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All. Lower case. Welcome.

0:24

To feature Hindsight, a podcast that takes

0:27

big ideas about civic life and democracy

0:29

and turns them into action items for

0:31

you and me. I'm Mila Kunis. It's.

0:42

Twenty Twenty Four and the future

0:44

of America is in your hands.

0:46

Democracy is not a spectator sport,

0:48

so we're here to bring you

0:50

an independent perspective about the election

0:53

this year and empower you to

0:55

change the status quo. One

0:58

of the things we often

1:00

hear is that politics in

1:02

America is uncivil that what

1:04

would cure our civic life

1:06

as dialogue and across divides,

1:08

widening our perspective and appreciating

1:10

the lived experience of the

1:12

other and even working across

1:14

the aisle also known as

1:16

bipartisanship. But this is not

1:18

that conversation And today we're

1:20

going to discuss negative partisanship,

1:22

how it works, and why

1:24

it's time for democrats to

1:26

embrace it. Our guest

1:28

is Rachel bit a call for she's

1:30

a political scientist and election forecaster turned

1:33

political strategist and the author of Hit

1:35

Him Where it Hurts How to save

1:37

democracy by beating republicans at their own

1:40

game. Welcome Rachel! Thanks so much for

1:42

joining us! My thank you so much

1:44

for having me to their. We.

1:48

Can all agree that Democracy is

1:51

on his deathbed and we've had

1:53

many guests discussing exactly this. The

1:55

also agree that currently the Republican

1:58

party is anti democratic and. The

2:00

major reason why we find ourselves.

2:02

In the current state of politics. And

2:05

you argue that we need to hit him where? It

2:07

hurts the title of the books. By using

2:09

their own playbook as negative. Partisanship.

2:12

And. Before we go into how to

2:15

do that, tell us what negative

2:17

partisanship is and how it works

2:19

Sir negative partisanship is a concept

2:21

from political science literature and it's

2:23

really important to understand negative partisanship

2:25

that you understand partisanship itself. Political

2:27

scientists set to understand Merrick and

2:30

Voters. Once we started to get

2:32

things called surveys in the nineteen

2:34

forties and fifties ago, we can

2:36

finally figure out like what Americans

2:38

know about said x and government

2:40

and how they vote and what.

2:42

Have you? And that was when political

2:45

scientist first learned a really terrible lesson

2:47

about the American electorate. It knows nothing

2:49

for care, hates. It basically knows who

2:51

the president is in some loose like

2:54

and person's about the party. but your

2:56

average voter doesn't have a lot of

2:58

knowledge about individual politicians. certainly the ones

3:00

that you and I know by name

3:03

and your listeners likely do as well.

3:05

So what they noticed was that it

3:07

didn't matter because they could use a

3:09

clue or what they called a heuristic

3:12

to make that. Vote Decisions. and that

3:14

vote decision is the party label and

3:16

which is always on a a federal

3:18

and state election general election ballot. you

3:21

get a handy died that a real

3:23

immediately tells you there's a difference between

3:25

John Smith and you know Quincy Adams

3:28

markets and one is a republican, one

3:30

of the democrats. So it's always been

3:32

that partisanship has existed and did a

3:35

very powerful predictor for vote choice for

3:37

which candidate a voter will end up

3:39

choosing. But what is interesting about is

3:41

is that we. have our partisan

3:44

identity and we also have an

3:46

identity that is shaped in the

3:48

negative to the opposition party and

3:50

so negative partisanship refers to the

3:53

feeling of threat and fear that

3:55

you get when you're being subjected

3:57

especially to the rule of the

4:00

opposition party. So it's a very strong

4:02

emotion, particularly when you're out of the

4:04

presidency. So it's an advantage right now

4:07

for Republicans. But it is also something

4:09

that Republicans observed in the electorate and

4:11

started to design electoral strategy around starting

4:14

in 2004. So

4:17

you just mentioned how little

4:20

the electorate knows about politics.

4:22

And I feel like before

4:24

we go further, I

4:26

feel like we need to understand just why

4:29

the messaging is so important and that the

4:31

messaging needs to be super strong and simple

4:33

because not a lot of people are actually

4:35

paying attention. In fact,

4:37

you start the book with a

4:40

statistic that essentially 54%

4:42

of Americans generally don't vote.

4:45

So that's actually a majority. With

4:47

some exceptions, of course, in the 2020 presidential

4:50

elections, 66% of

4:52

the electorate turned out. But

4:54

for the most part, the majority of Americans

4:56

just don't vote. And I have to say

4:58

that the scale fell off my eyes when

5:00

I read that chapter about why Americans

5:02

don't vote. Tell us a little

5:04

bit more. Yeah, I

5:07

mean, there's a few reasons why

5:09

Americans don't vote. But what the

5:11

left has fixated on is institutional

5:13

access. So the rules that surround

5:16

voting. And we know for

5:18

a fact because of the variation, it's a

5:20

state level duty. So there's a

5:22

lot of variation between the states. And in

5:24

some states, they have tried greatly to expand

5:26

the ease of voting, the access to voting

5:29

through things like Oregon's program, a vote by

5:31

mail, which has been, you know, only way

5:33

that you vote in Oregon for over 20

5:36

years. Other states have done that. So

5:38

you know that there's a relationship between like, how

5:40

hard is it to vote? Can I vote early?

5:42

Can I vote absentee? Can I vote by mail?

5:45

And turnout rates. And we can see that, you

5:48

know, in states like Texas, that suppress the vote,

5:50

make it hard to vote, the turnout is lower.

5:53

But what escapes us and

5:55

has really hampered democratic electioneering

5:57

strategy is the Other

5:59

part of that. Story because the fact is

6:01

the reason half of the electorate doesn't

6:03

even bother to though. Even and the

6:06

most consequential elections is because they are

6:08

interested in politics. Okay, it's not that

6:10

they can't and they just really wish

6:12

they could. And I are present some

6:14

really compelling data that the Knight Foundation

6:17

took a very large sample survey of

6:19

Americans and of non voters to explore

6:21

the reasons why they don't bode, and

6:23

the reason that is most commonly cited

6:25

as lack of interest. Interest don't care,

6:28

right? And we have raised and created.

6:30

A political culture in America that encourages

6:32

lack of civic participation. I point out

6:34

that you might have a friend who

6:36

would be embarrassed to tell you she

6:39

a french fries last night's but would

6:41

be quite proud to tell you oh

6:43

I'm not voting. I don't do any

6:45

of that riot because said that her

6:48

mind she is morally clean because politics

6:50

is so dirty right? Just buy it.

6:52

Engaging in politics, you're somehow morally flawed,

6:54

which is of course the exact opposite

6:56

of how you would want a pastor

6:59

in a democracy. To be is so

7:01

getting people to understand that because of

7:03

interest. If you think about the things

7:05

you're interested in versus the things you're

7:07

not interested in, you know I'll just

7:09

take a gamble. Muslim people here and

7:11

me right now probably not into Nascar,

7:13

you know, probably couldn't tell me any

7:16

names of current Nascar drivers who won

7:18

the last race which state as good.

7:20

Now for all the little details that

7:22

you learn when you're interested in something

7:24

and that's how most people are about

7:26

politics. Very don't know any of the

7:28

details of Donald Trump coup. Plot They

7:30

know there was a thing at andre

7:32

answer to that was insurrection or whatever,

7:34

but they don't know that that was

7:36

part of a coup. Plot that it

7:38

was a capstone of. And out of

7:40

us, your multifaceted effort to overturn the

7:42

election. We assume everybody knows these things,

7:44

and therefore we've been doing or messaging

7:46

down in the weeds rights. And what

7:48

we need to be doing is making

7:50

sure that the electorate knows one basic

7:52

fact of contemporary American politics. And that

7:54

is that the Republican party is an

7:56

extremist for the their freedom right now.

7:59

Well. Have to say I found your

8:01

book so refreshing. You don't mince words

8:04

about having to go on our sense

8:06

to a liked pro democracy candidates likely

8:08

to said be Disney to make sure

8:10

that everybody understands what the over arching

8:12

message should be for Democrats. So let's

8:15

talk about the fighting words that lead

8:17

to winning political power and you just

8:19

talked about how dangerous that Republicans are

8:21

and we know that we need to

8:23

makes Freedom the democratic brand. What would

8:26

be the over arching message you want

8:28

All Democrats. Running for office to communicate.

8:30

This year. Are you with the

8:32

Democratic party or to you're talking about

8:34

very different party than the Republican party

8:37

and we've allowed those differences to kind

8:39

of hamper strategic changes. Are it were?

8:41

Oh, we can't do this because we're

8:43

not all white people were all concerned

8:45

with his says suffocates and I'm like

8:47

no, no, no, Listen, it doesn't matter

8:49

of your issues, climate change, gay rights,

8:51

women's raids, whatever it might be in

8:54

that democratic coalition, it comes under the

8:56

same threat from the Republican party, so

8:58

that the threat to freedom, the threat

9:00

to your health, wealth. Freedom and Security

9:02

is what I call it. It can

9:05

tie and all these different constituencies within

9:07

the Democratic party and unite them under

9:09

one broad seem. And so getting people

9:11

to do that is so important Because

9:14

we think about Republicans, they pick something.

9:16

It could be immigration, it could be

9:18

crime. And Twenty Twenty Two and all

9:21

crimes in Twenty Twenty One in Virginia.

9:23

Blend young ten who is the Republican

9:25

candidate there and in a kind of

9:27

upsetting the democratic front runner for the

9:30

governorship and what they did. was a

9:32

painted the entire election theme around

9:34

some issue i had never even

9:36

heard of called c r t

9:38

case they take something that even

9:40

me had never heard of in

9:42

january twenty twenty one and made

9:44

it the defining issue voters were

9:46

telling pollsters out in the fall

9:48

of the twenty twenty one the

9:50

when the way they did that

9:53

is that they focused all of

9:55

their messaging or on this one

9:57

thing even though individually the candidates

9:59

probably have many different things that they're

10:01

focused on. And certainly Glenn Youngkin is

10:03

a business type conservative. He would

10:05

be focused on economics normally, but

10:07

instead he ran on wedging this

10:10

idea that we're indoctrinating white children

10:12

to feel guilty in schools. And

10:14

they all amplified that message through

10:16

their media, through all three of

10:19

the statewide races, even though most

10:21

of those things had nothing to do with the

10:23

CRT in school. So getting Democrats

10:26

to understand if the electorate doesn't know

10:28

anything, and our goal is to make

10:30

sure they know at least one thing,

10:33

your freedom's under threat, then it becomes

10:35

about repetition and centralization. And you need

10:37

everybody pounding that same refrain over and

10:40

over and over and really harping on

10:42

the issue. Yeah,

10:44

well, you just mentioned about the

10:47

coordinated messaging from the

10:49

Republican Party up and down the entire

10:52

infrastructure and how with

10:55

your Democrat, it feels like nobody got the memo. No,

10:57

no, I mean- And think about

10:59

like I said, CRT in schools is not

11:02

an issue that any of those candidates cared

11:04

about, I bet you, maybe some of the

11:06

deeper ed districts, like the true cult believers

11:08

did, but most of the swing

11:10

race Republicans in Virginia, that cycle, if you

11:13

were to ask them as candidates,

11:15

what is your issue? I

11:17

am certain no one wrote CRT

11:19

down, okay? But they all

11:21

understood the power of

11:24

this thing that they understand ambiguity

11:26

is actually an asset with

11:29

us, it's like, oh, we can't call

11:31

them fascists because no one knows what

11:33

that is. And I'm like, no one

11:35

knows what a socialist is either, but

11:37

after 10 years of calling us that,

11:39

they know one thing about socialism, Democrats,

11:41

it's connected to Democrats, right? So,

11:44

I think it's really important for us to get over

11:46

this hump, it's certainly something I'm highly focused on for

11:48

2024, Making sure

11:50

that the Biden team's running a good message

11:53

frame, they're gonna be running under this banner

11:55

of threat to Democracy, they're gonna be making

11:57

that threat personal and concrete And that, you

11:59

know.? Abstract and top level bit

12:01

about individual freedoms and rights that people

12:04

stand to lose under this new mad

12:06

the regime that wants to come in.

12:08

But the swing races for the house

12:11

and senate also need to be pounding

12:13

that they need to be really hitting

12:15

the voters hard about freedom on abortion

12:18

issue. That is the most salient issue.

12:20

The voters are not a shy of

12:22

help that they're pretty clear about. be

12:25

a power. I mean think about disenfranchising

12:27

half of the population stealing a constitutional

12:29

rights. On here to tell the mail

12:31

analyst and others you don't get over

12:33

it. It doesn't go away, doesn't in

12:36

the receipt in the background. In fact,

12:38

as we've been subjected to headlines coming

12:40

from places like Texas of medical torture

12:42

women, it's going to get stronger. And

12:44

that's why I push very hard for

12:46

people to understand the electoral power of

12:48

focusing on were on dogs and republican

12:50

big government intrusion into your private life

12:52

as the way that you when power

12:54

of your issues, climate change or whatever

12:57

else you have the power to do

12:59

the policy that. Right now we're like

13:01

the kind of mix those two things up,

13:03

but we are what we're running on our

13:05

favorite policy things. Rather or not, those are

13:07

the most effective things to optimize winning. right?

13:10

Yeah, I totally agree that running on abortion

13:13

as very strong. And people didn't miss

13:15

that memo Everyday people they understood that

13:17

it took away their freedoms to lead

13:19

healthy lives to the started the family

13:21

when they want to to basically be

13:23

in charge of their own decisions of

13:26

their own lives. In terms of Crt,

13:28

I wanted to turn back there because

13:30

I feel like maybe not exactly is

13:32

here too but woke as I'm still.

13:34

On the agenda for Republicans,

13:37

especially at local levels or

13:39

on school board. elections so

13:41

what would be an effective for a

13:43

bottle for democrats when it comes to

13:45

see or t or whoa kissed education

13:47

as i be i wish i could

13:50

be on meet the press one day

13:52

with rhonda santas when he starts talked

13:54

about woke ism and how he has

13:56

to protect children from it because the

13:58

second Republican makes the mistake of uttering

14:00

the phrase protect children in my presence,

14:02

they're going to get hammered for letting

14:04

our children get slaughtered by weapons of

14:06

war in school. And I'm going to

14:08

ask them, why do you want our

14:10

children to die at school, just like

14:12

they would do to us, right? So

14:14

it's about pivot and attack. In

14:17

Virginia, I wrote a CRT

14:19

chapter about my frustration, and this was

14:21

when I was first trying to get

14:23

into the pit of Democratic electioneering, that

14:26

we were responding to CRT by proving

14:28

it wasn't real, that showing how

14:30

great Tony Morrison's book is, or

14:32

whatever, right? And what we should

14:34

have been doing is, oh, the

14:36

Republican Party wants to make an

14:39

election about education? Great!

14:41

Because the Republican Party's record

14:43

on public education, it's

14:46

dismal, okay? They came in with

14:48

their Reaganomics stuff in the 80s

14:50

and utterly decimated America's K through

14:52

12 infrastructure. Our public schools have

14:54

been in decline every year since

14:56

then, and it's the Republican Party

14:58

that killed them. So it

15:01

should be a conversation where it'd be like,

15:03

come into my web, little mosquito. I'm

15:05

happy to have a conversation about protecting

15:08

children with a party that's letting them

15:10

get slaughtered every day at school. Yeah,

15:13

so pivoting and attacking on something

15:16

that really does hurt, because of course,

15:19

they are the party that is preventing

15:22

gun safety. And voters do not

15:24

know that. So like, okay, if you ask a

15:26

voter which party wants to take away all your

15:28

guns, Democrats, okay? If

15:31

you ask people which party wants

15:33

Pro-Pot, higher minimum wage, climate change

15:35

action, whatever it is, all of

15:38

our popular stuff that we've made

15:40

really popular, gun reform, they don't

15:42

connect it immediately to us, right?

15:44

And that's because we have developed

15:46

a messaging system that bleached out

15:48

partisanship. So we talked about

15:50

the bad guys as the NRA, big

15:53

pharma, big oil, Congress

15:55

generally. And you

15:57

do that because when you're smart and

15:59

you're informed... you read Congress and

16:02

you saw the headline yesterday or whatever

16:04

about the immigration bill get killed, so

16:06

you immediately know, oh, that was Republicans

16:08

in Congress. Normal people

16:10

do not know that. They will not

16:12

know that unless you tell them we

16:14

have to be assigning blame

16:16

to the Republicans, wide

16:18

brush all Republicans, right? Not most Republicans. Just

16:21

because somebody says they're not going to vote

16:23

yes or doesn't support a national abortion doesn't

16:25

mean they're not going to vote for it

16:27

and they don't give us that kind of

16:30

quarter. They don't say, oh well, Joe

16:32

Biden doesn't want to defund the police. They

16:34

branded him, even though he said publicly, I

16:37

don't support it, they still run him as

16:39

a defund the police candidate and we have

16:41

to do the same thing. We have to

16:44

do the same thing because if we do

16:46

not, we're not going to win

16:48

and if we don't win, people who are these

16:50

marginalized groups that we care about are going to

16:52

be the very first people to suffer. Well,

16:55

tell us a little bit more about taking

16:58

credit and giving blame strategy because we've heard

17:00

so many times now in the news

17:02

where Republicans tout the federal dollars that are

17:04

coming into their district, even though these

17:06

very same politicians voted against

17:08

the Insulation Reduction Act or the

17:11

American Rescue Plan Act and then progressives,

17:13

of course, on Twitter go bonkers and like, oh my

17:16

god, you know, these hypocrites, but

17:18

then of course the elected Democrat says

17:20

nothing. Give us an example of effective

17:22

branding up for Democrats from the get-go.

17:26

I mean, it comes from the members,

17:28

right? The most important message narrative setters

17:30

we have are our electeds. And so,

17:32

you know, big part of my work

17:34

is about getting to them

17:37

to give them an explanation of like, okay,

17:39

look, if you were

17:41

to watch like election analysis today

17:43

or anytime, you're going to hear

17:45

election analysis kind of from a

17:47

practitioner angle. And

17:49

so candidates, you know, they're practitioners

17:52

are not like studying it systemically

17:54

or institutionally. So it's really important

17:57

that at the end of the day,

17:59

why is the Republican message to me, Sheen works

18:01

so well. That's two reasons. They built an

18:03

ecosystem and their people behaviorally,

18:05

Republicans love, like old people love Fox

18:07

News, right? We have people who don't

18:10

really like politics, but will vote for

18:12

the left. So we're very diverse in

18:14

all of our media, even the people

18:16

that do listen to the news, which

18:18

isn't by any means the majority of

18:20

us. Okay. We're very diverse in our

18:22

selections. They are very, very

18:25

centralized. All Republicans trust one

18:27

thing for news and that's Fox. I don't

18:29

trust anything else. And

18:32

so they have that amplification, but what makes it

18:34

so powerful folks is the other side of it.

18:36

And this is something we can fix. And

18:39

that is, you know, they come up

18:41

with an attack. It's a border invasion.

18:43

They all start using the phrase border

18:46

invasion from the party

18:48

committees, the house oversight

18:50

committee chair accounts, from everything

18:53

official, all the electeds and

18:56

the press covers the politicians, right?

18:58

So they pick up the narratives

19:00

from these politicians and they start

19:02

talking about, Oh my God, Joe

19:04

Biden, what is he going to

19:06

do with this border crisis? So

19:08

we need to understand that we're

19:10

stronger together, that we would

19:12

be best off to have a

19:14

talking point memo that we operate

19:16

off of where everyone's on message.

19:18

Everyone's pounding things like nowhere

19:20

to hide national abortion ban. If

19:22

he just keeps saying nowhere to

19:25

hide national abortion ban, you're branding

19:27

for people in these safe blue

19:29

districts and states in particular, like

19:31

the threat is to you, right?

19:33

You know, getting the electeds on

19:35

the same page is

19:38

to me a very important strategic shift

19:40

that we're still working towards. We're

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going to take a quick break to thank

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with Rachel in just a moment. But

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21:52

now let's return to my conversation

21:54

with Rachel Bittekofer. Let's

21:58

go back to the immigration bit because we're in

22:01

the wake of the

22:03

second and now successful vote

22:05

to impeach Secretary Mallorca's. And

22:08

before his hearing, he

22:10

submitted this multi-page letter,

22:13

which I doubt anybody read, but

22:15

I read it. It was very reasonable, you

22:18

know, but it's also sort of like this

22:20

whole age-old thing that Democrats do. They rebut

22:23

with the facts, you know, snooze, boring, or

22:25

try to persuade the logic of

22:28

a policy prescription, also boring, nobody

22:30

cares, like you said. So

22:32

what could the secretary have said in

22:34

these hearings? Because I feel like

22:36

it's really just political theater and still nobody's

22:38

understanding that this is what this is. And

22:41

in your mind, if you had been in

22:43

his ear, what would you have whispered?

22:46

I think it's very important

22:48

that we define it as Trump wants the

22:50

border open, right? He's the one

22:52

that killed border security. So every time they bring

22:54

up the word immigration, the strategic

22:57

objective of Biden or anybody else

22:59

that's opening their mouth should be

23:01

to get the sentence across Donald

23:03

Trump killed bipartisan border security.

23:06

If you read the front half

23:08

of this book, your polling data, understanding polling

23:10

data is going to improve a lot because

23:12

you're going to understand how is it that

23:15

Donald Trump issues a

23:17

public edict, vote no, kill

23:19

this bill, and yet when we

23:21

poll people, why did border security fail,

23:23

more people say it's Biden's fault than

23:25

Donald Trump, right? The reason is is

23:27

that no one knows that. And so

23:29

it's our job to make sure that

23:31

the voter hears Donald Trump killed border

23:33

security. And so we need the politicians

23:35

to say that sentence in, you know,

23:37

whatever else they're going to say on

23:39

the issue, they need to make that

23:42

point clear. Donald Trump just killed border

23:44

security because we need the public to

23:46

know. And the reason that the obstruction

23:48

strategy has worked so good for them,

23:50

and they started the strategy, by the

23:52

way, in 2010, it was an articulated

23:55

strategy when they were out in the

23:57

wilderness. I mean, in 2009, the

24:00

conversation was after the Iraq War

24:02

debacle and the Great Recession, was

24:05

the Republican Party going to be

24:07

DOA in terms of Congress and

24:10

the Senate for a decade because

24:12

of how bad the brand

24:14

took a hit? And within a year, Michael

24:17

Steele's picking up 63 House seats for

24:19

the Republican Party, right? I

24:21

was like, okay, I got to understand how that

24:23

happens. And, you know, at the end of the

24:25

day, how it happens is that Republicans understand how

24:29

to obstruct and then use

24:31

public civic illiteracy

24:34

to make it look like the president's inept.

24:36

Do you see what I'm saying? So, like, they're able

24:38

to say Biden wants open borders and

24:40

they know that most of the public is not

24:43

going to know that they just had the best

24:45

chance they've had in four decades. The

24:47

most conservative border security bill, this is

24:49

the third time that they've killed comprehensive

24:51

border security, by the way, since 2006.

24:55

John McCain voted against his own

24:57

bill, just like Langford did with

24:59

his, right? In 2006, because he

25:01

wanted to be the Republican nominee

25:04

in 2008, and that was when the party first

25:06

started to radicalize on abortion. In

25:09

2013, same issue, the Senate passes

25:11

a bipartisan bill over the filibuster,

25:13

so hard to do. Send

25:16

it to the House where Republicans have complete

25:18

and total control because the majority party rules

25:20

the roost in the House. The minority party has

25:22

literally no power and they killed the bill then

25:24

and now they've just done the same thing. And

25:27

yet when you ask people why didn't

25:29

border security happen with Obama, even in

25:31

the left, even amongst activists who are

25:33

not normal people, they are

25:36

much more likely to blame it on Obama

25:38

than on John Boehner. Okay? So,

25:41

we have to make sure that

25:43

we're assigning blame, taking credit. If

25:45

you're a senator and you're excited

25:47

about $35 insulin, good. Let's

25:51

say, hey, Democrats got you

25:53

insulin. All the Republicans

25:56

voted against it. Our brand up, their

25:58

brand down. claiming because

26:00

people like to do that, but we're

26:02

also getting that contrast in and pounding

26:05

a refrain basically, which is Democrats

26:08

give Republicans take. Yeah,

26:11

that's a great example. Well, you also

26:13

dedicate a whole chapter to giving wedgies,

26:15

as you call it, which is to

26:17

say, using wedge issues to accomplish what

26:20

you call the two goals of negative

26:22

partisanship. And I'm going to quote you

26:24

now, quote, turn out voters from your

26:26

team and to disqualify the

26:28

opposition in the eyes of

26:31

swing voters. That's how Republicans

26:33

do persuasion. We do persuasion to

26:36

sell a candidate on their biography and

26:39

on their policy promises, like

26:41

median voter policy appeals and

26:44

appeals of bipartisanship. And

26:46

what this book is designed to do is

26:48

get people to realize, actually, Republicans stopped doing

26:50

that a long time ago. They don't do

26:53

that. They didn't sell JD Vance to Ohio.

26:55

They made sure Ohio would not buy Tim

26:57

Ryan. Right. Yeah. Well

26:59

said. Well said. Well, so you suggest

27:01

a number of ways for Democrats to

27:03

wedge various issues. And my favorite

27:06

one actually was about wedging rural

27:08

America, where Republicans have

27:10

controlled politics for more than

27:13

two decades, of course. We know

27:15

notoriously rural Americans are primarily Republicans.

27:18

So tell us about how a

27:20

good wedgie would sound about rural America.

27:24

Yeah. So when we get to rural

27:26

America, you know, here's the thing. Voters

27:28

are mad, right? They're always mad because

27:30

stuff's never great. We're living through the

27:32

best, literally the best human experience any

27:34

human has ever had in the whatever

27:36

30,000, 40,000 years of humans

27:40

crawling on the face of the earth.

27:42

We're the first people that have the

27:45

opposite problem of starvation. We have too

27:47

much food, calorie surplus. We're

27:49

living at a time where we can

27:51

regrow organs out of pig stuff. I

27:54

mean, it's an incredibly wonderfully rich

27:56

time to be alive. No one

27:58

cares. No one knows. that, right?

28:01

So if you're going to

28:03

be angsty and mad, and they are,

28:05

especially about economic stuff, probably

28:07

we want to do instead of telling them not

28:09

to be angsty because that's not going to work.

28:12

And instead of saying, well, you know, we know

28:14

you're mad and that both parties have let you

28:17

down because that's also not going to work in

28:19

terms of branding and winning stuff. We

28:21

tell people the story of what happened

28:23

to their rural community because the Republican

28:26

party has ruled the roost there for

28:28

20 years, and their record is

28:30

absolutely dismal. They've totally eviscerated

28:33

rural America. And at every

28:35

turn, vote in ways

28:37

that harm rural America, particularly with

28:39

Medicaid expansion, which ended up costing

28:41

many rural communities their hospitals and

28:43

that is still ongoing, right? So

28:45

to me, what you do is

28:47

you come in and you stop

28:50

being micro. It's not just that

28:52

Trump is a scab, though that

28:54

is a helpful brand he is

28:56

in the Midwest. It's about telling

28:58

the story to working class America,

29:00

which is not just white anymore,

29:02

working class America. The Republican party

29:05

steals your stuff and gives it to

29:07

their rich donors, right? If

29:09

we try that, we don't know if

29:11

it will work. But we do know

29:14

telling them, I'm not one of those

29:16

Democrats and reaffirming the GOP's attack, which

29:18

is that the Democratic brand is bad

29:20

and there's something wrong with Democrats, we

29:23

might want to go into rural America

29:25

and run the race as a referendum

29:27

on the Republican party's rural record,

29:30

which I just laid out is dismal

29:32

in many ways. I mean, if you're

29:34

a rural voter right now, you're

29:37

not having a high probability of being able to

29:39

keep your children in the town that you're living

29:41

in because they have no economic

29:44

opportunity. And the reason

29:46

why? Reaganomics. Starve the beast.

29:49

Die best. And that's why we've seen

29:51

a real decimation in rural America. It's

29:53

a compelling story and it's one you

29:55

can lay squarely at the feet of

29:57

the Republican party. Oh

30:00

yeah, for sure. I mean, we just spoke to Jess

30:02

Piper in Missouri, where we know

30:04

there are many schools that are only

30:06

open four days a week because the

30:09

teachers don't get paid and many of

30:11

them only stay in the job for

30:13

like a year because they don't get paid and they have

30:15

to find other work. And by paying

30:17

them for only four days, by only having school

30:19

for four days, that means they can have another

30:21

job on the weekend. And that's, you

30:24

know, that's like a totally insane thing and

30:26

Republicans totally don't own it. They just think

30:28

that's normal. And what I was actually also

30:30

very shocked to discover was that in some

30:33

places in Missouri, this has been the case

30:35

for the last 15, one five years. And

30:37

I just thought, what? Like how come the

30:39

parents are not in revolt? How come the

30:41

state is not in revolt? And

30:44

why are Democrats not running on this? You

30:46

know, it's just shocking. It is

30:48

shocking. And the reason why no one's in revolt

30:50

is the voters will only be mad about what

30:52

we tell them to be mad about. It's just

30:54

like with the Republican Party, right? You can't be

30:56

mad at what you don't know about. I mean,

30:59

think about that, right? So like that the

31:01

heart of the strategic shift is like, look,

31:03

people, if they cared about policy, they'd

31:06

already be us. Okay. Instead,

31:09

we got to find something that

31:11

they're mad about negative emotions and

31:13

this is just basic human psychology

31:15

are stronger. You get more

31:18

anger about something that hurts you,

31:20

then you get happiness about something

31:22

that helps you. That's

31:24

just how we're wired, unfortunately.

31:27

And they're manipulating it to win

31:29

swing races. We have

31:31

to do the same. Yeah. Lots of

31:33

version is a very strong emotion. It

31:36

is. And turns people out. I actually,

31:38

I'm wondering, you know, you talked in

31:40

the book about the difference between independents

31:42

who are leaners and you don't really

31:44

count them, you know, you count them

31:46

as partisan essentially when you do the

31:48

polling, does negative partisanship also

31:50

turn out the true independents, which are only about

31:53

10 to 15% of the electorate, like

31:55

the real swing voters? Yeah, it's

31:57

really great. I'm glad you asked that, right? Because What's

32:00

beautiful about the Republican strategy or modeling

32:02

it off of negative partisanship strategy is

32:04

that if you have people think, oh,

32:06

independent voters are so informed and they're

32:08

going to pull up both the candidate

32:10

websites and they're going to read all

32:13

this and like we might even know

32:15

somebody like that. I do. I

32:17

know one voter who's like that. You can find them,

32:19

especially if you're out in the stomp and

32:21

you're, you know, at campaign events because those people

32:24

are not typical people or you're going to show

32:26

up. But generally speaking folks,

32:28

if it goes back to the beginning

32:30

of our conversation, we

32:32

have found in political science that most

32:34

people know nothing about the government other

32:37

than who the president is. We

32:39

have found they're using a cognitive shortcut to

32:41

get around that and make political decisions that

32:43

group them into two parties. We

32:46

have found that most people who say they're independent

32:48

will admit that they lean to the Republican

32:51

or Democratic party and that when we take

32:53

those people and we look at their voting

32:55

behavior, there is not much

32:57

difference in the strength of their party

32:59

voting compared to somebody who admits

33:01

they're a partisan. And you know,

33:04

in polling when they report independence is usually 30, 35% of

33:06

the survey, right?

33:09

So what we're basically saying is of

33:11

that 35%, really about 15 of

33:13

it is fake partisans, closet partisans who

33:15

are just pretending to be independent or

33:17

like to think of themselves that way.

33:20

But then we get down to that 15. Okay.

33:23

What Republicans found out, and I argue

33:25

this in the book, we're not selling

33:28

Toyota, Tacoma's, okay, or Apple watches or

33:30

even a new sweater. We're

33:32

selling a product everyone hates. Everyone hates

33:34

politics. Everyone hates both parties. Everybody

33:37

hates politicians. The decline in

33:39

our institution stuff has been so

33:41

horrible and bad for democracy because

33:43

you know, everyone thinks everyone is

33:45

corrupt. So the end

33:47

of the day, what matters to these

33:50

independents who are mostly low info, low

33:54

interest folks who don't have

33:56

the passion to push

33:58

them into a one issue

34:00

that then pushes them into a

34:02

party. They have a deep sense

34:04

of civic obligation to vote, so

34:07

they were socialized into voting by

34:09

someone, but they don't

34:11

have an enjoyment of political phenomena.

34:14

And what matters with them, because this

34:16

is a long way of answering your

34:18

question, does negative partisanship matter to the

34:20

middle? Yes, because what

34:23

negative partisanship is doing is

34:25

creating a top-of-mind brand argument,

34:27

right? And that argument from

34:30

the right is always going to be, Tim

34:32

Ryan's a Democrat, Democrats are socialists and they

34:34

want to turn your boy children into girls,

34:36

or whatever the thing is this week. And

34:39

at the end of the day,

34:41

that's what the swing bucket's going to hear

34:43

about Tim Ryan. If we're

34:46

saying, oh, Tim Ryan's a nice guy, he

34:48

does this and that, and he's going to

34:50

get you this and that, there's an asymmetry

34:52

in that argument for that low information narrative.

34:54

So what's important is to make sure that

34:56

that 15% who

34:58

are very imagistic, very fundamental

35:01

shaped in terms of like

35:03

in-party, out-party, economy, whatever, that

35:05

they're hearing the Republican

35:08

Party is a threat to you and

35:10

that pushes them from voting from

35:12

the Republican to the Democrat by

35:14

default. That's exactly how the Republicans

35:16

do their swing messaging. So you

35:18

look at why are extremists winning

35:21

swing races if the

35:23

middle of the electorate, the swing bucket

35:26

is the way that the media and the

35:28

analyst on TV and even people like Nate

35:30

Silver talk about them, then

35:32

why is it when you

35:34

present them the perfect candidate

35:36

in terms of biography, moderation,

35:39

ideology, everything, and

35:42

the extremist is winning? And I

35:44

think the answer to that is it's

35:47

because Republicans have set up

35:49

their electioneering to utilize that

35:51

low info by painting an

35:53

impression in that swing bucket

35:55

of extremism and threat. And

35:57

that our only hope to...

36:00

offset that isn't an argument of

36:02

how great our person is. Though

36:04

candidate campaigns will always spend money on that.

36:07

At the end of the day, it's about how

36:09

much do you make the election in Florida

36:11

Senate, for example, a referendum on

36:13

Rick Scott, who's a Republican, and

36:15

all Republicans are a threat. Do

36:18

you see what I'm saying? Mm-hmm.

36:21

Yeah. And like, that's what swing voters are very,

36:23

that's why the midterm effect was going to be

36:25

so hard to stop in 2022. And

36:28

I say in the book, there were shifts in

36:30

the map. Some places ran new strategies, some places

36:32

ran old, where we ran old in Ohio

36:34

and Florida and, you know, North Carolina,

36:36

races that pulled competitively. Right? We lost

36:38

them all. And it was no surprise

36:40

to me. In places where we

36:43

stopped trying to sell a product to

36:45

the middle of the electorate and instead

36:47

built the strategy around telling, making sure

36:49

the middle of the electorate, the swing

36:51

voter bucket, the uninterested people in

36:53

that bucket hear at least one thing

36:55

about what's going on in contemporary politics.

36:58

And that is Republicans have stolen your

37:00

reproductive freedom and are going to subject

37:02

you to death panels. And it's so

37:04

hard just to even get that to

37:07

permeate to a tuned out electorate that

37:09

follows no news. Their algorithms

37:11

are not news based, not politics based.

37:13

They don't see any of the stuff

37:16

we see. They see celebrity stuff, cooking

37:18

stuff, Hollywood stuff, fun stuff, but they

37:20

are not seeing politics and it's our

37:22

job to make sure they know what's happening.

37:25

Well said. You just mentioned

37:28

the midterms and in every

37:30

election, there are the fundamentals

37:32

of overturning the party in

37:34

power. But also this year,

37:36

a presidential election year, there's

37:38

also the power of incumbency when

37:41

thinking about Biden's reelection bid. How do

37:43

you think it's going to work out? Yeah,

37:46

I mean, I was a big proponent

37:48

of Biden running for reelection because again,

37:50

I'm a trained political scientist who knows

37:52

the fundamentals of political science

37:54

research really well. And that there's one

37:57

fundamental that don't lie, folks. It's called

37:59

the presidential incumbent. It's a big advantage. Why isn't

38:01

it a advantage? Well,

38:03

let's talk about, like, I think for a lot

38:05

of people, and the reason you see this and

38:07

saw this so much in polling, I want a

38:09

different candidate, is that when people are answering

38:12

that, they just, in

38:14

their head, take Biden and replace

38:16

it with their preferred Democrat. But

38:18

the problem is, like, my preferred

38:20

Democrat may not be your preferred

38:22

Democrat. In fact, almost certainly it

38:24

isn't. And so what you

38:27

end up with is a very

38:29

divisive situation where your party is

38:31

fighting amongst itself over

38:33

a nomination and sending $100 million

38:36

of resources that could be saved

38:39

and then pushed out against Republicans to win

38:41

the general over trying to, you

38:44

know, make sure Buttigieg wins over Harris

38:46

or Whitmer over Newsom or whatever, right?

38:49

So what people are not counting in is

38:51

all the effects of that. Okay, you lose

38:53

the fundraising advantage. Biden has a war chest

38:55

of $170 million. Trump

38:59

has nothing, basically, right? You

39:01

have all the headlines are about

39:04

internal party fighting. And imagine, folks,

39:06

imagine if we would

39:08

have had open Democratic primary going

39:10

on on October 7th and

39:13

the weeks after that. My

39:15

goodness. I mean, it would have been

39:17

an absolute mess, okay? So

39:19

Republicans would never even entertain

39:22

for a second giving up

39:24

the significant structural advantages that

39:26

come with incumbent president, okay?

39:28

You get the presidential podium,

39:30

you get the presidential plane,

39:32

you get the bully pulpit,

39:34

you get the news media.

39:37

I mean, you have so

39:39

much strategic structural advantage with

39:41

an incumbent that they would

39:43

never have entertained replacing theirs. And

39:46

I had to do a lot of explaining to

39:49

people, look, Biden is

39:51

the guy. You want to run Biden, you don't

39:53

want an open primary, you don't want all this

39:55

stuff going on. What we

39:57

need is everyone focused on the opposition

39:59

party. And I feel very good

40:01

about the Biden team's strategy. They're going to

40:03

make sure you tuned out Americans hear the

40:06

stakes of the election because they don't know

40:08

many Americans have no idea that

40:10

Republicans are planning mass deportations, that

40:13

they're going to come after foreign

40:15

nationals and apply loyalty tests. These

40:17

are things they're openly discussing and

40:19

not like, random people, people like

40:21

Stephen Miller had significant administration posts

40:23

in the first Trump term. People

40:26

don't know that. And the Biden team is going

40:28

to make sure that they tell people that. My

40:30

concern is that we don't amplify

40:32

that and get the most bang for

40:35

the buck. Like we did in 2020

40:37

when, you know, the Biden campaign was

40:39

running kind of on threat of Trump

40:42

and Trump mismanagement, but the down ballots

40:44

were just doing whatever. Like one person's

40:46

talking about this and one person's talking

40:49

about that. That centralization needs to exist

40:51

so we can create a cacophony. We

40:53

need every voter in every state, in

40:56

the state legislative race to hear this.

40:58

Republicans are coming through your freedom

41:00

message to be, you know, if we

41:02

can do that, we can create something

41:05

that at least resembles their noise machine.

41:08

I always ask this question towards the end of

41:10

our conversation. What are two things an

41:13

everyday person can do to

41:16

have better tools in their civic

41:19

action toolkit? And in this case,

41:21

I'm curious what an everyday person can

41:23

do to turn the tide on

41:25

the fundamental lack of interest in

41:28

politics and democracy and to help

41:30

establish a healthy civic culture.

41:33

And I know it's a little bit out of left field

41:35

because we just talked about messaging, but I kind of feel

41:37

like, you know, if we had more people interested, we would

41:39

have a different kind of politics. Oh,

41:41

we certainly would. Right. I mean, so I

41:43

talk about it in terms of climate change

41:45

and wildfire. OK. Right now

41:47

we have a wildfire. It is threatening to

41:50

burn us all down in November. We

41:52

have to put this wildfire out. And the only way

41:54

to do so is to beat it electorally and beat

41:56

it big. But at the end of

41:58

the day, we still have climate. change. So

42:01

at that point, it comes into what you're asking

42:03

me about. How do we fix this? What can

42:05

individual people do? So in terms of

42:07

putting out the wildfire, every single person

42:10

who hears my voice is an influencer. It

42:12

doesn't matter if you have 165,000 followers on

42:14

Twitter or 100. You're still influencing people and

42:19

you're also influencing your personal

42:21

network, right? And you know

42:24

people like this. Like I have friends that

42:26

vote but they don't really follow anything, right?

42:29

We have to make them look. We have to make Americans

42:31

eat their civic vegetables. You're not going

42:33

to watch news. So then our job

42:35

is then to inform our friends, the

42:37

people on our timelines, using

42:39

those communication tools intentionally to make

42:41

sure people hear about the threat

42:44

to democracy. It can be very

42:46

hard to talk about. So I'm

42:48

so proud that Biden's willing to

42:50

talk about fascism, that some of

42:53

our country's most notable historians have

42:55

been very, very vocal about the

42:57

similarities between the modern Republican Party

42:59

and a fascist movement. And I

43:02

think it's important that people get over

43:04

their fear of looking silly and start

43:06

to explain to people what's happening within

43:08

the Republican Party and what their plans

43:10

are for America starting in 2025. They

43:12

aren't shy about it. They

43:15

wrote a whole manual from the

43:17

Heritage Foundation for a transition into

43:19

autocracy. It's called Project 2025, the

43:22

manual for leadership. They're hiring young

43:24

conservatives into a data bank that

43:26

they plan on replacing

43:28

all of our career merit-based

43:30

civil service Employees with. They

43:32

Want to purge out the civil service

43:35

and once they do that stuff, they'll

43:37

be able to consolidate power. So It

43:39

really is time to panic. If We

43:41

panic now. we might be able to

43:43

prevent democratic catastrophe. If We wait until

43:45

the democratic catastrophe is obvious to everyone,

43:47

The lesson I learned from three years

43:50

of studying the rise of the Nazis

43:52

and other totalitarian regimes is that it's

43:54

too late. You Have to panic in

43:56

advance. Very Hard for humans to do

43:58

so. It really takes... Everybody

44:00

influence in their own spear of influence.

44:02

People are much more likely to trust

44:05

people they know we're related to. So

44:07

please use your own personal networks and

44:09

made sure every voter that you can

44:12

shows up to vote on election day

44:14

and boats a full D for Democracy

44:16

ticket. Yeah here here.

44:19

Good advice. Your so passionate! I

44:21

love it so looking into the future

44:23

would makes you hopeful. Who.

44:26

Suffer election results keep making me

44:29

hopeful because you know I say

44:31

in the book. I.

44:33

Am are just part of a bunch

44:35

of people who are pushing the messaging

44:37

strategic machine forward. But we could have

44:39

done all that work. And without the

44:41

dogs repeal a don't know that it

44:43

would have still had the same a

44:45

sack in sorting the red ways. So

44:47

what makes me hopeful as this? We.

44:50

Didn't. Run perfect strategy and twenty

44:52

twenty two everywhere and we still did

44:54

okay. But. Gives me hope is

44:56

that we're going to have good strategy across

44:59

the board. And twenty twenty four, we're going

45:01

to repudiate fascism at the ballot box. We're.

45:03

Going to force the Republican party to

45:05

finally. Splinter. Whatever

45:08

fall the power and needs to

45:10

do something because it used to

45:12

be like or party seventy percent

45:14

of stabbed which meant thirty percent

45:17

like progressive base. Type.

45:19

Person. And. In the Republican

45:21

party that has slipped in ten years and

45:23

is now majority base controlled and that is

45:25

why even with my Johnson the oh he

45:28

in the one day killing border security for

45:30

them and and giving Ukraine to poop and

45:32

but the next day if he doesn't total

45:34

wine on a mario guess impeachment vote or

45:36

whatever the mad is right after em out

45:39

in for it need to vacate Am I

45:41

mean you don't want to be in a

45:43

position where you have radicals in charge of

45:45

your party and unfortunately the Republican party's put

45:47

us all in that position. So what gives

45:49

me hope. is that will win and

45:51

twenty twenty four we have to win the presidency

45:54

were i think the changes that are going to

45:56

come or to be fast and furious to our

45:58

oh how we operate in the u s The

46:00

parchment only helps us if people

46:02

are willing to abide by it.

46:05

And unfortunately, all it takes is

46:07

the willingness to say, I'm suspending

46:09

the Constitution and a

46:11

party willing to stand by

46:13

and let them do it. And I

46:16

think the Republican Party has demonstrated, especially

46:18

with the reaction to Jan 6, that

46:21

they are just the kind of party that would

46:23

be willing to stand by and let somebody do

46:25

that. And that gives me

46:27

hope that we're going to win in 2024 and

46:29

that that will give us the momentum to start

46:31

fixing our civic culture. Our civic

46:34

culture has to be

46:36

fixed. We cannot go on with

46:38

a population that is too dumb

46:40

for democracy. Amen. Yes.

46:43

Well, that also makes me hopeful. Here's

46:46

to winning in 2024 and fixing

46:48

our civic culture. Rachel, thank

46:50

you so much for joining us on Future Hindsight.

46:52

It was really a pleasure to have you on

46:54

the show. Oh, such a

46:56

pleasure. Thank you for having me. Rachel

46:59

Bittacoffer is a political scientist

47:01

and election forecaster turned political

47:04

strategist and the author

47:06

of Hidden Where It Hurts, How to

47:08

Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their

47:10

Own Game. Next

47:17

week on Future Hindsight, we're joined

47:19

by Braxton Brewington. He's the press

47:21

secretary of the debt collective and

47:23

a PhD candidate in

47:25

sociology at UNC Chapel

47:27

Hill. People should have the

47:29

choice to make on their own. If people

47:31

want to pursue a type of career that

47:33

requires a bachelor's degree or a master's degree,

47:35

they should be able to do that. And

47:37

if that's not something they want to do,

47:39

then they don't have to do that. But

47:42

education is a public good. And so if

47:44

you believe that, then you probably quickly get

47:46

to student debt relief. On top of that,

47:48

it's just good for the economy. That's

47:50

next time on Future Hindsight. And

47:57

before I go, first of all, thanks so

47:59

much for listening. If you

48:01

liked this episode, you'll love what we have

48:03

in store. Be sure to

48:05

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48:32

episode was produced by Zach Travis

48:35

and me. Until

48:37

next time, stay engaged.