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all lower case. Welcome

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to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big

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ideas about civic life and democracy and turns

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them into action items for you and me.

0:32

I'm Mila Atmos. It's

0:42

2024 and the future of America is

0:45

in your hands. We're here

0:47

to bring you an independent perspective about the

0:49

election this year and help you unlock your

0:51

power to change the status quo. We're

0:54

having a conversation today just after the

0:57

Iowa caucus where the MAGA leader has

0:59

just won. And although

1:01

2020 seems like a long four

1:03

years ago, it feels like we

1:05

are in for a rematch of

1:07

exactly that same race. Despite

1:10

solid rejections of the MAGA agenda,

1:12

for example in codifying reproductive freedom after

1:15

the Dobbs decision, in state

1:17

after state where it was on the

1:19

ballot, whether that's Kansas or Ohio, the

1:21

disgraced former president continues to have a

1:24

firm grip on his MAGA Republican base.

1:27

So the central question that I

1:29

have today is how can pro-democracy

1:31

voters and candidates talk about the

1:33

stakes this year? And

1:35

furthermore, how can we process the

1:37

onslaught of information this election cycle?

1:40

To help us address these questions, we're

1:43

joined by Anat Shankar Osorio.

1:45

Anat is the host of the

1:47

Words to Win By podcast and

1:50

principle of ASO communications, where she

1:52

examines why certain messages falter, where

1:55

others deliver. She was on the show

1:57

back in 2022 and emphasized them. that

2:00

all political candidates should talk about

2:03

what they're for. I'm not. Welcome

2:05

back and thank you for joining us. Thank

2:07

you so much for having me back. Happy

2:10

New Year. Ish. Ish, yes.

2:12

So we're so excited to have you

2:15

back and talk about election speak, mobilizing

2:17

voters to actually turn out and vote.

2:19

When we spoke last in 2022, you

2:22

were ecstatic that candidates need to talk

2:24

about what they're for instead of rebutting

2:26

the opposition and repeating those frames. So

2:29

let's start with how 2024 is different from

2:31

2022. You've

2:34

just completed a survey on economic

2:36

messaging that moves and mobilizes. What

2:38

are the winning messages this year?

2:42

Oh, trying to boil that down

2:44

to a single thing. So we're in a

2:46

complex spot. We're in

2:49

the incumbency, regardless of

2:51

reality and objective measures that

2:54

say the economy is going

2:56

pretty darn well. And

2:59

the Biden administration has a lot to

3:01

crow about and they've been trying to

3:03

crow about it. What we

3:05

find is that it's

3:07

not a winning strategy, either

3:10

in romantic relationships or in voting relationships,

3:12

to try to negate people's feelings. People

3:15

feel what they feel, and you have

3:17

to have some measure of acceptance of

3:19

that and a way to move them

3:21

forward. So people are

3:24

feeling malaise. They

3:26

are feeling despondent. To some degree,

3:28

they are feeling they have more

3:30

months than check, because even with

3:32

inflation somewhat under control, there's

3:34

still things like housing prices, which

3:36

are out of control. There is

3:38

extraordinary amounts of inequality and all

3:40

of the realities that neoliberalism over

3:42

decades has brought us. And

3:45

so what we really find on the

3:47

economic front, and I'll start there, but

3:49

that's definitely not the entire story, is

3:52

that when we have

3:54

arguments about who is better,

3:56

quote, for the economy, the

3:59

brand advantage... goes to Republicans. Again,

4:01

it's not really about what's true in

4:03

the world, it's about people's perceptions. When

4:06

in contrast we ask voters

4:08

who is better for your

4:10

economic well-being, that prize gets

4:13

handed to Democrats. That's true in public poll

4:15

after public poll after public poll, it's true

4:17

within our own research. The same goes if

4:20

you ask voters who is good for quote

4:22

growing the economy, they credit

4:24

Republicans. If you ask them who

4:26

is better at protecting cherished

4:29

programs like Social Security, Medicare,

4:31

Medicaid, etc. Democrats.

4:33

And so what does that mean? It

4:35

means that we need to stop agreeing

4:38

to have the opposition's conversation. They want

4:41

to have a conversation about who is

4:43

better quote for the economy, which after

4:45

all isn't real. It's just an abstraction.

4:47

You can't let go hang out with

4:50

it. It's not going to take you

4:52

out to dinner. You can try, but

4:55

rather talk about who

4:58

will ensure your family can

5:00

have a better life. That

5:02

better life approach, the personalizing allows

5:04

us not just to make an

5:06

economic argument, but it allows us

5:08

to talk about what it means

5:10

to have the life that you

5:12

want. And for US voters, what

5:14

we see broadly is

5:17

that what they want is to be able

5:19

to decide whether and when they grow their

5:21

families. They want to be able to send

5:23

their kids off to school and not worry

5:25

that they'll get shot in the process or

5:28

less existentially, that they'll actually be able

5:30

to read accurate books about American history

5:32

that are true and inclusive. They want

5:35

to know that when they go to

5:37

the doctor, they're not going to get

5:39

sick worrying about the bill. All

5:42

of those things that are part of having

5:44

a better life are a

5:46

brand advantage to Democrats. People associate

5:49

Democrats with being better at that.

5:52

They are the things people care about. So

5:54

we need to move away from, Hey

5:57

friends, we grew the economy. Hey

5:59

friends. We're going to grow the

6:01

economy symbol. That's an

6:03

argument that is less meaningful to

6:05

people and it is less desirable

6:07

terrain for us. So that's

6:09

the economic piece. Thank you. That

6:12

was very concise. Well done. So

6:14

we just had a conversation actually

6:17

about the demise of unions in

6:19

western Pennsylvania and how actually for

6:21

unions, the better

6:23

life argument has really failed,

6:25

right? Because their lives are

6:27

not better with democratic

6:29

control or any control actually. Their

6:32

life has become worse over

6:34

many decades of course. So that didn't

6:36

happen overnight. But they

6:38

are the quintessential MAGA

6:41

voter in a way because they want to

6:43

return to a time when things were indeed better

6:45

for them. But as

6:47

we know now, the Iowa caucus results

6:50

came out and of course

6:52

I was disappointed but not surprised.

6:56

And for you to talk about better life

6:58

messaging, I kind of felt like actually progressive

7:00

messaging was really good in 2018 and 2020.

7:05

Even in 2022, Democrats actually outperformed

7:07

expectations, right? Like the fact that

7:09

Biden won, that was huge. The

7:11

fact that Democrats didn't give up the

7:13

House in the way that it was projected

7:15

in 2022 was very strong. And

7:19

having said all that, I also

7:21

was thinking that Republicans in all

7:23

this time would reform

7:26

itself and become more broadly appealing because it

7:28

really didn't do well in 18 and 20

7:30

and in 22. And

7:33

especially after January 6th, I really thought

7:36

a new kind of leader would emerge.

7:38

But alas, there was not. So

7:40

thinking on these last three cycles, what do you

7:42

think would have been even

7:45

better pro-democracy and pro-freedom messaging?

7:47

Because after Iowa, it

7:49

feels like people are not buying it

7:51

or not getting it. Yeah.

7:54

Wow. So many conversational threads. I would love

7:56

to pick up the Union one, but I'll

7:58

let it go. answer your question.

8:01

So I think that what

8:04

we saw in 2022, I'll just

8:06

start there, was that

8:08

we actually had two elections,

8:10

we had what my colleague

8:12

Mike Podhorser has titled a

8:14

Red Wave Blue Undertow. So

8:17

in the 15 states, those states

8:19

include Pennsylvania, they include Wisconsin, they

8:22

include Michigan, but they also include

8:24

other states that are not traditionally

8:26

deemed to be presidential battlegrounds, but

8:29

are places where neither Trump nor

8:31

Biden won by more than 15

8:34

points. So they're purple E. So

8:36

the barrel guns plus, in those 15

8:39

states, Democrats won,

8:41

and turnout despite it being a

8:44

midterm, despite Democrats being in the incumbency,

8:46

where generally we would have the expectation

8:48

that the voters would be sort of

8:50

dissuaded and not that into it. That's

8:53

what happens when you're the party in

8:55

power, your voters not that energized the

8:57

out of power party is energized. That

8:59

is the reason behind a red wave.

9:02

In the 15 states where there was a marquee

9:04

MAGA Republican running, they were running for governor, they

9:07

were running for Senate somewhere close to the top

9:09

of the ticket, and the

9:11

movement groups, and sometimes the

9:14

candidates, made the election

9:16

a contest of freedom

9:18

versus fascism made the election

9:21

a contest about either

9:23

they're going to take away your freedoms,

9:25

or you voter not the Democrats going

9:28

to come to save you, that doesn't

9:30

work. You the voter as the protagonist

9:32

in the ad in the speech in

9:34

the communication, can decide to protect them.

9:37

In those states, turnout was unprecedented,

9:40

it matched 2018 levels, which was

9:43

historic, historic, historic, and

9:46

Democrats won. In the 35 states

9:50

where Democrats ran much more

9:52

traditional midterm campaigns, talked about

9:54

the economy tried to rebuff

9:56

the crime arguments, I'm thinking

9:58

of course, places like New

10:01

York, iconically, California, to a certain

10:03

extent where I live, turnout

10:05

was down, as would

10:07

have been predicted, and there was indeed a

10:09

red wave. That is why we did not

10:11

hang on to the House, as you know.

10:14

So there were two elections that happened, and

10:16

that's a very important thing

10:19

to look at, because when you look

10:21

under the hood, you challenge the conventional

10:23

wisdom that turnout was down. Turnout was

10:25

only down if you look in the

10:28

aggregate. The places where Democrats

10:30

won turnout was up, the places where

10:32

they lost turnout was down. So you

10:34

cannot look in the aggregate and

10:36

say, oh, Democrats don't win

10:38

by turnout. That's not true. You

10:41

have to look where we won.

10:43

So why am I making this point?

10:45

I'm making this point in answer to

10:48

your question, because when voters understand that

10:51

an election in modern

10:53

day United States is

10:56

a contest between freedom and fascism,

10:58

they turn out and they turn out

11:00

to vote democratically. When they

11:03

do not understand that, when it is

11:05

muddled or unclear, it becomes about who

11:07

loves the economy best, or it becomes

11:09

about who is gonna be harsher at

11:11

cracking down on the border, that

11:14

is where we dissuade the Democratic

11:16

base from turning out, and we

11:18

confuse the conflicted between choosing

11:21

between A and A-, right? Between

11:23

Robocop and mall security. And

11:26

that is really the essential thing that

11:28

we need to understand about 2024. It's

11:32

about marshaling in people the

11:35

feeling of defiance. If you don't

11:37

decide, they'll decide for you, the

11:39

power, as you said so beautifully

11:41

in the intro, is

11:43

indeed in your hands. Again,

11:45

not in Democrats' hands, not

11:47

in picking a savior, but

11:49

rather in recognizing that we

11:51

are the ones who make

11:53

our own future. Yeah,

11:55

yeah, thank you. So speaking

11:58

of us making our own future. and

12:01

messaging around getting people to be

12:03

defiant to show up, I

12:05

feel like what Republicans did

12:07

really well is getting people

12:10

defiant about wokeness and anti-wokeness.

12:13

And that seems to be well

12:15

enough understood that it's become a lightning

12:17

rod, of course, to rally around. And

12:20

I feel like in this moment, woke

12:23

is a pejorative really of a person

12:25

who cares about justice, about LGBTQ rights,

12:27

wants to be anti-racist. But

12:29

actually, we should talk about these issues in

12:31

a way that helps us make progress as

12:33

a society. So how

12:36

do you think about engaging in dialogue

12:38

on issues that are deemed woke

12:41

on the campaign trail? Yeah,

12:44

let me start by

12:46

first giving credit where due to MAGA.

12:50

When they look at an issue, and

12:52

they first test it, and people are

12:54

like, don't care, don't

12:56

know what that is. Classic case would be critical

12:59

race theory. When we started

13:01

off doing focus groups ourselves to

13:03

understand the dynamics of this, and

13:05

we asked people critical race theory,

13:08

they were as likely to believe

13:10

that that phrase meant being critical

13:12

of talking too much about race

13:14

as what it actually is, which

13:17

of course is an academic theory

13:19

about how the racialized legacy of

13:21

our country impacts everything, especially legal

13:23

cases and precedent and sort of

13:26

how things operate in our systems today. It

13:29

wasn't like death panels. It didn't convey to

13:31

the average voter, I don't know what that

13:33

is, but I know I'm not supposed to

13:35

like it. So when they

13:37

first saw, people won't give a shit about

13:39

this, the same with political correctness, which is

13:42

what wokeness used to be called, you know,

13:44

they just keep having the exact

13:46

same strategy. And their

13:48

exact same strategy is that they don't

13:50

do polling to take the temperature like

13:53

Democrats all too often do. They

13:55

do polling to figure out how could

13:57

we change the temperature? How can

13:59

we? We pick the issue that repeating it

14:01

over and over and over and over and

14:04

over and over and over and over and

14:06

then some more. Again,

14:08

we can make people care about this

14:10

thing. On the Democratic side,

14:12

they say, oh, people only care about the economy.

14:14

So we'll talk about the economy. People don't care

14:16

about January 6th. So maybe we shouldn't do

14:19

a January 6th hearing. People

14:21

are sick of us talking about the Trump trial.

14:23

So maybe we shouldn't do that. We

14:25

need to understand that the job of

14:27

the message is to make the

14:30

conversation what we need it to be. So

14:33

how do we handle this woke thing? Well,

14:35

first of all, let us reassure ourselves. Having

14:38

now done two to four focus groups a

14:40

week, you know, since 2020, so roughly 700,000

14:45

years is how it feels in pandemic time.

14:48

Any and every time we ask folks,

14:50

and whether it is a swing voter

14:53

group or a turnout voter group, hey,

14:55

what's the thing that really bugs you

14:57

most about Democrats? If you ask them

14:59

that unprompted, none of the

15:01

time do they say excessive wokeness. None

15:04

of the time do they say they care too

15:07

much about trans kids. None of

15:09

the time do they say they're just handing out

15:11

stuff to immigrants. To be clear, you can get

15:13

them there. You can say, but does this upset

15:15

you? But does that upset you? Unprompted,

15:18

they never offer that. They

15:20

always offer. They don't fight.

15:23

They don't get done what they

15:26

say that they're for. They're always

15:28

capitulating. They're always caving. That is

15:30

people's chief beef with

15:32

Democrats. And by the way,

15:35

there is a strong correlation

15:37

between the discourse around Biden

15:39

being too old, which we

15:41

can't change and we can't

15:43

alter, and a perception underneath

15:45

that, that that's actually a

15:47

signaling mechanism for saying too weak,

15:50

not resolute enough, which we

15:52

could change. So

15:55

here we have Republicans being like, you know

15:57

what? We're going to make this an issue.

16:00

We have Democrats being like, oh, people don't care

16:02

about this, so we won't talk about it. How

16:04

do we handle wokeness? Well, first

16:06

of all, we recognize that politics

16:08

isn't solitaire, and it is

16:11

not our choice to not talk

16:13

about things, because when we do,

16:15

it's like handing somebody some headphones,

16:18

and one side

16:20

gets this unrelenting

16:23

vitriolic fear, xenophobia,

16:25

homophobia, transphobia, and

16:28

the other is just silent. You

16:30

can't counter hatred and

16:33

fear with silence, because

16:35

you're just letting that messaging

16:37

penetrate more deeply into the

16:39

voter's consciousness. So what do

16:42

we say? What we say,

16:44

we know through a series of endless

16:46

experiments at this point, we have

16:48

been testing permutations of this about

16:50

race, about gender, about gender identity,

16:52

even about abortion, which Democrats used

16:54

to deem, you know, they called

16:56

it the A-word, and we're like,

16:58

you can't campaign on that. It's

17:00

too polarizing. Again, having preemptively decided

17:02

that we need to just stick

17:04

to things that everyone is going

17:06

to be okay with, complete opposite

17:08

of what actually works. So

17:11

what we say is, no matter what

17:13

we look like or where we live, most

17:15

of us want our kids to go

17:17

to a good school and feel excited to

17:19

be there and come home, have the biggest worry

17:22

on their minds, be where did I put my

17:24

backpack? But today,

17:26

Magma Republicans want to turn

17:28

us against each other while

17:31

they take away the resources

17:33

that our families need. They

17:35

hope that if they can

17:37

scare us about newcomers, or

17:40

if they can make us

17:42

concerned about crime, or they

17:44

can make us fearful about

17:46

transgender folks, then we'll

17:48

look the other way while they pick

17:50

our pockets and take the wealth our

17:53

work creates. We know

17:55

better. We know that when

17:57

we stand with and for each other,

17:59

we can fight for the things that

18:01

all of our families need and make

18:03

this a place where every single one

18:05

of our kids is comfortable and

18:07

free to be who all that

18:09

they dream to be. It's that

18:12

kind of a message where you

18:14

essentially reveal the magic trick that

18:16

they're just engaged in yet another

18:19

look over there, right,

18:21

in order to obfuscate

18:24

what they're actually doing.

18:27

What I mean over and over again

18:29

is that when you narrate the dog

18:31

whistle, when you reveal the anti-trans siren

18:33

song, as my colleague Jay Marcellus names

18:36

it, people understand. They

18:38

understand that there is

18:40

a nefarious intent behind

18:43

that make-believe attack, which

18:45

is actually just to

18:47

control us. And

18:49

I can't emphasize enough how much it

18:51

is popping to describe their agenda,

18:54

both as taking away our freedoms

18:56

and as wanting to control us and

18:59

decide our futures for us. That

19:01

is very resonant to the voters. They understand

19:03

it. It's short. They

19:05

find it credible and they don't like it. Mm-hmm.

19:09

Well, in the words of Theda Scotch-Paul,

19:11

Americans are not fools. They

19:13

get it. I mean, I think they understand the

19:16

divide and conquer tactic if you unpack it to

19:18

your point. We're

19:21

going to take a quick break to

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21:21

And now let's return to my

21:23

conversation with Anant Shankar Osorio. So

21:28

you made a quick allusion to

21:30

January 6th. And

21:32

personally, I feel like we should be talking

21:34

about that a lot in the context of

21:36

not re-electing the instigator to the White House.

21:39

And also to your point, it feels like

21:41

old hat. It's almost irrelevant. And

21:43

in truth, so many things are happening right

21:45

now in the world. It's overwhelming. But

21:48

if you want to remind the voter

21:50

about how bad that was and what

21:52

a re-election would mean for us and

21:55

for democracy writ large, what

21:57

would your message be? Yeah,

22:00

super important. What we saw just

22:02

to reassure listeners is that over

22:05

the course of the January 6th

22:07

hearings themselves, we were able

22:09

to meaningfully move public

22:11

opinion and not just in a generic

22:14

national sample kind of way, but specifically

22:16

among the target voters that we need,

22:18

those swing and those turnout voters in

22:21

battleground states, basically, that's the name of

22:23

the game, that's who we're looking at,

22:25

that's who we're seeing when we say

22:28

something is working, needs to be working

22:30

with one or both of those groups,

22:32

otherwise it's kind of just irrelevant. We

22:36

were able to move folks' opinions,

22:38

not just that the January 6th

22:40

hearings were important, were vital, were

22:43

critical, but that actually they were

22:45

about getting out

22:47

the truth, ensuring justice, and

22:50

on the incredibly important dependent

22:53

variable measure of this

22:55

is part and parcel of a broader

22:57

MAGA agenda to take away our freedoms

23:00

and control us. This is part

23:02

and parcel of a broader agenda

23:05

to take away our votes, to

23:07

overthrow the will of the people. Getting

23:09

people to understand that it wasn't just

23:11

the foot soldiers, which was their initial

23:13

understanding, we know from data, that initially

23:15

it was like, yeah, it was that

23:17

QAnon-Shaman guy, and it was the people

23:19

who broke in, but not

23:22

seeing kind of the generals that sent

23:24

the marching orders. And that was a

23:26

big part of the narrative push that

23:28

we had to make. To de-center the

23:31

folks who were on TV all the

23:33

time, because there's a lot of footage,

23:35

and that footage is very sexy from

23:37

a TV news perspective, to be like,

23:40

no, it's about the folks who planned,

23:42

paid for, pardoned. Planned, paid for, pardoned.

23:44

The members of Congress who planned, paid

23:46

for, pardoned, you can hear my repetition,

23:49

that's intentional. So we

23:51

need to keep at that and

23:53

remind folks, and the language that

23:55

we have found most efficacious in

23:57

this regard is talking about January.

24:00

as a criminal conspiracy,

24:02

as opposed to an

24:04

insurrection, an

24:07

attempted coup, an attack. I mean,

24:09

attack is also good language. When

24:11

we talk about it as an attack,

24:14

it's really important to say that it

24:16

was an attack on our country as

24:19

opposed to an attack on our capital

24:21

or an attack on our democracy. People

24:24

need to have it made visceral for

24:26

them, that this was

24:28

personal, this was sort of our

24:30

generation's Pearl Harbor. This was

24:33

the moment of no return. And

24:36

when we talk about it as an

24:38

attack on our country, a criminal conspiracy

24:40

to overthrow your vote, to

24:43

silence your choice, to decide

24:45

for themselves that they would

24:47

take power at any cost,

24:50

people understand that. We

24:52

have in the upcoming Trump trials,

24:55

another opportunity to expand

24:57

that narration. And

24:59

what we see in polling in the same

25:01

sort of anxiety inducing polls that all the

25:03

folks are looking at and saying, oh, the

25:06

horse race is bad, the horse race is

25:08

bad. And there's plenty to say

25:10

about why those polls ought

25:12

to be put into the garbage bin. In

25:15

all of those polls, usually somewhere

25:17

question, 12 or 20 or

25:20

however long down the line, they

25:22

will ask something around, but

25:24

what if Trump is convicted or how would

25:26

a Trump conviction impact your vote? Or how

25:29

do you feel about a convicted person? If

25:31

he's convicted of a crime, like should he

25:33

still be president? In all

25:35

of those polls, that

25:38

question flips enough voters, usually by

25:40

taking them out of the don't

25:42

know, not sure undecided, not by

25:45

taking them out of the Trump

25:47

voter category to flip

25:49

the election by meaningful

25:52

digits. And so we

25:54

need to understand that that story

25:56

that you just lifted up, that

25:59

what's... at stake here is, are

26:02

we going to be a place where we continue

26:04

to have the freedom to cast

26:06

our votes and have it counted? Are we

26:08

going to be a place where you have

26:11

the freedom to decide what happens in your

26:13

own future? Or will we allow this fascist

26:15

movement to rule over and not represent us

26:17

that that's what's going on in this election?

26:20

I guess I'm surprised the way that

26:23

you're saying that it is, you

26:25

know, an assault on our country,

26:27

that people have not messaged it

26:30

as being anti-American in a way

26:32

that people all over this country

26:34

describe communism as anti-American, right? Like

26:36

this was anti-American. But

26:40

speaking of the polls that you said

26:42

that if Trump is convicted, people change

26:44

their mind and in the polling would

26:46

not vote for him. And

26:48

I have to tell you that just a few days

26:51

ago, my 16-year-old asked me, how is

26:53

it that he's even on the ballot

26:55

given that he was convicted of raping

26:57

a woman, of lying about the financial

26:59

condition of his company and now being

27:01

barred from conducting business in the state

27:03

of New York and is of course

27:05

embroiled in these lawsuits, you know, in

27:07

the federal election interference case in D.C.,

27:10

the conspiracy to overthrow the election. And

27:12

if you believe Chris Christie, he will

27:14

be convicted. So of course, there

27:17

are some states who are barring Trump from being

27:19

on the ballot. And so when

27:21

you are specifically talking

27:24

about the criminality and

27:26

the potential conviction, what

27:28

do you say? What

27:31

do I say to the question that your child

27:33

very, very wisely asked? Like how is this our

27:35

reality? How is it even possible? Yeah. How

27:38

is this our reality? You know, I

27:40

asked myself that on a multiple times

27:42

an hour basis. It's hilarious being friends

27:44

with people who live in other countries

27:47

and trying to explain because they're like,

27:49

just explain again, like explain again how

27:51

this is what's going on and this

27:53

is what you do in France. Mostly

27:57

on that question, but also on the question of. How

28:00

is it that you're having the exact same election

28:02

again? Like, didn't you do this? Wasn't

28:04

that 2020? What's going on? You

28:07

know, and my joke is that the

28:09

reality TV show producers have become very

28:11

lazy. And instead of casting archetypes, they've

28:13

just like gone back to the exact

28:15

same characters. And a lot of the

28:17

malaise that we see out of voters,

28:19

my pet hypothesis is just people are

28:21

bored. Americans like new things. This

28:23

is not new. We had this matchup before.

28:25

Why should I be plugged into it? This

28:28

is boring. But back to your

28:30

question. The frogs in

28:32

boiling water analogy to me is

28:34

really the most apt. And I

28:36

think that the media is kind

28:39

of the sinquannon of the

28:41

frogs in boiling water, by which I mean, everything

28:45

is normalized. Everything

28:47

as if this were

28:49

just kind of permutations

28:51

of normal. And, you

28:54

know, whether or not we're actually going

28:56

to allow people the legal right to

28:58

vote, that's just a policy disagreement

29:00

in the way that like, I think the highway

29:03

should go over here. And you think the highway

29:05

should go over there. I think that

29:07

we should do this kind of

29:09

financing for Medicare. And you think

29:12

we should do that kind is

29:14

a policy disagreement. We

29:16

have had since 2016, and

29:19

actually, let's go on before that

29:22

to the Tea Party. The Tea

29:24

Party, a movement born of questioning

29:26

Barack Obama's place of birth, place

29:28

of origin, whether he was actually

29:31

even fit to run, a movement

29:33

born of questioning whether people of

29:35

color should even have rights, a

29:38

movement born of the exact same

29:40

impetus and roots as

29:42

Jim Crow, right? The

29:44

movement to destroy reconstruction. I

29:48

think that it is very

29:50

telling that in Germany,

29:53

after World War II, there

29:55

were very concrete steps taken,

29:57

and written into law, that-

30:00

ensured that a Nazi party could

30:02

not rise again, could not

30:04

run again, could not be

30:06

made to represent people, because I

30:09

think that they understood that, you

30:11

know, it's like weeds, right? You

30:13

think you got all the weeds,

30:15

but you just gotta keep weeding

30:17

unless you truly pull them out

30:19

by the root. I promise you,

30:21

they're sitting there in the soil.

30:24

And those weeds of white

30:26

supremacy, of domination, that

30:30

are part of the

30:32

soil of this country, and

30:34

I think that we're kidding ourselves if we

30:37

say anything differently. We never

30:39

pulled those out by the roots. We

30:41

never actually barred people who had

30:43

been involved in attacking the country.

30:46

In fact, we say that there

30:48

was a war of North versus

30:50

South, that's ridiculous. The North wasn't

30:52

a separate force, it was a

30:55

war of the South versus the

30:57

United States of America. The South

30:59

attacked the United States of America.

31:01

The North is not a

31:03

country. And so

31:06

when they did that, operating

31:08

from concentration camps, which we've been

31:10

conditioned to call plantations, doesn't that

31:12

sound nicer, we did

31:15

not nip that in the bud. We

31:17

did not put in place laws. The

31:19

closest we got to it, ironically, was

31:22

the 14th Amendment, Part 3, which

31:24

barred insurrectionists from running for office,

31:26

which is the part of the

31:29

Constitution right now at issue in

31:32

Colorado and Maine, as you brought up

31:34

barring Trump from being on the ballot.

31:37

And so I think the way that we

31:39

have gotten to here is by

31:41

pretending along the way that

31:44

everything is within some kind

31:46

of realm of normal, and

31:49

everything that this man has done, everything

31:52

that this movement has done, everything that

31:54

the Tea Party did in

31:56

sort of preparation for becoming back,

31:58

was just kind of a policy

32:01

disagreement, what folks

32:03

need to understand is that a political

32:05

party tries to court your vote and

32:07

an authoritarian faction tries to keep you

32:09

from voting. The Republican Party

32:12

is no longer operating as a political party,

32:14

and that is a choice that they have

32:16

made. I did not make it for them.

32:18

I wish that they would make another choice.

32:22

And so they need not be

32:24

treated and spoken of as

32:27

a party, but rather as

32:29

an attempted usurping force. That's

32:32

what people need to understand. Well,

32:34

I was going to ask you a question about how

32:36

you're thinking about the American voter today and the way

32:38

that it used to be even 10 years ago. But

32:41

you've just laid out the context that really

32:44

white supremacy never died, that has

32:46

been with this country for a long,

32:48

long time. And you made

32:50

a reference to the Tea Party, which in my

32:52

mind was sort of like the resurrection of this,

32:54

the beginning of where we are today. I

32:57

mean, it would be inaccurate to say it's the beginning, but sort

32:59

of the kindling fire maybe is a

33:01

better way. But the

33:03

reality is that politics is not the way it used

33:05

to be even like in the 80s or the 90s. Politics

33:08

has changed. And one of the things

33:10

that I'm worried about is that someone

33:12

like Biden has lived and worked all

33:14

his life and that other system that

33:17

is no more. And he continues, he's

33:19

talking and running like that old politician

33:21

that really nobody is interested in anymore.

33:24

So in your mind, how

33:26

has the electorate evolved? Having

33:28

said all this, contextualizing all this? Yeah.

33:31

And I want to really just draw

33:33

a bright line between the things that

33:35

I say that are kind of my

33:37

attempt to understand what's going on and

33:39

the things that I say that are

33:41

messaging advice and they are different things.

33:44

So that analysis is

33:46

not actually a message. That is not

33:48

a sort of front facing message to

33:50

a voter. And I would not encourage

33:52

that to those people. First of all,

33:54

most people can't listen that long and

33:56

have already tapped out. So I just

33:58

want to draw that distinction. I think

34:01

when I'm looking at the

34:03

US voter, what I'm principally

34:06

concerned about, as I said before,

34:08

is the disaffected. What

34:11

I am principally concerned

34:13

about is how we

34:15

reassemble the Avengers. The

34:18

Avengers got to come back for yet another movie

34:20

here. It's a rerun. And

34:23

the anti-magical coalition that came out in full

34:25

force to deliver us a blue wave in

34:28

2018 that came out in 2020 to eke

34:31

it out, that came out in the states

34:33

that I mentioned in 2022 in

34:35

the off-year elections that you

34:37

lifted up, rightly so at

34:39

the beginning, to defy pundits,

34:41

precedent, expectations, etc. That's

34:44

the coalition that we have to reassemble. And

34:46

so the questions that we have to ask

34:48

ourselves are what makes

34:50

those folks go

34:53

out and do the thing? And

34:56

a lot of what we know

34:58

is that voting is a habituated

35:00

behavior. And this is maybe the

35:02

most challenging thing for folks

35:04

like me, I'm going to say you, anybody

35:08

who is deeply engaged in

35:10

politics to understand. We

35:13

traditionally think of the distinction between

35:15

voters being ideological. Oh,

35:17

there's, you know, these two factions, there's

35:19

progressive people, and there's right-wing people, and

35:21

they're very, very different. In

35:24

many ways, the more important distinction

35:26

is between engaged voters, which is

35:28

a teeny tiny little

35:30

group of people, and

35:34

most Americans. The largest

35:36

political bloc in the United States

35:38

is not Democrats and is not

35:40

Republicans. It is voter eligible non-voters.

35:43

That is the largest group, that's

35:46

larger than the Democrats group, larger than

35:48

the Republicans group, and they are the

35:50

name of the game for us. Expected

35:54

voters, first-time voters depends on which

35:56

election you're measuring against, but they

35:59

are around. 12 to 20

36:01

points more progressive than

36:03

the general electorate. So if

36:05

you turn them out you're

36:08

gonna get more Democratic big

36:10

D and little d outcomes

36:12

because more people taking part

36:14

in our decision-making is more

36:16

Democratic small D. So

36:19

what turns them out? We

36:21

like to believe it's issues. We like

36:24

to believe it's a magical incantation. We

36:26

like to believe it's a candidate that

36:28

you know really really excites them. In

36:31

reality what the behavioral science

36:34

shows is that it's

36:37

not that different than adhering to

36:39

a diet, adhering to an exercise

36:41

routine. Voting is a

36:43

matter of habituation. People who

36:45

always vote always vote and

36:47

people who never vote never vote.

36:50

So how do you tip them from

36:53

oh no I'm just not a person

36:55

who exercises like I don't exercise to

36:57

I don't just exercise but I'm gonna

36:59

stick with it. It's not just gonna

37:02

be like a January 1st kind of

37:04

situation. I'm gonna go past January 2nd.

37:06

I'm gonna go into February and in

37:08

fact I'm gonna need you to go

37:11

to November friend. So

37:14

what most alters voting

37:16

behavior and I

37:18

know this isn't sexy it isn't like

37:21

soaring anthems and issues and

37:24

ideology is social

37:26

proof i.e. the

37:29

middle school theory of messaging. People

37:31

do the thing they think people

37:34

like them do. So if you're

37:36

milieu, if your sort of identity

37:38

group whatever that is could be

37:40

religious could be racial could be

37:42

job related however you

37:44

kind of identify. If that

37:47

group of people has voting

37:49

as part of its habituated

37:51

behavior you're much more likely

37:53

to do it. It's

37:55

not that different to the phenomenon of like

37:57

well that must be the good place to eat because

37:59

there's line there. I don't know anything about

38:02

that place, but that line is telling me

38:04

something. So in

38:06

2018, in 2020, through

38:08

the Trump resistance, being

38:11

political, being engaged,

38:13

consuming political news, having

38:15

political posters in front

38:17

of your house, wearing

38:19

political clothing, all of

38:22

that surged. There was just a lot more

38:24

of it going on. And it became a

38:26

part of way more people's

38:28

identity, people who maybe previously never

38:30

paid attention to political things, or

38:32

maybe they voted, didn't do much

38:34

more, maybe only in presidential. We

38:37

have to get back into a place

38:39

where being tuned in and tapped into

38:41

politics is part of identity.

38:43

And that is really what this year

38:46

is about. It's much less

38:48

immediately, though eventually we have to seal

38:51

the deal, about calling Biden,

38:53

about selling Harris, about selling

38:55

Democrats. We first have to

38:57

sell the very idea of

39:00

participating itself. So

39:03

the number one way to increase voting

39:05

behavior is to talk about voting. Not

39:08

about issues, not about candidates, about

39:10

voting. The other way

39:12

is social pressure. Social

39:14

pressure is that creepy postcard that comes

39:17

to your house that says who

39:19

you vote for is private. Whether or

39:21

not you vote is a matter of

39:23

public record, or this is your record

39:26

on voting, you vote X percent less

39:28

than your neighbors or X percent more

39:30

than your neighbors. It's basically saying people

39:32

can tell whether or not you voted.

39:35

And those are the levers basically

39:37

making it the socially sanctioned thing

39:40

to do that have the most

39:42

movement on changing behavior. Mm hmm.

39:45

Yeah. Well, I will say

39:47

that works, of course. I in

39:49

2022 had a texting

39:52

tree and I texted all my

39:54

friends to say when you vote,

39:56

please bring two more friends to

39:58

the voting booth. And And not

40:00

everybody responded, but some did. I'm

40:03

not sure that they necessarily invited people,

40:05

but I think they tried. But to

40:07

pivot here, I want to talk about

40:09

some other races that you are watching

40:12

on the state level or municipal level,

40:14

aside from the presidential. What should we be

40:16

on the lookout for? Yeah,

40:19

so as a note of hope, I just

40:21

want to say, look at what

40:23

just happened in November of 2023 at

40:25

the school board level. We have this

40:28

group. We're quaking in our boots. They're

40:30

supposedly so powerful, moms for liberty. And

40:32

this is, again, where MAGA just excels.

40:35

I mean, they are the fake

40:38

it till you make it kings,

40:40

queens, royalty of the universe. They

40:43

take, let's say, Iowa 2.7% of eligible

40:46

voters. That's

40:49

who turned out in Iowa. Did you know that was less than 3%? Iowa

40:52

is a state with 1% of

40:55

the US population, 2.7%

40:58

of eligible human beings were voting in that

41:00

election. So we're talking what, like

41:02

20 people? I'm kidding. I'm exaggerating.

41:04

But it's not a lot of people.

41:07

And Trump is declaring that he was chosen

41:09

to be king of the universe. They

41:12

take whatever little teeny

41:14

tiny crumb is going

41:16

on, and they say, this means

41:18

that everybody loves us. We take

41:20

winning in race after race after

41:22

race and say, we're the losing

41:24

team. We're very, very concerned. We're

41:26

probably going to lose. So

41:29

this is another example of social proof.

41:31

School board races. You thought I had lost

41:33

the thread, but here it is. In

41:36

the election that we just had in 2023, when,

41:39

of course, Andy Bashir remained governor

41:41

of Kentucky. We saw the Virginia

41:44

State House flip. God bless Virginia.

41:46

We saw great outcomes in the

41:48

Pennsylvania Supreme Court races. We saw

41:50

Ohio deliver another ballot win on

41:53

the heels of the previous one.

41:56

And we saw school

41:58

board races. in

42:00

place after place after place that moms

42:02

for liberty had put their eggs in

42:04

the hatred xenophobia anti-trans basket that is

42:06

where they love their eggs they keep

42:08

their eggs very warm in the hatred

42:11

basket and we won

42:13

a lot of those races so

42:15

i'm looking again at school boards

42:17

this is an absolutely winnable issue

42:20

when you bring things down to

42:22

the local level and people really

42:24

understand oh you're going to

42:26

get in the way of my

42:28

kids actually being able to have

42:30

an education that they want and

42:32

deserve oh no no no friend

42:34

right it becomes very clear and

42:36

unambiguous to people who are politically

42:38

engaged that requires you know some

42:40

measure of being a high information

42:42

voter that you're paying attention so

42:44

i think school board race is

42:46

extraordinarily important i think there

42:49

are senate seats for example

42:51

missouri wouldn't it

42:54

be delicious and wonderful to

42:56

have josh holly run his

42:58

way to whatever slime bath

43:00

he actually belongs in i

43:03

think that missouri is a great

43:05

pickup opportunity i think

43:08

that there is a pathway to hold

43:10

on to the senate i mean i

43:12

am a pathological optimist so i believe

43:15

that there is a pathway to have

43:17

a trifecta again if

43:19

and when we mobilize this

43:21

defiance and we make this

43:23

act of voting being the

43:25

thing to do and what

43:27

people like you however you

43:29

define that do well

43:32

not to throw a wrench in here but

43:34

i know that there are some engaged voters

43:36

progressives who are currently divided over what's happening

43:39

in gaza and who have told me personally

43:41

yeah i am not going to vote for

43:43

biden because i'm so upset and

43:45

it's not that they're going to vote for the

43:48

opposition but they'll just not vote so it's the

43:50

kind of thing where i feel like well i

43:52

i understand where you're coming from but the stakes

43:54

are high and i kind of feel like how

43:56

do you persuade them to come out or

43:58

is there just a lot of time between now and November. But

44:00

you know, that sounds lazy, but you know

44:02

anything. No, no, not at all. It doesn't

44:04

sound that way at all. So that's

44:06

real. And I think that anyone who

44:09

thinks it's not real is kidding themselves.

44:11

We can see it in qualitative, we

44:13

can see it in quantitative, we

44:15

can see it really, really acutely in

44:17

a state like Michigan, where there is

44:19

a high concentration of Arab American voters,

44:21

who not only are a core part

44:24

of the base, they are

44:26

very politically engaged, right? There are

44:28

a lot of our GeoTV volunteers,

44:30

they doorknock. So we need to

44:32

remember, it's not just an impact

44:34

on voters. In some places,

44:36

it's an impact on the machine

44:38

that we rely upon to animate

44:41

other voters, right? These people are often,

44:43

let's take the banned analogy, the first

44:45

trumpet. And if you can't get the

44:47

first trumpet to be planned real loud,

44:49

like, how could you possibly get the

44:51

rest of the orchestra to be on

44:53

it? So what you're

44:55

talking about is very real. And

44:58

I think what's especially visceral

45:01

about it, is that

45:03

these conversations that you're describing, what

45:06

we are getting from voters is not, I'm just

45:08

going to stay at home, it's

45:11

I'm going to skip the top of the ticket, I

45:14

will vote down ballot. That's

45:16

a very sophisticated person that is a

45:18

different kind of a voter than one

45:21

who's like, but it won't

45:23

do anything, or the

45:25

kind of a person who has never

45:27

voted before. And they're just like, they

45:29

don't even really know what's going on.

45:31

They're barely aware the election's not on

45:33

their radar. So the first

45:35

thing, you know, I will give

45:38

the annoying researcher answer and say

45:40

it's an empirical question. We are

45:42

right now in deep, deep, deep,

45:44

deep, deep, trying to disaggregate who

45:47

are these different subgroups of potentially

45:49

disaffected voters, because I just named

45:51

three categories. And those are different

45:54

kinds of people. And they require

45:56

a different rhetorical response. So

45:58

the best answer that I can give

46:00

at this point is you've

46:03

already intuited, I think because

46:05

you're very smart and because

46:07

you're obviously an incredibly empathetic

46:09

person. What doesn't

46:11

work is yelling

46:13

at people, shaming people, berating

46:16

people. I personally have never had the

46:19

experience of telling someone, wow, what you're

46:21

thinking of doing is the worst idea

46:23

ever and you're obviously an idiot and

46:26

having them turn around and say, please tell

46:28

me more about that. I'm so excited to

46:31

hear your opinions. So all

46:33

of that kind of like, do you have

46:35

any idea what you're doing? You

46:39

are the person who's gonna put Trump in office.

46:41

Like all of that, that does

46:43

not work. So if you need

46:46

to scream that into a pillow, if that's your

46:48

natural inclination, like go get a pillow, don't say

46:50

it to other people. What

46:53

to say to other people, I

46:55

have tried various things. And

46:57

again, we're talking about high information people,

46:59

at least the kind of conversation that

47:01

you've described is either,

47:05

I hear you, it's an

47:07

extraordinarily awful situation.

47:10

And I personally disagree

47:14

with the policy as well. And I feel

47:16

sad. I mean, it's

47:18

beyond sad, right? Sad is not enough of a word.

47:22

And here's what I know. What

47:24

I know is that if you don't

47:26

decide, they'll decide for you. If

47:30

you don't cast a

47:32

vote for the

47:34

continuation of the

47:36

freedoms, limited as they are, insufficient

47:38

as they are, inadequate as they

47:41

are in this country. If

47:43

you don't cast a vote to protect

47:45

what we've got, then what comes next

47:48

will be, we

47:50

no longer even possess the means to

47:54

keep fighting. We no

47:56

longer even possess the means to

47:58

contest this. So that's... one

48:00

way of doing it. The

48:02

other way which is related, again, if

48:04

it's a high info person is to

48:07

say, yeah, this shit's

48:09

real broken. It's extraordinary

48:11

in the worst possible way

48:14

that this is our choice

48:16

to make that these are the

48:18

candidates in a country this large with

48:20

this many extraordinary human beings contained within

48:23

it, that we're making a choice

48:25

in 2024 that is the same choice we had

48:27

in 2020.

48:31

The US electoral system is

48:33

like a broken down toaster

48:35

that has two and only

48:37

two slots. You are

48:39

never going to get a nutritious breakfast

48:41

out of a toaster. You can't get

48:43

protein, you can't get vitamins, you can't

48:45

get anything really delicious. And

48:48

in that toaster, we get to

48:50

select between a crusty dry piece

48:52

of bread that is not that

48:55

appetizing, but will give us some

48:57

calories. Will fuel the

48:59

calories we require so we

49:01

can get through the rest of our

49:04

day and a carcinogenic arsenic-laced piece

49:06

of poison. What

49:08

we need to do is we need

49:10

to not have a country where

49:12

what we pretend is democracy is

49:15

run by a toaster. We need

49:17

to have a full kitchen of

49:19

appliances. And that is why we

49:21

march. That is why we do

49:24

labor actions. That is why we

49:26

have to have other means of

49:28

civic engagement. But

49:31

unless and until we make that choice

49:33

to pick the bread so that

49:35

we can have some calories, we're not going to

49:37

be able to keep engaging in these other fights

49:41

and we won't be able to go on. Well

49:44

said. Well, as we are

49:46

rounding out our conversation here, last question, looking

49:49

into the future, what makes you hopeful?

49:52

You have teen kids. I have teen

49:54

kids. Obviously, that's an enormous source of

49:56

hope. I would say that

49:58

beyond that, What gives me

50:01

hope is that I would rather win elections

50:03

than polls. And

50:05

despite the fact that, yes,

50:07

we have lost ground, you know, I'm not going

50:09

to lie to you, I'm not going to make up a story, down

50:12

ballot in state houses, in local

50:14

places where a

50:16

generation ago, let's say there was much more

50:19

democratic dominance, and that's a tale for another

50:21

time. All of the ways that that happened,

50:23

short form, TLDR, it's the neoliberalism stupid,

50:26

that was a big mistake on Democrats

50:28

part was just being a

50:30

B minus version of Republicans. But

50:34

in this period that you have named sort of

50:36

the 2016 on, Democrats

50:39

just keep defying the odds. And

50:42

that is because of

50:44

this ragtag

50:46

imperfect coalition

50:48

of folks who simply understand that when

50:50

freedom is on the line, they're going

50:52

to show up to defend it. And

50:54

that is what gives me hope. Oh,

50:57

terrific. And me too. It's

51:00

not that you've said it in this way. It's

51:02

really heartening to remember that in fact,

51:04

people do show up, and they do

51:06

take the vote seriously, as we've seen

51:08

over all these cycles, and

51:10

they make a choice for

51:12

all Americans. Thank you so much for joining

51:15

us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have

51:17

you back on the show. It was a joy to

51:19

be with you. Annette

51:21

Schenker Osorio is the host of the

51:23

Words to Win By podcast and principle

51:26

of ASO communications. Next

51:33

week on Future Hindsight, we're joined

51:35

by Cynthia Ritchie-Torell. She's

51:38

the founder and executive director of

51:40

Represent Women, the writer of a

51:42

weekly column on women's representation for

51:44

Ms. magazine, and an expert

51:46

on electoral reform and system strategies

51:50

to advance women's representation and leadership.

51:53

Incumbency is the biggest barrier. In Congress,

51:55

for example, 95% of people

51:57

get reelected. whether

52:00

that's a male or a female. And so

52:02

when there's that little competition, it's super hard

52:04

for challengers to run and to win. We

52:07

saw in the 2022 midterm elections, even

52:11

though there were many challenger

52:14

candidates who registered and filed to

52:16

run in elections, and we spent

52:18

somewhere between eight and $9 billion

52:21

on congressional races in the midterms, we

52:24

went from 123 women in the US House to

52:27

124 women in the US House and one challenger

52:30

won. That's

52:33

next time on Future Hindsight. And

52:38

before I go, first of all, thanks for listening.

52:41

You must really like the show if you're still here.

52:43

We haven't asked a few. Could

52:45

you rate us or leave a review on

52:47

Apple Podcast? It seems like a

52:49

small thing, but it can make a huge

52:51

difference for an independent show like ours. It's

52:53

the main way other people can find out

52:56

about the show. We really appreciate

52:58

your help. Thank you. This

53:02

episode was produced by Zach Travis

53:04

and me. Until next

53:06

time, stay engaged. This

53:17

podcast is part of the Democracy Group.