← Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
92. Breaking the Duopoly Loop – Nathan Smolensky
00:29:18
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Welcome to Outrage Overload, a science podcast about outrage and lowering the temperature. This is episode 92. We talk a lot on this show about how hyper partisan outrage is fueled by a rigged system between safe gerrymandered districts and a political duopoly that has optimized the game for zero sum total two player matchup. It's incredibly easy to fall into a mindset of defeatism. It feels like we're trapped in a permanent political doom loop until some massive far off structural reform happens. But what if the duopoly's aggressive over optimization is actually its biggest vulnerability? And that's what we're going to talk about on this episode of the Outrage Overload podcast. I'm your host, David Beckmeier to look at the practical, immediate pathways to breaking this cycle. I sat down with a campaign consultant who was working on the front lines of of the independent movement to help candidates challenge these traditional power structures.
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I'm Nathan Smolensky. I'm an independent strategist and consultant and the author of Common Ground from the Ground Up.
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Nathan Smolinski brings a highly pragmatic, data grounded perspective to this conversation. Instead of offering idealistic how to be nice bridge building stories, he breaks down the raw mechanics of election data. He explains exactly how independent candidates can flip the spoiler effect on its head. And he shows how scalable new campaign technologies are dismantling the fundraising barrier to entry. If you are part of the exhausted majority looking for a realistic strategic reason to have some hope for our electoral systems, this is an episode you don't want to miss. Let's get into it. Nathan Smolenski, thank you so much for making time for our show.
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Thank you for having me.
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So, yeah, I'm glad to have you. Glad to have you here. So, you know, I saw this article that, that you wrote, kind of speaking as a takeoff from an article written recently about the sort of the doom loop and, and that we were going to have to wait till, you know, these reforms happen. And you kind of countered that with there, there's things we can do right now. And you know, one thing you say in that article is that the independent model is already working. Can, can you share some examples of, of that?
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So the independent model, as far as just positioning independence for electoral success. And that's sort of what I was meaning by that in the article. And insofar as that we have this perception of the third party or the independent candidate as presidential. Oftentimes the presidential elections cloud what most people think of as elections. And there's A lot of other elections that go on and they have very different dynamics because they're not multi billion dollar affairs with the entire country voting. And when that's not the case, you have more naturally lopsided districts, you have a smaller field of candidates. And so rather than positioning yourself as a third option in a field where people are already hugely invested, not only monetarily, but in terms of their energy and their support and their perception of what is at stake and how much hangs on a delicate balance when you have these local elections, state level elections, even federal elections, in a lot of cases you can bring in an independent and especially a coalition minded independent and really position them as a second option quite often where there is no viable alternative to many of these incumbents and many of these parties in power. And that creates a much more viable path to competition and to real voter choice than I think a lot of people tend to realize.
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Well, yeah, so I guess that takes to something else that we talk about a lot, which is how gerrymandering has created all these safe districts and that can create some sort of defeatism and you're sort of stuck with, with, with these candidates. And plus they get more extreme because it's all about winning the primaries. And so we know that that's a driver for some of the hyper partisan outrage that we see. So, so how do, how do we, you know, really realize more the goal of, of more viable independent candidates?
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How we realized that? I mean, it starts with kind of realizing that, you know, there is a pathway and there are a lot of these pathways and a lot of the ways we think about politics and political competition and just the options that are out there. There's almost a kind of religious way of seeing shift on the larger scale in the bigger picture of politics. Insofar as when you have more and more division sprout up, it's just, well, this is human nature. This is us turning against each other. This is only getting worse and it's, there's nothing we can do about it. It's very natural to fall into a defeatist mindset. And even when it comes to something like gerrymandering, gerrymandering is, well, okay, these, these parties are making the game completely rigged now. It's impossible to compete. Well, it's impossible for the other party to compete. They're staking it on this sort of two party binary, on this duopoly and they're investing in, well, all right, if we can keep this kind Of0Sum2 player game going, we can optimize our strategy for the two player game. But the more, once you stop being defeatist, once you sort of zoom out and take more of a pragmatic mindset, more of a, a business mindset even, you realize, okay, they're optimizing for this situation, they're leaning more and more into, well, okay, if it's Democrat versus Republican, how do we have to act? How do we have to position ourselves? How do we have to strategize? And the more that they lean into that, the less equipped they are to deal with independent challenges, the less equipped they are to deal with those who are going to come in and defy that binary. And that is kind of the glaring weakness that they try to hide because again, their strategy is, and everything they do is so optimized for the way that this game is played.
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Now, do you think that that suggests that maybe some of this recent, you know, really partisan gerrymandering, aggressive tactics could backfire?
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It can if you can model it. Yeah, absolutely. And more so, and this is something that I bring up when I talk to candidates who discuss gerrymandering. It is something that I tried to remind them of that when you're running as an independent, it is not just that you pretend to have the solution, like you're, well, we have this independent redistricting and all this, and that stuff is fine. I, you know, on principle, as far as good policy goes, sure, that's great. But also you are the solution. And what I mean by that is if you can model, all right, we're going to outflank, we're going to coalition build. If it is 60, 40 in a Republican Democrat contest, then the Democrat is typically not going to field or not going to field a viable candidate. And you can have an independent come in and be a much more viable option. And not only be a more viable option than a Democrat would be, but once you look at the numbers of independents, once you look at sentiment and just the brand of these major parties, the numbers are very much on the independent side as far as that natural breakdown. And so, yeah, you can see that gerrymandering and take that as an opportunity, Take that as more, more places to compete, more places to sort of flank parties in power and present independence as second options.
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Yeah, we always talk about this idea of this fear of sort of the wasted vote. And that may be a limiter for some of these, you know, candidates that people, people don't know. So, you know, what are, what are some, you know, how do you help people move past that Anxiety.
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You acknowledge it, you respect it. You realize that there is that scenario. I, I remember I, I was a Youngster when the 2000 election happened and it was the most delicate balance and the, the tightest finish that anyone could have anticipated. And any, you know, Nader was the one who got all the attention. But any third party impactor within a race like that, yeah, that there is that, that spoiler effect. That is a thing that can happen. And you do not overcome this fear of the spoiler effect by saying, you know, oh, no, just vote for, vote for what you believe. Stand by your principles. Don't let them tell you. I think you have to respect it and you have to acknowledge it and you have to make people feel heard with those worries. And at the same time, I think within the independent movement, we have to be pragmatic and we have to kind of own, you know, those potential scenarios where, look, if, if the independent is skewing the result of the race in favor of the Democrat or the Republican, then that is something we need to be aware of, that is something we need to be acknowledging. But at the same time, in a lot of these scenarios, once we own that, once we show, okay, we hear you, we are being realistic, then it's like, okay, well, this is Democrat versus Republican, and the Republican has no chance at all against the Democrat, but the Independent against the Democrat, suddenly that's a real contest. So who is the spoiler now? And yeah, I, I would say hear it, acknowledge it, and turn it on its head, because there is more cases that, than people realize where you can.
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Well, I think, yeah, I mean, that's one of the things. It's almost like there's a psychology going on. I don't want to be the first one to do it or something. Right. I'm going to wait.
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People get intimidated by it. And this is, this is defeatism in a nutshell, is like, well, you know, how can you compete? How can you possibly challenge these parties in power? And yeah, they kind of, they rely on that to a degree.
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Yeah. So you, you cited tools like Good Party, I believe, as, as sort of a game changer for independence. You know, we often hear tech being sort of blamed for increasing polarization. You know, can you tell us a little bit, maybe some good news about how some of these platforms might be actually able to help improve, create a more constructive political environment?
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They're tools. They're powerful technological tools. Powerful technological tools. Throughout history, the general trend is they can be used for good, they can be used for evil, they can be used for a lot of things in between. My point that I was making within the article is, all right, we have this sort of idea of money in politics, money being so powerful in politics. What does money in politics actually do? What is it actually spent on? It's spent on managing voter data, collecting voter data, doing mass outreach and advertising and fundraising field operations, a bunch of these things. And a lot of these things can be made more cost effective through technology. And this is the critical point when you have a company like Good Party, an organization like Good Party that is providing a lot of voter data management campaign management resources at a fairly low cost that are incredibly scalable, that changes the complexity, that changes the barrier to entry for political competition. And it says, okay, well, not only can I technically run even though I'm, I don't have the fundraising machine or the support of special interests as my opponent does, but I can make up for a lot more of that difference than a candidate 10 years ago might have been able to because of all these new tools, because of all these new technologies and what they provide in terms of cost effective mass outreach, voter data processing, field management, campaign management, and all these other things. And that is, I think, a huge part of the viability message that is so critical to the success of any independent movement and any independent candidate.
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Well, and I have to believe that just this fundraising question is a pretty big barrier to at least a psychological barrier. You know, in our area where I am even, even fairly low level seats like school board and things like that, people spend millions to get on to get those seats. It's kind of been crazy. And you know, but I have to believe in a lot of parts of the country, kind of an average Joe ish type person could run some of these campaigns in certain areas where you probably don't have that kind of funding going on. Or is that really not pretty much true everywhere these days that there's that much money for these states?
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I think multimillion dollar school board elections are not generally the case, I would imagine. But yeah, I mean, it's also, it's tricky for a lot of independent candidates to message around because I've run into this problem. I've seen a lot of individuals run into this problem of, well, okay, I'm, I need to make the case that I can run without all this special interest support, without this major party war chest. And then you kind of get into this idealized, well, it's just a grassroots effort and the will of the people winning out and suddenly you're not able to fundraise because people are just like, well, you don't care about the money anyway. But the reality is, look, you can overcome some, some of those gaps, a great deal of those gaps with technology, with just efficient spending and utilization of all these new tools and with these sort of numerical advantages in terms of voter sentiment, voter alignment, voter enrollment, even that independents have. But you, you still need to get to maybe if it's not $2 million, while you need to get to $500,000, and then you can message more directly around that and you can make the case, hey, your money is going to something that's really viable, your money can make an impact and we can still compete even though it may not be as much money as the opponent raises because of all these factors. So, yeah, I would say, again, not that it completely eliminates the factor of money, but really shifts that competitive balance and that barrier to entry.
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It wasn't in your article. But I'm curious to get your take on this because, you know, I've seen a lot of different kind of debates about this. I've talked to different political scientists about it. You know that we see these numbers that, you know, people that declare independent. Right. They don't want to declare either Republican or Democrat is, you know, a big number. I don't know. Different people say different things, but it's like over 40% and, and that's bigger than either, you know, Democrats or Republicans typically. Right. And yet we don't really see that in the election results. Right. And you don't see 40% of candidates being independent. Right. Or even getting 40% of the vote. And a lot of people talk about all different factors into that. One is that people say they're independent, but they're pretty much blue or red for the most part. And they tend to vote that way most often. But that's clearly not true 100% either, because you have these voters, these swing voters. It's all anybody can talk about is swing voters. Right. And how they will go from a Biden to a Trump, jump back to a, you know, Kamal Harris again or something like that. Right.
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And.
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Or vice versa. And you know, what's some of your thoughts about how some of that doesn't seem to align? Some of those numbers, like, kind of don't add up together.
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So, yeah, there's a few factors. One is absolutely. People do tend to have a lean. People tend to have strong opinions. I think there is. I don't know if you've covered it on the pod before the Hidden Tribes report The, from more in common from about 2018 did talk about this sort of the, the true swing that, the, that very, very. The pure centrist, I think maybe they called it, which is. Doesn't lean either way and it's like 7% of the population. Now on a national election scale, that is a big, big factor. So if, if you can get them to lean a little more this way or that way with this specific candidate, yeah, that can be a big deal. They tend. But again, that's nowhere near the portion of voters that is registered independent. One of the biggest things I'll say is independent candidates don't have the. They can't really speak for all independents. No one can speak for all independents. And that sort of is defeating the purpose and defeating the idea of being independent, which is you tend not to want to be spoken for. And that's certainly the case with the candidates who do emerge. And the pathway to success is not just saying, well, the independents are going to vote for me because I'm on their team. No, it's, it's not really a team in that way. The strength of an independent candidate is, is not necessarily in the. Directly in the number of independent voters. It's that they're not beholden to party structures, party bosses, party incentives. That is the appeal of running as an independent. And as far as appealing to independence, resonating with independence, you're never going to make any statement again. You, you are never going to speak for the group because it's a group that doesn't want to be boxed in and doesn't want to be spoken. But if you can convey a sort of a coalition mindset, if you can convey that you make people feel heard, that you let them speak for themselves, then I think you can start to demonstrate a style of politics that is particularly appealing to independent voters, that is particularly resonant with them. One other thing that I will say is independents as a voting bloc do tend to be less politically involved and less politically active than party members. And so that may skew both how represented they are in terms of election results and how many of them are actually engaging in being candidates themselves. This is also an issue with voters who have libertarian sentiment. This is one of these kind of fascinating things that I've thought quite a bit about, where the entire philosophy is espousing kind of a negative view of government. And so the cross section of, well, I view government in this way and I want to be part of government is very narrow. And that leads to probably fewer candidates with libertarian ideals and inclinations than there are voters or prospective voters with those kinds of ideals.
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So interesting. Well, as we look at 2026 and, and into 2028, these, these races that we see and certainly the last, there's for a while now these, these, these margins in this, in the, in the House and Senate have been pretty small. The individual election margins often are small. Other than, you know, like you say, these very, very gerrymandered districts, very safe districts. But you still see, especially at the Senate level, you see a lot of times close elections there. You certainly see close elections for president. For listeners that are kind of feeling exhausted and outraged by, I don't know, everything going on, I guess, particularly just kind of frustrated with the political system and duopoly perhaps in particular, what's sort of a practical first step people can take, you know, between now and the midterms and between now and the 2028 elections,
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there's a lot of time between now and the midterms, a lot can change pretty quickly. As far as just seeing new options out there, there are a few sites that do agglomerate independent candidates running. Independent Voices Forward Party is an organization that largely endorses independent candidates, although not exclusively Good Party has a lot of endorsements and a lot of candidates they support at the local level. There's a number of sites for the independent voter where you can keep track of that and you can always look up in your local elections who is running and who is in particular trying to break through the duopoly and break through the sort of traditional power structures of our politics. And if we can demonstrate that, if we can get that momentum going and show people, hey, this is a real thing, this is a real pathway to breaking through and changing the incentives and breaking down, closing that doom loop, then I think people will pay attention. And I think you get these breakthroughs when you have more mainstream media exposure, when you have conversations start to happen around. Huh? The independence running there. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, you know, suddenly there are these political contests in these normally safe districts. Suddenly there's real voter choice in places where there wasn't any before. And that is a big deal that can make a big difference. And as far as what it can do for the incentives that are in play, it is pretty dramatic. And it sort of can show at the very least that this divisiveness, this sort of negativity that the parties engage in before, before you can demonstrate that that doesn't work, or before you can completely recreate the, the incentive structure to push away from that, you can at least show people that that is not the only way to political success. And even that is a big, big deal. And even that, I think, can inspire some hope because again, the hopelessness is what traps us in this cycle, in this loop.
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Awesome. Well, Nathan Swinsky, tell us a little bit more about your book and, and where can people find you?
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Well, the book they can find on Amazon, it is common ground from the ground up, is how rethinking politics can help us feel heard, heal relationships and fix our democracy. And the idea of that, the idea of that book was basically it's actually less a response to division and more a response to the bridging efforts that were existing already insoar as I wanted to really make the case that it is not just those who seek out, or specifically seek out unity and togetherness and all this that should enjoy the benefits of it. It is anyone who wants to make themselves feel more heard and become a better advocate of their beliefs and a better, more effective voice within the democratic process. Being able to speak to those with whom you disagree is such a critical part of that. So that, that is the book that is a little more on the social level than the political level. Although I do do address that that you can find on Amazon. Beyond that, anyone interested in a speaking engagement can find me on Nathan Smolensky.com and anyone running for office and looking for help along the way can find me@unifireconsulting.com that is is my group, my consultancy, and that is where I help independent candidates and coalition builders of any political affiliation find their pathway to success.
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Awesome. Well, and we'll have links to all that in the show notes as well. And I'll put the book on the Outrage Overload bookshop too. And Nate Smolenski, thank you so much for making time for our show.
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Thank you so much for having me. I am feeling less overloaded on outrage even after this conversation.
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So that's great. That's what we're looking for. That's what we want. Awesome. Well, thanks again. Appreciate it.
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Thank you.
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That is it for this episode of the Outro. For links to everything we talked about on this episode, go to outrageoverload.net Outrage Overload is a Connors Institute podcast. The Connors Institute for Nonpartisan Research and Civic Engagement at Shippensburg University works to disseminate high quality nonpartisan information to the American public around issues of societal well being, democracy promotion and news literacy. If you found this episode valuable, please share it or leave a review. It really helps. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time.
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This podcast is part of the Democracy group.