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- [00:07]
A
Hey, Charles.
- [00:08]
B
Hey, Tyler. How are you?
- [00:09]
A
I'm good. Thank you so much for being here.
- [00:11]
B
Thank you for having me. This is such a treat.
- [00:14]
A
I'm really excited to talk about your latest piece. I mentioned this to you before we started talking, but I think it's rare to read a piece that is both critical of the state of the Democratic Party right now, while also kind of, kind of offering some suggestions as to how the party can do better in terms of organizing and creating an effective coalition. So I think this is. I'm feeling a bit more optimistic after reading your story.
- [00:39]
B
Oh, that's great to hear. And what's interesting is that when I reached out to academics who study social movements, they were all in complete agreement as to what the Republicans in MAGA are doing really well and the Democrats are doing wrong. And so I think it's one of those situations where if we go back to the science, if we go back to the expertise, we can actually turn this around. We can figure out what needs to happen for this nation to come back together.
- [01:07]
A
That's Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author. His latest piece for the New Yorker explores how Republicans and the broader conservative movement have managed to build and sustain a wide ranging coalition and turn it into a series of electoral and political victories over the past few decades. Democrats, Charles argues, have often struggled to do the same, frequently getting sidelined by litmus tests and internal divisions. I wanted to talk with Charles about the lessons that Republicans have learned around short term mobilizing versus long term organizing. Why Democrats haven't been able to build or wield comparable power, and how those dynamics are playing out in today's left wing and progressive social movements. This is the political scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt, a senior editor at the New Yorker. So before we talk more about what the Democrats have been doing poorly and what the Republicans have been doing. Well, I mean, let's just start by talking about the beginning of your piece, which juxtaposes two organizations that emerged at around the same time, which is DARE and mad. Can you briefly walk us through what each of these groups was trying to do and sort of why you decided to start the piece with this contrast between two organizations that I guess maybe they're political but not really. Right. It's sort of a different area.
- [02:26]
B
Right. So to answer why I started with that is because I was born in 1974. So I'm like gen. I'm as Gen X as they come. And, and I think that. And I just like and like mad And DARE are these things that I grew up with, and I've always wondered, like, mad, which is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Like, today it's a powerhouse. And dare, when I was a kid, dare, which is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education Program. When I was a kid, this was, like, the biggest thing on earth. And today, you never hear about dare. The only time you hear about DARE is when, like, the Stuff Stoner is wearing a DARE shirt that he got.
- [03:00]
A
At a vintage shop with, like, the lion mascot.
- [03:02]
B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And they're doing it ironically. Right. So I wanted to go back and figure out, like, why these were two social movements that you're. You're right, were not political. They were rooted in very specific issues. One of them has gone on to become hugely successful mad. The other one has basically failed completely. In fact, there's studies showing that if you participated in DARE in the 1980s, you were more likely to use drugs on average, than the kids who didn't participate.
- [03:29]
A
Wow.
- [03:29]
B
And it turns out that when I looked at the organizations, it comes down to what we know about the science of social movements. So DARE was fantastic from the start in how it was set up. It was organized from Los Angeles. It was run with strict, you know, efficiency from a central headquarters. They got backing immediately from major companies. Their budget went up. President Ronald Reagan declared DARE Day, and kids were let out of school to, like, learn that if you smoke even one joint, you're going to become homeless within minutes. It was very, very effective at what social psychologists and what academics call mobilization. And mobilization, or mobilizing is convincing people to go out into the street. It's convincing people to take up the cause, to write letters to their congress people, to. To make donations. Mobilizing is what we see when we look at those protests that are happening in Minnesota right now. When we look at the. No Kings Day, when we look at the Women's March, that's mobilization. On the other hand, MAD was a little bit different. MAD was a mess when it started, and it was a mess for a long time. It was basically started by this woman whose child had been killed by a drunk driver. And she got angry about it. And there was no central coordination or very little central coordination. And it sort of seemed like the type of group that should fail, frankly, to get any traction yet. What it was really good at was the other part of what a social movement needs to succeed. In addition to mobilization, MAD was really good at what's known as organizing, which is pushing down leadership to local representatives who take responsibility for building communities who build that infrastructure that a social movement needs to succeed. And in part this was inadvertent on their part. Central headquarters for MAD was such a total mess. The woman who ran it, who founded it, was using the organization's funds to like pay for dry cleaning. So she got pushed out. But all these local leaders basically said like, oh, this is important to us, like we're going to run this on the local level, like we think it should be run and we're going to step up, we're going to fill in these leadership vacuums. And so as a result, MAD became this like kind of training grounds for how to be a leader, how to run an organization, how to build an organization. And it turns out that social movements need both mobilizing and organizing. But that does not mean that they are equally important. Organizing is more important than mobilizing. It's more valuable, it's more powerful. Particularly when a social movement is starting organizing, developing that infrastructure. So that not, it's not all dependent on one person, but rather it's dependent on thousands of people who have built little communities around them of people who are dedicated to this cause. That is what makes a social movement sustainable. That's what allows you to do mobilizing, that's effective. And that kind of explains what's going on right now with the Republicans and Democrats.
- [06:19]
A
Yeah, I mean, let's get into that because I feel like you make the argument in the piece that Republicans have been better at organizing, even though it, you'll explain in a bit why that is the case. But I also feel like a lot of it does feel like it's kind of this top down thing where it's like, okay, there's this guy Trump, everyone in the party likes him. And so, yeah, it doesn't necessarily feel like there are all these like little communities, you know, it kind of just feels like it's all based around one guy.
- [06:43]
B
So I think from the outside and from the Democratic perspective, it appears like that, but exactly the opposite is true. So the groups that have built the infrastructure in the communities within the right, the Republican Party groups like Faith and Freedom Coalition, the precinct strategy that was launched by the Tea Party to take over local Republican precincts. In fact, Turning Point usa headed by Charlie Kirk, they were all anti Trump when Trump was first running, right? They all were terrified by this guy and really upset that he was so crass and so, so undignified. And you see that from Ralph Reed, the head of Faith and Family. You see that from Charlie Kirk, who is critical. He actually Compared Trump to Hitler at one point. Then when Trump started winning, these groups were opportunistic, as all politicians and political groups are, and they realized that Trump can be a great vehicle for them. But what we see right now as MAGA is not actually Trump. MAGA is this thing that is powered by hundreds and hundreds of organizations that have come together, and they've all said, okay, Trump's the guy that we're going to stand behind. He's the winner. We know that he can get a certain number of votes, so we're all lining up behind him. But they're not Trumpers. And in fact, as soon as Trump is out of this picture, like, we're going to see a bunch of diversification. What is important is that those groups have been under construction for two decades now, and it's the distributed nature of them. The fact that you and I don't know about Faith and Freedom Coalition, which is probably the most powerful conservative organization in the nation right now, the fact that we don't know about them is a testament to their success.
- [08:21]
A
Can you tell us more about them, just in general? Because I know that they emerged after Obama won in 2008. Right. And it seems like a lot of the leftist organizers you spoke to in the piece kind of pointed to them as like an example of, like, you know, they're doing the work.
- [08:36]
B
They're amazing. They're amazing. So, yeah, so. So Ralph Reed, who you'll remember, was the head of the Christian Coalition back in the 80s and 90s, after the 2008 Obama election, he looked at exit polls, and he realized that religious voters were voting for Obama in larger numbers than he had ever seen anyone vote for a Democrat before. And this was really concerning to him because basically, he had built a coalition of religious voters to support Republicans consistently. And so he starts trying to figure out why. What did Obama do? And what Obama did was this kind of interesting thing. Obama turned campaign conventional wisdom on its head. Usually you have a bunch of volunteers for a campaign that are managed by the professional staff from sort of central headquarters. Obama did the exact opposite. What he basically said was, if you want to become a franchisee of the Obama campaign, if you want to start your own local initiative, we support you 100%. And you know what? We'll give you some talking points and we'll give you some guidance, but you should do what you think is best. You should become the owner of your local Obama franchise. And one of the consequences of this was the largest volunteer turnout in U.S. history. Right? You had 2.1 million people who tried to convince their neighbors something like 30 million times to vote for Obama. And that's one of the reasons in 2008 we saw such a huge victory for Obama and for congressional Democrats. So Ralph Reed looks at this and he says, look, we've been doing this all wrong. We need to imitate Obama. And in fact, that's exactly what they did. They took the Obama playbook and they started the Faith and Family coalition started in 2009. And their theory was this, what we want to do is we want to find people who are religious or who are conservative. We want to inspire them to found their own local chapter. And then we're basically going to give them a little bit of support, a little bit of money, but it's up to them to figure out how to organize what issues to advocate on, how they're going to conduct themselves. Because learning from Obama, we think this is going to attract more people. And in the last Trump election, the last presidential election, the 3.1 million faith and Family Coalition members around the country approached their neighbors 86 million times to vote for Trump, three times larger than Obama's record setting initiative back in 08.
- [10:58]
A
That's.
- [10:58]
B
But the thing is, it's insane. It's insane. But none of us have heard of this, right? And the fundamental unit, the atomic unit of the Faith and family coalition is 10 to 12 people who get together. There are neighbors and they get together once a week. Sometimes they do it for Bible study, sometimes they just do it to socialize. They do it year round. And when time comes to ask them, can you sit down and make, you know, 30 hours of phone calls this week? They say, sure, I'm going to do it with my friends. Why wouldn't I do that? That sounds like fun.
- [11:31]
A
More with Charles Duhigg after the break. This is the political scene from the New Yorker.
- [11:43]
B
When I listen to the news, here's what I want to know. Why this story matters, who's at the center of it, and how the reporters uncovered it. And as a journalist, I want to make sure that's what you get, too. I'm Elahei Izadi, co host of the podcast Post Reports. Every weekday, my colleagues and I at the Washington Post give you the context you need on the biggest stories.
- [12:04]
A
Health care tariffs, artificial intelligence.
- [12:07]
B
We've got you covered. Look for Post Reports wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [12:21]
A
Part of what's interesting here is, like, especially when talking about faith and freedom, which, like, it seems like they learned a lot from the kind of Like Obama playbook is that these are Republican organizations that are sort of adopting these tactics from Democratic organizations, except now it seems like we're seeing less of this from the Democrats. So, I mean, what happened, in your opinion? Like, why is it that, you know, Obama kind of has this playbook, this, like, franchise idea, and then we see faith and freedom pick it up. And now this is something that is more associated with the Republicans and with the Democrats.
- [12:56]
B
Yeah. So I think, and there's been widespread, very legitimate critiques of the Obama administration that they did not do enough on the local side. They. They basically use this strategy to get elected, and then they sort of let it wither. But I think what's happened on the Republican side that's. That's important to this is that as Democrats, particularly as when Trump was first elected, there was such outrage, Right. People talk about this Trump derangement syndrome, which I think is a kind of unfair way of critiquing his critics. But to a degree, it's right that people reacted very emotionally to Trump. And there was this feeling almost immediately. The Women's March happens the day after Trump's inauguration, Right. And because he's been accused of rape, credibly, because he has made comments about women's bodies, this outrage manifested. And there was this belief that if we could just turn millions of people out into the streets, that it would affect some change. And even more so, there's a belief that those millions of people who show up, they have to have some ideological unity, right? We have to present a unified front to say, we are so angry at this man being elected that we are coming out to the street and we're all united against him. There's a couple problems with that. First of all, as we mentioned before, mobilizing millions of people means that they go out into the street one day and then they go home and they don't do anything else. Right. They feel like they've done their job and they're not part of a community. They don't even know who to turn to. There's no infrastructure building as a part of getting millions of people into the street. Those millions of people will march and then they'll go home. The second thing that happened is that this focus on ideological unity is really, really damaging to creating the big tent that you mentioned earlier. So take the Women's March as an example. It was at that point, the largest single day mobilization in U.S. history. But there were all these things that were exclusionary. So the Women's March actually said, if you are A feminist. If you belong to a women's group, women's right groups, but you're pro life, there's no place for you here. We, like, we don't want you to show up. There were all these debates that, and, like, internal controversies that happened almost immediately about the roles of, of Jewish people in racism, about whether sex workers should be seen as victims or seen as people who are empowered. And. And it was vicious. I mean, we've all lived through this, right? We remember this era and how if you said the wrong thing, you were suddenly cast out by your peers. And I understand the impulse for that because you want to present ideological unity. The consequence of it, though, is that all those people who are sort of ambiguous, who are ambivalent, there's very little opportunity to convert those people to your side because you're already telling them, like, if you're uncertain about abortion, like, you don't belong here, so then they're just not going to show up. And that's been. One of the things that's happened on the left is that we have seen a focus on ideological purity. We've seen a focus on these big spectacle mobilizations like, no, King's Day, millions of people. And what all the science tells us is that does not change the vote. It does not change what swing voters believe or how they act. It doesn't change the nation. It actually probably makes it harder for us to come together.
- [16:09]
A
How do you, like, distinguish between an ideological purity test and legitimate concern? I mean, I get that when you're mobilizing a bunch of people or organizing a bunch of people, that it can make sense to have that big tent. But I'm thinking more about even just like, the kinds of things that we saw during the most recent presidential election where you have people who are, you know, unsure about voting for Harris because they don't like the Biden administration's, you know, sort of approach toward Gaza, I guess. At what point do you think that people should kind of put aside some of their concerns? And, and at what point do you think that it's important to dwell on those concerns?
- [16:48]
B
Yeah, it's a really good question, right? It gets at the core of, like, why we are political as people. I mean, let's talk about what they're doing on the right, because the Republicans have basically said, and I think this is very sa savvy, although not ideologically coherent, they basically said, look, if you wear the red hat, like, if you're willing to vote for Trump, we don't really care what you believe. Beyond that, some of these people are anti government, others are pro government, some of them are pro life, some of them are pro choice, some of them are pro guns, some of them are anti guns. These fault lines that used to exist on the right about who's allowed in and who's pushed out, they've basically disappeared. As Sarah Longwell, this Republican strategist that I spoke to, said, if you put on the red hat, you are a member of the MAGA movement. It doesn't matter what else you believe. Now, hopefully others have more ideological honesty. Right. And I think to get to your question about we don't want the Democratic Party, we don't want the left to become something where it's. If you put on the blue hat, you can say whatever crazy things you want, but it is a question of what is a core Democratic value and what is not a core Democratic value. I think for many people, they would say that the right to have access to abortion is a core Democratic value. But historically that hasn't been true. There's been pro life Democrats until about 20 years ago who did very well nationally. Right. I think that there's a number of people who, you know, the difference in the perception on January 6th and whether that was an insurrection or whether that was legitimate protest. I think there's a lot of people in the middle who say, like, you know, like, it doesn't seem legitimate. They hurt cops, but at the same time it doesn't seem like insurrection. Insurrection is like a big deal. And yet on their left, it's become this article of faith, this dogma that you have to say that January 6th was an insurrection. What I would say is we need a conversation within the Democratic Party. And I think it's going to happen next year, in the following year, as we lead up to the to 28. We need to have a conversation in the Democratic Party about what it means to be a Democrat. And that has to be. These are three or four core values that are important to us. And it might be that we are against racism, we are against bigotry, we are for the rule of law. But then beyond those three or four, to say you can believe anything you want outside of these three or four core issues. If you're pro life, if you're pro choice, if you think that, you know, the trans issue is one that really troubles you, or you think we're not doing enough on trans rights, we need to create space inside the Democratic Party for all those people and decide what our core values are. And that's what A primary is. It's a debate over what the core values ought to be.
- [19:28]
A
I just wonder if, like, the core value that we've at least seen kind of articulated by a lot of Democrats, like, I feel like if I had to pick a core value right now that I would associate with the Democrats, it would be protecting people who they see as marginalized. And so that kind of applies to women who are seeking abortions or people who are seeking transitions or who are getting persecuted for being trans or, you know, people who are at risk of getting deported. And so if you kind of accept that as the core value or as one of them, it almost feels like it's impossible to expand the coalition without feeling like there's something really essential that's being compromised.
- [20:07]
B
Yeah.
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A
So maybe that can't be the core value, but then that is, like, you know, it's a good core value to have.
- [20:12]
B
Well, I think that there's a way. So when Tip o' Neill would talk about this, what he would talk about is he would say we need to have a safety net in place to take care of people who, for whatever reason, aren't able to take care of themselves. Right. That wasn't based on the color of your skin or your immigration status or your sexual orientation. It was very much based on just where, like, can you take care of yourself? And in fact, I'd argue that it was probably much more economic than we give it credit for. So I think another way of reframing what you said is, and there's a strain within the Democratic Party that's pushing for this, that if we make our focus on marginalized people around people who are primarily economically marginalized, like, they can't. They simply cannot get the resources that they need in order to live successful lives. I think what it does is it captures a lot of the groups that you just mentioned. Right. But it also expands that out to working class, frankly, whites. Right. And working class women. And working class men. Working class men have basically just completely abandoned the Democratic Party in part because they. They feel like the Democratic Party isn't offering anything for them. They see the Democratic Party the same way you did. The core value is that they want to take care of minorities and they want to take care of people who are undocumented in this country. And I'm a blue collar white man living in the South. I'm neither of those things. So why would I vote for the Democratic Party when it offers nothing to me? I actually think. I don't think we can ever criticize someone for Voting in their own self interest. It is enlightened and something I admire when we vote for things that are not in our self interest, when the rich vote to raise taxes. But I don't think it's a winning strategy. And I don't think it's ethical to criticize someone who says, I don't want to vote for the Democrats because the Democrats don't seem like they want to do anything. For me, that's a legitimate way to vote.
- [22:06]
A
I mean, just thinking about voting, like, is there a politician right now, like, who kind of represents this version of the party, you know, this kind of big tent, you know, if you're for democracy but you're pro life, you know, there's a place for you here. Or is there like a figure who's trying to build a coalition of this kind that you can, you can think of?
- [22:28]
B
So I don't think we know yet because I think that everyone who's like going to be one of those people is right now trying to figure out what they can say safely and what they can't. Right. There's this concept of the Overton window, which is what we're talking about, what's acceptable to say within, within society, in this case the Democratic Party. There are a number of candidates, Gretchen Whitmer, for instance, is a great example of this. There are a number of candidates who are trying to expand that Overton window. I think the governor of Pennsylvania, I think, is another example of this. And actually in his own way, Gavin Newsom is an example of this. They are trying to expand the tent. What they're terrified of and which, what we won't know until the primary really starts is they're terrified of stepping on a landmine. Like, if I expand the tent a little bit too much, is it going to blow up in my face? And all of a sudden everyone's going to say, oh, he's not really a Democrat, or he's not really electable, or he's not really someone we want to get behind. So what we're seeing right now is this jockeying. Every candidate that I think is a legitimate candidate, if you look at them, is actually trying to expand the tent and they're trying to figure out what they can safely say. Gretchen Whitmer is a great example because she's working with Trump. Right? She doesn't say, she doesn't really say that many, like bad things about Trump. And she's from Michigan. She's a governor of an area that has long time conservative roots. She is someone who is clearly trying to expand the tent without drawing attention to herself for doing so, and in so doing become a lightning rod for criticisms.
- [23:54]
A
So there's this moral question of like, how big the coalition should be and who you should let into it. And then there's also the kind of like, I guess, like more tedious on the ground work of like creating these, you know, sort of organizations. And like, I'm thinking about the. The MAGA led precinct strategy, which encouraged activists to run for leadership positions within their Republican party chapters, their local chapters, and become poll workers. So do you see the left is like, even though the left kind of engages in these purity tests, you know, we've been talking about, do you think that the left is still focused on that kind of like, slow local work, which is the kind of thing that I would, you know, would have historically kind of associated with the left? Or have you seen like, the left backing away from that as well?
- [24:34]
B
Yeah, you know, this is what, even better than I do. The left is a big group. Right. Saying the left is like kind of saying like Americans, like they don't all believe in the same thing. But what we do see is that at the local level, there are a lot of leftist groups that they don't present themselves as leftist groups that are trying to build these organizations. In the piece we talk about this group down home, North Carolina, and what they do is they try and organize rural voters and they basically don't take a position on who should be elected president or even who should be elected senator. They don't take a position on things like birth control or trans rights. What they do is they go and they say, what do you care about in your community? How can we help you make change in your community? And by the way, with the change you want to see, if you vote for this guy for, for Land and Soil and Water Board, he's probably going to be on your side on this issue. So it makes sense to organize. So what they're doing. And there's a group called Hoosier Action, which is doing this Isaiah in, in Minnesota, which we. We can talk about more because of what's going on in Minnesota right now. These groups are very political without being tied to ideological dogmas. They are very focused on building coalitions and building community support and building communities around issues that people actually care about that we don't think of as ideological issues because it's whether we should repave the basketball court or whether we should, you know, have more local control over the schools. Those are all political issues. Those are answered by politics, but we don't think of them as ideological. But once you get people trusting you, once you get people working together, once you get people saying, you know, you and I disagree on abortion, but, like, we really agree on a lot of other stuff and I really like you, that's when we start having conversations where people can convince each other on these big I ideological issues. And if you can get them talking to each other and they come from different backgrounds and they're going to vote for different people for president, what's going to end up happening is that they're going to influence each other. We're going to get more centrist candidates, we're going to get more centrist candidates getting elected. And honestly, once you start tacking towards the center, once you get a big agreement about how this country should be run and who should be running it, whether they're the left or the right matters a lot less. And look, there's problems with it, right? When you have a centrist government, when you have centrist candidates, you don't change. There's no radical revolution. I think that you can argue that on things like racial equity, that centrists have been much slower to make change than people who are on the right or the left. But for the health of a nation, centrist ism has worked pretty well in keeping us together even when we disagree.
- [27:21]
A
Yeah, it's an interesting question of whether the focus will be on, you know, kind of elevating more centrist candidates who can take in some of the previous Trump voters and like, bring them into the tent versus like, whether people will be be so fed up with four years of Trump that you'll see people coalescing around like just someone who was like, very clearly kind of the opposite of Trump, but also like, very into using executive power in a pretty full throttle way, but to execute on progressive policy and to undo the stuff that Trump did.
- [27:53]
B
So I'm actually worried about that. I was at this thing, this event recently, and I was talking to someone who's a fairly high DOJ official in, in Democratic administrations, and I asked him, you know, are you really worried about what's going on with DOJ right now? And he said, you know, I am, but I'm actually even more worried about what happens when our party wins, because all the tools that Trump is using right now are tools that the left can use as easily to punish their enemies and to, to push through with executive orders, their policies and the system of checks and balances that I think has been, that is itself centrist, that pushes towards moderation is being threatened. And I don't think that the right or that Trump has a monopoly on that threat.
- [28:43]
A
One thing that's striking here is I feel like we've been talking a lot about this kind of, like, gravitation toward centrism and maybe how it's maybe even necessary. And I feel like if it's thinking about, like, examples of successful coalition building on the left, like, the main example that comes to mind is Zoran Mamdani in New York City. And obviously a mayoral race is much different than a presidential election. And there are like, a lot of weird things about that race. But I guess, like, do you see him as an example of someone who was doing it? Right? I mean, what's also interesting is he's like, not a centrist at all, right? Like, he's, you know, he's a socialist. And yet I think that he was very happy to, to take Trump voters. And so I wonder, like, if, you know, we're talking about, like, Whitmer and Newsom and all these people, but like, I wonder if actually you could end up having a very large coalition that is focused on electing someone who is pretty far left.
- [29:38]
B
I think that could happen. But I'm actually going to challenge you that, that Mamdani isn't a centrist. So you're right, he is. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Right. He self identifies as a socialist. He self identifies as someone for whom Palestinian is very, very important. And yet beyond identifying that way, he said very few things that would actually trigger those buttons. Right. He, he has talked about on a number of social initiatives in New York that align with socialist values. But he also hired Tish, retained Tish as the, as the head of policing and who is widely. I mean, first of all, she's a billionaire. She's widely seen as someone who likes, can. Can have a conversation with both Republicans and Democrats equally. I think when we use this word centrist, we sometimes assume that there's a set definition of it. But I actually think centrist is a very malleable thing. I think the fact that Mamdani is governing the way that he is governing right now, that he's. He's willing to back away from his appointees when there seems to be something controversial in their background, actually suggests that he is more of a centrist than we're giving him credit for. Being a centrist doesn't mean you have to be centrist on every single issue. It means you can choose. These are the issues that I want to be radical on, but it also means I'm willing to compromise on other things to make hay with the other party in order to get things done.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like your definition of a centrist in some ways is just being a smart politician. I feel like I was taking it to mean more like you're like a blue dog Democrat or something like that. But, like, I mean, I guess like, both definitions can kind of hold, but it's like being able to compromise when the situation calls for it. That is a tenet of centrism.
- [31:21]
B
I think that it's real politic, that it's pragmatism, that I think centrism, in the way that I think about it is there are a handful of issues that I will hold firm on, and then the other things I will be flexible on because I need to do that in order to get things done. Right. That is not true for Donald Trump right now. Right. You cannot. Every single issue that threatens Donald Trump is one that you have to be 100% on Donald Trump's side. But I do think that there is room for. Look at the civil rights movement. Right. Like, one of the things that I love about the civil rights movement is that it was radical. It was. It was a revolution. And yet even then, you had people like the Reverend King who didn't take positions on a number of issues because they felt it was not core to their mission and they worried about alienating potential supporters and who compromised on a number of things in the greater battle to win equal rights for people of all races. That's what I mean by centrism. Centrism is the ability to work with the other party and say, this is what's important to me. But I recognize things are also important to you. And I think there's a compromise where we can both get a little bit of what we want.
- [32:38]
A
Well, if that's the definition we're going with, then I think we would all agree that more centrists flood the government with centrists coalesce around them. No, it's exactly what is needed. We'll have more of the political scene from the New Yorker in just a moment.
- [33:04]
B
Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown, Jackson Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlemagne, the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [33:41]
A
So let's talk about the demonstrations that we've been seeing in Minneapolis. I mean, is this, you mentioned this earlier as an example of mobilizing. Right. And so I guess, does that mean that you think it is unlikely that this is going to lead to anything sustainable, or is there a way that mobilizing can be turned into organizing? Like, it seems like the two can go hand in hand. We've seen that in the past. And so I guess how do you kind of see that playing out here potentially?
- [34:08]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. So. So I think what's interesting about Minnesota is that there are these groups that are very focused on organizing in Minnesota. I mentioned this group named Isaiah. Isaiah is, is a, is a coalition of Islamic centers, college students, childcare providers, East African immigrants. There's like 15 or 20 different groups that make up Isaiah. And these are groups that normally wouldn't come together, but what Isaiah has done is they've done real community building among these groups to make them a coalition that is effective. And I think one of the reasons we're seeing such durable turnout in Minnesota, in addition to the fact that just what's happening is awful and so heart rending, is that you already have an infrastructure that's been built over the last 20 years there that people are taking advantage of now. The second part of your question, though, can mobilization become organization? Absolutely. But what it requires is it requires someone who, if I blow my whistle and I'm out on the street, that the next day I call the person who was next to me and I say, hey, I just want to introduce myself. Like, we exchanged numbers, but we really didn't get a chance to talk. Can we have coffee sometime? Because I'd love to continue talking about this issue with you. I'd love to be active with you. Mobilization can become organization, but it takes a deliberate effort to do so. And if your goal is simply to turn people out into the streets, then the organization won't happen. Organizing won't happen. But if your goal is to use this as an opportunity to build coalitions, to help introduce people to each other, to try and figure out who lives close to each other so it's easy to get together, then this can become an enormous catalyst. And just to be clear, organizing on its own is not enough. Right. You need the mobilization. It's just that you need both of them.
- [36:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, one thing I found really Interesting, at least about, like, the latest phase of the story is just that we're now seeing outrage from across the political spectrum. So, like, even some conservative commentators and influencers are upset about the most recent killing that happened over the weekend. So do you think that this is also a good moment to fold more either center leaning people or right leaning people into a kind of the larger big tent that we've been talking about?
- [36:28]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. And the Republicans are already trying, I don't know if you remember, but a couple of months ago there was a Turning Point USA national convention where the people on the stage were criticizing each other. Ben Shapiro criticized Tucker Carlson. There was a lot of fighting on stage and on the left there was kind of this gleefulness like, oh, they're finally coming apart. They're finally attacking each other. The coalition isn't holding up. I don't think they understood what was going on there. The fact that these people can disagree with each other on a stage at Turning Point usa, one of the most high profile conservative gatherings is actually, it's not a bug, it's a feature. It's showing to the members like, we allow for dissent, we allow for dispute, we allow people to disagree with each other. And I think to your point, the question now becomes, can we convert those people who are swing voters, who are in the middle, who are feeling very uneasy about what's happening with Americans being killed, executed in the streets in Minneapolis, can we make the left a welcoming place for them? And the way that we do that is not by saying, by the way, if you show up, we're really glad you showed up for the party. We just assume that you're pro choice and that you want to let as many immigrants into this nation as possible. Like, if you don't feel that way, it's probably not the right place for you, then it's not going to work. We're not going to convert people who are in the middle. But if we say, hey, this is a big party, we're like, you can have all kinds of opinions and we are as disturbed as you are about what's happening in Minneapolis. But also it's, we see January 6th differently and that's totally fine. Like, you don't have, we don't have to see everything the same. Then we will attract those voters to the Democratic Party and we'll get their vote.
- [38:11]
A
I want to talk more about this idea of infighting that you mentioned at the TPUSA conference. I mean, I feel like infighting and maga, that's two phrases that often go hand in hand where it's like thinking about the furor over the Epstein files and when Trump first bombed Iran and you had Tucker Carlson and other people who were part of the MAGA coalition kind of being like, don't do that. So you said that this is a feature, not a bug. But I feel like, at least as an outsider, I look at that and it does make me wonder about the longevity of that coalition. Like, maybe there's something to. You can see how when you are trying to get a bunch of people to vote one way in an election, it can be great to invite all these people into the tent. But then how isn't it so much harder to keep all those people happy to govern? Like, how does it actually. How can you sustain such a big group?
- [39:06]
B
So, and I think this is one of those places where it's really important to create the distinction between Trump and maga.
- [39:11]
A
Yeah, right.
- [39:12]
B
Because we think of them as being synonymous. But I think there's very little evidence right now that Donald Trump is doing anything to make MAGA into a sustainable movement. Right. He really just cares about himself, like he cares about. About amassing his own power. He doesn't really care about, like, where the Republican Party is 12 years from now. He just cares whether. Where it is, you know, a year from now when midterms happen. So. So you're exactly right that the Trump administration and the. The folks in Washington, D.C. who are Republicans, they do not allow any diversity of opinion. They are very, very strict because any diversity wouldn't serve Trump. Trump wants complete domination of that party. But if you look at MAGA beyond Trump, that's when you start to see a lot of this diversity come out. And I think your question is, how do we deal with this tension between, we want a big tent, we want diversity, but at some point, you have to make a decision. At some point you have to govern. And some things win and some things lose. And the answer is, there is no easy answer to that, except that that's what government is. Right. Government is a system where we have a bunch of people come in with different priorities and we let them negotiate with each other. And whichever one gets the most votes is the one that we decided to be true and just. And I would say that I think our government, in our system of government is strong enough to accommodate differences of opinion. I think, in fact, having those differences of opinion makes a movement stronger. And my guess is that Trumpism will essentially end once Trump leaves office. But MAGA ism can stick around for a long time if they continue to allow for dissent and discussion. And it's gonna be a lot easier to do that once Trump is out of the picture, actually, to be honest.
- [41:01]
A
I mean, what do you think that would look like? Like, just thinking about these organizations we've talked about, like Faith and Freedom and TP usa. Is it kind of like during the primary, maybe TP USA seems to be a little bit more JD Vance friendly, whereas Faith and Freedom really wants Marco Rubio. And then they kind of, once it's clear who the candidate is or they decide to sort of team up and do everything they can to get that Republican elected, I guess. How do you see that working?
- [41:32]
B
I think it's exactly what you just said, and I don't know if Rubio is the candidate. So JD Vance is very close to tpusa, Right. It seems like they're going to organize for him, but there's going to be other groups, Faith and Family Coalition, numerous other groups that are leery of J.D. vance in, in part just because they'll think he's too closely tied to Trump and they want to get someone who's, Who's. Who's not so closely tied to Trump.
- [41:57]
A
So.
- [41:58]
B
Yeah, but that's kind of what happens in every election, right? We have these primaries where everyone who basically agrees with each other with small differences, fights over who gets to be the standard bearer for the party, and then everyone lines up behind the standard bearer. And it's important to recognize that this has happened inside the Democratic Party for centuries or a century. That's how you end up winning and winning, winning elections on a national basis. And at some point, those two groups, they got to fight it out. They got to decide which of them is going to prevail. That's why we have a Congress, is to sort of facilitate that. But, but having that difference of opinion does. Is not necessarily a weakness. The weakness is if you can't brook a difference of opinion, or once the difference of opinion is settled, if you can't put it aside and all coalesce behind one candidate, that's what's weak.
- [42:49]
A
So let's end by talking more about the Democrats and sort of what they ideally should be doing in the coming months, the coming years. I mean, do you feel like the Democratic Party has enough of these on the ground organizations? Does the infrastructure exist, but it's just not being used effectively, or does the infrastructure need to kind of be built from scratch right now?
- [43:11]
B
I think. Well, it doesn't need to be built from scratch, but I think what people tell me is that we need to refocus where Democratic dollars and attention are going, right? So over $2 billion was spent trying to elect Kamala Harris to the presidency. And that's a tremendous amount of money. It's more money that had been spent in any other campaign in history. The groups on the ground, these small groups that are doing the local organizing, they're getting pittances of that they maybe can get a million, million and a half dollars. And so we need to start saying instead of spending exclusively on national campaign, of spending exclusively on federal races, instead of spending exclusively on big issues that we think affect everyone across the country the same way, we need to start spending our money and our attention on more local initiatives. And that might mean that we get behind candidates who we don't agree 100% with, but it does mean that we get behind candidates who have sustainable infrastructures around them that can propel them into higher office over time. So that's the first thing that I think the Democrats should be doing. The second thing is exactly what you mentioned before. It is unclear to me right now what the Democrats stand for, except being anti Donald Trump and anti Donald Trump is not a sophisticated enough and a nuanced enough stance to build a party on. And so we need to have these conversations within the Democratic Party, within the primaries where people are debating, what does it mean to be a Democrat? What are the things that are core to being a Democrat? The things, the values that we won't give up, and what are the things that we feel comfortable giving up. And it means that we're gonna have to go after some fatted calves, right? Like, I think that there's been an enormous amount of fundraising around the abortion and access to abortion issue. And it is unclear to me if that is a issue that the Democratic Party should be completely solid on, because there's a lot of voters who are more ambivalent on it. And that doesn't mean that we should limit access to abortion. I'm not advocating for that, But I am saying that it's a more nuanced conversation, particularly now that it's illegal in a number of states, than the Democrats have been admitting to. And until we admit that nuance, we're probably not going to attract swing voters who feel strongly on this issue. So there needs to be a conversation about what the Democratic Party ought to stand for. And I think we're going to see a really crowded primary for the presidency. I think we're going to see a really dynamic primary. And I think out of that is going to come a consensus about this is what on these three issues you got to say yes with us. On everything else, you can say whatever you want.
- [45:56]
A
Thank you so much for being here, Charles. It was really interesting to talk about all of this.
- [45:59]
B
Thank you, Tyler. It's such a treat to spend some time with you.
- [46:06]
A
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter whose books include how to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. You can find his latest piece, what MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing and Infighting@newyorker.com this has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. I'm Tyler Foggy. This episode was produced by John Lamay with mixing by Mike Kutchman and editing by Michelle o', Brien, as well as engineering by Pran Bandy. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next Wednesday.
- [46:55]
B
Come see Critics at large live. On February 19th, we're gonna be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City for a conversation about Wuthering Heights. There's a new adaptation coming up starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and we will certainly be getting into that, but we'll also do what we humbly I'll say what we do best. Returning to the text, we're gonna go deeper on the Gothic and Emily Bronte. Join me, Vincent Cunningham and my co hosts Alex Schwartz and Nomi Frye for the discussion. And crucially, if you buy a VIP ticket, you'll join us for an after party, too. Go to 92ny.org for more information. That's 92ny.org hope to see you there. From prx.