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1:29

Tune into new episodes every other Sunday right here

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1:33

to get the goods you need to convince every

1:35

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1:37

election year. Yes, even your Zoomer

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1:45

episode one. Subs

1:59

by www.zeoranger.co.uk this time, he is

2:01

coming bent on revenge. He knows

2:03

how government works. He knows how

2:05

he was thwarted the last time.

2:07

I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly

2:09

swear... No more people keeping him

2:11

in check. ...that I will faithfully

2:14

execute the office of president... ...that

2:16

would deploy the U.S. military domestically

2:18

under the Insurrection Act. ...and will,

2:20

to the best of my ability...

2:23

Ending birthright citizenship, purging the federal

2:25

government of tens of thousands of

2:27

civil servants... ...to grow, protect, and

2:30

destroy... ...terminate the Constitution... ...jail political

2:32

opponents... ...execute generals

2:34

who are infiscently loyal...

2:37

...treating mass determinants, kids, to serve,

2:39

and women's rights there... ...so help

2:41

the government. This

2:46

might be the last presidential election, uh...

2:51

...in our lifetimes. He is just president

2:54

until his death. Okay,

2:57

I realize that may have been a tough listen. But

3:00

I can promise you it'll be even tougher to live

3:02

through if Donald Trump wins this election. And

3:04

I don't think most voters are sufficiently alarmed about

3:06

the likelihood of that outcome. So here

3:08

we are with another season of the wilderness. Not

3:10

to panic you, but to empower you. To

3:13

give you insights from voters and advice from

3:15

experts that can help you persuade as many

3:17

people as possible to be part of the

3:19

anti-MAGA majority that defeated Trump four years ago.

3:25

Yes, this is primarily the job of Joe

3:27

Biden, his campaign, and the thousands of Democratic

3:30

candidates, strategists, and organizers who do politics for

3:32

a living. But they need all help.

3:35

They can't win this alone. Trust me, I've been

3:37

there. A campaign is much more

3:39

likely to succeed when its voters become its

3:41

volunteers. And that's truer today than it's

3:43

ever been. Because even if many

3:45

news outlets actually believed it was their job

3:47

to help defend democracy, they

3:49

simply don't have the power to reach or persuade

3:51

as many Americans as they once did. There's

3:54

too little trust, too many choices, too many

3:56

different realities, and too many people who've decided

3:58

to tune out altogether. That

4:01

leaves us, the people who are

4:03

paying attention, and who are absolutely certain that

4:05

Donald Trump must not return to power. If

4:08

you love Joe Biden, that's great. If

4:11

you don't, if you aren't happy with everything he's done,

4:13

or even if you're pissed at him but you know

4:15

that he's the better option, that's okay

4:17

too. In fact, you may be

4:19

even more persuasive to voters who feel like you

4:21

do, but haven't yet landed in the same place.

4:24

It's sometimes hard to remember that voting isn't

4:26

primarily about rewarding or punishing Joe Biden or

4:28

Donald Trump. It's about much, much more than

4:31

those two men. It's about us. It's

4:34

a choice between two very different futures for

4:36

America. And no matter who you

4:38

are or where you live, I promise you, it'll

4:40

be nearly impossible to escape the consequences of what

4:42

Trump has planned for a second term. You

4:45

know, Trump is in two respects talking

4:48

about using federal

4:50

force to impose kind of the

4:52

red state vision on

4:55

blue America. That's Ron

4:57

Brownstein, a political analyst at The Atlantic and

4:59

CNN, who's done some of the most extensive

5:02

reporting on what a second Trump term would

5:04

look like. So one track in all of

5:06

this is basically using control of

5:08

the federal government to force blue

5:11

states to live under the rights

5:13

rollbacks that have proliferated in red

5:15

states, whether it's ban

5:17

on gender-affirming care from minors,

5:20

national voter ID and national

5:22

bans on voting by mail,

5:24

a national don't say gay bill,

5:27

national concealed carry legislation. And

5:29

of course, kind of the pinnacle here would

5:31

be some kind of national abortion ban. Do

5:36

you believe in punishment for abortion?

5:38

Yes or no, as a principle?

5:40

The answer is that there has to

5:42

be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah,

5:45

there has to be some form.

5:47

Donald Trump's new comments on abortion,

5:49

saying that some states might choose

5:51

to monitor women's pregnancies to

5:53

possibly prosecute women who violate abortion

5:55

bans. Do you support any restrictions

5:57

on a person's right to contraception?

6:00

But we're looking at that, and I'm going to have a

6:02

policy on that very shortly. The

6:05

other track is probably

6:07

even more explosive,

6:09

because Trump, in a whole

6:11

series of ways, is talking

6:13

about using federal force in

6:16

blue cities to advance his agenda. He's

6:18

talked about sending federal forces into blue

6:20

cities to round up the homeless. He's

6:23

talked about sending the National Guard into

6:26

blue cities just to fight crime. In

6:28

cities where there's been a complete breakdown

6:30

of public safety, I will

6:32

send in federal assets, including

6:35

the National Guard, until law

6:38

and order is restored. And

6:41

then, maybe the most

6:44

expansive of all of these

6:46

ideas is him talking about

6:48

massive federal forces executing

6:50

a deportation

6:52

drive unprecedented in American history.

6:56

You go to the red state governors and

6:58

you say, give us your National Guard. We

7:01

will deputize them as immigration enforcement officers.

7:03

They know their states, they know their

7:05

communities, they know their cities. That's Stephen

7:07

Miller, who may become Trump's White House

7:09

SOOFA staff on The Charlie Kirk

7:11

Show last November. And if you're going to go

7:14

into an unfriendly state like Maryland, well, then it

7:16

would just be Virginia doing the arrests in Maryland,

7:18

right? Very close, very nearby. I

7:21

think that all of this can get really out

7:23

of control of myself. What does happen? If

7:25

a red state governor really agrees to

7:27

send their National Guard into a neighboring

7:30

blue state? I mean, is that really

7:32

going to end well? You know, I

7:34

do think that if they

7:36

do even a portion of this, we

7:39

are going to face situations that we just

7:41

have not confronted in this country since, you

7:43

know, really the Civil War. Some

7:47

of you might think this sounds a little far fetched. I get

7:49

it. I'm always worried about freaking people

7:51

out too much, especially if it ultimately turns

7:54

out to be unnecessary. And

7:56

I suppose there's a chance that Trump could spend

7:58

his next presidency raging on true. social and figuring

8:00

out all the ways he can abuse the office

8:03

to make himself rich. It's

8:05

possible. But if Trump decides to

8:07

go ahead with even a fraction of the things he

8:09

says he'll do, ask yourself.

8:12

Who will stop a vengeful two-term president

8:14

who will never have to face voters

8:16

again? The courts he stacked

8:18

with right-wing judges? The government

8:20

he plans to purge of nonpartisan public

8:22

servants and replace with MAGA loyalists? A

8:25

military that reports to Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike

8:27

Flynn? Could

8:30

we ride out one term? Maybe,

8:32

but I don't think we can ride

8:34

out two terms. You can't overcome the

8:36

erosion of norms. You can't overcome the sort

8:39

of civil protections that kept in place in

8:41

the federal government the first time around. Like,

8:43

it just won't be there the second time

8:46

around. That's Jen Palmieri, who was Hillary Clinton's

8:48

2016 communications director before doing the

8:50

same job in the Obama White House. It

8:53

just seems like that that whole bureaucracy

8:55

could just barrel out of control.

8:59

And courts will try to rein him in, but

9:01

he will continue to act in

9:03

the vacuum of decisions that are

9:05

final and enforceable. Jen's

9:07

point about not being able to count on the courts

9:10

was echoed by someone with very different politics who

9:12

I talked to on PODS of America a few months

9:14

ago, Liz Cheney. What

9:17

scares you most about a second Trump term? The

9:21

extent to which we know that as president

9:23

he will refuse to enforce the rulings of

9:25

our courts. We're only a nation

9:27

of laws if the president enforces

9:29

the rulings of the courts. And

9:32

to have someone like Donald Trump, who

9:34

we know won't do that, presents an

9:36

existential threat. I

9:39

know. Real nightmare fuel from someone

9:42

who isn't exactly a liberal alarmist. And

9:44

that's to say nothing of all the

9:46

very legal power that any president has

9:48

to make for, control immigration, deploy law

9:51

enforcement, order surveillance, and respond to crises,

9:53

real or manufactured. A

9:56

second Trump term would almost certainly be worse than the

9:58

first Trump term. And that one ended with

10:00

an attempted coup after he lost the election

10:02

because he mismanaged a pandemic that killed a

10:04

million Americans. But

10:06

hey, maybe it'll be fine. And

10:08

even though this time around, no one's really asking if

10:11

it's possible for Trump to win, a lot

10:13

of us want to believe it's likely that he won't.

10:16

I want to believe that. I want

10:18

to believe that Joe Biden actually has a stable five-point lead

10:20

over Donald Trump in all of the battleground states he needs

10:22

to get to 270. And

10:25

maybe the polling will finally show that lead in the fall. Or

10:28

maybe we'll just have to wait until the election results. But

10:31

let's just set all the polling aside for a moment.

10:34

Because even if we didn't see another poll from

10:36

now until election day, the safest bet

10:38

you could make about the outcome of the Biden-Trump

10:40

rematch is how close it's likely to

10:42

be. We'll tell you

10:44

why after the break. If

10:55

you're struggling to convey the stakes of 2024 to

10:57

someone in your circle, this show is perfect for

10:59

you. But for those persuadables in

11:01

your life, it might be best to give them

11:03

an actual book they can follow to get ready

11:05

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I grow up, I'm going to be a

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awesome. And I'm going to be

11:53

what you said we need more of. So you

11:55

want to be a plumber-narian? Do you think I

11:57

can? I think that if you work really hard,

11:59

you can do it. You can be anything.

12:01

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you promise your kids the world, we're here to help you

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somewhere. Welcome back to

13:35

the wilderness. Let's get right back into it.

13:38

So we know this election is going to be very close,

13:40

and here's why. In 2020,

13:42

Joe Biden won more votes than any

13:44

presidential candidate in history in an

13:47

election where 155 million people cast their ballots, the

13:51

highest turnout in the 21st century. But

13:54

thanks to the Electoral College, Donald Trump

13:56

still came within just 43,000 votes of winning. 43,000

14:01

votes, and that razor-thin margin

14:03

wasn't unique to the 2020 election. If

14:06

you look county by county across

14:08

the country, and you look at

14:11

the Democratic Party share of the

14:13

two-party vote in 2016, and

14:15

then you say, how did the Democratic Party

14:18

do in that county in 2020? On

14:21

average across all the counties, the

14:23

absolute shift in the Democratic vote

14:25

share was about a point and

14:27

a half. That's Lynn Vavrick,

14:29

a UCLA political scientist who's done years

14:31

of research on the American electorate. Enough

14:34

to know that these tiny margins we're seeing

14:36

weren't always the case. In

14:39

the 70s and the 80s, some of those

14:41

elections, votes were really changing. But

14:43

now, these elections are replays of

14:45

one another. According to Lynn, it's

14:48

not just that usual suspect, polarization that's

14:50

keeping voters from shifting their votes. It's

14:53

more than that, something she calls

14:55

calcification. Calcification, we

14:58

think about it as polarization plus.

15:02

Calcification has four drivers, and

15:04

the first two are probably

15:06

very familiar to people. That

15:09

is an increasing distance between the

15:11

two political parties, so

15:13

they want to build very different

15:16

worlds, possibly more different than in

15:18

our lifetime. The

15:20

second driver of calcification, an

15:23

increasing homogeneity or sameness

15:25

within each political party. Democrats

15:28

are more like one another. Republicans

15:30

are more like one another now

15:32

than, again, in the recent and

15:35

not so recent past. Third

15:39

is the shift in what

15:41

we're fighting over. For

15:44

most of my lifetime, we've been

15:46

fighting over New Deal issues, the role and

15:48

size of government, the tax rate. And

15:51

in 2016, that really shifted. And

15:54

we started talking about identity

15:57

inflected issues, immigration.

16:00

The abortion's always been important, but more important

16:02

now than maybe in the

16:04

recent past. Things

16:06

like a Muslim ban or a religious

16:08

test to enter the country, same-sex marriage.

16:11

These issues are different from

16:14

New Deal issues. They're harder

16:16

to compromise on. And

16:18

then the last driver of calcification

16:21

is we just happen to be

16:23

at a moment where we're in rough balance

16:26

in the electorate between people who call themselves

16:28

Democrats and people who call themselves

16:30

Republicans. Each

16:32

side either wins or almost

16:34

wins every election,

16:36

presidential elections. And so that

16:39

really means when you lose, there's

16:41

no incentive to go back to the

16:43

drawing board and think about, boy, people

16:45

are really buying what we're selling, so

16:48

we better change what we're selling. All

16:51

of that kind of mashes up together, and

16:53

it makes politics feel stuck. It's

16:55

like calcification in the bones. It's rigid.

17:25

I think this thing is going to be decided by a

17:27

few thousand votes in a couple swing states. Adeesu

17:29

Dimesi is a senior adviser to

17:31

Future Forward USA, the primary super

17:33

PAC supporting President Biden's re-election campaign.

17:36

Before that, he ran successful campaigns for

17:38

Democrats like New Jersey Senator Cory Booker

17:41

and California Governor Gavin Newsom. He's

17:43

confident that Biden can pull this out, but he's

17:45

not pretending it'll be easy. I

17:47

am not somebody who tries

17:50

to convince people the sky is green when the sky is blue. Things

17:54

are tough out there for people. Joe Biden

17:56

is 82 years old. It is what it is. to

18:00

the evenly divided electorate Lynn talked about, there are

18:02

a few other factors that are likely to make

18:04

this race so uncomfortably close. I

18:06

think what 2020 proved and why it was so

18:09

close is that Donald Trump is a strong political

18:11

figure. He has a strong base that is going

18:13

to show up. He motivates the hell out of

18:15

them. And because of

18:17

the way that the Republican electorate

18:20

is just distributed, like by population,

18:22

in battleground states, it

18:25

gives Donald Trump an advantage

18:27

in the electoral college. So

18:29

we should absolutely plan for the MAGA base turning

18:31

out in the states that will decide the election.

18:34

But a decent point though that there's also another factor

18:36

that's making this race even tougher for Joe Biden. When

18:41

you are the sitting president, you have a bully

18:44

pulpit and you also have at

18:46

least the perceived responsibility for the state of the country

18:49

and some actual responsibility, sure. So Joe

18:51

Biden is the incumbent president. Donald Trump

18:53

was the incumbent president last time. And

18:57

that is significantly different dynamic.

19:00

Adisa is pointing out something that I think has

19:02

been underappreciated. The political advantage that

19:04

was once associated with being an incumbent

19:07

president has almost disappeared. In

19:09

fact, the last time an incumbent president

19:11

won his second term with a bigger

19:13

margin than the first was 20 years

19:15

ago when George W. Bush beat John

19:17

Kerry. One reason

19:19

incumbent presidents don't have the advantage they once

19:21

did is because most voters have

19:23

become disillusioned with politics and unhappy with the

19:26

state of the country, no matter who's in

19:28

charge. As Jen Palmieri

19:30

points out, Trump is uniquely suited to

19:32

benefit from the fact that he's now

19:34

a challenger who's also a former incumbent.

19:37

You can talk about like, oh, I delivered a lot. I

19:39

did get a lot of stuff done when I was president.

19:42

And you're able to say like, and if

19:44

I was president again, everything would be

19:46

magically fixed. You don't have to own what's

19:48

happening now. And I do think that he

19:51

has the benefits of incumbency, but

19:53

also the benefits, the

19:55

sort of freedom and dreamscape

19:58

that comes with being. a

20:00

challenger? Basically,

20:02

Trump gets to pretend he has the experience to

20:04

come back and fix everything people have been angry

20:07

about during the four years that Joe Biden has

20:09

been president. Now, you might be wondering, why

20:11

have people been so unhappy over the last four years?

20:14

Here's what Lynn Vavrick told me. I

20:18

looked the other day at this time

20:20

series, the general social survey has been

20:22

asking since 1972. The

20:25

question goes something like this. Even all

20:27

together, how would you say things

20:30

are these days? And this is

20:32

not about the economy. This comes in a battery

20:34

of questions where they're asking people about their personal

20:36

lives. So this is really meant to

20:38

be a question about how happy are you. And man, this

20:40

thing is like steady. Since 1970, like

20:43

there's not a lot that makes

20:45

huge changes. But the

20:48

difference between 2019 and 2021

20:50

is the biggest difference that there's

20:53

ever been. And people

20:55

are less happy after,

20:58

I'm going

21:00

to say COVID, significantly less

21:02

happy with how things

21:04

are these days than they were at any point

21:06

since 1972. You

21:08

know, I just think that that

21:11

COVID year and a half was

21:14

really, really hard. And

21:17

you know, people might not be able

21:20

to articulate that they're still in this

21:22

COVID malaise. So let's

21:24

complain about these guys are uninspiring and the

21:26

election is uninteresting. And I'm so sick of

21:28

it. And I think

21:30

a lot of that is this

21:33

moment in time. I

21:35

thought for a while now that the post COVID

21:37

malaise Lynn talks about might explain a lot about

21:39

the country's grumpy mood. Then

21:41

you layer on all the other issues that voters say they're

21:43

very worried or upset about. High

21:45

prices, high interest rates, immigration,

21:48

abortion, Gaza, democracy itself. It

21:50

would be a hard political environment for any incumbent

21:53

president, no matter how much they'd accomplish or

21:55

what kind of political talent they have. In

21:58

fact, incumbents all over the world. world

22:00

are quite unpopular right now, and that's

22:02

true across the political spectrum. And

22:06

yet, despite how dreary

22:08

and challenging this political environment is,

22:11

despite how much more difficult the path to

22:13

victory appears than it did in 2020, that

22:16

path absolutely exists. In

22:19

fact, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party go

22:21

into this race with some fairly significant advantages

22:23

of their own. The

22:26

most powerful force in our politics today

22:28

isn't disappointment in Joe Biden or discontent

22:31

of the economy. It's fear

22:33

and opposition to MAGA. And

22:35

if you are already fearful and scared

22:37

of MAGA in those previous

22:39

elections, the MAGA that's on the ballot

22:41

in 2024 is far more

22:43

dangerous, far more extreme than

22:45

it was in earlier iterations. That's

22:48

Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist who got his

22:50

start in Bill Clinton's war room back in 1992.

22:54

Today, he writes a very popular sub-stack

22:56

called the Hopium Chronicles, a name

22:58

that makes sense after you talk to Simon for a few minutes.

23:01

The guy is more bullish on Democrats' chances than

23:03

anyone I've talked to, and that includes the actual

23:05

Biden campaign. I think Trump could collapse

23:07

this election. I'm just going to be bold and put this

23:09

out there, that I think there's a 25 percent chance

23:13

that this election's a blowout and that

23:15

Trump collapses, because there's nothing

23:17

really holding him up. He has no rationale to

23:20

be president. It's my view

23:22

that our aspiration in 2024 should

23:25

be to win this election by eight to ten points

23:27

and to make it a clear repudiation of MAGA, because

23:29

I think the only way that MAGA starts to leave

23:31

our bloodstream is if Republicans view

23:33

it as a political loser. What

23:38

did I tell you? Straight Hopium. Simon's

23:40

view doesn't line up with what everyone else I spoke

23:43

to is seeing, another extremely close

23:45

election in a highly polarized country. But

23:48

after correctly predicting the Democratic Party's overperformance

23:50

in the 2022 midterms, it's

23:53

worth taking his theory of the case seriously. things

24:00

that have happened to Trump and frankly more

24:03

since 2020 that make him a very different

24:05

candidate. One is the insurrection and the other

24:07

is Dobbs. What happened in 2018

24:09

and 2020 was amazing, right? We

24:13

unseated a president. We won the House and the

24:15

Senate. But what's happened since Dobbs may

24:17

be even more remarkable politically because

24:20

rather than losing power, which is usually what happens for

24:22

a party in power, we've actually gained ground in 2022,

24:25

2023. And

24:27

even in early 2024, we've had very

24:29

impressive performances. Simon is

24:32

absolutely right that Democrats have had a string

24:34

of victories and over-performances in the last few

24:36

midterm and special elections. The

24:38

challenge is that the pool of voters

24:40

in a presidential election is much, much

24:42

bigger and more diverse. Just

24:45

to cite the most recent example, there were

24:47

about 40 million voters in 2020 who just didn't

24:49

show up at all in 2018. And

24:51

that was the highest midterm turnout in history. We

24:55

obviously can't know for sure what all the voters who didn't

24:57

show up in 2022 will do in

24:59

2024. But just

25:01

about all the polling we have suggests that

25:03

they tend to be less favorable toward Joe

25:05

Biden and the Democratic candidates than the people

25:07

who voted in the specials and midterms. Those

25:10

midterm voters are on average, older,

25:13

whiter, more college educated and more

25:15

tuned in to politics. Simon

25:18

doesn't really buy this argument. And again, we can't

25:20

know for sure until people actually vote in 2024.

25:24

But he also sees a silver lining to the

25:26

dynamic where Democrats in the Trump era have gained

25:28

more of the highly engaged voters who show up

25:30

in every election. And

25:33

I think that what's being underappreciated

25:35

is that the picking up of

25:37

these higher educated, higher propensity voters

25:40

is also creating the most powerful democratic

25:43

machine that we've ever had. Because people

25:45

are also funding our

25:47

campaigns at unprecedented levels. Those unprecedentedly large

25:49

campaigns have, through the money they have

25:51

and through the volunteers they have, unprecedented

25:54

tools to reach lower propensity voters and people

25:56

that we need to reach, both with persuasion

25:59

and with the would turn out. And

26:01

so what we have is we have this extra

26:03

muscle. You

26:07

may have already guessed this, but that

26:09

extra volunteer muscle is you. You

26:12

probably vote in every election. You've hopefully

26:14

volunteered, maybe even through an incredible organization like

26:16

Vote Save America, which you should immediately go

26:18

check out if for some weird reason you

26:20

haven't heard of it yet. The

26:23

point is, you have a huge

26:25

role to play in this election. And I promise

26:27

that's not bullshit. You see,

26:29

the flip side of living through an

26:31

extremely high stakes election that's likely to

26:34

be terrifyingly close is this. Calcification

26:37

and close elections, it

26:39

doesn't mean that we're

26:41

stuck and nothing matters. It

26:44

means everything could be pivotal.

26:47

Everything could be pivotal. So people often, oh,

26:49

is this election going to turn on dust?

26:51

Is it going to turn on the economy?

26:53

Is it going to turn on their ages?

26:55

And my answer is always, well, it's not

26:58

going to be about any one of those

27:00

things. But yes, probably

27:02

all of them will be pivotal.

27:06

Everything matters. Every issue, every

27:08

ad, every voter and every person

27:10

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what does that mean for you? We'll get

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This. Episode is brought to you by a

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paycor.com/leaders. Welcome

28:53

back to the wilderness. Years ago,

28:55

it wasn't all that hard for campaigns and White

28:57

Houses to communicate with most voters. Jen

28:59

Paul Mary remembers that time well. Imagine

29:01

this in the Clinton White House, we'd be

29:03

like, okay, let's just make sure we get

29:05

the President's message event of the day done

29:08

by 2 15. So it can be on

29:10

the network news. Got

29:12

to be done by two. So

29:14

it can make the network news at 6 30

29:16

that night. And

29:18

the post and the times and the AP

29:20

will write about it and we'll do some

29:22

radio feeds to the local news and we're

29:24

done. And we did a fantastic job. And

29:26

like it was super easy to communicate. And

29:30

it is, you know, that is just the

29:32

hardest thing, right? It is why

29:35

all the disinformation can flourish

29:37

and why no one knows anything

29:39

Biden has done is because there's

29:42

not a good channel that reaches

29:44

everyone. I'm sure this doesn't come as a

29:46

surprise to you. It's been decades since

29:48

most of the country got its news from a

29:50

few different newspapers and television networks. Now

29:53

we consume whatever our own personalized algorithms fire

29:55

into our brains all day long, which

29:57

is obviously super healthy for everyone. It's

30:00

also very challenging for candidates and campaigns to

30:02

actually communicate with the voters they need. And

30:05

that, dear listeners, is where you come in. Most

30:09

voters aren't consuming a lot of political news.

30:12

Most aren't consuming the same political news. And

30:15

an increasingly high percentage of voters don't trust

30:17

a lot of the news they're getting. Some

30:20

for good reason. But you know

30:22

who voters do trust? The people they know.

30:25

Adisoo Demisi explains. Because

30:28

of the fracturing of the media environment,

30:30

I think the importance of peer-to-peer contact

30:32

is maybe even more important. Meaning

30:34

like people you know. Not just like people from

30:37

your neighborhood or people from your community or people

30:39

who look like you, but like literally people you

30:41

know. We all get those

30:43

spam texts from politicians that I write

30:46

stop to every day. But like if

30:48

my friend texts me about something, I might read

30:50

it. Would Adisoo just describe

30:52

to something called relational organizing? Relational

30:55

organizing is essentially instead of using

30:57

a voter list, which

30:59

is what traditionally we did and send maybe

31:01

people from your neighborhood, maybe people not from

31:03

your neighborhood to knock doors or make phone

31:06

calls to voters. You're actually using your

31:08

contacts list in Apple or Android to like

31:11

contact voters, your own people that you already know. Your

31:15

audience for real politics should be

31:17

pretty freaking narrow. Like the

31:19

people on your block, the people in

31:21

your neighborhood. A-town

31:23

Hirsch teaches political science at Tufts

31:26

University and specializes in U.S. elections

31:28

and civic participation. He's

31:30

clearly a big fan of relational organizing. He

31:33

also believes in another strategy the campaigns

31:35

and organizers are now using to persuade

31:37

voters, a practice called

31:39

deep canvassing. You basically

31:41

focus on building empathy in

31:44

a 15, 20 minute,

31:46

30 minute kind of conversation with this person,

31:48

understanding what their view is, trying

31:51

to express what your view is and where

31:53

you come from. And it's all like a

31:55

very kind of vulnerable conversation where the person

31:57

on the other side gets to see you.

32:00

as a real person and what's motivating you deeply

32:02

about the issue. And by the way, you

32:04

also get that from them. And so sometimes

32:06

the conversation just then like, oh, we understand

32:08

each other better, that's helpful. And sometimes the

32:10

person on the other end is like, you

32:12

know what, I never have really given this

32:14

issue much thought, but now that you've told

32:16

me how you see it and why it's

32:19

important to you and you seem like a

32:21

nice person, like I'm with you. It's

32:23

a really inefficient way to think about

32:26

politics, like one 20 minute conversation at

32:28

a time, but it works and works

32:30

in a much more durable way than

32:32

a postcard or a

32:34

letter or something like that. It's

32:41

more durable and according to the research,

32:43

more effective. It's also

32:45

the perfect antidote to a problem

32:48

called political hobbyism that Hirsch wrote

32:50

an entire book about. Hobbyism is

32:52

when you follow politics, talk about

32:54

politics, maybe post and argue about

32:56

politics online, but aren't

32:58

engaged all that much in the real work of politics, which

33:00

involves building power by actually persuading other

33:03

people to see things your way. Yeah,

33:05

so when I was looking at this, I

33:08

asked people about how they spend

33:10

their time. A third of the country or something like that

33:12

is spending an hour or two hours a day on

33:15

political consumption, but this is the group

33:17

that is not checked out. Okay, so

33:19

let's just look at the people who

33:21

care, they say they care, they know

33:23

a lot of facts, they learning stuff.

33:25

What percent of them are doing any

33:27

kind of volunteer political activity and

33:29

it's like 5%. So

33:32

of the group of people who are

33:34

cognitively engaged in politics, it's only a

33:36

very small fraction that engage in any

33:38

kind of volunteerism. Now,

33:42

obviously, I realize this doesn't

33:44

describe the habits of anyone listening to this

33:46

podcast. One of many episodes that

33:48

our progressive media company has released just this week,

33:50

along with countless pieces of content we hope you'll

33:53

engage with. I'm sure you're

33:55

much more like me, an occasional news

33:57

consumer who spends most of my time

33:59

deep, canvassing and organizing my

34:01

neighborhood. But really, I

34:04

don't think any of us should feel bad about

34:06

listening, scrolling, and posting to our hearts content. I

34:08

do think we should feel bad if that's all we

34:10

do to stop Trump from winning. If

34:12

Joe Biden loses in November, we can all fight about

34:15

why, and we can all blame him for mistakes he

34:17

made in the White House and on the campaign trail,

34:20

but we will all have to live with the

34:22

consequences, as well as the knowledge that each

34:24

of us could have done more to avoid them.

34:29

So in this season of the wilderness, we're

34:31

going to focus on the messaging that actually

34:33

persuades in conversations I hope you have with

34:35

friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and perfect strangers who

34:38

aren't yet certain that they'll vote for Joe

34:40

Biden. Not diehard fans

34:42

of Trump or RFK Jr. Other

34:44

third party candidates, not Biden stans

34:47

or Democrats who already vote blue, no matter who.

34:50

I'm talking about the group of people who still aren't sure

34:52

what they're going to do in November. Typically,

34:55

an undecided voter is

34:57

a little less interested in politics.

35:00

That doesn't mean that they don't have policy

35:02

preferences, that they don't know what kind of

35:04

world they want to live in. They're just

35:06

less interested in it. I

35:08

asked political scientist Lynn Vavrick what percentage of

35:10

the electorate is usually made up of undecided

35:12

voters. And she said that while it varies,

35:15

it's not going to be more than 25 percent, you know,

35:18

but it's not going to be five.

35:20

And so all of these undecided voters,

35:22

they could have lots of cross positions

35:24

between the Democrats and the Republicans. Very,

35:28

very few people are 100 percent

35:30

liberal or 100 percent conservative. There's

35:32

a big, big, big chunk of

35:34

the electorate in the middle. And

35:37

so those people have to decide

35:39

which of these things that I

35:41

have positions on are the most

35:43

important to me. It doesn't

35:45

mean these voters are centrist. It doesn't

35:47

mean that they're only choosing between Democrats and

35:50

Republicans. Some may stay home. Some may vote

35:52

third party. Some may vote for all Democratic

35:54

candidates and one Republican candidate or vice versa.

35:57

And because 2024 is a rematch of a. that

36:00

Biden won by only 43,000 votes, a

36:03

lot of these voters will be people who supported the president in

36:05

2020. Every

36:07

single one of these voters matter, whether they're

36:09

excited about Joe Biden in this election or

36:11

not. There's a lot of people

36:13

who are coming to grips with the choice that they

36:15

have and looking around for

36:17

options that may not even be there,

36:20

right? Including third-party options that might

36:22

not even be on their ballot. And

36:24

that includes some base Democratic voters, that includes

36:26

some base Republican voters who are just, you

36:28

know, disaffected with comp. It's young people who

36:31

are, you know, a base of the Democratic

36:33

Party, but like when the election is going

36:35

to be decided by 50,000 votes, like

36:38

they matter. Black folks, if they

36:40

defect a little bit, they matter. Latino folks,

36:42

if they defect a little bit, they matter. If swing

36:44

voters defect a little bit, they matter. So we kind

36:47

of have this thing where we got to plug a

36:49

lot of holes in that sense since we won last

36:51

time. Adeese's job, which

36:53

is also the Biden campaign's job and our

36:55

job, is to figure out who these voters

36:57

are and what might persuade them to make

37:00

up their minds. And that, my friends,

37:02

is the real reason that polls and focus

37:04

groups are actually useful. Maybe

37:06

the only reason. It's not that I don't. I

37:08

love polls. Like, I read

37:10

polls for a living. But when I read a

37:12

poll, I don't read it to take stock of

37:15

what the state of the horse race is seven

37:17

months before an election. I

37:19

read it to see what do voters care about,

37:21

how are they thinking, you

37:23

know, what is actually moving their opinions of

37:26

people and that's how private polling and practitioners

37:28

look at it. That's also how I

37:30

hope all of you look at it throughout this season. As

37:33

always on the wilderness, we're going to let you hear

37:35

what's on the minds of undecided voters from all walks

37:37

of life. But unlike past

37:39

seasons, we're not conducting our own focus

37:41

groups. Instead, we're turning to the people who

37:43

do them for a living. In each

37:46

episode, I'll have a conversation with political

37:48

strategists and campaign pollsters about research and

37:50

focus groups they've conducted with different groups

37:52

of voters who are up for grabs.

37:54

I'll also talk to on the ground organizers about what

37:57

they're hearing from these same kinds of voters. The

38:01

purpose of diving into this focus group content is

38:03

not to help you predict the outcome of the election. They're

38:06

not meant to help you figure out who's ahead right now. They're

38:09

not meant to confirm your own political beliefs or

38:11

settle any debates about the direction of the Democratic

38:13

Party or the country. That's what

38:15

the election is for. The purpose

38:17

of hearing from these strategists, pollsters,

38:20

organizers, and voters is so

38:22

that you can have access to some of the

38:24

same information and insights that the campaigns do. One

38:27

of my great frustrations with Democratic politics is

38:30

the huge gap between what campaigns know

38:32

about voters and what volunteers know about

38:34

voters. Strategists and

38:36

pollsters talk to literally thousands of

38:38

voters every day. Every

38:41

week they write really smart memos and

38:43

give presentations about what undecided voters are

38:45

thinking and what's most likely to persuade

38:47

them. And very little of that knowledge

38:50

makes its way to the volunteers whose

38:52

conversations with voters will ultimately decide the

38:54

race. So we're going to

38:56

try to bridge that gap. You know, it's

38:58

funny to get a report on a focus group

39:00

where you're like, well, we sat with

39:02

Hispanic men who voted for Biden,

39:05

age 25 to 28, and

39:07

they didn't know a single thing Biden did, is

39:10

accomplished, and they're unenthusiastic, and they think

39:12

he's old, and you're like, oh, shit,

39:15

it's terrible. And then you actually watch a focus group

39:17

and you're like, give me three minutes of those guys.

39:19

I can give them some to vote for Biden. That's

39:24

what I'm talking about. I want you to

39:26

feel like Jen Palmieri feels after hearing from a focus

39:28

group, like you're ready to go convince those voters to

39:30

back Biden. It's so much easier

39:32

to get people to come back to Biden,

39:34

people who voted for him before to come

39:37

back to him, when there is a

39:39

record of accomplishment. We're not asking

39:41

them to come back to something that didn't

39:43

work. It's a much easier endeavor

39:45

than it is to convince people who didn't vote for him

39:48

last time to vote for him this time, which is what

39:50

Trump needs to do. I

39:52

have seen enough research to know that, you

39:54

know, black folks, young black folks included, they

39:58

might be upset with the same thing. of the

40:00

country, they might be disappointed that things haven't changed as

40:02

much under Joe Biden as they wanted when they voted

40:04

for him to win in 2020, but it's not like

40:07

they love Donald Trump. You know,

40:09

they, in fact, they might dislike him

40:11

more. And they're just

40:13

kind of coming to grips with the

40:15

fact that these are the choices and they may not

40:17

have to vote for somebody they're not necessarily enthusiastic about. And

40:20

I think we can move a lot of those folks who might

40:22

right now be waffling there over

40:24

the course of the campaign. There

40:26

is more for Biden to squeeze out in

40:29

white color, white America, I think, than in

40:31

2020. Those voters are frustrated

40:33

by inflation like everyone else. And a lot of

40:35

them think Biden is too old to run again

40:37

like everyone else. But they are the most receptive

40:39

to the argument that Trump is a threat to

40:41

democracy. And they

40:43

are also the most pro-choice, but also

40:46

the most likely to prioritize that issue.

40:51

This is going to be a tough one. It's going

40:53

to be a close one. But that was always

40:55

going to be the case because America in

40:57

the Trump era is a place with an

40:59

evenly divided, calcified electorate. The

41:03

good news is that there's absolutely a

41:05

path to win and finally break Trump's

41:07

stranglehold on our politics. The

41:09

votes are there and each of

41:11

us has the ability to go get them. Because

41:14

this is not about you and me and Joe Biden at the

41:16

end of the day. It's about the people

41:18

of the United States deciding that this is this country

41:20

is not going down on their watch. Those

41:23

grassroots warriors, the people who are

41:25

writing their postcards and giving ten

41:28

bucks and fighting with everything they

41:30

got and leaving it all in the playing field for

41:32

America and our democracy and our liberties and our freedoms.

41:35

And at the end of the day when you ask me why

41:37

I'm so optimistic is because of all of them. And

41:40

I think it's why we have this extra superpower,

41:42

this extra gear, this extra muscle that

41:44

is going to carry us through and help make sure that we

41:46

win. A

41:52

hopeful note to end on from Simon. Now

41:54

it's on us to make it a reality. So

41:56

let's get into it. The

42:11

Wilderness is a production of Crooked Media. It's

42:14

written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. Our

42:17

senior producer and editor is Andrea B. Scott.

42:19

Austin Fisher is our producer, and

42:22

Farrah Safari is our associate producer. Sound

42:25

designed by Vassili's Photopolis. Music

42:27

by Marty Fowler. Charlotte Landis and

42:29

Jordan Cantor sound engineered the show. Thanks

42:32

to Katie Long, Reed Cherlin, Matt DeGroat,

42:34

and Madeline Herringer for production support. And

42:36

to our video team, Rachel Guyeski, Joseph

42:39

Dutra, Chris Russell, Molly Lobel, and David

42:41

Tolles, who filmed and edited the show. If

42:44

The Wilderness has inspired you to get involved,

42:46

head on over to votesaveamerica.com to sign up

42:48

and find a volunteer shift near you. When

42:51

I grow up, I'm going to be a veg-tay. Veterinarian?

42:55

That's awesome. I'm going

42:57

to be what you said we need more

42:59

of. So you want to be a plumber-narian?

43:02

Do you think I can? I think that

43:04

if you work really hard, you can be

43:06

anything. Promise? You said I do. When

43:09

you promise your kids the world, we're here

43:11

to help you keep it. Ohio's 529 plan

43:13

is the best tax-free savings plan

43:15

for future college or career training

43:18

nationwide. Start now at collegeadvantage.com. Here's

43:22

to the paper pushers, the

43:24

rush hour warriors, and

43:26

the gotta-getawayers. Trade

43:29

the daily grind for a place to unwind,

43:32

where you can rise with the tide and

43:34

roll down the boardwalk, where

43:36

you can eat french fries for lunch and

43:38

ice cream for dinner, where your only commute

43:40

is