
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: this way with no chance of recovery. I don't think
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: I would be comfortable in saying that, but I would
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: certainly say that we're a lot more like Germany and
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: off Day than or we'd like to admit. We're a
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: lot more like the United Kingdom and Reform than we
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: would like to admit.
• 39:49
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  Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer, so I have
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: another theories are too strong of a word. But you know,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: before two thousand and four, we had an incorrect presumption
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: about American politics, and the incorrect assumption was forty five
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: forty five, and then the ten in the middle right.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: And then of course what happened with micro targeting and
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: big data as it got introduced into the political system, Oh,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: we found out that the undecided they're not a bunch
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: of just squishy, middle, middle of the road people. They've
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: just got certain issues that animate them. And if you
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: animate a specific issue, you can push it right, or
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: if you animate another issue, you can push them left.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, it's one of those things. Ignorance
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: was bliss and when we had, you know, where politicians
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: thought in October they had to sound bipartisan in order
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: to win an election in November. And then micro targeting
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: comes along, big data comes along, and we go, oh,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: these undecided voters are not moderates, they have all sorts
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: of other reasons why they're undecided. Let's go message them directly.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: The fact that we don't have collective messaging, right, the
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: fact that we have siloed so many ways that you know,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: it's like, all right, we're going to get our gun voters,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: our abortion voters are and I can say this on
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: either side whether you know guns an abortion, depending on
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: your point of view, but we're going to We're going
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: to animate all of these sort of subgroups and then
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: collectively it should give us fifty percent plus one.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: That's right, I think is most hair hying here is
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: just how crude that micro targeting was. So we were
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: micro targeting individuals based on their age, their level of education,
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: their ethnicity. Incredibly crude but effective metrics. Today, though, with AI,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: you can learn everything about a person, right. You can
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: copy their exact voice, you can use phrases that they
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: might use them social media. You can figure out exactly
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: what products they are talking about, exactly what issues matter
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: to them, and make it so that it's not just
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: the message that you're delivering to young white males, it's
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: the message that you're delivering to the young white male
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: named Jack, So I think that we're only going to
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: see this become more and more disruptive. But you're exactly right.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: We went from parties that had really inflexible positions to
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: parties that are really strange agglomerations of issues that just
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: shouldn't fit together. We have populism on both the left
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: and right, joined with economic libertarianism on the right, and
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: with I think what you would consider to be traditional
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: democratic strong government on the left. They shouldn't make sense,
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: but they do.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: They resonatell You know the other thing that I that
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: folks will lament and they'll say and I think this
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: was relatively true in the seventies and eighties, and then
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: this stopped being true again. I think the Cold War
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: was the was sort of the pivot point. You had
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: ideological diversity in both parties. And that's not to say
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: there isn't ideological diversity that still kind of exists in
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: both parties, but less so the self sorting. Okay, I
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: did not, I don't think any of us. When I
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: was growing up in Miami, I don't. I didn't know
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: what my neighbor's politics were, and I happened to Miami
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: was kind of a swingish area at that time still
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: is sort of Miami Dide County. But now right, there's
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: democratic neighborhoods, there's Republican neighborhoods. And while they existed before,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: it was less so in the suburbs, right, it was
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: less so in the sort of the larger sort of
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: single family home neighborhoods. But self sorting seems to have been.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Is that an unintended consequence of polarization? Like and what's
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the chicken and egg on that one?
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: So the really interesting thing with your graphics sorting is
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: how discordant preferences are from behavior. So if you ask
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: voters if they would prefer to live in a place
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: that is aligned with them ideologically, people will overwhelmingly say yes.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: But if you give them any kind of trade off,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: if you tell them that in order to live, if
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: you're a Democrat, in order to live in a sold
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: league Democratic district, you would have to accept marginally poor
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: quality schools, or you would have to accept an overall
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: government that is perhaps less sufficacious, or if you accept
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: a longer commute. Most people aren't willing.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: To make that trade off. So it appears is if.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: The clustering is largely incidental, right, So people in particular
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: neighbors are united by socioeconomic situation, perhaps by ethnic considerations,
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: But it is not the case that most people are
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: moving to a particular place because of ideology. It just
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: happens to be the case. People in regions are becoming
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: more consistently democrat and more consistently Republican. But that's not
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: exactly a positive result, because it suggests that artisanship is
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: the lack of a better term, a bit tantageous.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Well. One of the concerns I've had is that if
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: you compare when we've seen other countries backslide on democracy,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: they've had some really harsh urban rural divides right than
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: as well in Turkey are the best examples, the quickest
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: examples I can come up with. It feels as if
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: when rural America went from sixty five to thirty five
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Republican to ninety ten, this got a whole lot worse.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I think that's right.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: So I think in individual neighborhoods and Americans are unlikely
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: to decide they're going to pick this block versus that
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: block because of the person.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Shit.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: But what you do have is liberal Americans who grew
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: up in Nebraska deciding, you know, they want to live
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: in New York, they want to live in California, or
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: conservatives in California deciding that they've had and not with
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: homelessness problem and relocating to Texas or Tennessee or the
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: heart So that's certainly Manesking In terms of the complete
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: segregation of the country by geographic region, I think that
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: that should really give us clause. It's what's happening in
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Germany right now with f Day.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: They're all the East, right, They're just dominating the politics
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: of the East.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's exactly because of it's happening in the
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: United States. The East is or it's less developed, or
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: fewer jobs, there are fewer opportunities. What you would use
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: to describe the rust Belt, you could easily use to
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: describe eastern Germany. We're moving in parallel together. The amazing
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: thing about Trump is that I don't think that he's
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: a strategic genius. I don't think that he in a
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: running co election in twenty sixteen, thought I am going
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: to try and speak to or underemployed fagues in the Midwest.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: You just happened to do it, and it happened to
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: be very successful. It could have potentially been a Democrat
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: who did the same thing.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Bernie might have. Bernie is nominee might have been that
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: very same Democrat that had done Bernie very well.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Might have been that same Democrat. But it's unclear now
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: how the current Democratic Party can compete with Trump on
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: issues that matter to those voters in rural Indiana who
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: are underemployed.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Well, I kind of look at I mean, I just
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: feel like if I were to pick one prescription, it
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: would be Democrats have to go get more competitive in
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: rural America in order to help America depolarize. Now, I
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: don't know what that means. Is that mean culturally of
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: rounding the edges of their more liberal cultural tendencies? Is it?
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: You know? I don't you know. We can There's all
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: sorts of ways that in theory, the party could could
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: change itself. But would that be like, let's do some
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: prescriptions here as we try to land this plane. Would
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: that be an effective prescription?
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: I think so, So I think that one of them
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: will come with the Democratic Party, is that the instituted
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: a series of litmus tests that only work in California
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: or New York or other solidly blue states. An added
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: up the Yes, the tests that we apply to candidates
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: on trends issues work well in Massachusetts, They're not going
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: to work for primary candidate in Utah. There's just no way.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I got this question. I'd love for you to address
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: this question actually, which is how should Democrats talk about
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: trans issues in order to not make it a liability
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: for the party and not throw trans people under the bus.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: Is there a message that would work? Yeah?
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: I think the best possible strategy would be what Republicans
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: are doing on an abortion now, which is to say
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: it's a local issue, it's a state issue. It should
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: be resolved by local communities based on the standards of
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: norms that they have come to define for themselves. Now,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: it is the case that we should do everything we
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: can protect transit, of course, but you can't govern if
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: you're not in power, and adopting some of these more
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: fundamental culture wars issues as immovable or monolithic's made it
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: so we've traded. The Democrats have traded off our for
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: moral clarity, and I certainly understand that it really helps
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of Democrats go to bed at night. But
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: that's not how you regain control over the country. It's
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: how you lower the temperature by functioning as a real
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: source of electoral competition in districts where you know, otherwise
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: no Democrats would have chance of winning.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: What other prescription.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Jerry mandering there As you said before, there is widespread
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: agreement that it is unfair. Americans don't like it, but
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: politicians are enacting it against our will. We need to respond.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: We need to push back against individuals who are trying
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: to game the political system for victory and not for
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: a function democracy. If we're to truly think big, I
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: think the malaportionment of the US Senate is one of
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: the most destructive courses in American politics. The fact that
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: we have the single worst upper chamber of any functioning
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: democracy should not be a signal of pride.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: I think that's explain that. Explain what you mean by
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: single worst.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: So we are that the Senate, the US Senate is
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: the most malaportioned legislative body on earth, which is to
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: say that the fact that we don't have one person,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: one vote in that the upper chamber, it is really
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: an outlier, and it's.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Worse than the House of Lords.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Well, it is worse in the House of lords for
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: a variety of reasons. The House of Lords is largely symbolic.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: The House of.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Lord is on a path now where every lord will
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: be appointed and where peerage will more or less be irrelevant.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: So you're going to have life peers and not hereditary peers.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: But even then, it's the case that the House of Lords,
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: as I guess, more symbolic meaning to the bricks than
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: the Senate. Senate is a real source of out It's
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: a real source of policy implementation in a way.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know how, you know. I don't think it's
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: changeable in the constitution.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: It would have to be a conspeitial moment. That's why I say,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to go big, go for
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: changing the structure.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: My friend Lindsay Schervinsky at the George Washington Library has
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: a Her plan would be to create tiers of states.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: So maybe the big four states would have five US senators,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: the next ten might have four and three. You know
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: that you would have this sort of tiered based on
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: population the number of senators different states get as a
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: way to try to at least somewhat equalize the Senate.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I think that's right.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I mean the bigger problem is that no matter what
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: we do, they're going to be negative science facts. For example,
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: if we expand the size of the House, if we
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: introduce multiple parties in the House, that's no guarantee that
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: we're going to have a series of centrist parties come together.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: It's equally plausible that you could have the populist parties
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: on the left and the populist parties on the right
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: come together in former government, or that you to end
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: up like Israel, where you have very small parties on
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: the total extreme of the ideological spectrum opting as kidmakers.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: So a lot of things that we could do that
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: would be helpful to our country. I guess the key
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: is to not over sell what they might do. So
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: is would ending gerrymandering fix all our owns? Would it
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: make a country better?
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: So would.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Fixing the malapportionment and the set fix all of our problems?
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: No?
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: Would it make a set it more responsive to the
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: will of the public. Makes it's hard to find out
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: magical ficks. I don't think if there is that singular fix,
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: I don't think there is that silver bullet. But what
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: we can do with citizens is largely focus on things
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: where we have real agency where we have a real power.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: So that means that if you don't like what a
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: member of Congress is don't is doing, don't just tweet
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: about it, right, that's going to do nothing. That may
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: certainly signal to your peers that's your a good and
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: loyal Democrat or a good and loyal Republican. But if
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: you truly object to what that representative is doing, give
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: money to the opposition, consider running for Congress. Go door
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: or door knock for, or the candidate that you think
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: might do a better job. Dry people to the polls
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: on the day of the election. Don't treat politics as
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: if it were a spectator sport. Don't treat politics as
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: if you're trying to cheer on your team in the
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: World Series.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Do the hard work you know you're getting it. Something
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: I've been asked to come up with a potential class
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: for incoming freshmen for a university, and one of the
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: ideas I had was, how about an introduction to the
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Constitution because I get the sense and more of like
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: a citizen's guide how a citizen should use the Constitution.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Because I do fear that we have the tools in
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: the toolbox. It's just so atrophied that I don't know
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: if we know how to use them. Like take uncapping
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the House. It got capped in nineteen twenty nine. There's
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: nobody alive today. My grandmother's ninety nine. She was born
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: in twenty seven, so she was technically alive when we
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: didn't have a cap on the house. But there's no
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: institutional memory of when. Oh yeah, the House of Representatives
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: always expanded with the population of the country, which it
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: did for one hundred and fifty years until it didn't.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: You know, constitutional amendments. I would argue that outside of
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: lowering the voting age to eighteen, we really haven't had
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: a consequential amendment as far as the democracy is concerned
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: since before FDR, because even all the FDR related amendments
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: were really about him, right, the twenty second Amendment and
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. So it's been arguably one hundred years
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: since we've had meaningful, small d democratic reform via the constitution,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: the income tax, direct election of senators, and women suffered.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: So one of the more ironic things about our current
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: local climate, it's just how much agreement there is on
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: the need to revitalize civics education.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll find.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: Groups on the left and the right who were dismayed
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: by the fact that it's been pushed out of high
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: schools because it's not part of standardized testing. You'll see
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: individuals arguing in the civic centers that have been created
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: in Ohio or Florida the need to teach the Constitution
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: as part of the college curriculum. But it's not a
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: national movement yet.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: It could be. I wish, I wish that it would be.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: I wish that every American had to add some baseline
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: understanding of how our government functions.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: All right, let's land this plane. What can people? What
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: do you what would what would be the best way
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: for any of my listeners to use the Polarization Lab,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: to use the tools that you've built at the Polarization Lab.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: So all of our data are all of our data
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: are open. You can go and see where Americans are
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: at any given moment on democratic norms, basslighting parties, and
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: Hatred's corporate political line.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Do you ask that question, would you let your daughter
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: or son marry somebody of the opposite political party that
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: I know that pol cut Yeah.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: So we don't ask that question, but that it will
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: do you know the story of that question.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: How that emerged, No, I do not.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: So this was about miscegenation. The idea was, let's try
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: to measure how much Americans object to someone marrying or
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: that someone's child marrying across the racial line. Let's include
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: partisanship is something that shouldn't matter at all. Right, So
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: we went from a world where interracial marriage was a
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: cultural wedge, partisanship was included as a control, to today
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: where racial marriage is not even an issue for most Americans.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: That partisanship has become its replacement. So you can certainly
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: look at general measures of where American attitudes are. But
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: I think the more useful thing that we ingust everything
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: that members of Congress say, So their floor speeches, their
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: X accounts, their newsletters, their press releases, and we categorize that.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: We use AI determine when they're talking about policy, what
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: policies they're talking about, when they're making personal attacks. So
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: you can go and you can see, you know, how
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: is my congress person performing, how is my senator performing.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: We've extended now to state level races, so you can
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: see what your state sider is doing, what your state
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: house member is doing. And in twenty twenty six. You
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: can actually see what every candidate or federal office is
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: staying as part of their campaign. So you can see
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: which candidates are building a platform of hostility and the conflict,
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: and which candidates are building a platform based on policy.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: You know, it's the same thing that our Bridge friend
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: friends found it that I sort of wrote about, which
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: was simply and I'm just looking at one of your dashboards.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Now you know the top five on each side of
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: the aisle that do policy discussion without attacking their opponents,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: and they are the ones that aren't looking for clicks, right.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: It's Maria Cantwell. It's Randy Feinstra, who replaced Steve King
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: in the House, Randy Fistra running for governor. It's Patty Murray.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: It's Verne Buchanan, a retiring Republican member of Congress. It's
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon. It's Bill Haggerty and Tennessee and
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: other you know, so it's interesting, it doesn't. What I
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: find interesting about your work is that you know, there's
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: going to be a perception that, oh, if you're in
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: a swing district, you're not polarizing. If you're in a
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: deep blue or deep red, you are, but that's not
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: been the case. Right Feenstra's in the most Republican district
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: in Iowa. He is not, but he's less polarizing in
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: his rhetoric than the three Republicans in the swing districts.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: So it really does come down to Canada quality, doesn't it.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: It really it comes out of to things. It comes
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: down to candidate quality and ability. So every member of
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Congress wants some attention. They want something that they can
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: use to get their name out there. For some people
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: that means introducing legislation. For some people that means constituent service.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: But there are other legislators who just don't have the
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: skill set to create legislation, that don't have the staff
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: or skill set to do constituent service. So what do
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: they default to. They default to what will get them
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: attention on X, what will get them attention on Box
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: News or CNN. And that's saying incredibly insulting things about
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: the other side. So what's happened is we have this
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: small group of legislators, really only about thirty five, who
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: are giving this false perception for the American public that
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: Congress is not a civil place that is destructive and
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: full of bullies. Truth of the matter is most members
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: of Congress go to DC, do their job, live home,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: meet with their constituents, and are just boring human beings.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: But hearing that gloss Kent Perez represented the constituents fairly,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: you know that's not going to leads DNN. That's not
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: going to lead Box news. We're in a world where
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: bad behavior gets attention and gets disproportion of attention to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: good behavior.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, there are some things you can't control,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: which is algorithms on social media, right, and that's that's
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: not a small part of this, is it?
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: Not?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think that we've created a world where if
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: you are activated by negativity, you will see behind but negativity.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: If what you want to see is compromise, you're endo minority.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: But you're only going to see compromise. And because as humans,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: we are predisposed to focus on fret to our group,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: to focus on complished, that's what most of us get
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: on our social media feeds. I think that Spencer Cox,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: in talking about America, the state of America after the
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: first assassination attempt, Donald Trump, was quite right. We need
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: to go outside and touch grass, We need to spend
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: less time focused on the manicure make that exists on
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: social media.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just true. I just take anti semitism.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I'm always surprised I have. I think I get I
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: see it a little bit better in stereo. I'd like
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: to think I see this stuff in stereo more so
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: than most reporters. I'm always stunned at the amount of
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: my friends on the left who are shocked there's anti
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: semitism on the left, and the amount of my friends
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: on the right who are shocked that there's antisemits they're
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: just discovering. I have some friends in the right clan camp, Well,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: I've just noticed this anti semitism, Like, you know, I've
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: seen it for a while there, and then I've heard
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: a similar thing on the left. Like actually, if you're
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: paying attention, I've seen it for a while there. Like
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: it is easy not to see what a lot of
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: us do see.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: Yep, it's it requires work. You spend time every day
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: sneaking out information that disagrees with your prior. You're looking
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: to see the complete picture. That's a lot of work.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: And if you're a single mom who's not got the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: time to do it, why would you engage in that behavior,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: we're asking a lot of our citizens, and we've created
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: just a technological infrastructure that is meant to inflame and
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: not attenuate. And that's a perfect storm.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you pessimistic or optimistic.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: I'm the most atistic person you would ever meet. If
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: I won the lottery, I would complain.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: About the taxes.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: But having said that, I'm really optimistic about America sweep
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: because I think we've survived far worth. It really is
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: the case that democracy is. It's kind of not of soil.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Right. We have strong.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Peaks and then we have very low valleys. I think
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: we're headed towards a low point right now, but our
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: institutions are remarkably strong. Just striking them, of course. But
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: he's still largely responding to court cases. It's not always,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: but he still is responding to court cases. Congress is
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: still passing laws. There's still probably going to be a
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: peaceful transition of power. I believe that we'll be able
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: to weather the storm well.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: And I also look that the public is reacting to
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: the current situation rationally, Like you know the pole, you know,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: you look at it, You're like, yeah, this should be unpopular. Oh,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: it is unpopular. Okay, right, Like we don't live. There's
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: always been this fear that we're developing, you know, a
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: fantasy world where people won't see the bad news. That's
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: not true. People's lived experiences are being expressed and you
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: see that, which that has been one way I've tried
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: to have optimism too. It's like, no people are acting rationally.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Single best ad against Donald Trump is the trip that
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: you make to the grocery story each week. We're filling
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: up your car at the gas station. The American public
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: is partisan, but they're not stupid, and they know when
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: dinner table issues are not going well. They know when
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: the president is not doing what he promised, and they
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: react accordingly. That's what will happen. I think in the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: midterms we'll see a resounding rejection of this president. And
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: if we were in a truly dysfunctional government, if we
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: were in a truly failed state, that wouldn't happen. The
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: single worst thing that we can do as academics or
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: as political elites is to tell the public that we
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: are in a fascist state or that we're in a
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: totalentarian state. That makes back sletting their witnessing a data
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: complete right. If you're a voter and your elites are
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: saying you're no longer in a democracy. Would you do
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: the effort to learn about candidates? Why would you go
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: to the polling place? You have to be measured with
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: our rhetoric. We can certainly be very pessimistic about what's happening,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean we give up. That doesn't mean
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: we don't keep fighting.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Look, I'm one of those who believes that politics so
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: abhors a vacuum that I can make any state of
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: swing state. It just takes a while to find the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: folk frum voter. Yeah, but in theory, there's always there's
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: always a folk rum in any state. You just got
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: to choose as a political party whether you're comfortable going
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: there shown.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: Out, So you end up with the Republican governor of
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: Massachusetts or the Democratic governor of Texas. Right, it has
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: to be personal politics, It has to be manicured to
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: that particular state. But it's not impossible. No.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: You watch I'm watching Rob sand and Iowa do America.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: The beautiful lyrics at the start of his rallies, and
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: because he's trying to make the emphasis, hey, we're we
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: have more in common than we don't, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: You know it's a little sticky, sure, but guess what
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: everybody sings. Yeah, it's bugging the flag. It's hugging the flag. Sean,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: this was terrific and like I highly encourage people America's
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Political Pulse, Polarization Research lab Right, America's Political Pulse dot com.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: I have it right. Yep, it's just terrific stuff. And
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're a member of Congress, is part
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: of the problem. Punish them. Be a citizen anyway, Sean,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: thanks for your time, Thanks.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: For having me on the podcast. I appreciate it.