Latest / Pod Save America / Kamala Harris’s Winning Message (Ep. 7)

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Kamala Harris’s Winning Message (Ep. 7) · Pod Save America

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Speaker 1: Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland,
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Speaker 1: JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon
0:07
Speaker 1: Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community.
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Speaker 2: Come on!
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Speaker 3: That's not what middle America is.
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Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you, I can't wait to debate
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Speaker 1: the guy. That is if he's willing to get off
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Speaker 1: the couch and show up.
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Speaker 2: You see what I.
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Speaker 4: Did there?
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Speaker 5: Well, the good vibes just keep on rolling. As of Tuesday,
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Speaker 5: we officially have our ticket. Vice President Harris selected a
0:59
Speaker 5: joyful Midwestern dad to be her running mate. Minnesota Governor
1:03
Speaker 5: Tim Walz, a veteran, former teacher, and high school football coach,
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Speaker 5: has kept the momentum going that Harris ignited when she
1:09
Speaker 5: took over from Joe Biden just three weeks ago. But
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Speaker 5: as good as the vibes are, we can't let ourselves
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Speaker 5: forget that this race is still incredibly close, just like
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Speaker 5: the last one was. Most polls have Harris and Trump
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Speaker 5: basically tied in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states she will
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Speaker 5: absolutely need to win in November. So this race could
1:30
Speaker 5: very much go either way. But as I said last episode,
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Speaker 5: the vice president is already in a stronger position to
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Speaker 5: defeat Trump than Biden ever was. Now she'll just need
1:40
Speaker 5: to ensure that the message she delivers and the one
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Speaker 5: we deliver to the persuadable voters in our lives is
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Speaker 5: one that really resonates and gets them off the couch.
1:50
Speaker 5: I swear I was not trying to make a J.D.
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Speaker 5: Vance joke there.
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Speaker 4: I promise. Today, I want to spend some time.
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Speaker 5: Talking about the Harris-Walls ticket, their message, and how it's
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Speaker 5: playing with voters. Joining me to break it down are
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Speaker 5: two of the smartest messengers and strategists in Democratic politics,
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Speaker 5: Anat Shenker-Osorio and Michael Podhorzer. Anat is a longtime message
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Speaker 5: guru who's led trainings for Democrats up and down the ticket,
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Speaker 5: including our new VP nominee, Tim Walz. And Michael Podhorzer
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Speaker 5: is a longtime strategist and former political director at the AFL-CIO.
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Speaker 5: We sat down together to talk about what they've been
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Speaker 5: hearing in focus groups and to evaluate the ways Governor
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Speaker 5: Walz and Vice President Harris have keyed in on some
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Speaker 5: messages that Anat has been advocating for since the earliest
2:34
Speaker 5: days of the Trump administration.
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Speaker 4: Let's get into it. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to The Wilderness. Anat, Mike,
2:47
Speaker 4: welcome back to The Wilderness.
2:48
Speaker 2: Great to be back.
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Speaker 6: Thanks for having us.
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Speaker 5: So now that we officially have our presidential and vice
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Speaker 5: presidential nominees for both parties, I wanted to talk to
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Speaker 5: both of you about how the race has changed, what
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Speaker 5: it'll take to reassemble the anti-MAGA coalition that beat Trump
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Speaker 5: in 2020, and most importantly... the best way to persuade
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Speaker 5: people who haven't yet decided who they're voting for or
3:14
Speaker 5: whether they're voting at all. Mike, it's hard to believe,
3:18
Speaker 5: but it's only been 19 days since Joe Biden dropped
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Speaker 5: out of the race, not even three weeks. Aside from
3:25
Speaker 5: our new Democratic nominee and the addition of two running mates,
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Speaker 5: how has this race changed in your mind since the
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Speaker 5: president stepped aside?
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Speaker 2: Sure, and it is. It's like there's a famous saying
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Speaker 2: that for decades, nothing happens. And then in a week,
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Speaker 2: decades happen.
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Speaker 4: Feels like it.
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Speaker 2: That's what we're living through. I think that in a way,
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Speaker 2: the basic structure didn't change in the sense that even
3:53
Speaker 2: with Harris's candidate, both are underwater in terms of favorability,
3:59
Speaker 2: that we're still in an election in which it really
4:04
Speaker 2: comes down to whether It's a referendum on the future
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Speaker 2: that Trump wants to take us in or on people's
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Speaker 2: grumpiness about the last four years. And what Biden stepping
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Speaker 2: aside did was make it much less likely it'll be
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Speaker 2: about the latter, right? Because people were saying pretty loudly
4:30
Speaker 2: in polls and elsewhere for quite a while that they
4:33
Speaker 2: felt that his age was disqualifying. And that would have
4:38
Speaker 2: made it easier for them to make the election about
4:41
Speaker 2: Biden's age, right? That's off the table now. So I
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Speaker 2: don't think the structure of what it's going to look
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Speaker 2: like has changed, but the opportunity to make it an
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Speaker 2: election about clean, about what they're going to do, has
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Speaker 2: just really become easier.
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Speaker 5: And you are quite familiar with another national campaign where
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Speaker 5: an old guy stepped aside for a younger woman with
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Speaker 5: just six weeks until the election and she won. Talk
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Speaker 5: about Jacinda Ardern's 2017 victory in New Zealand that made
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Speaker 5: her the world's youngest woman head of state. And what
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Speaker 5: lessons do you think Kamala Harris and the Democrats can
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Speaker 5: learn from that race?
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Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure. Necessary caveats. New Zealand is like more
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Speaker 6: sheep than people. It's roughly the size of Minnesota, which
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Speaker 6: I think will come up in future conversation. It's not
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Speaker 6: a global superpower. So nothing that I say discounts the
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Speaker 6: reality that New Zealand is sort of the land of
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Speaker 6: make-believe where literally everyone is cousins and the United States.
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Speaker 6: But that said, I think was really, really extraordinary about
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Speaker 6: That dynamic is that Andrew Little, who was the head
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Speaker 6: of the Labor Party, read the tea leaves, saw the
5:55
Speaker 6: writing on the wall and assessed. his party's ability to
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Speaker 6: overtake the then ruling conservative coalition and thought, if I
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Speaker 6: stay here, we will lose, brought Jacinda Ardern to the fore.
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Speaker 6: She was a relatively unknown backbencher. And in six weeks,
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Speaker 6: they already had the ads made. They had the banners printed.
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Speaker 6: Everything was done. And so they had to remake an
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Speaker 6: entire campaign, which sounds pretty exhausting. In very little time.
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Speaker 6: And I think the main thing, I mean, besides the
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Speaker 6: fact that their slogan, which they ended up going with,
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Speaker 6: which is let's do this, you know, is the fact
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Speaker 6: that Harris has so prominently featured, let's win this a
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Speaker 6: homage or a nod to Jacinda. I don't know, but
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Speaker 6: fun thing to speculate. is that it really revivified the campaign.
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Speaker 6: It took a kind of known entity, known quantity, and
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Speaker 6: shook it up. And I think that that dynamic, to
6:53
Speaker 6: add to what Mike was saying, yes, it's absolutely about,
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Speaker 6: in the US case, putting MAGA's agenda and just exactly
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Speaker 6: the many, many ways that they plan to screw you
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Speaker 6: and not in the fun way on the front burner.
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Speaker 6: But it's also that right now, as we saw in
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Speaker 6: New Zealand back in the day, the choir actually wants
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Speaker 6: to sing from this songbook. And that's not nothing. It's
7:20
Speaker 6: not nothing to have, even if it's just activists. And
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Speaker 6: it seems from the data and at least the conversations
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Speaker 6: we've been having in focus groups that the disaffected Democratic
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Speaker 6: base is much more excited about singing this song. And
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Speaker 6: that's really the only way to break a signal through
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Speaker 6: the noise is to have something that the choir wants
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Speaker 6: to repeat over and over again. That's what Jacinda did.
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Speaker 6: That appears, at least for now, like what Kamala is doing,
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Speaker 6: even if it's just in our own social media bubble.
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Speaker 6: People actually now want to talk about this. They want
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Speaker 6: to show visible support for it.
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Speaker 5: So, Anant, you just mentioned focus groups. I'm sure both
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Speaker 5: of you have heard a lot about how voters are
8:02
Speaker 5: processing these last three weeks, either in focus groups or polling. Anat,
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Speaker 5: you were kind enough to share some findings from four
8:08
Speaker 5: different focus groups conducted over the last month. Persuadable white
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Speaker 5: women in Michigan, persuadable black women in Michigan, black men
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Speaker 5: across the battleground states, and young black voters across the
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Speaker 5: battleground states. I want to start with the two groups
8:21
Speaker 5: of persuadable women voters from Michigan, one made up of
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Speaker 5: white women and one made up of black women. Mike,
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Speaker 5: two things in these groups stuck out at me. One,
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Speaker 5: some of them aren't really sure that Project 2025 could
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Speaker 5: actually happen. And two, they don't want to hear so
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Speaker 5: much Trump bashing. Now, I know that you've said the
8:41
Speaker 5: Democrats will win if this election is about MAGA. So
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Speaker 5: how do you reconcile these two seemingly contradictory views from voters?
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Speaker 2: Sure. I think that one of the challenges internally in
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Speaker 2: politics is that people are often not very good at
9:02
Speaker 2: telling you what's going to persuade them. Or what they
9:05
Speaker 2: do or don't want to hear. And part of the
9:09
Speaker 2: problem in the political conversation is always taking them literally
9:13
Speaker 2: and then being surprised when it turns out not to
9:16
Speaker 2: be true at all. Right. So if you remember, like
9:20
Speaker 2: up until it wasn't, if Democrats did the J6 committee hearings,
9:25
Speaker 2: it would backlash because people wanted to put that in
9:29
Speaker 2: the rearview mirror. I don't know, more than a decade.
9:32
Speaker 2: They said, don't talk about abortion because it would never
9:35
Speaker 2: be a voting issue on our side because that's what
9:38
Speaker 2: people said in polls, right? Up until Biden stepped aside,
9:44
Speaker 2: Harris wasn't doing any better in the polls against Trump
9:47
Speaker 2: than he was, right? And so you really have to
9:52
Speaker 2: be cautious about just taking at face value what people say,
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Speaker 2: I think that, and I think probably Yannat will go
10:01
Speaker 2: into this, but I think there are two kinds of
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Speaker 2: ways of attacking 2025 and Trump and so forth. One
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Speaker 2: is a kind of wild ad hominem way, and another
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Speaker 2: is really just making it credible and that these things
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Speaker 2: will happen, right? Because people basically categorize those kinds of
10:28
Speaker 2: attacks as negative advertising when they don't believe it and
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Speaker 2: as truth when they do, right? And so what's important is,
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Speaker 2: especially for people who are not seen as, you know,
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Speaker 2: committed capital D Democrats, To be concerned about all the
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Speaker 2: things in 2025.
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Speaker 4: Anat, what do you think?
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 6: I mean, it's a horrific thing to have me on
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Speaker 6: tape agreeing with Mike. And I really wish that this
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Speaker 6: isn't the position that you put me in, John. I'm
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Speaker 6: not really sure what I did to you. We've met
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Speaker 6: in person very few times. I don't think I've had
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Speaker 6: the opportunity to be as offensive as I'd like, but
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Speaker 6: clearly I did do something. And this is very weird
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Speaker 6: way of taking it out on me. I use weird
11:19
Speaker 6: very intentionally in this. Now I'm, going to answer the question,
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Speaker 6: but I just need you to know exactly what you've
11:26
Speaker 6: done so that you can think about it. I think
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Speaker 6: that what Mike is talking about and what you've brought
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Speaker 6: up is something that I have termed the credulity chasm,
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Speaker 6: mostly because Mike can't pronounce that phrase for some reason.
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Speaker 6: So it's really perfect in that way. And what we see,
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Speaker 6: for example, in one test that we did, we asked folks,
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Speaker 6: we sort of gave them the bare bones introduction to
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Speaker 6: Project 2025. And I'm going to interrupt myself to say,
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Speaker 6: One of the biggest challenges that we have serving about
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Speaker 6: Project 2025 is that when we actually cut and paste
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Speaker 6: verbatim from the heritage document, people are like, that's a
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Speaker 6: bunch of bullshit. Like, why did you make that up?
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Speaker 6: And what is wrong with you? And why are you
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Speaker 6: lying to us? And we're like, we actually have to
12:12
Speaker 6: temper what is in the document in order to be
12:15
Speaker 6: able to ask questions about it. It's extraordinarily hard to
12:18
Speaker 6: write these questions because people think that it's apocryphal and like,
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Speaker 6: So we have to make it sound less terrible.
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Speaker 5: What are some of the parts of the document that
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Speaker 5: people are least likely to believe because they sound so terrible?
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Speaker 4: Are there any examples or just one or two?
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 6: The stuff about, for example, I mean, I don't have
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Speaker 6: it verbatim in front of me, but basically just more
12:40
Speaker 6: or less paraphrasing, it says that they're going to outlaw
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Speaker 6: porn and they're going to imprison people who make it.
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Speaker 6: It says that the stuff about enacting sort of biblical
12:51
Speaker 6: rules around marriage, ending no-fault divorce. People don't believe that,
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Speaker 6: especially when coupled with, you know, Mr. Divorce himself, Donald Trump. Like,
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Speaker 6: that feels especially difficult to buy because they're like, this man, like,
13:05
Speaker 6: you know, this man does divorce at the drive-thru. Like,
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Speaker 6: I'm not really sure that this is his agenda. And so, yeah,
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Speaker 6: I mean, those are some of the kind of head-scratchery elements.
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Speaker 6: So to go back, When we have asked folks, for example,
13:19
Speaker 6: you know, we'll do sort of a bare bones description
13:22
Speaker 6: of Project 2025. And this is some of what they intend.
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Speaker 6: And we'll even sort of water it down and say
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Speaker 6: they plan to or they intend to or whatever. And
13:31
Speaker 6: then we ask them, do you think that this is
13:34
Speaker 6: going to happen? And we offer them a series of
13:36
Speaker 6: reasons why it could potentially not happen. Like Democrats will
13:40
Speaker 6: stop it. The Supreme Court will stop it. you know,
13:44
Speaker 6: they're too incompetent to do it. They don't actually want
13:47
Speaker 6: to do it. When we ask the question that way,
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Speaker 6: we end up with 21% of voters saying they will
13:52
Speaker 6: do this. We can increase that number if we ask
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Speaker 6: the reverse of that question by saying, what are the
13:59
Speaker 6: reasons why they could possibly enact this? But going back
14:02
Speaker 6: to that credulity chasm, which is real and much more
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Speaker 6: market in our focus groups among white voters, Black voters
14:10
Speaker 6: so far that we've talked to, they have no trouble.
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Speaker 6: They're like, oh no, they're going to do all that.
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Speaker 6: That's their plan. That's their menu. They don't live in
14:18
Speaker 6: the credulity chasm. They live in the reality. For folks
14:21
Speaker 6: who are sort of scratching their heads how this is possible,
14:24
Speaker 6: I would just remind you that we lived through at
14:27
Speaker 6: least a generation of people being like, oh, but they'll
14:30
Speaker 6: never overturn Roe. That's never going to happen. And so
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Speaker 6: The just world theory, what psychologist John Joes calls system justification,
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Speaker 6: it's really strong in people. This sense that things are
14:44
Speaker 6: not going to be upended, the world's not going to
14:46
Speaker 6: be turned upside down, my sort of desires and life
14:50
Speaker 6: aren't going to just be taken from me. And so
14:52
Speaker 6: the ways that we have to contend with this that
14:56
Speaker 6: we've seen are, number one, to point out that in
15:00
Speaker 6: states where they have full control, where they have a
15:02
Speaker 6: red trifecta, they have implemented lots of these. That's a
15:06
Speaker 6: helpful sort of proof point. Always pointing back to Dobbs
15:11
Speaker 6: and the fall of Roe is a helpful proof point.
15:14
Speaker 6: And then actually what we find is that ensuring people
15:20
Speaker 6: feel that they have agency to stop this, giving them
15:24
Speaker 6: the sense that this is their plan, this is what
15:27
Speaker 6: they intend, but not on our watch, and they'll have
15:31
Speaker 6: to go through our dead body to do it, increases
15:34
Speaker 6: people's willingness to accept that this is actually their plan.
15:38
Speaker 6: Because much like climate change messaging for lots of time,
15:43
Speaker 6: if you just simply present people with, you know, this
15:46
Speaker 6: is the horrible abyss that awaits us,
15:51
Speaker 6: Because how are you
15:54
Speaker 6: supposed to take that in? And so it's about sort
15:57
Speaker 6: of how we present it, not presenting a laundry list,
16:01
Speaker 6: just picking out, you know, three things, making clear that
16:05
Speaker 6: they've done it before in other places and making sure
16:09
Speaker 6: that whatever we say about the badness, it comes packed
16:13
Speaker 6: inside of a, but we're going to defy them.
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Speaker 5: Mike, one thing you hear from a lot of these
16:30
Speaker 5: voters is when they're asked about Kamala Harris, they know
16:35
Speaker 5: of her, know her. A lot of them say, I
16:38
Speaker 5: want to know more. I want to know what she
16:40
Speaker 5: stands for. I want to know who she is. How
16:42
Speaker 5: much do you think Kamala Harris needs to define herself
16:48
Speaker 5: and her and talk about her plans and her agenda
16:52
Speaker 5: in a race that, as you've said, needs to be
16:56
Speaker 5: in a larger sense about maga and the threat of maga.
17:00
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that is really important
17:03
Speaker 2: is that like they're just not one thing that every
17:08
Speaker 2: actor should be doing right there's no like just comprehensive
17:12
Speaker 2: this is what everyone should be saying or doing right
17:16
Speaker 2: harris my view of it part of why she's been
17:20
Speaker 2: as successful as quickly as she has been is because
17:26
Speaker 2: she has been defining herself in a pretty good way
17:30
Speaker 2: by showing up and being comfortable in herself and in
17:35
Speaker 2: her attitude towards Trump and in ways that aren't exactly, well,
17:40
Speaker 2: here's my position on this and here's my position on that.
17:44
Speaker 2: I think really she just needs to clear the bar
17:47
Speaker 2: of people feeling comfortable with her being president and then
17:52
Speaker 2: it can move to the other. I think obsessing over
17:57
Speaker 2: like what combination of issues is she going to talk
17:59
Speaker 2: about or what positions is she going to take is
18:02
Speaker 2: not what voters really are looking for. They just want
18:06
Speaker 2: to be comfortable with the idea that she's going to
18:10
Speaker 2: be their president. And that has a lot more intangible
18:14
Speaker 2: to it.
18:15
Speaker 5: Anat, what, if anything, is different about the voters she
18:19
Speaker 5: still needs to persuade versus the voters that Biden needed
18:23
Speaker 5: to persuade?
18:24
Speaker 6: I mean, I think it's still roughly the same calculus.
18:28
Speaker 6: I'll talk about the differences after the similarities. You know,
18:32
Speaker 6: it's still what Mike has termed over and again, this
18:35
Speaker 6: anti-MAGA majority. It's the folks who turned out for us
18:39
Speaker 6: in 2020, the folks who turned out for us in 22,
18:42
Speaker 6: and the places that they did turn out where we won.
18:44
Speaker 6: I think that, obviously, people age into the electorate, and
18:50
Speaker 6: some people... age out of the electorate as they age
18:54
Speaker 6: out of their life on earth. So there are some
18:57
Speaker 6: changes in terms of the actual physical makeup of what
19:01
Speaker 6: that voting body is. We have had, as I think
19:04
Speaker 6: you know well, struggles at the younger end. And so
19:08
Speaker 6: that's a place where I think Harris is really, really
19:12
Speaker 6: well positioned to kind of harness this enthusiasm, this excitement,
19:18
Speaker 6: at the risk of presenting anecdote here, I think one
19:21
Speaker 6: of the sort of fun things that's happened to us
19:23
Speaker 6: is that as we're recruiting, we only really do two
19:27
Speaker 6: kinds of focus groups. One is with swing voters and
19:30
Speaker 6: one is with people we call disaffected Democrats who basically
19:34
Speaker 6: are kind of in that double hater category. So are
19:36
Speaker 6: the swing, to be quite honest. And the last couple
19:40
Speaker 6: of groups, we have actually had challenges with our recruitment
19:43
Speaker 6: vendor to get disaffected folks into these rooms because they're
19:48
Speaker 6: not meeting the recruit, which is to say, I'm not
19:51
Speaker 6: excited to vote. That's anecdotal, but a fun little nugget
19:56
Speaker 6: of hope.
19:56
Speaker 4: It's a good anecdote. I'll take it.
19:58
Speaker 6: Yeah. Fun little nugget for you on a Friday. So
20:02
Speaker 6: I think that it's largely the same group. I think
20:05
Speaker 6: that obviously, you know, we still woke up after this
20:09
Speaker 6: decision for Biden to step aside and hand the reins
20:13
Speaker 6: over to Harris living in the United States. I know
20:15
Speaker 6: that most people don't want to remember that. And by that,
20:18
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, still a racist sexist spot.
20:22
Speaker 2: And so.
20:23
Speaker 6: It's possible there are some people, especially in that more
20:27
Speaker 6: swinging category, who were okay with an older white man
20:32
Speaker 6: who are kind of less comfortable with a younger than
20:37
Speaker 6: him woman of color. And so, you know, sort of
20:40
Speaker 6: how does that dynamic play? I think that I largely
20:44
Speaker 6: view the election as a question of kind of getting
20:48
Speaker 6: our anti-MAGA coalition to turn out rather than try to
20:52
Speaker 6: lure people in who just kind of have no business
20:55
Speaker 6: ever voting for us. So I don't think it's that different.
20:57
Speaker 6: But I'm actually curious what Mike would say in terms of,
21:00
Speaker 6: you know, is it the same folks, different folks?
21:03
Speaker 4: What do you think, Mike?
21:04
Speaker 2: I think it's mostly the same. I think that we're
21:10
Speaker 2: now in our fourth Trump MAGA election. Right. And over
21:15
Speaker 2: that period of time, there are at least 10 million
21:19
Speaker 2: more people who can vote this November who have voted
21:23
Speaker 2: for our side than voted for their side. And so
21:27
Speaker 2: like beginning as if we don't know that and as
21:32
Speaker 2: if we're like just starting from scratch and looking for
21:35
Speaker 2: swing voters is really misguided. Right. If we just get
21:40
Speaker 2: the people who voted for us to vote again. Right.
21:44
Speaker 2: Then we win. Right. And that's just a fact. Right.
21:48
Speaker 2: And it's very different from the way it felt in 2016,
21:51
Speaker 2: where we're desperate to find new voters. We have the
21:54
Speaker 2: new voters.
21:55
Speaker 6: Right.
21:55
Speaker 2: And I think one of the things that you said
21:58
Speaker 2: earlier that was really I really appreciated was it's not
22:01
Speaker 2: just a question of getting people to are undecided between
22:07
Speaker 2: which one to vote for. A much bigger audience are
22:10
Speaker 2: the people who may or may not vote. Right. Yeah.
22:14
Speaker 2: And in the mainstream commentary about the election, that part
22:21
Speaker 2: of the electorate is completely absent in the conversation, right?
22:25
Speaker 2: The conversation is always, how do I get a voter
22:28
Speaker 2: to be for her instead of him? Never, how do
22:32
Speaker 2: I get a voter to care enough who already is
22:35
Speaker 2: against MAGA to show up again, right? And that's really
22:39
Speaker 2: what we have to do. I mean, to me, as
22:43
Speaker 2: someone who follows this, it's kind of mind-blowing that after 2016,
22:48
Speaker 2: we had this really unprecedented increase in people voting, and
22:54
Speaker 2: no one pays attention to that, right? That there's this
22:58
Speaker 2: new group that creates the anti-Mac majority, right? The people
23:03
Speaker 2: who voted in 2016 and 2020, the people who voted
23:04
Speaker 2: for Clinton and for Biden, voted for both of them
23:11
Speaker 2: by two points, right? If they were the only people
23:15
Speaker 2: who came back, Donald Trump would be finishing his second
23:20
Speaker 2: of three terms or whatever, right? But that isn't what happened. Instead,
23:25
Speaker 2: about 30 or 40 million people who hadn't voted in
23:30
Speaker 2: 2016 showed up and they supported Biden by 12 points.
23:35
Speaker 2: like half of them really weren't thrilled about it, but
23:38
Speaker 2: really didn't like Donald Trump. And that's basically who we
23:43
Speaker 2: have to get out. It's young voters who really think
23:48
Speaker 2: the system has failed them, both Democrats and Republicans, and
23:53
Speaker 2: want to change things up a lot, but not in
23:56
Speaker 2: the way Trump wants to. And that's why through these
24:00
Speaker 2: last several months, even with Biden on like still nominally
24:04
Speaker 2: the ticket, those voters, those voters who had voted for
24:10
Speaker 2: Biden were not going to Trump. Even in sort of
24:13
Speaker 2: the worst polls, only 4% max of people who voted
24:18
Speaker 2: for Biden in 2020 said they were going for Trump.
24:22
Speaker 2: Another 20% or so said they were undecided or going
24:27
Speaker 2: for a third party, right? Yeah. They just parked themselves
24:31
Speaker 2: somewhere else. And Harris quickly got a bunch of them back,
24:35
Speaker 2: which is what we're seeing. But whether or not the
24:39
Speaker 2: rest of them show up comes down to the credulity
24:43
Speaker 2: chasm and whether they're convinced again that they need to
24:47
Speaker 2: go out and vote because there will be a national
24:49
Speaker 2: abortion ban or there will be national stop and frisk
24:53
Speaker 2: or there will be, you know, reckless deportations of your
24:59
Speaker 2: friends and all of that. So That's what has to happen.
25:02
Speaker 2: That's who we have to win back.
25:04
Speaker 6: Wall says and what the independent expenditures and what activists say,
25:08
Speaker 6: like it's all a piece of the puzzle. But I
25:10
Speaker 6: think this is where I really have to praise Harris,
25:14
Speaker 6: because rather than fall into the trap of let's take
25:19
Speaker 6: the temperature today and see that, oh, Social Security is
25:22
Speaker 6: the issue du jour or repealing Obamacare is the issue
25:25
Speaker 6: du jour or, you know, this tax cut is the
25:27
Speaker 6: issue du jour. she's actually constructing a narrative, which is, hallelujah,
25:33
Speaker 6: lovely to see. And that narrative, I think it's undeniable,
25:37
Speaker 6: is constructed out of two F-words. And those F-words, not
25:41
Speaker 6: one of my favorite F-words, but those two F-words are
25:43
Speaker 6: future and freedom, and freedoms plural, whenever possible. And I
25:48
Speaker 6: think that that does succinctly and powerfully what we've been
25:53
Speaker 6: talking about, which is really to make clear that this
25:56
Speaker 6: election is a referendum on which future we're going to have.
26:00
Speaker 6: A future in which we allow MAGA Republicans to take
26:03
Speaker 6: us backwards into the Mesozoic era and to control our
26:06
Speaker 6: lives and to, you know, take the wealth of our
26:10
Speaker 6: livelihoods and basically to refashion the world in their own
26:14
Speaker 6: interest on behalf of the billionaires who bought them. Or
26:18
Speaker 6: a future in which, let's not pretend everything is magically delicious,
26:23
Speaker 6: but a future in which We sort of still possess
26:26
Speaker 6: the freedoms to be able to live to fight for
26:29
Speaker 6: the rest of the promise of the American dream that
26:31
Speaker 6: has heretofore evaded us, but we still believe. And I
26:37
Speaker 6: think that that storyline, which can be applied to then
26:41
Speaker 6: how you talk about social security or how you talk
26:42
Speaker 6: about Obamacare or how you talk about taxes or how
26:45
Speaker 6: you talk about unions, that's what allows a signal to
26:49
Speaker 6: break through the noise because it's a repeated trope. again
26:52
Speaker 6: and again and again you know i think it's just
26:55
Speaker 6: really great to see.
26:56
Speaker 5: That yeah yeah it has been let's talk about the
26:59
Speaker 5: running mates who in some ways are like mirror images
27:02
Speaker 5: of each other uh jd vance was picked as the
27:05
Speaker 5: maga era parent for his uh working class rural midwest
27:10
Speaker 5: roots uh though what we've seen so far in the
27:12
Speaker 5: campaign trail is what tim walls calls weird And he
27:17
Speaker 5: was selected by Kamala Harris for his rural working class
27:20
Speaker 5: Midwest roots to project a very different image to America. Anat,
27:24
Speaker 5: you've worked in Minnesota on campaigns with the very same
27:27
Speaker 5: messaging we're hearing from Tim Walz. Let's hear some of
27:30
Speaker 5: that now.
27:31
Speaker 2: These guys are just weird.
27:32
Speaker 4: That's where they are. So it isn't much else.
27:35
Speaker 2: Don't give them the power.
27:36
Speaker 4: Look, are they a threat to democracy?
27:37
Speaker 2: Yes. Are they going to take our rights away? Yes.
27:39
Speaker 2: Are they going to put people's lives in danger?
27:41
Speaker 3: Yes.
27:41
Speaker 1: Are they going to endanger the planet by not dealing
27:43
Speaker 1: with climate change? Yes.
27:44
Speaker 2: They're going to do all that. But don't lift these
27:46
Speaker 2: guys up like they're sometimes heroes.
27:48
Speaker 3: Everybody in this room knows, I know it as a teacher,
27:50
Speaker 3: a bully has no self-confidence.
27:52
Speaker 4: A bully has no strength.
27:54
Speaker 3: They have nothing. Their policies are what destroyed rural America.
27:58
Speaker 3: They've divided us. They're in our exam rooms. They're telling
28:01
Speaker 3: us what books to read. And I think what Kamala
28:04
Speaker 3: Harris knows is bringing people together around the shared values,
28:07
Speaker 3: strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class,
28:11
Speaker 3: health care that's affordable and accessible. Those are the things.
28:14
Speaker 3: You look what they're talking about. They went right to division.
28:17
Speaker 7: In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices
28:20
Speaker 7: that they make. Even if we wouldn't make the same
28:27
Speaker 7: choice for ourselves, there's a golden rule.
28:29
Speaker 1: Mind your own damn business.
28:32
Speaker 5: Anat, tell us a little bit about your work in Minnesota,
28:35
Speaker 5: for those who haven't tuned into earlier seasons of The
28:38
Speaker 5: Wilderness and your fantastic podcast, Words to Win By. Tell
28:41
Speaker 5: us a little bit about your work with Minnesota and
28:43
Speaker 5: Tim Walz.
28:44
Speaker 6: So Minnesota, as a person from Wisconsin, people need to
28:49
Speaker 6: understand just how painful it is for me to say
28:51
Speaker 6: anything positive about Minnesota. So obviously everything that I'm saying
28:56
Speaker 6: is true because, you know, no one from Wisconsin wants
28:59
Speaker 6: to praise Minnesota unless they absolutely have to. In 2016,
29:04
Speaker 6: Trump came within the closest margin of getting Minnesota. He
29:08
Speaker 6: didn't that a presidential candidate had done since Ronald Reagan.
29:14
Speaker 6: And what the right wing in the state saw in
29:17
Speaker 6: that and they in that year, they had control of
29:21
Speaker 6: the state Senate and the state House. They saw sort
29:24
Speaker 6: of their ability to weaponize the trifecta in the Minnesota
29:30
Speaker 6: case of anti-migrant, anti-Black, anti-Muslim hate baiting because of the
29:35
Speaker 6: significant Somali American population that is clustered in that largely
29:39
Speaker 6: white state. And so they went double, triple, quadruple down
29:44
Speaker 6: with all sorts of ugly dog whistles. And they had
29:48
Speaker 6: all of this messaging and all of this sort of
29:50
Speaker 6: discourse about specifically Somali daycare fraud and suitcases full of
29:55
Speaker 6: cash going to Mogadishu. Like that was their story. They
29:58
Speaker 6: were pounding that gong hard. And what organizers in the state,
30:02
Speaker 6: and here I really just want to hold up SEIU Minnesota,
30:05
Speaker 6: Education Minnesota, Faith in Minnesota, Unidos, the Somali Workers Center,
30:09
Speaker 6: Better Minnesota, like so many folks had already had the
30:13
Speaker 6: muscle of working together as a choir, of having a
30:17
Speaker 6: unified message, of knowing that in order to break a
30:20
Speaker 6: signal through the noise, you have to say fewer things
30:22
Speaker 6: and say them more often. And so they looked around
30:25
Speaker 6: and they'd been going door to door because they organize
30:27
Speaker 6: year round, God bless them. And what they found is
30:31
Speaker 6: that when they would knock on doors in rural Minnesota
30:34
Speaker 6: and they would give their economic promise, they would say,
30:37
Speaker 6: you know, we're going to raise wages and we're going
30:39
Speaker 6: to give you child care and we're going to do
30:40
Speaker 6: this kitchen table, kitchen table, kitchen table, kitchen table. People
30:44
Speaker 6: at the doors would say, that sounds lovely. But there
30:46
Speaker 6: was a guy knocking doors here about half an hour
30:48
Speaker 6: ago who said that immigrants are taking our jobs or
30:51
Speaker 6: who said that, you know, we can't go into the
30:54
Speaker 6: Twin Cities because there's too much crime. And what they
30:58
Speaker 6: realized is that a colorblind, economic-only message has no hope
31:03
Speaker 6: of landing and penetrating in an arena in which people
31:07
Speaker 6: are subjected to a cacophony of this divide in order
31:11
Speaker 6: to conquer right-wing strategy that we know well. And so
31:14
Speaker 6: they signed on to this project that I was really,
31:17
Speaker 6: really proud to help lead called the Race Class Narrative.
31:20
Speaker 6: And then we actually started implementing it most thoroughly in
31:25
Speaker 6: Minnesota in 2018 and when Tim Walz became the governor.
31:30
Speaker 6: And we called that campaign, we branded it Greater Than
31:33
Speaker 6: Fear because that is the goofy way the Minnesotans refer
31:36
Speaker 6: to the rural parts of their state. They call it
31:38
Speaker 6: Greater Minnesota. Who knows, right? They have to have their affectations.
31:43
Speaker 6: I think they also call soda pop.
31:45
Speaker 4: That's fine. I like that.
31:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.
31:48
Speaker 6: Do you know, this is a little aside, do you
31:50
Speaker 6: know that instead of calling it Duck, Duck, Goose, they
31:52
Speaker 6: call it Duck, Duck, Gray Duck? Which is honestly, like,
31:55
Speaker 6: how are they calling people weird?
31:57
Speaker 4: That's weird.
31:58
Speaker 5: I was just about to say that's weird.
32:00
Speaker 4: That is weird.
32:01
Speaker 6: It's very controversial, Duck, Duck, Gray Duck. It's like the
32:04
Speaker 6: most upsetting thing to learn about Minnesota. I'm sorry to
32:07
Speaker 6: be the one to share it. I'm guessing this is
32:09
Speaker 6: going on the cutting room floor. So when we started
32:13
Speaker 6: assembling that campaign... Tim Walz had cinched the nomination for
32:18
Speaker 6: the governorship and at a fundraiser, the organizers sort of encouraged,
32:24
Speaker 6: aka forced me to, after he and Peggy Flanagan, the
32:30
Speaker 6: lieutenant governor, soon to be the governor of that state, woohoo,
32:33
Speaker 6: made me give him a greater than fear shirt with
32:37
Speaker 6: our campaign logo so that reporters that were at that
32:40
Speaker 6: event could take pictures of him sort of wearing our messaging.
32:45
Speaker 6: And when I said to them, isn't everyone going to
32:47
Speaker 6: think that this random lady from California is an asshole
32:50
Speaker 6: for interrupting a Minnesota fundraiser? They're like, absolutely they will,
32:53
Speaker 6: but then you'll get on a plane and go home.
32:57
Speaker 6: So Walls really, through partnership with these extraordinary organizers and
33:03
Speaker 6: through his own incredible ability, props were due, as an
33:08
Speaker 6: orator and as sort of everyone's dad really figured out
33:12
Speaker 6: that you can't just make believe that these attacks are
33:15
Speaker 6: not happening and try to kind of let them therefore
33:19
Speaker 6: dominate the conversation about race, about gender, about these sort of, quote,
33:24
Speaker 6: cultural issues. And he really figured out, as did other
33:28
Speaker 6: folks in the state, how you have to have a
33:32
Speaker 6: message that presents a really big we, And that presents values,
33:37
Speaker 6: whether that be mind your own business, whether that be
33:39
Speaker 6: looking out for your neighbor, whether that be freedom that
33:42
Speaker 6: most people believe in, and then call out the other
33:46
Speaker 6: side for precisely how they're trafficking in division, essentially reveal
33:50
Speaker 6: the magic trick that it's all a sleight of hand,
33:53
Speaker 6: that they want us pointing our finger in the wrong direction.
33:55
Speaker 6: They want us shaming and blaming some sort of constructed
33:59
Speaker 6: other so that we don't notice that actually they're the
34:03
Speaker 6: ones that are making our lives impossible by handing the
34:07
Speaker 6: wealth our work creates to a small class of billionaires.
34:12
Speaker 6: And Walls has really perfected this. And I hope that
34:17
Speaker 6: it serves as a model that, yes, he's real good
34:20
Speaker 6: at this. And that is somewhat an individual characteristic. But
34:24
Speaker 6: there's also a formula to it, and it's a formula
34:27
Speaker 6: that you can rinse and repeat, and it works.
34:30
Speaker 5: Anat, what do you think about walls defining JD as weird?
34:34
Speaker 5: What do you think about the weird messaging?
34:36
Speaker 6: Yeah, we've been having an internal conversation among Mike and
34:41
Speaker 6: I both work in what I like to call cadena perpetua,
34:45
Speaker 6: my lifetime sentence of working with Mike in a thing
34:47
Speaker 6: called the Research Collaborative. So among sort of all the
34:51
Speaker 6: pollsters within the Collaborative community, we've been debating this weird thing.
34:55
Speaker 6: So the experiments that have been done on vote choice,
34:58
Speaker 6: both sort of out in the world with different kinds
35:01
Speaker 6: of content, and more recently, a poll that Axios reported
35:05
Speaker 6: on with swing voters, they don't show vote choice movement
35:08
Speaker 6: out of this weird thing, perhaps not the most shocking.
35:11
Speaker 6: People do have some measure of their calculus baked in.
35:16
Speaker 6: It's more important to highlight to folks that MAGA is
35:20
Speaker 6: dangerous than that they're weird. It really needs to be voter-facing.
35:24
Speaker 6: It really needs to be about, you know, not that
35:27
Speaker 6: Mike Johnson and his son co-monitor each other's porn, which
35:31
Speaker 6: I was very, very shocked to see most Americans didn't
35:34
Speaker 6: deem the most weird thing. And I was telling Mike,
35:37
Speaker 6: I'm like, someone needs to do a PhD on that because...
35:40
Speaker 6: That's obviously the weirdest thing.
35:41
Speaker 4: I would have guessed. I would have put that at
35:43
Speaker 4: the top of the list for sure.
35:44
Speaker 6: Yeah. Like, I don't know if we just have a
35:46
Speaker 6: men problem and the two of you could fill us
35:49
Speaker 6: in on what's going on and why that's not deemed weird.
35:53
Speaker 6: I don't understand it. But the most important thing is
35:59
Speaker 6: really to have the messaging be what I call voter facing.
36:03
Speaker 6: And what's interesting about that Walls clip that you played is. is,
36:07
Speaker 6: you know, him saying, yeah, they're weird. They want to
36:09
Speaker 6: do this to you. They want to do this to you.
36:11
Speaker 6: They want to do this to you. And so for me,
36:13
Speaker 6: a few things about weird. Number one, you know, it's
36:17
Speaker 6: a question of what follows the word weird is what
36:21
Speaker 6: follows the word weird. Like they monitor each other's porn,
36:24
Speaker 6: which like is according to me, objectively weird, but not
36:27
Speaker 6: voter facing. Like that's some sort of underground lifestyle habit
36:31
Speaker 6: that I don't understand. But it's not saying you don't
36:36
Speaker 6: get health insurance anymore. It's not saying you're not going
36:40
Speaker 6: to be able to have Social Security when you retire.
36:42
Speaker 6: So it's important that the way that it gets articulated
36:46
Speaker 6: is voter facing. The other thing that I would say
36:49
Speaker 6: about it that I think isn't measurable in a traditional
36:53
Speaker 6: randomized control trial that's looking at vote choice is, does
36:57
Speaker 6: weird serve the role of a pre-buttled or a rejoinder
37:02
Speaker 6: to the anti-woke attack. Because if you take it at
37:06
Speaker 6: its essence, I think the anti-woke attack is really about
37:10
Speaker 6: you don't believe what real Americans quote unquote believe. You
37:14
Speaker 6: are outside of some kind of established norm. This is
37:17
Speaker 6: what most of us want. This is what most of
37:20
Speaker 6: us like. This is how most of us behave. And
37:22
Speaker 6: you're out there on some sort of, you know, San
37:25
Speaker 6: Franciscan Brooklyn Island and what the hell is that? Silver
37:30
Speaker 6: Lake can be included too. John, you're welcome. Maryland, Mike,
37:35
Speaker 6: you're good. I think that to the extent that weird
37:40
Speaker 6: is an interesting rejoinder to that without actually calling attention
37:47
Speaker 6: to it, without saying, we're not woke, or it's fine
37:50
Speaker 6: to be woke, or why are they attacking us for woke,
37:53
Speaker 6: all of which doesn't work. weird sort of is serving
37:56
Speaker 6: the same purpose of saying, this is the boundary, this
37:59
Speaker 6: is the norm, this is kind of what people believe.
38:02
Speaker 6: And these folks are so far from it that they're
38:05
Speaker 6: kind of in their own category. I think that in
38:08
Speaker 6: that sense, it's an interesting approach. I think it's another
38:12
Speaker 6: permutation of this race class narrative thing where we're sort
38:16
Speaker 6: of calling out the other side for being divisive and hateful.
38:20
Speaker 6: But that again, you have to ascribe motivation. If it's
38:23
Speaker 6: simply that they're in between husband and wife, call each
38:27
Speaker 6: other mother and father. That's weird, but doesn't impact me.
38:30
Speaker 6: If they want to like, tell me what I can
38:33
Speaker 6: and can't do with my body, then that is a
38:37
Speaker 6: kind of weird that is really, really disastrous.
38:42
Speaker 7: Yeah.
38:43
Speaker 5: Mike, I had been thinking that We shouldn't necessarily be
38:46
Speaker 5: calling them weird because that's just not as effective, but
38:48
Speaker 5: we should be calling their ideas weird because they could
38:51
Speaker 5: actually have an effect on our lives, on voters' lives,
38:53
Speaker 5: and not set it better. But I was going to
38:56
Speaker 5: ask you because, you know, I've had this struggle where
38:59
Speaker 5: we've got to frame MAGA as dangerous and a threat,
39:03
Speaker 5: which is different than weird. But then now I'm coming
39:07
Speaker 5: back to this credulity chasm. And so I kind of
39:10
Speaker 5: thought that maybe weird was helping some people who might
39:13
Speaker 5: not believe that it's a real threat and dangerous and
39:17
Speaker 5: that they should be scared by saying, yeah, well, I
39:20
Speaker 5: don't know if it's, if it's that dangerous, but it's
39:21
Speaker 5: certainly weird. And I don't want that, but I'm just
39:23
Speaker 5: trying to figure out how you break through for people
39:26
Speaker 5: who aren't sure that it sounds dangerous or think people
39:28
Speaker 5: who say it's dangerous are just over-exaggerating.
39:31
Speaker 2: Right. So take this as a concurring opinion to what
39:35
Speaker 2: Anat said. I think that we've all heard opinionators say,
39:43
Speaker 2: don't bother attacking Trump. Everyone knows Trump. Yeah, it's been
39:47
Speaker 2: 10 years. There's nothing left to tell people they don't know.
39:51
Speaker 2: And I think that's not correct. I think it is
39:54
Speaker 2: correct if it's about how weird he is, how off-putting
39:59
Speaker 2: he is, right? I mean, there's a whole comedy industry
40:02
Speaker 2: based on essentially how weird they are, right? There's MSNBC,
40:08
Speaker 2: which is business model is how weird they are, right?
40:12
Speaker 2: So it's not really telling anyone that anything that's going
40:17
Speaker 2: to help by calling them weird. What it does do, though,
40:22
Speaker 2: is make Harris and Wells relatable. And that's where I
40:28
Speaker 2: think it's been really helpful in this time. That for them,
40:33
Speaker 2: instead of being super serious all the time and being like,
40:38
Speaker 2: eat your spinach, you can see that they're people thank
40:44
Speaker 2: God they're finally acting like human beings and not like automatons, right?
40:51
Speaker 2: And so I think for them in this moment, it
40:54
Speaker 2: was a great part of the introduction to America, right?
40:58
Speaker 2: That they're loose, that they can see that. And in
41:02
Speaker 2: terms of international elections where we have the same kind
41:08
Speaker 2: of like fascist who's going to ruin everything on this
41:10
Speaker 2: side versus the other, that The sweet spot is landing
41:16
Speaker 2: the credulity chasm, saying, yes, if they get elected, your
41:20
Speaker 2: life is going to be much worse, and treating the
41:24
Speaker 2: wannabe dictator as a clown, right? Not cowering at them
41:30
Speaker 2: because the only way they'll ever get the power is
41:33
Speaker 2: if they win the election, right? And so I think
41:37
Speaker 2: for the candidates to be looking for ways to just
41:40
Speaker 2: laugh at Trump, that's his kryptonite. Right. Which we're seeing
41:44
Speaker 2: him melt down over it. Right.
41:47
Speaker 4: Yeah.
41:48
Speaker 2: It's just don't be sanctimonious.
41:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
41:51
Speaker 4: No, I totally agree.
41:52
Speaker 5: I think much more mockery of Trump and mockery and
41:55
Speaker 5: sort of like a light way that makes him seem
41:57
Speaker 5: like a clown, as you said. All right, let's talk
42:13
Speaker 5: about what Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, the Democratic Party, and
42:16
Speaker 5: hopefully everyone listening can do to persuade voters over the
42:19
Speaker 5: next few weeks. Democratic National Convention is essentially a four-day
42:23
Speaker 5: national TV ad during primetime. The message and the story
42:26
Speaker 5: we tell there is entirely in our control, even if
42:29
Speaker 5: not everyone hears it the way we want to. And
42:33
Speaker 5: so far, the Harris campaign has given us a hint
42:35
Speaker 5: of what that message might sound like with their first
42:38
Speaker 5: paid television ad.
42:39
Speaker 4: Let's listen.
42:43
Speaker 8: There are some people who think we should be a
42:45
Speaker 8: country of chaos, of fear, of hate. But us, we
42:50
Speaker 8: choose something different. We choose freedom. The freedom not just
43:04
Speaker 8: to get by, but get ahead. The freedom to be
43:06
Speaker 8: safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about
43:10
Speaker 8: your own body. We choose a future where no child
43:13
Speaker 8: lives in poverty, where we can all afford health care,
43:17
Speaker 8: where no one is above the law. We believe in
43:21
Speaker 8: the promise of America.
43:23
Speaker 6: And we're ready to fight for it. Because when we fight,
43:27
Speaker 6: we win.
43:29
Speaker 4: So join us.
43:30
Speaker 5: So, Anat, when I first heard this, I was like,
43:34
Speaker 5: is Anat writing her speech again? Anyone who's listened to
43:38
Speaker 5: The Wilderness and heard you on this podcast in past
43:41
Speaker 5: seasons will recognize the freedom framing. Talk to me about
43:47
Speaker 5: the freedom messaging. Democracy's out, freedom's in. Why does it work?
43:52
Speaker 5: I was provocative there. I was intentionally provocative.
43:55
Speaker 6: Let me stand up for democracy for a moment and
43:58
Speaker 6: just say, because this actually has come out. There was
44:02
Speaker 6: even a Washington Post piece about this yesterday. To be clear,
44:05
Speaker 6: freedom is the way that we talk about democracy. It's
44:08
Speaker 6: not that we're sort of eschewing democracy. It's that democracy
44:12
Speaker 6: is too much of an abstraction for people to actually
44:15
Speaker 6: get excited about. Whereas freedom, to use a dorky word
44:18
Speaker 6: for you, you're welcome. is corporeal. When you ask people
44:23
Speaker 6: for kind of the salient exemplar of having freedom taken away,
44:27
Speaker 6: they will tell you, oh, it's being confined, it's being chained,
44:30
Speaker 6: it's being unable to move. It's kind of a thing
44:32
Speaker 6: that you can feel inside of your body, whereas like,
44:34
Speaker 6: what is democracy? Draw me a picture of that. It's
44:37
Speaker 6: just too nebulous. So the thing about freedom is that
44:42
Speaker 6: when you ask US voters, and this is true across
44:45
Speaker 6: public polling, it's true across internal polling that we've done,
44:48
Speaker 6: what value do you most closely associate with this country?
44:51
Speaker 6: It's freedom. And it's freedom, number one, and number two
44:55
Speaker 6: isn't even close. And that's true across demographics. It's been
44:58
Speaker 6: true for a very long time. And so we've lived
45:02
Speaker 6: in this horrible universe in which we've allowed for a
45:05
Speaker 6: while the right to claim freedom because they think freedom
45:10
Speaker 6: means that you get to worship your God as long as,
45:13
Speaker 6: of And you get to worship your gun as long
45:17
Speaker 6: as it's very, very, very large and you're white. So
45:21
Speaker 6: they have claimed this and the left has been for many,
45:25
Speaker 6: many years reluctant. And, you know, both Mike and I
45:29
Speaker 6: have experienced this of others, like people being like, oh,
45:32
Speaker 6: we can't reclaim that. That's right wing. That's this. And
45:35
Speaker 6: what I would say to people all along is tell
45:39
Speaker 6: that to FDR, tell that to Martin Luther King Jr.
45:41
Speaker 6: Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, I'm
45:44
Speaker 6: free at last. Tell that to the marriage equality movement
45:47
Speaker 6: who not coincidentally shifted from the right to marry to
45:50
Speaker 6: the freedom to marry. Freedom is what we call a
45:53
Speaker 6: contested concept. It has different iterations in different kinds of frames.
45:59
Speaker 6: It does have a right-wing version and it absolutely has
46:02
Speaker 6: a left-wing version. And so reclaiming it as we saw really,
46:08
Speaker 6: really forthrightly in 2022 among not coincidentally folks like Governor Shapiro,
46:14
Speaker 6: who really banged the protect our freedoms drum, what it
46:17
Speaker 6: allows us to do is, again, as Mike said before,
46:20
Speaker 6: be relatable. If this is kind of the top thing
46:23
Speaker 6: that your voters think is meaningful about your country, then
46:28
Speaker 6: you can't really afford to just let it go. And
46:32
Speaker 6: it has a lot of credibility because of the fact
46:36
Speaker 6: that they came for our freedoms with respect to Dobbs.
46:39
Speaker 6: The freedom, as Harris says in that ad, to decide
46:42
Speaker 6: for ourselves what happens to our bodies. And the same
46:44
Speaker 6: is true for contraception and for IVF and a whole
46:47
Speaker 6: raft of things. And so claiming freedom, what it allows
46:51
Speaker 6: you to do is have a story that you can
46:54
Speaker 6: tell about all the things. Because you can talk about
46:57
Speaker 6: freedom to send your kid to school and know their
46:59
Speaker 6: biggest worry is, where did I leave my backpack? Freedom
47:03
Speaker 6: to retire in dignity, freedom to join a union and
47:06
Speaker 6: be able to negotiate a fair return. It's a word
47:10
Speaker 6: that allows you to connect issues together rather than having
47:13
Speaker 6: to have a separate story about each thing. And it's
47:17
Speaker 6: a direct contestation of what MAGA is doing, which is
47:20
Speaker 6: trying to take away our freedoms on every level and
47:23
Speaker 6: in every dimension.
47:25
Speaker 5: Mike, what do you think the party's messaging goals should
47:29
Speaker 5: be for the convention?
47:30
Speaker 4: What do they need to get done?
47:31
Speaker 2: I think what they have to get done is things
47:34
Speaker 2: we were already talking about, landing that we will all
47:39
Speaker 2: be comfortable if Harris is president and doing as much
47:45
Speaker 2: distance closing on the credulity chasm. One thing I want
47:49
Speaker 2: to add about the democracy part, which I think is
47:53
Speaker 2: really important, is that if you don't think that the
47:58
Speaker 2: direction of the country is that great, which only about
48:02
Speaker 2: three quarters of Americans think, then like it's democracy that's failing, right?
48:10
Speaker 2: Unlike any other industrial country, we've never had anything other
48:16
Speaker 2: than democracy, right? And like how we should govern ourselves
48:22
Speaker 2: has never been on the ballot or in terms of
48:25
Speaker 2: vocabulary contested, right? And so we just saw in France
48:30
Speaker 2: where the not far right all got together in the space,
48:34
Speaker 2: which are not, you can take a lot of credit
48:36
Speaker 2: for it, but in helping really quickly is because you
48:40
Speaker 2: don't have to explain to people in France what fascism is, right?
48:44
Speaker 2: There have been different types of governments in all those
48:49
Speaker 2: European countries, right? We have no other word for how
48:53
Speaker 2: we live than democracy. And if you don't think it's
48:57
Speaker 2: going well, like to quote or not, it's like, what
49:00
Speaker 2: has it ever done for you? Right? And so, I
49:05
Speaker 2: think we even are disqualifying ourselves when we talk to
49:09
Speaker 2: people who are not yet in our camp and say,
49:12
Speaker 2: but he'll destroy democracy because anybody who would respond to
49:17
Speaker 2: that is already on our side. right? What we have
49:21
Speaker 2: to do is make clear what tangibly is at stake,
49:26
Speaker 2: what they don't realize could be taken away from them, right?
49:31
Speaker 2: And I completely agree. It's like, we should have been contested.
49:34
Speaker 2: We've been trying to contest this and not need for like,
49:38
Speaker 2: what was it? Like when we did the labor thing. 2012. Yeah. Right.
49:42
Speaker 2: It's taken a while, but because the right wing version
49:46
Speaker 2: of freedom is essentially the freedom of privileged white men
49:51
Speaker 2: to do whatever they want. Right. And that is what
49:56
Speaker 2: it has meant. And that's why people are, Not just
49:59
Speaker 2: the left, but anybody else is shied away from it.
50:02
Speaker 2: There's a great book called Freedom's Dominion by Jefferson Cowey
50:05
Speaker 2: that really makes that clear. So anyway, I think that
50:10
Speaker 2: freedom is much better, and we really over-index on how
50:15
Speaker 2: much people value democracy.
50:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I completely agree.
50:19
Speaker 6: The other thing about that ad, and generally speaking, when
50:22
Speaker 6: we test things, is that The protagonist antagonist relationship that
50:27
Speaker 6: needs to be set up in messages, including when they're
50:29
Speaker 6: spoken by Democrats and certainly when they're spoken about Democrats
50:32
Speaker 6: by the rest of us. It needs to be that
50:35
Speaker 6: the antagonists obviously are mega Republicans and the protagonists are voters.
50:40
Speaker 6: They're not the Democratic official who's running. And that's true
50:44
Speaker 6: both because, hate to tell you, but there's nobody who
50:46
Speaker 6: believes that Democrats are coming to save us. That just,
50:49
Speaker 6: I mean, you want to talk about credulity. That's where
50:50
Speaker 6: people absolutely are like, um, uh, funny, cute. No, I
50:55
Speaker 6: don't think so. But even if they did believe it,
50:58
Speaker 6: and as a focus group junkie, I can assure you
51:01
Speaker 6: they don't. We wouldn't say it anyway, because what we're
51:05
Speaker 6: asking of the viewer of the ad or the listener
51:08
Speaker 6: of the message is we want you to feel like
51:10
Speaker 6: you got to do something. You got to get off.
51:14
Speaker 6: I now feel dirty using the word couch. I don't
51:17
Speaker 6: I don't know if sofa is better, but like, sorry.
51:20
Speaker 5: I know I was saying earlier when I'm like the
51:22
Speaker 5: voters that are going to get off the couch and
51:24
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, can we still say that?
51:25
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know what the rating
51:27
Speaker 6: is on this podcast, but like I hope you have
51:29
Speaker 6: explicit already. So, you know, we need you to get
51:32
Speaker 6: up off the couch, whatever you're doing there. I'm not
51:35
Speaker 6: here to.
51:35
Speaker 2: Judge because you should have freedom to do whatever you
51:39
Speaker 2: want on your.
51:40
Speaker 4: That's true.
51:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
51:41
Speaker 5: And whatever piece of furniture you enjoy.
51:43
Speaker 6: You know what? I've heard good things about Ottomans.
51:47
Speaker 2: I don't know.
51:47
Speaker 6: It's not the way I go. It's not how I
51:50
Speaker 6: do it, but like, okay. So I think that what's
51:54
Speaker 6: going on in that ad and in better pieces of
51:56
Speaker 6: communication is that there is some element of, and we're
52:01
Speaker 6: the ones and let's decide, and we have the chance
52:04
Speaker 6: to make the choice. And that's where that kind of
52:06
Speaker 6: two futures thing happens. comes in, which we've been seeing
52:10
Speaker 6: in testing since back in January. And we saw in Poland,
52:14
Speaker 6: we saw in Brazil, we saw to a certain extent
52:17
Speaker 6: in France more recently, not for nothing was the kind
52:21
Speaker 6: of Polish overarching message, vote for the Poland you want,
52:24
Speaker 6: not the person you want. And similarly, at least in
52:27
Speaker 6: the days where we still had Biden at the top
52:30
Speaker 6: of the ticket, what we were finding is saying to people,
52:33
Speaker 6: vote for the country you want, not the candidate you want,
52:36
Speaker 6: was really, really potent because it is this kind of
52:39
Speaker 6: inflection and fork in the road between two possible futures,
52:43
Speaker 6: one with and one without freedom, that gets folks to
52:46
Speaker 6: want to act and to do so in the ways
52:48
Speaker 6: that we need.
52:50
Speaker 4: Well, that is a great place to leave it.
52:52
Speaker 5: Anat Shankar Osorio, Mike Podhorzer, thank you, as always, for
52:56
Speaker 5: making me smarter and sharing your insights with our audience.
53:02
Speaker 4: Freedom, I'm in.
53:03
Speaker 2: Freedom, yeah.
53:05
Speaker 4: All right, guys. Take care. Thank you.
53:06
Speaker 2: Thanks. Take care.
53:13
Speaker 5: We'll see you next week for the final episode of
53:16
Speaker 5: The Wilderness. The Wilderness is a production of Crooked Media.
53:27
Speaker 5: It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. Our senior
53:30
Speaker 5: producer and editor is Andrea B.
53:32
Speaker 4: Scott.
53:33
Speaker 5: Austin Fisher is our producer. and Farrah Safari is our
53:36
Speaker 5: associate producer. Sound design by Vassilis Fotopoulos. Music by Marty Fowler.
53:41
Speaker 5: Charlotte Landis and Jordan Cantor sound engineered the show. Thanks
53:45
Speaker 5: to Katie Long, Reed Cherlin, Matt DeGrotte, and Madeline Herringer
53:48
Speaker 5: for production support. To our video team, Rachel Gajewski, Joseph Dutra,
53:53
Speaker 5: Chris Russell, Molly Lobel, and David Tolles, who filmed and
53:56
Speaker 5: edited the show. If the wilderness has inspired you to
53:59
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