← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The One-Per-centers Pushing Democrats to the Left
00:38:35
The One-Per-centers Pushing Democrats to the Left
Loading summary
Transcript47 lines
- [00:00]
A
As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com newyorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
- [01:17]
B
You're listening to the Political Scene. I'm Andrew Morantz and I'm filling in for Tyler Foggatt. I'm a staff writer at the New Yorker where I cover a whole lot of things, including both left wing and right wing political movements. For this week's magazine, I wrote a profile of Leah Hunt Hendricks, who is a left wing philanthropist whose grandfather was an extremely rich and extremely conservative oil tycoon. Unlike a lot of philanthropists we might be used to who use their money and power to accomplish goals that are in line with their own immediate interests. Part of what drew me to Hunt Hendricks is that she doesn't seem to do that. She seems to support social movements whose goals do seem to be at odds with her class, interests and possibly even her own bottom line. Higher taxes, more corporate regulation, even a Green New Deal, which in theory could one day put her own family company out of business. So in order to think all this through, the role of money in politics, and whether there's a not terrible role for money in politics, I thought we could hash it out with another writer who's been thinking about this stuff for a long time. His name is Anand Giridaridas and he's written four books, including Winners Take all, which is a very bracing critique of philanthropy. And most recently, the Persuaders, which is about progressive activists and organizers. Anand, thank you so much for joining us.
- [02:39]
C
Thank you so much. And congratulations on the piece. It's really a thoughtful and brilliantly reported piece.
- [02:45]
B
Thank you so much. We're sort of doing something a little unusual. You know, we might normally have like Tyler interview me about my piece, but I thought we could just have sort of a two way conversation about this stuff that we're both sort of interested in thinking about. And in fact, you know, a few weeks ago or a few months ago, we were having lunch and sort of talking about what we were working on. And I sort of said, you know, I could use your help thinking this stuff through. Cause I'm thinking about someone who comes from the plutocracy, who was born into just extreme privilege and wealth, but who is supporting what seemed to be these real grassroots social movements. And yet I was feeling kind of skeptical or conflicted, like I don't want to write a puff piece, like, am I getting something wrong? And we were just sort of talking it through. So I guess one place to start is like, what are the reasons for being skeptical? Whenever a rich person says they're trying to help and how are ways that they actually could be helping? Or how are ways that they could be sort of saying they're helping, but, you know, not really?
- [03:41]
C
Yeah, I mean, if you, if you. The book of mine you cited, Winners Take all that. The subtitle is the Elite Charade of Changing the World. Right. And so I come to this conversation and to the reporting that I did that led to that book with, as you say, a skepticism. And it's maybe worth starting with the backdrop of what most very wealthy people do. One of the moments that crystallized my thinking on this was when I was invited into this fellowship in the Aspen Institute. And it was a lot of very wealthy people and influential people trying to give back in ways that are really different from Leah Hunt Hendricks. It was a tech company doing something for let's teach 40 black teenage girls STEM education in the building area. While we are, you know, pushing anxiety on millions of other social media users of the same demographic, or let's take some of the profits from Soda company and give it to fighting obesity and fighting diabetes, or let's take a really big investment fund and create a small kind of itty bitty social good fund on the side that gives not only measures itself by financial metrics, but by social ones. And I was surrounded by these kinds of efforts of rich people trying to change the world at the Aspen Institute. And I was asked to give a talk there and gave this talk about what I call the Aspen Consensus. And I think your piece, in some ways is about an effort to escape the Aspen Consensus. But the Aspen Consensus, as I laid it out there, was we give back. We, as in super rich, privileged, plutocratic people, we give back. As long as you don't ask us to take less, we will make a difference as long as you don't question our right to make a killing. We will try to change the world and talk a lot about changing the world as long as you don't change our world through tax policy and regulation and the like. And, you know, as the phrase Aspen Consensus implies, it's really a deal that people like that will do these kindly things. And they are kindly sometimes, sometimes they're not effectual, but sometimes they're highly consequential if and only if the society does not ask bigger questions about how that money's made and what should stop being done instead of what should simply be done, more of, and I understand this really fascinating profile you've written of Leah Hunt Hendricks as frankly being about a new generation who kind of, I think, in many ways, you know, has internalized that critique of the Aspen Consensus and who actually does want to question whether the killing should have been made, does want to question how the systems that enabled the privilege should be changed, and is basically asking, how can I, as a super rich person, fight for a world in which someone like me is never possible again? And it's both, in my view, a profoundly important and good question to ask. And it's also an incredibly difficult endeavor to live a life pursuing the destruction of privileges like your own.
- [06:57]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was definitely something that I've noticed in previous reporting situations where there's a certain line, this unspoken line that you can't really cross where, as you say, how did the money get made? And I did notice in talking with both Leah Hon Hendricks and with people in that cohort that's not off limits. Like, I could have a conversation with her where I said, what do you think about oil contributing to these massive climate emergencies that we're all facing? And it wasn't like the conversation shut down. I guess one way of wrestling with that is, you know, we're in this era where it's very uncouth to just be an out and out climate change denier, let's say. And I sort of notice different ways of talking about this. When I was talking to people who continue to run this family oil company or other oil companies, the people who run the companies don't say, what are you talking about? We don't understand the science. They just say, well, why can't there sort of be a win win here? And why can't we be civil and listen to each other more? And I was thinking about that in relationship to your more recent book, the Persuaders, because that book is about having open conversations, but it's not about having this kind of fake civility where you're pretending to have a conversation, but it doesn't really result in anything. So how do you draw that line? I mean, Leah Hun Hendricks has written a whole dissertation about the concept of solidarity and she makes a similar point that, you know, solidarity is not unity. Solidarity is not everyone agreeing and getting along and just doing whatever because it makes everyone feel nice. So I guess a way to phrase the question is like, how do you both hold a kind of immovable truth? Like if we keep taking oil out of the ground, we will incinerate the planet while also not doing the dismissing people and, you know, sort of being disgusted by them and dehumanizing them thing that you were warning against in your more recent book.
- [08:49]
C
I mean, I love this. I mean, it really, what you're asking really in a funny way, puts together the last two books in a way that a lot of people saw them as totally different books that have no relation to each other. But I mean, first of all, in the Win Win thing, Winners Take all was about so many things. But if it was about one idea, if it was one idea it was trying to take down, it was the idea of Win win ism. Right? That was the religion that I thought was a fraud. And it's really present in this piece. That's the conflict in this piece that Leah has in this kind of civil way with her cousin. It was, or who we should say.
- [09:22]
B
Still runs Hunt Oil. I mean, often we hear young inheritor and we think this is like a Rockefeller or a Carnegie where the money was made long ago. In this case, there still is an oil company called Hunt Oil and she was meeting up with her cousin who runs it to have a drink and they were talking about this.
- [09:37]
C
The actual conflict you very astutely document between the two of them is win win ism versus Win lose ism. Right. And so I want to spell that out because, you know, I think win, win, I mean, it's seductive to people. And the reason it is such a dangerous idea is in, specifically in the context of social change, social progress, movements for reform. When you have a problem like climate change, when you have a problem like how do you deal with thousands of years of patriarchy and transition the world to a gender equal society? When you have a problem like extreme plutocratic capture of wealth and power to do right by the society, a significant number of people will have to have less privilege. You know, for us to move beyond plutocracy, there are specific large pots of money that will need to be smaller and donations to politics that will mean to not be able to be made in order to get to a more just society. And so again, the same scene in your article where she's talking to her cousin, I think there's the question, distinct question of how do you talk to people, particularly people who are in that group where you're saying you're actually gonna have to lose. And I think our societies are really, really bad at this. There's no honesty about trade offs in politics. Kind of for obvious reason that like no one wants to tell anybody they're going to have to give anything up. But then I think what happens is when people who want change is not honest with people about the trade offs, it creates space for your opposition to go to the people who are losing from change and be like, what yo? You seem to be losing from change. Right. And you have not inoculated that. So I think it's incredibly important in these conversations, kind of with a persuader's hat on to say, look, here is why if you run an oil company or if you, you know, pump your car with gas, it is going to get harder in certain ways for you. Right. And here's why that should happen. And it's not because you're a bad person. And it's as opposed to just like it's just better for all. And, you know, this kind of better for all. There's a corporate version of it, but there can also be a version of it on the left that just doesn't want to level with people about the fact that just transitions can be choppy for people.
- [11:52]
B
Yeah, I remember this during the 2020 primary where there was something where I think it was, you know, asking Bernie, okay, so you're saying Medicare for all, does that mean you would outlaw private health insurance? And it was all framed in terms of that loss. And it was very difficult to have that straight answer. For precisely that reason, you don't want to lead with your campaign. You know, what am I going to take away from you that's bad retail politics. I mean, it was interesting when I would bring up with sort of the activists and organizers, I would bring up this idea of, well, you guys are sort of asking people to face this win lose reality. And often people would be resistant to that and say, no, ultimately our version is a win win, because if there's a hole anywhere in the boat and it's sinking, we all have to patch up the boat. And I think I take that point, but I think it might be sort of thinking on different time horizons. You know, what can I get tomorrow versus what can I get 50 years from now? And so when you're thinking in terms of, you know, realigning the entire political order, getting rid of the patriarchy and moving beyond it, you know, these big kind of topics that we're talking about, a transition to sustainable energy, these are things that are not going to happen in one election cycle. And so I think that gets us to the question of, you know, in my piece, the kind of work that Leah's supporting and also in your most recent book, the kind of work that the people in the Persuaders are supporting. What is the role of social movements in all this? And what does it mean to be someone coming from an oligarchic or plutocratic position to plug into a social movement and support it? How does that kind of cross class organizing work?
- [13:22]
C
I mean, one of the things that's fascinating, you know, after Winners Take all came out, a lot of people came up to me or emailed me with kind of versions of the question that Leah has clearly had more of her own clarity on than many people, which is, I have this money, I have this fortune, or I'm part of this thing, or I'm on the board of this thing, I, I understand it shouldn't exist, I understand I shouldn't have it, I understand we should have never, blah, blah, blah. But in the kind of sublunary world that we're all in, it's here now, I'm here now, we're not quite yet at the promised land. Like, is there anything I can do to help get us there? Right? And so my standard answer, long before I even heard of Leah's name was, I think the most kind of high integrity thing you can do in that situation is, is give in ways that are most likely to put that power and privilege you stand on at risk. Give in ways that reduce your power over Others. So even in the way that giving is structured. So you could give to the aclu, great organization, has a lot of money, has a lot of notice, has a lot of powerful friends. Or you could give to very marginal organizations that have reasons not to be loved, that are controversial, that push slogans, for example, like defund the police, that may be important to hear as part of an evolving conversation about where we might end up, but may not be majoritarian friendly right now and really may struggle to kind of raise money. So that's one choice. And then when you make the donation, even two $1 million donations to the same organization, let's say a kind of marginal organization like that, one could be structured so that the giver is on the board and one could be kind of totally unrestricted giving, where it's just like, here's a million dollars, knock yourself out. It's not going to eliminate all traces of that power because your organization still has to be pleasing enough to a certain kind of person to be in the running for that kind of money. But I will say, having, you know, you read about the democracy all and other spaces like that, I've been to many of those spaces also. And I will say what's actually struck me in a lot of those spaces, spaces where you see grant recipients from some of these big pots of progressive money. I'm actually often struck by how radical some of those groups in the room are. And it has often seemed to me that if anything, progressive big money is propping up groups that would struggle to raise large amounts of money if they stood outdoors and said what they mean, because they have pretty strident, ideological, not quite where everyone is right now views of the world. And I think for them, it is frankly easier some of these organizations to find, you know, one extremely guilty inheritor than to raise $100,000 small dollar contributions from people because they're like on the leading, leading edge of a conversation. And in the broad ecosystem of fighting for progress, I think it's useful to have folks like that in the mix.
- [16:40]
B
So, yeah, it's a very nuanced critique you're making about how sort of donors could advertently or inadvertently push their preferred policies in ways that might be inorganic. And so is that something you imagine being analogous to something that the Kochs are doing, where they're pushing a line on the right and driving the Republicans farther to the right? Or is that the wrong analogy?
- [17:02]
C
I think it's analogous in the sense that it's the same kind of influence when we're talking about using wealth and power. In the specific case of trying to get ideas on the table that would not themselves necessarily be on a panel at the conference, there is a kind of subsidizing of, you know, what may not float on the open market. I think the profound difference is a moral difference. What the Koch brothers tend to advance, the ideas they tend to advance are ideas that would make the common good worse and advance their narrow, pecuniary interest. And the ideas here are ideas that would generally advance the common welfare, but because of where those ideas currently stand, haven't had the airing in frankly corporate, media owned environment and for other reasons haven't had the airing to even have a chance to have that kind of public purchase.
- [17:58]
B
Yeah, I want to talk. I have two things on that being out ahead of the conversation. I think before we get to that, let's just take a break here and we'll have more with Anand Giridharadas on the political scene from the New Yorker in just a minute.
- [18:19]
D
America is changing and so is the world.
- [18:24]
B
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [18:32]
D
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [18:34]
B
Tristan Redman in London. And this is the Global Story.
- [18:38]
A
Every weekday we'll bring you a story.
- [18:40]
D
From this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [18:44]
B
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. So two things I want to get to with that. One is a concrete example of how an idea is out ahead of the pack. You know the phrase people use is Overton window, right? An idea that is outside the Overton window kind of becomes part of the mainstream. We haven't seen it quite happen with Defund yet, but we have seen that happen with the student debt conversation. You know, that was an example of an idea coming out of the Occupy movement. People like Leah Hun Hendricks and Astra Taylor and David Graeber, the late David Graeber. There are a few people who were at Occupy and Astra and David and a few people were sort of saying we need to start a conversation, saying debt is immoral. We should abolish all of it. At the time, 2013, 2014, even 2015, that was considered absurd. Nobody supported abolishing all student debt. I don't think even Bernie supported it at the time, much less, you know, either major political party. And then you have things like this movement that starts building. It's a small movement. It gets funded by people Like Leah. And then you start injecting it into the conversation with these movement aligned politicians. And this is where we start to get into inside, outside game. You know, you have people in Washington in the halls of power, but you have people out on the streets and there's some kind of connective tissue between them. You feel like the politicians are kind of accountable to movement. And then you start to see, okay, the Sanders campaign in 2016 is unexpectedly popular. There's a huge amount of momentum behind it. The Sanders campaign in 2020 moves to the left of where he was in 2016 on issues like student debt and climate and all these things. And then because the Sanders campaign in 2020 is so powerful and in the intervening years you've had AOC and Ilhan Omar and all these people getting elected to Congress, there's now, you know, it's not a majority of the Democratic Party, but it's a wing, it's a block, it has power. You know, Bernie doesn't win spoiler alert in 2020, but he has enough power and marshals enough support that he forces Biden to come out in favor of some slightly watered down version of a student debt cancellation policy, which Biden had previously rejected out of hand. So that's an example of how these things can move from outside to inside. Now, what are sort of things you see in that as either lessons, cautionary tales? I mean, what do you see in that as a parable?
- [21:06]
C
I mean, first of all, I literally felt like moved listening to the story you just told. Like to me, what you. The story you just told is politics. That's real politics. And it's an incredibly hopeful story of real politics with lots of disappointments and lots of frustrations and literally everybody not getting what they want. Like Biden may have not even wanted to propose that Bernie didn't get the full right.
- [21:30]
B
And then, you know, I left out the ending where our right wing Supreme Court strikes down the plan that the President put in and then the President has to come up with a new plan. I mean, it's full of disappointments the whole way through.
- [21:40]
C
And yet the story you just told is a story in which the kind of ego and the self and the individual's political pursuit recedes. And there's a kind of more ecosystem, rainforest view of how as political actors we show up and in a kind of political ecosystem and you push your thing and I push my thing and things move, we end up in a different place. And I think all too often we have a very American, individualistic view of Political pursuit that really emphasizes the thing I want and whether or not I got it. And undercounts these kinds of victories, right? Really undercounts them. And often the people who are responsible for these victories undercount their own victories and are kind of too depressed about not getting what they want and failing to realize this kind of story of moving the country. I think you could tell a similar story around the notion of taxing the rich. You know, Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, shifting the conversation, Bernie having a wealth tax. Bernie railing against billionaires in 2016 in a way that felt off key to people at the beginning and then kind of became something that Joe Biden is now talking about. And there's a Joe Biden version of it. Just pay your fair share, man. But I remember in 2019, when I interviewed Bernie for a profile I was writing for Time magazine, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had gone into that territory of, like, there should be no billionaires. I don't think anybody had a. Or then or since has had a actual policy that would make that happen. But she was saying, in a moral society, the ability to make that kind of money wouldn't exist. Right. I remember asking Bernie about it in an airport bench, and he was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying. I'm not saying, you know, you shouldn't be able to be a billionaire. We should abolish billionaires. Right? And then I think later on he had come, right? So AOC is created as a politician because she's a volunteer on his campaign in 2016 and sees a different. As she described it, she saw herself in a new light. She saw herself as a waitress who hadn't lived up to the potential she saw for herself because he articulated a certain view of the world. She comes up and then leapfrogs ahead of him on that policy issue saying, just abolish billionaire. There should be no billionaires. He's like, in 2019, like, I don't know if I'm comfortable with this, right? And then he kind of leapfrogs and, like, puts in place a different policy. And so this is how it works. And the progressives having the effect they've had on Biden, Biden particularly, I think, under the chief of staff, Ron Klain, really having a relationship that understood progressives not as, like, annoying kids nibbling at their heels, but actually the more morally pure versions of who they would be if they weren't, like, grizzled veterans of the political process. And so there is A way in which if you are able to get past the ego of your individual political striving and take this kind of ecosystem approach, real and quite substantial change is possible in our societies in our lifetimes has been happening. And I think the lessons of that kind of ecosystem approach and not having to be the one who spikes the football to shift metaphors is incredibly important.
- [25:03]
B
Yeah, I think the thing you just said, that these movements can be seen as actual political actors with some amount of power, not as annoying kids. That narrative that like the real grownups make policy and the way we make policy is by tacking to the center and the clear eyed moral demands of the movements in the streets are just sort of like this starry eyed, idealistic thing to be dealt with, that is an extremely powerful narrative in our politics. Like I find it to be so powerful that even when what the squad, you know, movement people are doing is like saying, hey guys, we should really vote for the president's bill, and what the problem solvers caucus in the middle is doing is obstructing the bill somehow, the people in the middle are seen as the adults in the room and the people on the fringes are seen as the annoying kids in the room. And I sort of was thinking about that in connection with this kind of philanthropic strategy where you are coming from wealth, but investing your wealth and privilege into street movements, into social movements, because that's your theory of change. And yet somehow that sort of movement politics is often sort of belittled or treated as not real politics. Even though it's from my reading of history, the only way politics has ever happened, right after it's over, we can look back and see, well, yes, Martin Luther King, of course, marshaled a movement to make necessary change. And he went to LBJ and said, I have these people in the streets. Can we negotiate? Right. That's the way inside, outside movement politics has always happened. And yet I don't know for some reason when it's happening in real time, we can't see it or we can't take it seriously. So if you're looking at this and saying you're a person of some means and resources, you want to invest in social movements, how does that work in a world where we don't even somehow see what social movements do as real or something, or am I overreading that?
- [26:48]
C
I think you're right about the background conditions, but I think the thing you're describing is actually changing as we speak. And one of the organizations that Leah is associated with, Way to Win, is Actually, a very powerful example of this. So here's a story that I would tell on this, which is, if you look at the Obama administration and the kind of culture of the Obama years, and then the Biden administration, the culture of the Biden years, first of all, like, I don't know what percentage of the staffers are overlap, right? It's a lot of the same people, certainly a lot of the same kind of intellectual mentors, same networks, same whatever. However, these are two very different administrations in my reporting and estimation, based on their attitude to the movement left. Most folks on the movement left that I speak to felt nothing but contempt from the Obama administration. Oh.
- [27:40]
B
I mean, you see it in his memoir. You read his entire.
- [27:44]
C
Straight up about this. Straight up about it.
- [27:46]
B
He spends hundreds of pages worrying about what Lindsey Graham is thinking of him and, like, zero time thinking about the left at all.
- [27:52]
C
And I think it was surprising to people because of Obama's biography, like, this is a community organizer, right? So forgive folks on the movement left for being like, finally, someone who won't think we're, like, smelly and worthless. You know, maybe it had to do with being the first black president, not being able to afford any kind of association with what could be painted as extreme. Like, you could, I think, give certain number of excuses which have validity. But I think at the deepest level, Barack Obama is a temperamentally conservative person who believes in doing things through the right channels. And those are just, like, not his people. And I think there was, like, an annoyance by him and others at those people, whether it's Bernie or folks on the street or whatever. And then Biden comes along, and I think, you know, based on my knowledge of Biden as a senator and all these things, like, I would have assumed it would only get worse. Like, much worse. Biden's not even a community organizer. These are not people he went to college with. Like, right.
- [28:55]
B
He worked at a local pool one time. But, yeah, there you go.
- [28:58]
C
And Biden turns out to have. Again, this is not just my view. I talk to lots of folks in the movement left who I think would agree with this, to have one of the most constructive, not to say aligned, but constructive, generative, open relationships with the movement left, certainly of any president since, I don't know, LBJ maybe. And it's a relationship that sometimes results in Biden doing things he wouldn't otherwise do, like student debt, like the Inflation Reduction act at certain moments, proposing really big things in there that didn't make it in, but were not Bidenish kind of Things if you'd historically followed Biden. But more importantly, I think a kind of sense among many folks in the movement left that there was respect for their movement in this administration that, again, they saw them as lodestars who, sorry, we won't be able to do everything you want to do. But, like, you're lodestars, you're prophets. Like, we can't do all the stuff prophets want to do, but we don't think you're bad people for wanting to do those things. Right. Ask Bernie Sanders how he felt respected or not in the Obama years and how he feels respected or not in the Biden years. Right. It is night and day. I mean, granted, he ran two very successful campaigns and built a movement, so you can't ignore him. But I don't think it's actually just that. I think there is such a thing as respect. Ask probably, you know, many members of the squad whether you feel heard and respected and you have someone you can call. And so I think this notion that you laid out, that the sensible people are seen as a center, I think that's a very powerful force in the Democratic Party and the left more generally. But I think if you look at groups like Way to Win, which Leah Hunt Hendricks is involved with and helps lead, what it is trying to do actually is use money and donations to shift that dynamic and encourage this more kind of coalitional view where perhaps Democrats run on things that activists push and make popular and create demand for. And then you find ways for groups like Way to Win to reasonableize those things for broader audiences so that something like Defund the Police becomes a campaign called Fund Our Lives. Right. The original activists may not have said Fund our Lives. They might think that's a little bit dilution, but it's not a lot of dilution. It's the same idea. It's the same policy notion. Take money out of police war chests and put them into community. Fund Our Lives is like, let's take something that is being said on the edges and use some of the things that people on the edges may vomit about, like focus groups and poll testing, to figure out how to actually talk to folks in, you know, white folks in rural Wisconsin about it to get some of them on board, and let's pass it. Way to Win is, I think, one of the most fascinating organizations in this country right now doing that work of trying to move Democrats from the persuasion by dilution to persuasion by actually revving up the middle about things that the base is fanatically excited about.
- [31:56]
B
Well, so let's end on way to win and sort of looking forward to 2024. Right? The kind of old way of thinking about this stuff is, you know, we're a big country, you know, people think we're a center right country. The standard narrative would be if you're a Democrat and you want to win over this big country, you gotta kinda tack to the center, as you say, you've gotta dilute a little bit. You know, there is this mythical sort of median voter in Wisconsin who's probably a 58 year old white guy who's scared and you know, you have to salve his fears. And that frankly was a lot of what you saw at the Democratic National Convention last time around. You know, it was lots of waving flags and stars and stripes and white guys and I think to the way to win sort of way of thinking, which is there are women of color in Arizona and Georgia who vote and frankly they vote more reliably than that white guy. What are we delivering for those people? So I guess like looking forward to 2024, I mean, do you think people are just gonna dig in and kind of decide there's like pandering to the swing voter over here, there's like base turnout over here and never the twain shall meet? Or like, do you see any kind of synthesis or way of moving forward with the strengths of both of those?
- [33:04]
C
It's such a great question. And here, I mean, I think I'm going to address myself specifically to the small but influential group of people who are going to be writing about the 2024 campaign. Look, I think frankly a lot of research and thinking has completely thrown out the notion of the moderate voter, the median voter, the swing voter as we understand it. And a lot of people who write about campaigns for a living are the last to know and keep repeating these frameworks, keep visiting the diners, keep imagining that there's essentially this like two way street with a median and some voters standing right in the middle with middle of the road positions, deciding which road they're gonna tip onto in the end. That metaphor has been completely invalidated by research and any reporter who's still working off that paradigm is just kind of missing the story of what's happened in our politics. So the phrase I would use is the torn voter. What you're really describing is people who don't know where they're gonna land yet in an election, and what we project onto them mistakenly is middleness. Not knowing how you're gonna vote is not the same as being in the Middle of something. Okay. So if you are a fanatically religious orthodox Jew who thinks homosexuality is an abomination and you have a gay son who you love and you can't decide between Trump and Biden, it is not because you are in the middle.
- [34:42]
B
Yeah.
- [34:42]
C
It is because you are torn between your commitment to your faith and your son. And there's lots of people like that. This is at the heart of the persuaders. A lot of the people I write about are the people who have pushed our understanding of it. What they fundamentally understand in these voters is these voters have competing moral frameworks within them that pull them in different ways. Their faith and their love for their child. They were raised in the Cold War and think capitalism good, communism bad, fear, redistribution. But they are so angry about their health insurance company and how it's treated them that right there is a torn voter who can absolutely vote for the most maniacal Republican tax and regulation cutter and who absolutely could vote for Bernie Sanders under the right conditions. Right. If you look at folks who are attracted to RFK Jr. S campaign right now, these are people who might hold in their head very right wing anti vax talking points and feel like we really gotta do something about this environment. And there are lots of people who clearly feel this way. And our entire model of writing about politics and writing about voters is completely missing the fact that people are not all monolithically on one part of the spectrum, but actually feel often quite extreme things on all sides of all issues. Many sides of many issues. And if that is your view of politics as it has become mine through this work, it completely changes how to write about it and it completely changes how to campaign for it. Because then you're not trying to get that guy who loves capitalism and hates communism because he has Cold War Russia trauma, but who hates his health insurance company. You're not trying to get him by moderating your health insurance program to be kind of capitalist ish and not that communist sounding. That would be what a lot of Democrats would have done in the past. What you're actually trying to do is make more salient to him his rage with his insurance company bills and how they actually cost him his marriage because the stress got him that divorce. You're trying to elevate that up into his consciousness so that his Cold War capitalism, communism, nuclear drills, trauma, recedes a little bit and the insurance rage rises and he becomes an insurance voter. It sounds very logical, but this is essentially not what the mainstream of the Democratic Party knows how to do. And it's crucial that it figures it out. And it's crucial that those of us who write about politics start writing about voters in an age of polarization as being profoundly complicated. Figures who fall all over the map and who are trying to essentially find not some policy answer that moderates its edge to woo them, but actually find communities of belonging.
- [37:39]
B
I totally agree. And I totally, I think that anybody who has spent time either knocking on doors and canvassing or to plug your book, deep canvassing, or anybody who spent time reporting in a real way, actually knowing enough about people's lives and context, it's always weirder and shaggier and thornier and more complex. You know, I mean, just in this one piece, like, did I just profile a person who is really, really close to her family, who runs an oil company, or really, really close to activists that want to abolish oil? Yes, both of those things. Are you a person who sits in church and admires all the amazing community building things about a megachurch, or a person who is made uncomfortable by the things the pastor is saying? Yes, both of those things. That's how normal people function. And so only by talking to political consultants on the phone all day can you get any other view other than people are weird and complex and there's lots of footholds to engage with that complexity.
- [38:33]
C
And once that's your view, then it becomes really important to try to have some of those conversations with people who have fallen under the sway of dangerous currents on the right in American life, but also have deep, deep moral commitments and personal commitments that go the other way. And there has been for, I think, many folks on the left an aversion to trying to talk those people through their inner conflicts. And I think a squeamish left is not going to be a victorious left. I think a tedious hair splitting left is not going to be a victorious left. I have been advocating for a conquering pro democracy movement that is self confident enough to know what it stands for and frankly, self confident enough to reach out to people and not fear that it will be pulled in. In fact, know that it will be able to pull others in.
- [39:30]
B
Here, here. End of squeamishness 2024. You heard it here. Thank you so much, Anand. This was a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate it.
- [39:38]
C
I'm so happy to chat with you. Thank you so much.
- [39:42]
B
Anand Giridharadas is a journalist and a political analyst for msnbc. He's the author of four books including Winners Take all and the Persuaders. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Andrew Morantz. The show is produced by Michelle Moses with support from Sidney Cobb. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Enjoy the rest of your week. Tyler will be back next.
- [40:20]
D
What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
- [40:47]
C
I want a shark that that eats.
- [40:49]
D
The Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [40:53]
B
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [41:01]
D
Week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from from me. One day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:31]
C
From. PRX.