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    It’s all but official that the 2024 presidential election is going to be Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. And so because of that, we’re going to move to more of a general election focus on Theory of Change.

    At this point in many of the surveys, Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump. There are a number of reasons for this, one of them being that the Democratic party is operating under a politics of yesteryear against a Republican party that has not existed in many decades.

    Besides being much more dominated by openly anti-democratic extremists, the American right has become incredibly professionalized with a gigantic infrastructure for networking, career advancement, legislation composition, and also propaganda.

    Democrats, by contrast, have almost no institutions that are as explicitly ideological and which work to advocate for center-left ideas to the public. As much as Democrats often talk about how democracy is at risk in this country, and indeed it is, they have not functionally changed their behavior from an institutional standpoint.

    And we will talk about that today with the guest in today’s episode with Rachel Bitecofer. She is a political strategist and the co-author of a new book called Hit ’Em Where It Hurts, and also the creator of a newsletter called The Cycle.

    The video of this episode is available. The conversation was recorded February 9, 2024. The transcript of the audio follows. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

    Cover photo: Lara Trump, recently appointed as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks onstage at a lavish conference thrown by Turning Point USA. June 19, 2023. Photo: Gage Skidmore/CC-by-2.0

    Theory of Change is part of the Flux Media network, please support our work and get more content like this by subscribing.

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    Audio Chapters

    00:00 — Most Americans know very little about politics, but Republicans seem to realize the importance of this fact more than Democrats

    08:37 — Television advertising doesn’t work, but Democrats keep wasting money on it

    20:48 — Republicans invest in political networking and career building, Democrats do not

    36:25 — How right-wing activists use mainstream media to push their message through manipulation

    38:59 — Right wing messaging can impact people who aren’t even conservative

    43:53 — How political branding influences people who consider themselves “independent”

    46:25 — The “both parties are wrong” critique of politics is completely disproven by actual data

    54:16 — Why humor and mockery are so important in political communications

    Audio Transcript

    The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

    MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Rachel.

    RACHEL BITECOFER: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here today.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. so let’s I guess start off the discussion with what’s the elevator pitch behind your book here?

    BITECOFER: Yeah, just contextually, I think it’s important for people to understand in this audience, probably in particular. This book is the product of a mission to, to bring the rest of the world up to what political science knows [00:03:00] about.

    Voting behavior, the mass electorate voter psychology, political polarization, because the reason that I’m even sitting here today is a forecast using my academic work. I was a PhD. I was a professor at a university in 2018. That forecasted a really strong Democratic performance in the 2018 midterms.

    And the reason I even put it out was I was frustrated watching and reading things like 538 and the Cook political report and others that didn’t seem to incorporate modern or recent political science literature, especially the literature on political polarization, because you guys hear the word all the time.

    We’re polarized, it’s polarizing, whatever, but what people don’t know is that actually that has created a really distinct mass electorate that never existed. I mean, maybe back in the civil war, we don’t have polling. It’s never existed before, and it has conditioned behavior [00:04:00] in a different way than we’re used to.

    What was happening in the nineties or when Ronald Reagan won and won almost every state on the map. Right? Those are things that can’t happen now because we have a different electorate. So motivating the book was to get a, the left predominantly to understand the reality of the American electorate, the role that partisanship party identification plays in vote choice.

    And then the very, very rough clay that is the American voter, It’s not like the people who are watching us now, they are tuned out. They are mostly not interested in politics. And if you think about something that you’re not interested in, like say, I mean, NASCAR, I don’t know anything about NASCAR.

    I couldn’t tell you one NASCAR driver, but if I was into NASCAR, I wouldn’t know a lot about it. I would be able to tell you a whole bunch, right? So, people don’t have an interest in politics. That’s the reason why half of the eligible electorate, basically it’s 60 40 percent in [00:05:00] 2020 don’t even bother to vote in the most consequential of our elections.

    The presidential election people in America are very tuned out and that has gotten much worse in the modern media environment, which allows people to completely isolate themselves from political news and current events in and really just go all in on entertainment. Right. So,

    SHEFFIELD: Oh, ’cause there’s, yeah, there’s just so much of it.

    Oh, so much for to watch.

    BITECOFER: It’s so much, right? Like, I can’t, sometimes I go into Netflix and I’m like, okay, what should I watch? Okay. Too much. I just, I quit . Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: I mean, hell, like, if you wanted to, you could literally. Only watch real housewives shows you literally do that for a year.

    BITECOFER: Our system is built and based on a flawed foundation. So this book is 1st, getting you to understand. How that’s that assumption that the electorate is engaged and informed and the, they, the public knows all this stuff that’s happening with [00:06:00] Donald Trump, it’s a flawed assumption.

    Okay. And if you accept that the electorate knows almost nothing about what’s happening in contemporary politics, strategically you shift, right? And it becomes, Oh, then we need a messaging strategy. That informs the electorate that they’re facing an existential threat to their health, wealth, safety, and freedom.

    So getting that second part of the book is about getting people to learn how the Republican system operates, how they’ve developed and, institutionalized infrastructure to pull off. They’re, really, they have really strong electoral performance relative to the amount of people that they’re, Are in the Republican party and and they’ve used it to dominate.

    Right. And so the book is about getting people to understand Republicans don’t campaign the same way their election messaging isn’t, Hey, I have candidate Tim, Tom, Tim Ryan, and he’s a bipartisan, moderate. Who’s going to get things done. He was up. [00:07:00] Good ideas. An extremist in JD Vance and JD Vance won that election.

    Now there is a lean to the right on in Ohio, but at the end of the day, the voters that voted for JD Vance on that partisan label preference, the R on the, ballot next to him. Many of them, they had no idea they were voting for a fascist, a guy who’s actually espoused in the public record, very fascist views, especially about women.

    Okay, they never heard that he would vote to ban abortion nationally. They never heard any of this because we are, our campaigns do not define our opponent. And so that’s what this book is about, getting everybody out of the old strategy. Understanding how modern elections work and how polarization has, really elevated the effect of partisan label.

    And at the end of the day, if partisanship is going to predict the vote choice for 90 percent of voters, and it does, even those independent leaners, then you have to be designing a campaign that sells the entire brand. And that’s what the Republicans have been very [00:08:00] good at. Their brand good, our brand bad, right?

    And so it comes, it’s a whole new approach to electioneering on the left.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, when it’s, when you’re talking about, defining the opposition the, Republicans figured out a long time ago and probably I’d say Paul Weyrich, the, right wing Christian strategist, he was the first one that really figured this out where he said that, people, it’s easier to motivate them against something than for something.

    And that’s, and essentially like. And that’s right.

    Television advertising doesn’t work, but Democrats keep wasting money on it

    SHEFFIELD: There is so much political science that has, has, really just floated around within the academic community. And I mean, that was my major in college and I remember reading all these papers and then I would look at the way that the, Two parties behaved and I was on the right at this point in time. And I was like, wow, the Democrats, even though they all have these liberal professors don’t [00:09:00] pay attention to them at all. And what they say, and like one of the, key insides of political science is that advertising doesn’t work.

    Especially at the higher, like the higher you go in politics, the less it works in terms of persuasion, because people already know who Donald Trump is. They already know who Joe Biden is. They already know who Barack Obama is or whoever, Hillary Clinton, they are, and they have their opinion.

    It’s the same way that if I showed you, if you like, Pepsi and I show you a thousand ads for Coke, it’s not going to make you go buy a Coke. Yes. and it’s because of the, it’s not going to make you like

    BITECOFER: it, especially. And really it’s not about the person. So it’s not Biden. I mean, Trump’s different.

    Okay. But whatever. It’s not. Bush and Kerry or whatever. It’s the in American political science when the field of mine, mine is behavioral, right? When that field emerged, it was because we had finally invented surveys on telephone surveys. And people were like, people [00:10:00] like me, nerds, political scientists were like, Hey, now we can, find out things about the American electorate.

    And so what they endeavored to do Was go find out about the electorate. It’s a seminal work in my discipline called the American voter. And what it found folks was this Americans don’t know jack s**t about politics. They can tell you the president is maybe the vice president. Beyond that, most Americans don’t have much context to work with when it comes to interpreting political phenomenon, but.

    The political scientist who wrote this book argue, don’t worry about it because they have this handy cognitive shortcut that they can use to make informed political decisions that don’t require them to have all this information. What is that shortcut? It’s the party label. Okay. And partisan elections, no matter how much you bleach out the party part in the campaigning, which is bad for us, right?

    At the end of the day, the voter is getting into the ballot booth. And if [00:11:00] I know nothing, I mean, say you were sitting there right now, Matthew, but you were a black dot. I didn’t know if you were a man or a woman, if you were rich or poor. Old, young, suburbanite, rural, nothing. But I knew that you were an independent who said, I lean to the Republican party or a Republican, vice versa on the other side, I would be able to predict your vote choice a year away from an election, a year away, as I have done in two cycles, right?

    I’ll be able to predict your vote choice nine out of 10 times. I’ll be right. Nine out of 10 times, because that you’re not buying a candidate, you’re buying a party. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: And and to some degree we’re, kind of seeing that people not understanding that with, when you look at the, a lot of the discussion about public opinion polls and Joe Biden and Donald Trump, that, like, I, I think the.

    The number one thing that happened in the Republican presidential primaries this year is that it wasn’t a [00:12:00] real primary. And that essentially because all the candidates were too afraid to attack Trump, basically it was a coronation of. You should vote for Trump because Joe Biden is the devil incarnate Republicans.

    And you need to understand that. And that was the, message out of every single debate, Joe Biden is evil. That was it. It was never, well, Donald Trump is kind of dumb or he’s kind of corrupt or is extreme, even though some of, except for Chris Christie, he was the only one that was actually willing to criticize Trump.

    And it was like the same, they, made the exact same mistake. The non Trump candidates that, that they made in 2016, they were too afraid to criticize this guy. And if you don’t criticize the number one person, well, you’re not going to win.

    BITECOFER: Why would I pick a Trump alternative? If I can have Trump, right?

    I mean, like they’re not going

    SHEFFIELD: to tell me why Trump was bad. Exactly.

    BITECOFER: Right. and as you point out, Christie did it. Now, if they had [00:13:00] all done it, I am convinced they could have put this guy down. Okay. But it would have taken all of them. Right. And they, just, they are so they’re like, it’s like, I don’t know.

    They’re so Vic they’ve turned themselves into such hapless lumps of play. They can’t even figure out how to get out of a wet paper sack anymore.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and I think the reason for that is that, the Republican party is not actually conservative. it’s reactionary. It is not a conservative party.

    And in many ways, the Democratic Party actually is a conservative party in America. It’s sad to say,

    BITECOFER: if you don’t classical conservatism, which you and I both, I think, understand pretty well. Yes, I mean, honestly, the Democratic Party is trying to preserve our institutions and, that’s a classic neoclassic liberalism, right?

    Like, it’s crazy. Yeah,

    SHEFFIELD: and certainly not trying to socialize anything. Yeah. And, and like, and, something that was, and, [00:14:00] of course, like somebody who’s right wing, hearing us say that might say, Oh, that’s just a bunch of communists talking nonsense. I don’t have to believe that.

    But something that is an objective fact to this point is that, when that American political consultants who are Democrats will go and work for the British Conservative Party because they see it as not that different from the Democratic Party.

    BITECOFER: Right. It’s amazing. Right. Because. When I do a, I did a survey once to test this and I, because I had a wonderful five year run where I had my own survey research center.

    It was fantastic. And so when things came into my mind, I could test it. When I tested, I said, I tested like brand, like awareness, like what is, what do you, what comes to mind when you think of each of the parties brands? Right. And guess what? I mean, you won’t be surprised at all. When I tell you what the most common word was that people Popped out in terms of hearing, what do you think of the Democrats?

    Right? And it was [00:15:00] socialism. So let’s think about how Republicans do their swing messaging. Okay. It’s about branding us as socialist and more lately child pedophile.

    And what it is like, okay, so a Democrat’s like, well, you can’t call people a fascist. They don’t know what it is. Well, nobody knows what the socialist is either. All right. It’s not that voters know that we’re socialist because there’s a bunch of policy points that prove it out. They just keep hearing the association, the word association and the way that we run like Tim Ryan.

    Did in Ohio. I mean, we, did kind of a bifurcated strategic map in 22 where Michigan and Arizona ran against the Republican party and defined it as an extremist movement. And then the old strategy ran with people like Tim Ryan. What Tim Ryan’s apologetic democratic approach is this, the Republican opponent saying, don’t vote for Tim Ryan because he’s a Democrat and all Democrats are socialist.

    Okay. And Tim Ryan’s messages. Yeah, but I’m not one of those Democrats. [00:16:00] And what you hear if you’re a swing voter is, boy, there’s something really wrong with the brand Democrat. And if you’re walking into a ballot booth where the most important thing on the ballot is going to be the D and the R and brand association and basically top of mind awareness of impression, then that it’s very dangerous and bad to be telling swing voters.

    Yes. There’s something wrong with that brand. You have to elevate your own party brand because at the end of the day, It’s the perception of the Democratic brand on the ballot is going to predict your performance in a swing race and especially against an opposition that’s willing to make. I mean, think about it.

    We’re living in a country folks. We’re living in a country. The only advanced democracy. That doesn’t even have paid maternity leave. Okay, everywhere else, I’ve paid 6 weeks or whatever of maternity, maybe 6 months in some cases. [00:17:00] Here, I was back to work 5 days after a C section. Okay, no paid maternity leave.

    So we’re not anywhere close to a communist regime. We can’t even see communists from our backyard in this country. And yet a not insignificant part of the population, I would argue, probably about 50 million Americans think that we’re socialist.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, it is, I mean, and a lot of that is media effects.

    And and as a discipline in political science, it has, there’s a massive, archive of studies that show that, It, media affects people’s opinions and yet when you look at the way that Democrats think about, Democratic leaders think about media, they seem to have the idea, and this is to the antiquated belief systems that you’ve been talking about, is that they seem to have this idea that, well, somebody can hear, 24 7 On six [00:18:00] different right wing cable channels and countless YouTube channels that Democrats are socialist pedophiles who are going to, let China take over America.

    Yeah. They can hear that every single day of their lives. But then if we have, a hundred million dollars of ads on shows that they don’t watch for politics, that will counteract it. And it’s like, No, guys, that’s not how it works. But yeah, and, but this it’s so pervasive, this idea that.

    Advertising is a panacea. Where, what can, let’s talk about why do you think that is?

    BITECOFER: I mean, I, think there’s a real naivety about how media operates and how the Republican party operates in relationship to the media, I mean, Democrats don’t, it’s been, it was like me for five, six years now teaching people, actually public opinion flows From the top down, right?

    The reason people are going to start noticing the economy is doing better. [00:19:00] Finally, is because the media is finally giving them headlines about how good the economy is. you can’t, you can, have things that are external, like, Gaza support from the Palestine people, but most of the time.

    Media effects are shaping public perception, right? And even once you recognize that, then you have real logistic hurdles to implementing something like they have where they, as you pointed out all day long, if I’m a conservative, I’m going to consume different various. Conservative media, but it’s all going to be the same message over and repetition is what you need to make it sink in.

    Whereas like us, we’re going to talk about 400 different things. There’s no repetition. 1 show is focused on this. 1 show is focused on that. And we can’t, we’re not going to, we’re not going to be able to compete with that. But what we can do. Because media follows campaigns is if we shape a narrow, if we’re shaping our message to create a narrative, then, and if we run [00:20:00] it from all levels, state, legislative house, Senate, gov president, it makes, I can make a cacophony effect.

    Like the Republican party just did in 2021 was CRT. CRT is something even I, and I know almost everything had never heard of in, early 2021 and yet they took something I had never heard of and made it a household name, a national name. And made an entire election cycle revolve around it. How did they do that strategy and centralization?

    We can’t stumble our way into better communication. We have to strategically design that system and intentionally centralize things. So that’s a lot of the work that I’m working on

    SHEFFIELD: now. Yeah, no, it’s true.

    Republicans invest in political networking and career building, Democrats do notz

    SHEFFIELD: And of course the way that they’re able to do that is that they have and I can say this, as somebody who was on the political right, that the right wing spends probably in a [00:21:00] given year, at least 500 million on networking like networking organizations, internal networking.

    And so they’ve got these groups like the council for national policy Americans for tax reform, CPAC, and Charlie Kirk’s many, organizations, which just alone, he controls like a hundred million dollars. That’s exactly

    BITECOFER: right. You’re the only person I’ve ever met that knows that other than me.

    SHEFFIELD: Well, that’s unfortunate.

    BITECOFER: I mean, like, I lay out in the book, I’m like, look, this is what they do. Like we need, we don’t, we should stop telling rich people. We don’t want their money. We need. Billionaires and they have to start spending billions on building this infrastructure, Alec

    SHEFFIELD: infrastructure of democracy.

    BITECOFER: Yes. Infrastructure for democracy. And if we, and we have 500 grassroot groups for youth voting, all elbow grease. Okay. And spit, and there’s almost no one’s paid to run or to work in any of these [00:22:00] things. And they have turning point, they have a hundred million dollar For office buildings of 4 floors each because I went and debated Charlie Kurtz so I can see the infrastructure of turning point 1 of those buildings.

    I didn’t access. Is outside labeled the turning point logistic center. So, 4 floors devoted to logistics guys. And like, we’re just getting like, we cannot band aid our way through this. We have to have an infrastructure that’s heavily invested in. We have to start right now because we’re already 15, 20, 30 years behind in that.

    Depending on what institution you’re talking about. And at the end of the day, we, I mean, we, for years have been saying, Oh, they have all this stuff and why don’t we have any stuff? Well, okay. Then f*****g build it. It’s time to build it, dude. How many years are going to go by when you were like, Oh, we wish we had an Alec.

    Like, we have to find these donors and have conversations about how to better spend their investment money in elections. Because as you just [00:23:00] pointed out, a hundred million dollars in all, in September, Isn’t going to offset 10 months of narrative setting by right wing media. Yeah,

    SHEFFIELD: no, it’s true. And, and, I think, and this is something that I’ve talked about a lot on, on, on my show is that I, think that the reason why you don’t see this stuff taken seriously is that when they look at a, like, a Democratic, a large donor or a party leader or high level consultant, when they look at Ben Shapiro or they look at Charlie Kirk, they see a buffoon who says, constantly says stupid stuff. And you know what, they are that, but they also are heard by tens of millions of people every single week when they say these things. And so you can laugh at what they have to say-- and it is absurd and like I have a comedy news podcast, so we do laugh at it.

    It’s worth laughing at it But the [00:24:00] problem is that things that are like fascism is both absurd and dangerous Yes and if you only think that it’s absurd then you’re going to lose to it

    BITECOFER: Yes, exactly. I mean, I’m doing a project. That’s called Project 1933. It’s tied into my work, trying to get people to read the Heritage Foundation’s Manual for Leadership, which is reissued since 1980.

    Every, time there could be a new incoming Republican administration. I thought, could these people have possibly put a thousand pages of a fascist autocracy takeover plan into the Heritage Manual? And I ordered it and guess what? Because they know we’re so in it. They can write their s**t in public and it describes how they’re going to use schedule of how they’re going to take over the civil service, how they’re going to ignore the court rulings.

    it’s a pathway to fascism or transition to fast fascism. And I’m trying to get people to see what happened in Germany in 1933. [00:25:00] Hitler’s sworn in on Jan 30th. And it’s basically like the Trump’s swearing, right? Like, Oh, this guy’s going to be a hot mess. He’s going to, this government will last three weeks, but you know, the conservatives are going to reign them in this and that, and I’m not kidding by the summer, DACA was built and it’s filled full of the Nazi party’s political enemies, guys, three months to take long. So I’m like documenting it in real time. Like it’s a live tweet. Tomorrow, in fact, is the next segment of that where I’m trying to show people just how quick it is because all you need is a willingness to ignore the law to suspend the law to say the law is suspended and you are not going to ever sell me that this Republican Party.

    Given Elise Stefanik was just on CNN talking about how she would have overturned the government, okay, overthrown the government for Donald Trump on January 6th. We have to believe them. They are quite serious. They are going to establish a fascist autocracy and we [00:26:00] have to panic now because if we wait until they’re actually doing it, like in Hitler’s Germany, it will be too late.

    SHEFFIELD: No, exactly right. And, and I think on the Hitler point, one of the other things about him is that. People looking at him today, almost 100 years from when he first came along, they tend to think of him as just, this purely evil and, charismatic figure who was sort of, had an almost godlike competence of, dictatorship.

    But that’s actually not how things were like. It is before he became, the absolute ruler, he wasn’t people thought of him as an idiot as a stupid moron who was constantly putting his foot in his mouth. And guess who that reminds you of. Yes.

    BITECOFER: I keep trying to tell people, listen. Don’t compare [00:27:00] Hitler to like, or Trump to Hitler from 1944.

    Okay? Like after he is murdered 6 million Jews in the gas chambers. What you should be looking at is the comparisons from 19 32, 19 33 Hitler, and if you do that. You’ll see the way the Nazis did their stuff was a victimization narrative. It was grievance politics, and it was an us versus them propaganda psych ops that they utilized a new mass communication tool to execute.

    That was the radio. Never before could you beam a voice into a head. Of an American in their living room prior to that, and it was really instrumental in what the Nazis ended up doing. We’re in a very same situation because the invention of the Internet has completely and fundamentally changed how people are getting information and we learn that.

    Because we know now that there’s a segment of the Democrats base, right? That has been radicalized over Gaza, probably [00:28:00] by social media content through TikTok and other things that were financed by Iran. Okay? We’ve never had a capability for foreign governments to put content into American brains directly.

    It’s a new form of thing. And, Vladimir Putin used it to first elect Trump, help get Trump elected. And now it’s, being turned against us both domestically and internationally. So it, we’re really in a moment. Yes, there are differences. The United States is a stabilized, institutionalized democracy that’s been in operation for almost 250 years.

    The Weimar Republic in Germany was never stable. Okay, so that is true folks. But at the end of the day, when you look at the mechanics of what happened, if the ruler is willing to say, there is a crisis of the border, the borders being invaded, I am suspending the constitution. That’s it. It’s game over.

    Now you might say, well, won’t we all react? maybe, [00:29:00] but it’s really easy to say that you will when you’re not the one with the AR 15 pointed at your family, right? So maybe we’ll react, but if they’ve declared martial law and they’re shooting protesters in the streets, it’s not going to be sufficient.

    The time to stop it is before it happens.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And we know for a fact that when Trump was trying to illegally cling to power in 2021, he was receiving advice from people. You need to suspend the constitution. You need to seize the voting machines. You need to declare a martial law because there is an insurrection.

    And they were the ones talking about insurrection.

    BITECOFER: Yeah. And we know this too, that was a white house meeting late at night after the, chief of staff had left because Cassidy Hutchinson told us. Right. And it came within seconds folks. And then actually it happened. Trump said, you know what I want to appoint, I can do whatever I want.

    Right. I can appoint Sidney Powell. As a special prosecutor and literacy, [00:30:00] right? And, they’re like, yeah, you can do that, but we’re not going to do it. We’re not, no, one’s going to execute this for you. No, one’s gonna like, he tried to appoint her, but the rest of the room was like, no, we’re not going to do it.

    Like they literally ignored a presidential order. People have no idea of any of that. Like my friends that vote regularly even, so they’re already better than most people. They don’t, know anything about what happened. They know there was an insurrection thing at the Capitol. They don’t realize it was part of an intricate, multi level, multi pronged, party wide conspiracy that came this close to ending democracy.

    And that’s why they devised Project 2025. They’re actually taking applications from young conservatives who they’re going to ideologically scream. They’re going to have this whole data bank of pre scaring to people who were like you, right? You. That are committed to loyalty to not to the constitution, not to anything else, but to Donald Trump personally.

    And I mean, that’s just where we’re at. [00:31:00]

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. And the, and so all those people that refuse Trump. In 2021, if he wins, they will, no one like that will be allowed in,

    BITECOFER: Donald Trump’s going to like pick a vice president that helps him do something like, he picked Pence because he wanted to get, make sure the evangelical vote, the most important constituency in the Republican party was squarely behind him.

    And he’s, a hot mess personally. And we thought maybe they would care because they’re supposed to like be religious, but apparently not like that. He’s not doing that this time. Trump has one criteria for Veep, will this person do what I want them to do when I seize power? And that’s it. Okay. And that’s why Elise Stefanik was auditioning on CNN the other day.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, exactly. And of course, they also do this at the, sort of thing at, the local and state levels as well. And, you mentioned a group that I think a lot of people might not have heard of [00:32:00] called Alec. What is Alec for people who don’t know what that is. Yeah. In the Republican.

    What do

    BITECOFER: they do? Yeah. Yeah. Within the Republican massive infrastructure, which is, as he pointed out, at least 500 million a year, but probably significantly more if we could, actually look

    SHEFFIELD: at the media, it’s over, billions.

    BITECOFER: Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. Well, one of the things that they did when they were developing a plan called red map, which is what they use to gerrymander, they, they had good timing, they had Michael Steele strategy.

    Fire Pelosi, nationalized politics, a referendum on Obama and Obamacare seized in 2010, and they ended up having this great electoral performance right at the right moment, because that was a redistricting year. And they use that power to redistrict themselves a ton of state legislative seats at the same time, what they were doing was building something called the American Legislative Exchange Council.

    Alec L A L E C. And what that does [00:33:00] is it, streamlines legislation for the state level. So when you look at Florida, right, we all know they have a thing called the stand your ground law, because we all know Trayvon Martin was brutally murdered for no reason because of the stand your ground law. What people don’t realize is stand your ground is a law that’s in multiple States.

    And it came out of this think tank called Alec, which writes what we call model legislation. So they basically take a law, they, write it up. It’s, and it’s always crazy s**t, like trans bans or stand your ground or busting the unions or whatever it is, right to work that all comes from Alec. And then they introduce it all across all the state legislatures that they control in the same legislative cycle.

    And that’s how you can get somewhere where like. Ron DeSantis starts ranting about trans people, and within six months, every state legislature that’s controlled by Republicans have passed brutal anti trans legislation. It’s because it’s all centralized, it’s all coming out of ALEC, and we have [00:34:00] absolutely nothing like that.

    SHEFFIELD: And I think, it’s really that network is so important because it allows them to move with extreme quickness in to impose their agenda on states and local and locality so like, and you, saw that, for instance, certainly with various, anti CRT laws, various, book censorship laws, teacher censorship laws, and, they just rolled these out before anybody in the local communities had any idea what the hell was going on. And like, and, they rolled the local media as well, because, they would give these signs, to their protesters and they’d show up somewhere and at a school board and say, I’m concerned about this or that.

    And these were in many cases, professional. Right wing activists, not parents at the school, no connection at all to the area. And the local media had no idea that this was happening and who was doing this. And they didn’t ask anybody. [00:35:00] And so, they would just report it as here’s some concerned parents who were talking about schools and, and, they, fooled a lot of people and, it’s only now that.

    They have, caused so much censorship and so many and suppress so much free speech that people are now realizing, oh, I actually have to pay attention to my school board election. So lunatics who want to, impose Christo fascism, don’t take over my school board.

    BITECOFER: I mean, I don’t know if you saw this, but yeah, just yesterday, a Utah, one of these moms for Liberty school board nuts, right?

    It was a man, but whatever, that’s the group that’s promoting Christofascism on our school boards. He accused a Utah student, a minor child of being transgender. She is not. And now she’s in police custody because so many people came after her that this poor, innocent, random kid. I mean, what, is that?

    Right? Imagine if that was your kid, [00:36:00] like, what, how angry would you be that some dude on a school board set radical extremist to the point where you have to put your kid into protective custody? Right. Like we, yeah, we have to make sure that we’re communicating to people the stakes, because although we are disorganized, disinterested and not motivated are, and there are few in number, but they are all of those things.

    How right-wing activists use mainstream media to push their message through manipulation

    BITECOFER: And they also are very strategic. I lay it on the book, how they made CRT a household name using not only right wing media ecosystem, which is 1 part, but by getting our mainstream system to validate. The crazy stuff that they want to talk about. Okay. And, we see that last night too, with the, dirt her report for Joe Biden there, they’ve been pounding this narrative, trying to paint him as senile.

    And now they’ve got this great report that they can point to. It’s none of it is an accident guys. Like it’s all intentional. And I was reading a book from another ex conservative [00:37:00] activist. I was talking about, Hey, I, everything that I was indoctrinated with, I thought like the left had.

    All this stuff that was like, similar to the stuff on the right, all the strategic infrastructure with long term plans and goals that were, rolling out step by step radical plans. And then she gets out of the conservative movement into the, other side and realizes, okay, no, actually there’s no liberal conspiracy there because there’s no, nobody’s doing

    SHEFFIELD: it.

    Yeah. And there isn’t even a liberal media. No. Like, Right.

    BITECOFER: There’s just a media that has been like, since the sixties, we, changed the model from, for media in America so that it had to turn a profit. It used to be that the networks we keep it when we’re talking about a very different environment.

    So it was CBS, NBC, ABC, basically at the beginning, those networks in order to use the public airwaves had to air Public affairs programming as a public service, the news, things like that, even though those [00:38:00] things were not very profitable or didn’t turn a profit. It was kind of, the cost of doing business to access the American mind for entertainment and make money.

    Okay, after we move away from that model. Suddenly the newsroom is faced with a problem. The corporate owner of the media station is saying, Hey, we need you to be profitable. We’re not going to operate you at a loss. And once that happens, they have to meet what people want psychologically. And people don’t want hard news, dense stuff, serious conversation.

    We’re conditioned, we’re human beings and we’re conditioned for certain things. And at the end of the day. If you are operating a new station with a mandate to maintain a profit margin, you’re going to give people what they want, not what they need. So we stopped eating our civic vegetables a very long time ago.

    And now we’re, really harvesting the ice. We’re harvesting now was planted back then in the 80s and 90s.

    Right wing messaging can impact people who aren’t even conservative

    SHEFFIELD: [00:39:00] Yeah. No, it’s true. And we’re seeing this on so many ways when it comes to different issues, like, and I think most principally currently with the economy that, you have, it’s just amazing to me how ignorant economists are about media studies.

    They know literally nothing about it. And they don’t understand that, when you going, like ever since right wing media became enormous in roughly like 2012 or so Republicans, when you ask them, if the economy, how is it going with the economy? They say it sucks. It’s horrible.

    It’s a depression. If a Democrat is the president and that’s irrespective of how it’s going, you could have, 10 percent GDP growth and, 1 percent unemployment. And they would say it was depression. Yes. And in fact, they did do that. We know for a fact that they, when, the after Obama was reelected, the economy was going great.

    It’s been fantastic. And, but Republicans [00:40:00] said it was horrible, the worst ever. And and we’re seeing that over again now with Joe Biden. And it. And that constant, and this is just purely a repetition of the message. So they all believe it. And then that sort of is a. Infectious belief to people who don’t know anything.

    Like if you’re a political person, their right wing neighbor tells them, Oh, we’re in a depression right now. We’re in a recession right now. What do they know to say otherwise? And who, who have they heard to tell them that’s not true? So they believe it. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s why we are where we are with the economy, but you know, like your average economist, they’re like, Oh gosh, that just must be inflation.

    That’s all it is. And it’s like, you guys haven’t looked at any. Actual polling other than the usual ones you look at and

    BITECOFER: just to reiterate how powerful the effect that you’re describing is. [00:41:00] And I do this every transition, like, every time the party switches in the White House, because the Gallup data goes back forever.

    So you can do it for a long time. It’s much stronger of an effect in the polarized era, but it’s always been there. You have a let’s say outgoing Republican Trump, right. In December, November of the election year, you have an incoming Joe Biden. When you look at that four months of Gallup data, almost immediately upon the inaugural, you will see the Republicans that thought the economy was wonderful under Trump suddenly dropped down to 10 percent and it inverts completely, right, because Democrats are less tribal, so they’ll be more honest.

    There’s still a partisan thing to it. And so, Trump is in office. The economy is awful. Trump’s out of office, even though we’re in a pandemic, Democrats are much more likely to say the economy was good even before it actually became good again. Right. So it, partisan, when I talk about partisanship and my frustration and my motivation to even become this person that I am [00:42:00] today, it’s, because it is so powerful.

    And yet we ignore it in almost all of our analysis. We don’t understand. Like I did a survey once at the Watson center, my polling firm, I wanted to see like, okay, can I, since people don’t know anything, they, know maybe the Republicans and Democrats, the position on guns on abortion, but beyond that, not really.

    Right. So I ran some policy questions by voters in an experimental survey design where I would rotate. The party proposing the policy to show people when you get, look at how Republicans act for a policy proposal. They’re told it’s a Republican that wants to do it massive support, but at the same policy description is assigned to a Democrat.

    Collapse, I mean, and not just little changes, 5, 10, I’m talking 40 point movement on that. Okay. And so it really is completely [00:43:00] underestimated and understood how much partisanship matters. And in a modern public mass opinion. What we’re seeing in a lot of survey data now that we, this didn’t used to be so much of an issue is, basically a measure of latent partisanship.

    So you have the partisans and then you have the lingerers that are basically closet partisans. And really, if you wanna know how the public

    SHEFFIELD: is, , partisans in denial

    BITECOFER: is what, right? And so if you really wanna know, like, not necessarily how the public is feeling, but how. Like the top level, top of mind awareness narrative in the independent bucket is, you have to suss out those leaners from your independence and sample enough that you can look at pure independence only.

    And that’s where you can see things like how successful Republicans have been defining Biden as senile and having dementia when we all know that Donald Trump has much worse mental acumen problems.

    How political branding influences people who consider themselves "independent"

    SHEFFIELD: Absolutely. One of the other things that I think a lot of people who do [00:44:00] left-leaning politics is that they, don’t understand that the political.

    Viewpoints of people that they were more of an X, Y graph rather than a left to right graph. And, once you have that realization, I think that, you, you understand, like when you look at and on the screen, we’ve got a graph for those who are listening, you want to check the show notes to see the graph.

    But basically like libertarianism can be perceived as both left and right. It, because most people, they don’t really have. A sound conception of, well, the government should spend more on this five things and not on these and less on these five things. People don’t think in those terms.

    They think in terms of, who do I, what do I prioritize society or the individual, or do I prioritize reason or tradition? And so, and I, and it’s relevant to this discussion because I think there are a lot of people out there who are, they have a libertarian standpoint. And we’re seeing, we’ve seen during the Trump years that a lot of libertarians have come [00:45:00] home to the right wing. Whereas before they, they have maybe a more secular outlook. They’re not religious fundamentalists. So they saw the Republican party as disgusting full of, theocrats. But then under, like with the rise of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren AOC, the Democratic Party is kind of relearning its former economic populism that it had for a long, for a long time.

    And these Republicans who, or these libertarians, they’re, disgusted at that because in their viewpoint, everything should be about the individual. And so in their case, if they’re, if the, party that’s saying less regulations and less lower taxes, then they’re going to go for that.

    And that’s why I mean, I think the news media is, Filled with people like this the mainstream media that you know, they thought the rich Christian right was gross But now they’re saying oh their Democratic Party has become [00:46:00] too extreme. They’re just out of control. What’s wrong with them? Communist woke stirs

    BITECOFER: Well, keep in mind.

    I mean we’re talking about A branding operation of now steady for 14 years, 2010 on that have been defining making sure to elevate the squad. Right? I mean, so let me, let’s look at this thing. Right?

    The "both parties" critique of politics is completely disproven by actual data

    BITECOFER: I study stuff in quantitative form and we have great measurements of polarization and we can see which party has an extremism problem.

    The Democrat, every party is going to have a base of ideologues that are nuts. Okay, but the question is about proportion how much proportional control and how much power do they have? Yeah to those bases have and so when you look at the Democrats, right? They’ve got the squad and the whatever the Hamas 11 you But it’s a lot of people dude 11 11 And they don’t have any committee chairmanships and they don’t control anything.

    And they certainly aren’t running [00:47:00] the RNC, the DNC, and they don’t have a president in the White House. I mean, they’re basically neutered and the Democratic Party remains pretty much where it’s been the last 2, 20 years, which is predominantly dominated by moderates. Okay. It’s a 70 percent moderate party, a 30 percent ideological liberal party and on the other side.

    Okay. 10 years ago, this was the truth for the Republican party, 70 percent establishment Republican, 30 percent Tea Party base, right? When that began in 2010 and what has been so remarkable as a political scientist is to see that invert. Okay. And it’s happening only on that one side right now where it’s actually the base, that’s the majority population.

    The 75 percent of the Republican party that’s pro Trump, pro MAGA, pro christofascism, whatever it is, been, it dwarfs [00:48:00] the Mitch McConnell part of the party now. And, that’s the big difference, but the image. It’s very easy to make, to paint. I mean, that’s why I’m, it’s frustrating. Right. I haven’t had to write a whole book.

    Like how can Democrats let themselves be defined by 10 people that have no power where the Republican party has all these extremists in charge and we’re not even telling people we’re not defining them around these crazy people. And these crazy people are actually running the ship.

    Right.

    SHEFFIELD: So we, yeah, Mike Johnson, Donald Trump.

    BITECOFER: Yeah. That’s exactly right. And I, it is just a mathematical fact. Polarization is asymmetrical. Democrats are less polarized either, both in the mass public and in, voter, member of Congress behavior. And, at the end of the day, we’re now up against a real Radicalized party in the Republican party.

    These are people that are living in a world in which some, truths are self [00:49:00] evident. Number one, Joe Biden stole the election and is illegitimate. Number two, the COVID vaccine is more deadly than COVID. Number three, Donald Trump is an innocent man. Who’s never done anything wrong, right? Those things sound loony.

    Okay, but that’s the that is the truth that many millions of Americans are living in day to day. And that’s why we’re under this existential threat level in 2024.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and but what’s. Terrible is that the, the vast majority of Americans don’t have those opinions. Almost all of that majority doesn’t understand that Republicans believe those things.

    That’s right. And because if they did, they would be. Exactly.

    BITECOFER: And we know it because we did that. We told people in two states in 2022 in Arizona and in Michigan, we told people what, what was happening with the modern [00:50:00] Republican party and made them see. And they rejected them. I mean, bye. September, it was clear that Michigan was uncompetitive for Republicans and that gubernatorial race.

    So it, it’s clear to me, like once people find out about, but right now what they, most people who are going to go cast an R ballot in 2024, all they know about Republicans, honest to God, it’s low taxes. They have impressions. Low taxes, good for the economy, good on national defense. We both know that’s not the case for the last 20 years.

    And yet those images, those issue ownership effects are still very profound in data. They’re going to remain so until we rebrand the Republican party and define it as a extremist cult.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Now, and I’m glad you mentioned the idea of issue ownership. Ownership, because that is something that you do talk quite a bit about in the book and it fits into the larger point that, for most people, [00:51:00] they, you know, they, don’t have a coherent idea about what the parties think about things.

    And even under the, huge propaganda operation of Republicans telling them lies about what Democrats think, they still, all the people who are kind of, who are, will vote for Republicans, all they know is that the Democrats are extreme on that issue. They don’t actually know what, even an exaggerated version of what they, of what Democrats think.

    They don’t know it. All they know is Democrats are extreme on education. Democrats are extreme on X. And that’s all they know. And like, and it is, when you, and I think anybody who has a MAGA relative or a Republican in denial relative or friend, like that’s all they really know to say to you about anything that Democrats are, Godless, communist, transgender, black people, radicals, or black [00:52:00] radicals.

    That’s all Democrats are. And, if you don’t, and again, because like, because Democratic leaders, they know that’s an absurdly stupid idea, and it’s lies. It is, outright lies. They think, and you talk about this, that, This idea. Democrats are obsessed with the idea. Well, the American people will figure that out, right?

    But will they figure that out?

    BITECOFER: Right? That’s the whole like, if you had to sum up what the book is about. That’s what it’s about. Right? No, they will not figure it out. American people are plenty smart, like all civilized Western democracies living through the greatest period of human development ever. Okay.

    There’s no human that has ever walked the earth that is more fortunate than you living in the 21st century. We can grow new livers out of pig kidneys and right? Like humanity is Peak [00:53:00] freedom, peak individual liberty, like libertarian friends. I have to tell you the entire right era of individual rights is a liberal concept.

    It comes from the liberals, not from the Republicans. And yet no one knows that, right? No one understands that we’re living through this incredible time period of Massive calories, massive, people used to starve to death dude in the West, like all the time, millions and it’s so different now.

    And we, we don’t do a good job of telling that story and making sure that people understand. how benefited they are from to be alive right now and be living in America, but that it’s all very, new, very. Very new. I’m the first generation as a woman born in 1977, that was born with the actual legal equality.

    Okay. Because prior to that, women couldn’t maybe get a credit card. They couldn’t do bank loans. They couldn’t get birth control in the 60s. You couldn’t even get it as a married couple until the [00:54:00] Griswold decision said that actually it’s a privacy matter and people should be able to make their own decisions.

    So if you’re big into individual rights and liberty, Okay. I’m telling you, you’re looking at the wrong party if you’re thinking about voting for Republicans.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, definitely true.

    Why humor and mockery are so important in political communications

    And one of the other things as a co host of a comedy news panel show, I certainly agree with you. You talk about the idea, the importance of mockery as a political strategy.

    SHEFFIELD: So what do you, why do you think that is so important?

    BITECOFER: Yeah, so, I was greatly concerned. Headed into this new Congress, because I knew that they were going to weaponize the government and use the committee process to try to politically damage Biden and other Democrats and I, the media has always assisted them every time, like, no collusion memo.

    Or Benghazi and butter emails or whatever, right? The media will treat things that are delegitimate as legitimate, and once you do so, [00:55:00] you have legitimized it. CRT is a case in point of that. The Democrats kept explaining how it’s this and that, and it’s illegal theory and not about, it’s not even in the schools.

    Now you’ve legitimated the stupid rando thing that Chris Ruffo basically steals from some freaks PowerPoint, right? Like you so mocking. Is about preventing the legitimization of the false premise of their b******t investigation. And it’s so critical to our survival because when we, meet they’re crazy with a factual rebuttal.

    All we have done is legitimated the crazy. And so mocking the crazy is a way of making people see it. Number one, but number two, it’s about making people feel like, I don’t want to be with stupid, right? So if we’re making fun of them and making, highlighting how ridiculously stupid they are, it’s much more likely that people are going to be like, oh, That’s [00:56:00] crazy.

    They’re crazy people. And instead of trying to define why it’s wrong.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And the reason for that is that you can’t, fact check your way out of delusions. Like, and if, you disagree with that goes, try to have an argument with the schizophrenic about their hallucinations, whether it’s exactly

    BITECOFER: exactly right.

    And so, when you look at like the lead, like the Democrats on the house oversight committee have been just tremendous at this, right? Every committee hearing that they’ve had, they have strategically mocked. Yeah. The Republicans and prevented them from painting a false narrative about what is a delusion.

    It is a delusion to argue that Joe Biden was selling porn interference with Hunter Biden. Okay. And the way to deal with that is to make sure people see it as ridiculous. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: And. When you do that, like, it irritates the hell out of them. Yes, it does. And you certainly see that in those hearings. [00:57:00] They are constantly losing their minds when they’re fact checked like that.

    Well, they’re so used to like Both

    BITECOFER: mocked and fact checked. Yeah, they’re so used to us swinging on their pitch, right? So, like, it surprised them. That they couldn’t get the media to legitimate these Hunter Biden allegations. Okay. It’s the pride them that Democrats didn’t come in and like, grow the witnesses and dah, And accept the premise, the false premise that instead they use their state. They use their committee hearing time as a stage. Right. And they made their strategic mocking. The point of the coverage, and it was so it’s been very helpful, though. We’ve got lots of room to improve. There are signs of improvement, both on the electioneering and my work and others on team reform, pushing these reforms, because I’m certainly not alone and in the terms of media.

    Being at least a little bit more wary of, carrying the Republican water when they serve [00:58:00] them up something. But, we’ll see how this her memo continues to be covered. It was last night was a real backslide, in my opinion, the media jumped right on it and treated it as a legitimate conclusion and not a political document designed to get them to say that Joe Biden’s senile.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, exactly. And and, I think one of the other things that, that the right wing is very good at is pushing and, you do talk about this also, that pushing a simple message. So like Republicans don’t run on their agenda. They don’t actually tell you what they want to do, except for maybe on immigration, that’s right at this point.

    That’s all they, will tell you about what they will do on every other issue. They don’t ever talk about it. They don’t talk about what they want to do with taxes. They don’t talk about what they want to do on regulation. they don’t talk about spending. They don’t talk about anything else except for immigration.

    And so it makes it easy if for people who are really into that issue to be really [00:59:00] motivated to support them, but it also makes it so that the voters that they don’t have to debate their positions because nobody even knows about them because and so they have no. So, like, there’s, this idea in in warfare of the idea of an attack surface that when you that you want to have as small of a from an aerial bombardment, you want to have as small of a surface possible.

    And that’s basically the, core strategy of Republican politics is to minimize all attack surfaces of their own, and then maximize the attack surfaces of Democrats. And they’re remarkably successful

    BITECOFER: at it. Yeah. And we have to be too. So like, like to me. Nothing frustrates me more than, well, we’re Democrats.

    We just can’t do that. No b******t. We can, we must, and we will. And if we don’t, if we don’t, we’re all, we’re going to be looking at some serious hurt for especially Brown people in this country. The Republican party has been very clear. [01:00:00] That they’re coming for communities of color day 1, they’re talking about route mass deportations and roundups and folks.

    There’s no way you do that without really trampling on the rights of Latino Americans, many US citizens and people who have legal. Entry are going to be terrorized if we do this, if we let this happen. So it’s now or never when, Republicans go low, we got to hit them where it hurts.

    SHEFFIELD: All right.

    Well, there you go. You wrap that up very nicely there, Rachel. I thought you’d appreciate it.

    All right. Well, so we’ve been talking today with Rachel, bit of cough. Ah, dang it. coffer. I’m going to, I have to do that again. So God, I always, it’s because you only have one F in there. It just makes

    BITECOFER: me famous so I can never get rid of it. That sucks.

    SHEFFIELD: Okay. I have to do that again here. So, so we’ve been talking today with Rachel bit of coffer [01:01:00] and she’s the author of the book, hit them where it hurts.

    And you can get that everywhere now on the internet wherever you want to including bad places like Amazon, but other places.

    BITECOFER: Where if you really like my capital, you can listen to the audible. I recorded

    SHEFFIELD: it myself. Okay. There you go. And then you are also on various social platforms at Rachel Bitterkofer.

    That is with one F for those who are listening. And so you can I encourage everybody to check you out over there. And then you also have a podcast and subset called the cycle, so people can check that out as well. So, all right. Thanks for being here today.

    BITECOFER: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Matthew.

    SHEFFIELD: So that is the program for today.

    I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And of course you can always get more. If you go to theoryofchange.show, you can get the full episode archive with the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if [01:02:00] you are a paid subscribing member. You get complete unlimited access and you can sign up on either Substack or on Patreon.

    If you go to patreon.com/discoverflux you can subscribe that way if you don’t like Substack. And then of course I encourage everybody to go over to flux.community where this show is part of the Flux Network and we have several different podcasts and articles to check out about politics, religion, media, and society.

    And how they all intersect and get our help, get this let’s do that again. And you can go to flux.community to get more podcasts and articles about politics, religion, media, and society and how they all intersect. And we need to band together people who are opposing fascism in this country. And I appreciate everybody who is supporting the show.

    If you can’t support financially through a subscription just tell your friends or family about it. And I really appreciate that. And if you can leave a written review [01:03:00] on Apple podcasts in particular, that is super, super helpful. I really do appreciate those. Thank you very much.

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  • It’s all but official that the 2024 presidential election is going to be Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. And so because of that, we’re going to move to more of a general election focus on Theory of Change.

    At this point in many of the surveys, Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump. There are a number of reasons for this, one of them being that the Democratic party is operating under a politics of yesteryear against a Republican party that has not existed in many decades.

    Besides being much more dominated by openly anti-democratic extremists, the American right has become incredibly professionalized with a gigantic infrastructure for networking, career advancement, legislation composition, and also propaganda.

    Democrats, by contrast, have almost no institutions that are as explicitly ideological and which work to advocate for center-left ideas to the public. As much as Democrats often talk about how democracy is at risk in this country, and indeed it is, they have not functionally changed their behavior from an institutional standpoint.

    And we will talk about that today with the guest in today’s episode with Rachel Bitecofer. She is a political strategist and the co-author of a new book called Hit ’Em Where It Hurts, and also the creator of a newsletter called The Cycle.

    The video of this episode is available. The conversation was recorded February 9, 2024. The transcript of the audio follows. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

    Cover photo: Lara Trump, recently appointed as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks onstage at a lavish conference thrown by Turning Point USA. June 19, 2023. Photo: Gage Skidmore/CC-by-2.0

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    Audio Chapters

    00:00 — Most Americans know very little about politics, but Republicans seem to realize the importance of this fact more than Democrats

    08:37 — Television advertising doesn’t work, but Democrats keep wasting money on it

    20:48 — Republicans invest in political networking and career building, Democrats do not

    36:25 — How right-wing activists use mainstream media to push their message through manipulation

    38:59 — Right wing messaging can impact people who aren’t even conservative

    43:53 — How political branding influences people who consider themselves “independent”

    46:25 — The “both parties are wrong” critique of politics is completely disproven by actual data

    54:16 — Why humor and mockery are so important in political communications

    Audio Transcript

    The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

    MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Rachel.

    RACHEL BITECOFER: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here today.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. so let’s I guess start off the discussion with what’s the elevator pitch behind your book here?

    BITECOFER: Yeah, just contextually, I think it’s important for people to understand in this audience, probably in particular. This book is the product of a mission to, to bring the rest of the world up to what political science knows [00:03:00] about.

    Voting behavior, the mass electorate voter psychology, political polarization, because the reason that I’m even sitting here today is a forecast using my academic work. I was a PhD. I was a professor at a university in 2018. That forecasted a really strong Democratic performance in the 2018 midterms.

    And the reason I even put it out was I was frustrated watching and reading things like 538 and the Cook political report and others that didn’t seem to incorporate modern or recent political science literature, especially the literature on political polarization, because you guys hear the word all the time.

    We’re polarized, it’s polarizing, whatever, but what people don’t know is that actually that has created a really distinct mass electorate that never existed. I mean, maybe back in the civil war, we don’t have polling. It’s never existed before, and it has conditioned behavior [00:04:00] in a different way than we’re used to.

    What was happening in the nineties or when Ronald Reagan won and won almost every state on the map. Right? Those are things that can’t happen now because we have a different electorate. So motivating the book was to get a, the left predominantly to understand the reality of the American electorate, the role that partisanship party identification plays in vote choice.

    And then the very, very rough clay that is the American voter, It’s not like the people who are watching us now, they are tuned out. They are mostly not interested in politics. And if you think about something that you’re not interested in, like say, I mean, NASCAR, I don’t know anything about NASCAR.

    I couldn’t tell you one NASCAR driver, but if I was into NASCAR, I wouldn’t know a lot about it. I would be able to tell you a whole bunch, right? So, people don’t have an interest in politics. That’s the reason why half of the eligible electorate, basically it’s 60 40 percent in [00:05:00] 2020 don’t even bother to vote in the most consequential of our elections.

    The presidential election people in America are very tuned out and that has gotten much worse in the modern media environment, which allows people to completely isolate themselves from political news and current events in and really just go all in on entertainment. Right. So,

    SHEFFIELD: Oh, ’cause there’s, yeah, there’s just so much of it.

    Oh, so much for to watch.

    BITECOFER: It’s so much, right? Like, I can’t, sometimes I go into Netflix and I’m like, okay, what should I watch? Okay. Too much. I just, I quit . Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: I mean, hell, like, if you wanted to, you could literally. Only watch real housewives shows you literally do that for a year.

    BITECOFER: Our system is built and based on a flawed foundation. So this book is 1st, getting you to understand. How that’s that assumption that the electorate is engaged and informed and the, they, the public knows all this stuff that’s happening with [00:06:00] Donald Trump, it’s a flawed assumption.

    Okay. And if you accept that the electorate knows almost nothing about what’s happening in contemporary politics, strategically you shift, right? And it becomes, Oh, then we need a messaging strategy. That informs the electorate that they’re facing an existential threat to their health, wealth, safety, and freedom.

    So getting that second part of the book is about getting people to learn how the Republican system operates, how they’ve developed and, institutionalized infrastructure to pull off. They’re, really, they have really strong electoral performance relative to the amount of people that they’re, Are in the Republican party and and they’ve used it to dominate.

    Right. And so the book is about getting people to understand Republicans don’t campaign the same way their election messaging isn’t, Hey, I have candidate Tim, Tom, Tim Ryan, and he’s a bipartisan, moderate. Who’s going to get things done. He was up. [00:07:00] Good ideas. An extremist in JD Vance and JD Vance won that election.

    Now there is a lean to the right on in Ohio, but at the end of the day, the voters that voted for JD Vance on that partisan label preference, the R on the, ballot next to him. Many of them, they had no idea they were voting for a fascist, a guy who’s actually espoused in the public record, very fascist views, especially about women.

    Okay, they never heard that he would vote to ban abortion nationally. They never heard any of this because we are, our campaigns do not define our opponent. And so that’s what this book is about, getting everybody out of the old strategy. Understanding how modern elections work and how polarization has, really elevated the effect of partisan label.

    And at the end of the day, if partisanship is going to predict the vote choice for 90 percent of voters, and it does, even those independent leaners, then you have to be designing a campaign that sells the entire brand. And that’s what the Republicans have been very [00:08:00] good at. Their brand good, our brand bad, right?

    And so it comes, it’s a whole new approach to electioneering on the left.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, when it’s, when you’re talking about, defining the opposition the, Republicans figured out a long time ago and probably I’d say Paul Weyrich, the, right wing Christian strategist, he was the first one that really figured this out where he said that, people, it’s easier to motivate them against something than for something.

    And that’s, and essentially like. And that’s right.

    Television advertising doesn’t work, but Democrats keep wasting money on it

    SHEFFIELD: There is so much political science that has, has, really just floated around within the academic community. And I mean, that was my major in college and I remember reading all these papers and then I would look at the way that the, Two parties behaved and I was on the right at this point in time. And I was like, wow, the Democrats, even though they all have these liberal professors don’t [00:09:00] pay attention to them at all. And what they say, and like one of the, key insides of political science is that advertising doesn’t work.

    Especially at the higher, like the higher you go in politics, the less it works in terms of persuasion, because people already know who Donald Trump is. They already know who Joe Biden is. They already know who Barack Obama is or whoever, Hillary Clinton, they are, and they have their opinion.

    It’s the same way that if I showed you, if you like, Pepsi and I show you a thousand ads for Coke, it’s not going to make you go buy a Coke. Yes. and it’s because of the, it’s not going to make you like

    BITECOFER: it, especially. And really it’s not about the person. So it’s not Biden. I mean, Trump’s different.

    Okay. But whatever. It’s not. Bush and Kerry or whatever. It’s the in American political science when the field of mine, mine is behavioral, right? When that field emerged, it was because we had finally invented surveys on telephone surveys. And people were like, people [00:10:00] like me, nerds, political scientists were like, Hey, now we can, find out things about the American electorate.

    And so what they endeavored to do Was go find out about the electorate. It’s a seminal work in my discipline called the American voter. And what it found folks was this Americans don’t know jack s**t about politics. They can tell you the president is maybe the vice president. Beyond that, most Americans don’t have much context to work with when it comes to interpreting political phenomenon, but.

    The political scientist who wrote this book argue, don’t worry about it because they have this handy cognitive shortcut that they can use to make informed political decisions that don’t require them to have all this information. What is that shortcut? It’s the party label. Okay. And partisan elections, no matter how much you bleach out the party part in the campaigning, which is bad for us, right?

    At the end of the day, the voter is getting into the ballot booth. And if [00:11:00] I know nothing, I mean, say you were sitting there right now, Matthew, but you were a black dot. I didn’t know if you were a man or a woman, if you were rich or poor. Old, young, suburbanite, rural, nothing. But I knew that you were an independent who said, I lean to the Republican party or a Republican, vice versa on the other side, I would be able to predict your vote choice a year away from an election, a year away, as I have done in two cycles, right?

    I’ll be able to predict your vote choice nine out of 10 times. I’ll be right. Nine out of 10 times, because that you’re not buying a candidate, you’re buying a party. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: And and to some degree we’re, kind of seeing that people not understanding that with, when you look at the, a lot of the discussion about public opinion polls and Joe Biden and Donald Trump, that, like, I, I think the.

    The number one thing that happened in the Republican presidential primaries this year is that it wasn’t a [00:12:00] real primary. And that essentially because all the candidates were too afraid to attack Trump, basically it was a coronation of. You should vote for Trump because Joe Biden is the devil incarnate Republicans.

    And you need to understand that. And that was the, message out of every single debate, Joe Biden is evil. That was it. It was never, well, Donald Trump is kind of dumb or he’s kind of corrupt or is extreme, even though some of, except for Chris Christie, he was the only one that was actually willing to criticize Trump.

    And it was like the same, they, made the exact same mistake. The non Trump candidates that, that they made in 2016, they were too afraid to criticize this guy. And if you don’t criticize the number one person, well, you’re not going to win.

    BITECOFER: Why would I pick a Trump alternative? If I can have Trump, right?

    I mean, like they’re not going

    SHEFFIELD: to tell me why Trump was bad. Exactly.

    BITECOFER: Right. and as you point out, Christie did it. Now, if they had [00:13:00] all done it, I am convinced they could have put this guy down. Okay. But it would have taken all of them. Right. And they, just, they are so they’re like, it’s like, I don’t know.

    They’re so Vic they’ve turned themselves into such hapless lumps of play. They can’t even figure out how to get out of a wet paper sack anymore.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and I think the reason for that is that, the Republican party is not actually conservative. it’s reactionary. It is not a conservative party.

    And in many ways, the Democratic Party actually is a conservative party in America. It’s sad to say,

    BITECOFER: if you don’t classical conservatism, which you and I both, I think, understand pretty well. Yes, I mean, honestly, the Democratic Party is trying to preserve our institutions and, that’s a classic neoclassic liberalism, right?

    Like, it’s crazy. Yeah,

    SHEFFIELD: and certainly not trying to socialize anything. Yeah. And, and like, and, something that was, and, [00:14:00] of course, like somebody who’s right wing, hearing us say that might say, Oh, that’s just a bunch of communists talking nonsense. I don’t have to believe that.

    But something that is an objective fact to this point is that, when that American political consultants who are Democrats will go and work for the British Conservative Party because they see it as not that different from the Democratic Party.

    BITECOFER: Right. It’s amazing. Right. Because. When I do a, I did a survey once to test this and I, because I had a wonderful five year run where I had my own survey research center.

    It was fantastic. And so when things came into my mind, I could test it. When I tested, I said, I tested like brand, like awareness, like what is, what do you, what comes to mind when you think of each of the parties brands? Right. And guess what? I mean, you won’t be surprised at all. When I tell you what the most common word was that people Popped out in terms of hearing, what do you think of the Democrats?

    Right? And it was [00:15:00] socialism. So let’s think about how Republicans do their swing messaging. Okay. It’s about branding us as socialist and more lately child pedophile.

    And what it is like, okay, so a Democrat’s like, well, you can’t call people a fascist. They don’t know what it is. Well, nobody knows what the socialist is either. All right. It’s not that voters know that we’re socialist because there’s a bunch of policy points that prove it out. They just keep hearing the association, the word association and the way that we run like Tim Ryan.

    Did in Ohio. I mean, we, did kind of a bifurcated strategic map in 22 where Michigan and Arizona ran against the Republican party and defined it as an extremist movement. And then the old strategy ran with people like Tim Ryan. What Tim Ryan’s apologetic democratic approach is this, the Republican opponent saying, don’t vote for Tim Ryan because he’s a Democrat and all Democrats are socialist.

    Okay. And Tim Ryan’s messages. Yeah, but I’m not one of those Democrats. [00:16:00] And what you hear if you’re a swing voter is, boy, there’s something really wrong with the brand Democrat. And if you’re walking into a ballot booth where the most important thing on the ballot is going to be the D and the R and brand association and basically top of mind awareness of impression, then that it’s very dangerous and bad to be telling swing voters.

    Yes. There’s something wrong with that brand. You have to elevate your own party brand because at the end of the day, It’s the perception of the Democratic brand on the ballot is going to predict your performance in a swing race and especially against an opposition that’s willing to make. I mean, think about it.

    We’re living in a country folks. We’re living in a country. The only advanced democracy. That doesn’t even have paid maternity leave. Okay, everywhere else, I’ve paid 6 weeks or whatever of maternity, maybe 6 months in some cases. [00:17:00] Here, I was back to work 5 days after a C section. Okay, no paid maternity leave.

    So we’re not anywhere close to a communist regime. We can’t even see communists from our backyard in this country. And yet a not insignificant part of the population, I would argue, probably about 50 million Americans think that we’re socialist.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, it is, I mean, and a lot of that is media effects.

    And and as a discipline in political science, it has, there’s a massive, archive of studies that show that, It, media affects people’s opinions and yet when you look at the way that Democrats think about, Democratic leaders think about media, they seem to have the idea, and this is to the antiquated belief systems that you’ve been talking about, is that they seem to have this idea that, well, somebody can hear, 24 7 On six [00:18:00] different right wing cable channels and countless YouTube channels that Democrats are socialist pedophiles who are going to, let China take over America.

    Yeah. They can hear that every single day of their lives. But then if we have, a hundred million dollars of ads on shows that they don’t watch for politics, that will counteract it. And it’s like, No, guys, that’s not how it works. But yeah, and, but this it’s so pervasive, this idea that.

    Advertising is a panacea. Where, what can, let’s talk about why do you think that is?

    BITECOFER: I mean, I, think there’s a real naivety about how media operates and how the Republican party operates in relationship to the media, I mean, Democrats don’t, it’s been, it was like me for five, six years now teaching people, actually public opinion flows From the top down, right?

    The reason people are going to start noticing the economy is doing better. [00:19:00] Finally, is because the media is finally giving them headlines about how good the economy is. you can’t, you can, have things that are external, like, Gaza support from the Palestine people, but most of the time.

    Media effects are shaping public perception, right? And even once you recognize that, then you have real logistic hurdles to implementing something like they have where they, as you pointed out all day long, if I’m a conservative, I’m going to consume different various. Conservative media, but it’s all going to be the same message over and repetition is what you need to make it sink in.

    Whereas like us, we’re going to talk about 400 different things. There’s no repetition. 1 show is focused on this. 1 show is focused on that. And we can’t, we’re not going to, we’re not going to be able to compete with that. But what we can do. Because media follows campaigns is if we shape a narrow, if we’re shaping our message to create a narrative, then, and if we run [00:20:00] it from all levels, state, legislative house, Senate, gov president, it makes, I can make a cacophony effect.

    Like the Republican party just did in 2021 was CRT. CRT is something even I, and I know almost everything had never heard of in, early 2021 and yet they took something I had never heard of and made it a household name, a national name. And made an entire election cycle revolve around it. How did they do that strategy and centralization?

    We can’t stumble our way into better communication. We have to strategically design that system and intentionally centralize things. So that’s a lot of the work that I’m working on

    SHEFFIELD: now. Yeah, no, it’s true.

    Republicans invest in political networking and career building, Democrats do notz

    SHEFFIELD: And of course the way that they’re able to do that is that they have and I can say this, as somebody who was on the political right, that the right wing spends probably in a [00:21:00] given year, at least 500 million on networking like networking organizations, internal networking.

    And so they’ve got these groups like the council for national policy Americans for tax reform, CPAC, and Charlie Kirk’s many, organizations, which just alone, he controls like a hundred million dollars. That’s exactly

    BITECOFER: right. You’re the only person I’ve ever met that knows that other than me.

    SHEFFIELD: Well, that’s unfortunate.

    BITECOFER: I mean, like, I lay out in the book, I’m like, look, this is what they do. Like we need, we don’t, we should stop telling rich people. We don’t want their money. We need. Billionaires and they have to start spending billions on building this infrastructure, Alec

    SHEFFIELD: infrastructure of democracy.

    BITECOFER: Yes. Infrastructure for democracy. And if we, and we have 500 grassroot groups for youth voting, all elbow grease. Okay. And spit, and there’s almost no one’s paid to run or to work in any of these [00:22:00] things. And they have turning point, they have a hundred million dollar For office buildings of 4 floors each because I went and debated Charlie Kurtz so I can see the infrastructure of turning point 1 of those buildings.

    I didn’t access. Is outside labeled the turning point logistic center. So, 4 floors devoted to logistics guys. And like, we’re just getting like, we cannot band aid our way through this. We have to have an infrastructure that’s heavily invested in. We have to start right now because we’re already 15, 20, 30 years behind in that.

    Depending on what institution you’re talking about. And at the end of the day, we, I mean, we, for years have been saying, Oh, they have all this stuff and why don’t we have any stuff? Well, okay. Then f*****g build it. It’s time to build it, dude. How many years are going to go by when you were like, Oh, we wish we had an Alec.

    Like, we have to find these donors and have conversations about how to better spend their investment money in elections. Because as you just [00:23:00] pointed out, a hundred million dollars in all, in September, Isn’t going to offset 10 months of narrative setting by right wing media. Yeah,

    SHEFFIELD: no, it’s true. And, and, I think, and this is something that I’ve talked about a lot on, on, on my show is that I, think that the reason why you don’t see this stuff taken seriously is that when they look at a, like, a Democratic, a large donor or a party leader or high level consultant, when they look at Ben Shapiro or they look at Charlie Kirk, they see a buffoon who says, constantly says stupid stuff. And you know what, they are that, but they also are heard by tens of millions of people every single week when they say these things. And so you can laugh at what they have to say-- and it is absurd and like I have a comedy news podcast, so we do laugh at it.

    It’s worth laughing at it But the [00:24:00] problem is that things that are like fascism is both absurd and dangerous Yes and if you only think that it’s absurd then you’re going to lose to it

    BITECOFER: Yes, exactly. I mean, I’m doing a project. That’s called Project 1933. It’s tied into my work, trying to get people to read the Heritage Foundation’s Manual for Leadership, which is reissued since 1980.

    Every, time there could be a new incoming Republican administration. I thought, could these people have possibly put a thousand pages of a fascist autocracy takeover plan into the Heritage Manual? And I ordered it and guess what? Because they know we’re so in it. They can write their s**t in public and it describes how they’re going to use schedule of how they’re going to take over the civil service, how they’re going to ignore the court rulings.

    it’s a pathway to fascism or transition to fast fascism. And I’m trying to get people to see what happened in Germany in 1933. [00:25:00] Hitler’s sworn in on Jan 30th. And it’s basically like the Trump’s swearing, right? Like, Oh, this guy’s going to be a hot mess. He’s going to, this government will last three weeks, but you know, the conservatives are going to reign them in this and that, and I’m not kidding by the summer, DACA was built and it’s filled full of the Nazi party’s political enemies, guys, three months to take long. So I’m like documenting it in real time. Like it’s a live tweet. Tomorrow, in fact, is the next segment of that where I’m trying to show people just how quick it is because all you need is a willingness to ignore the law to suspend the law to say the law is suspended and you are not going to ever sell me that this Republican Party.

    Given Elise Stefanik was just on CNN talking about how she would have overturned the government, okay, overthrown the government for Donald Trump on January 6th. We have to believe them. They are quite serious. They are going to establish a fascist autocracy and we [00:26:00] have to panic now because if we wait until they’re actually doing it, like in Hitler’s Germany, it will be too late.

    SHEFFIELD: No, exactly right. And, and I think on the Hitler point, one of the other things about him is that. People looking at him today, almost 100 years from when he first came along, they tend to think of him as just, this purely evil and, charismatic figure who was sort of, had an almost godlike competence of, dictatorship.

    But that’s actually not how things were like. It is before he became, the absolute ruler, he wasn’t people thought of him as an idiot as a stupid moron who was constantly putting his foot in his mouth. And guess who that reminds you of. Yes.

    BITECOFER: I keep trying to tell people, listen. Don’t compare [00:27:00] Hitler to like, or Trump to Hitler from 1944.

    Okay? Like after he is murdered 6 million Jews in the gas chambers. What you should be looking at is the comparisons from 19 32, 19 33 Hitler, and if you do that. You’ll see the way the Nazis did their stuff was a victimization narrative. It was grievance politics, and it was an us versus them propaganda psych ops that they utilized a new mass communication tool to execute.

    That was the radio. Never before could you beam a voice into a head. Of an American in their living room prior to that, and it was really instrumental in what the Nazis ended up doing. We’re in a very same situation because the invention of the Internet has completely and fundamentally changed how people are getting information and we learn that.

    Because we know now that there’s a segment of the Democrats base, right? That has been radicalized over Gaza, probably [00:28:00] by social media content through TikTok and other things that were financed by Iran. Okay? We’ve never had a capability for foreign governments to put content into American brains directly.

    It’s a new form of thing. And, Vladimir Putin used it to first elect Trump, help get Trump elected. And now it’s, being turned against us both domestically and internationally. So it, we’re really in a moment. Yes, there are differences. The United States is a stabilized, institutionalized democracy that’s been in operation for almost 250 years.

    The Weimar Republic in Germany was never stable. Okay, so that is true folks. But at the end of the day, when you look at the mechanics of what happened, if the ruler is willing to say, there is a crisis of the border, the borders being invaded, I am suspending the constitution. That’s it. It’s game over.

    Now you might say, well, won’t we all react? maybe, [00:29:00] but it’s really easy to say that you will when you’re not the one with the AR 15 pointed at your family, right? So maybe we’ll react, but if they’ve declared martial law and they’re shooting protesters in the streets, it’s not going to be sufficient.

    The time to stop it is before it happens.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And we know for a fact that when Trump was trying to illegally cling to power in 2021, he was receiving advice from people. You need to suspend the constitution. You need to seize the voting machines. You need to declare a martial law because there is an insurrection.

    And they were the ones talking about insurrection.

    BITECOFER: Yeah. And we know this too, that was a white house meeting late at night after the, chief of staff had left because Cassidy Hutchinson told us. Right. And it came within seconds folks. And then actually it happened. Trump said, you know what I want to appoint, I can do whatever I want.

    Right. I can appoint Sidney Powell. As a special prosecutor and literacy, [00:30:00] right? And, they’re like, yeah, you can do that, but we’re not going to do it. We’re not, no, one’s going to execute this for you. No, one’s gonna like, he tried to appoint her, but the rest of the room was like, no, we’re not going to do it.

    Like they literally ignored a presidential order. People have no idea of any of that. Like my friends that vote regularly even, so they’re already better than most people. They don’t, know anything about what happened. They know there was an insurrection thing at the Capitol. They don’t realize it was part of an intricate, multi level, multi pronged, party wide conspiracy that came this close to ending democracy.

    And that’s why they devised Project 2025. They’re actually taking applications from young conservatives who they’re going to ideologically scream. They’re going to have this whole data bank of pre scaring to people who were like you, right? You. That are committed to loyalty to not to the constitution, not to anything else, but to Donald Trump personally.

    And I mean, that’s just where we’re at. [00:31:00]

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. And the, and so all those people that refuse Trump. In 2021, if he wins, they will, no one like that will be allowed in,

    BITECOFER: Donald Trump’s going to like pick a vice president that helps him do something like, he picked Pence because he wanted to get, make sure the evangelical vote, the most important constituency in the Republican party was squarely behind him.

    And he’s, a hot mess personally. And we thought maybe they would care because they’re supposed to like be religious, but apparently not like that. He’s not doing that this time. Trump has one criteria for Veep, will this person do what I want them to do when I seize power? And that’s it. Okay. And that’s why Elise Stefanik was auditioning on CNN the other day.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, exactly. And of course, they also do this at the, sort of thing at, the local and state levels as well. And, you mentioned a group that I think a lot of people might not have heard of [00:32:00] called Alec. What is Alec for people who don’t know what that is. Yeah. In the Republican.

    What do

    BITECOFER: they do? Yeah. Yeah. Within the Republican massive infrastructure, which is, as he pointed out, at least 500 million a year, but probably significantly more if we could, actually look

    SHEFFIELD: at the media, it’s over, billions.

    BITECOFER: Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. Well, one of the things that they did when they were developing a plan called red map, which is what they use to gerrymander, they, they had good timing, they had Michael Steele strategy.

    Fire Pelosi, nationalized politics, a referendum on Obama and Obamacare seized in 2010, and they ended up having this great electoral performance right at the right moment, because that was a redistricting year. And they use that power to redistrict themselves a ton of state legislative seats at the same time, what they were doing was building something called the American Legislative Exchange Council.

    Alec L A L E C. And what that does [00:33:00] is it, streamlines legislation for the state level. So when you look at Florida, right, we all know they have a thing called the stand your ground law, because we all know Trayvon Martin was brutally murdered for no reason because of the stand your ground law. What people don’t realize is stand your ground is a law that’s in multiple States.

    And it came out of this think tank called Alec, which writes what we call model legislation. So they basically take a law, they, write it up. It’s, and it’s always crazy s**t, like trans bans or stand your ground or busting the unions or whatever it is, right to work that all comes from Alec. And then they introduce it all across all the state legislatures that they control in the same legislative cycle.

    And that’s how you can get somewhere where like. Ron DeSantis starts ranting about trans people, and within six months, every state legislature that’s controlled by Republicans have passed brutal anti trans legislation. It’s because it’s all centralized, it’s all coming out of ALEC, and we have [00:34:00] absolutely nothing like that.

    SHEFFIELD: And I think, it’s really that network is so important because it allows them to move with extreme quickness in to impose their agenda on states and local and locality so like, and you, saw that, for instance, certainly with various, anti CRT laws, various, book censorship laws, teacher censorship laws, and, they just rolled these out before anybody in the local communities had any idea what the hell was going on. And like, and, they rolled the local media as well, because, they would give these signs, to their protesters and they’d show up somewhere and at a school board and say, I’m concerned about this or that.

    And these were in many cases, professional. Right wing activists, not parents at the school, no connection at all to the area. And the local media had no idea that this was happening and who was doing this. And they didn’t ask anybody. [00:35:00] And so, they would just report it as here’s some concerned parents who were talking about schools and, and, they, fooled a lot of people and, it’s only now that.

    They have, caused so much censorship and so many and suppress so much free speech that people are now realizing, oh, I actually have to pay attention to my school board election. So lunatics who want to, impose Christo fascism, don’t take over my school board.

    BITECOFER: I mean, I don’t know if you saw this, but yeah, just yesterday, a Utah, one of these moms for Liberty school board nuts, right?

    It was a man, but whatever, that’s the group that’s promoting Christofascism on our school boards. He accused a Utah student, a minor child of being transgender. She is not. And now she’s in police custody because so many people came after her that this poor, innocent, random kid. I mean, what, is that?

    Right? Imagine if that was your kid, [00:36:00] like, what, how angry would you be that some dude on a school board set radical extremist to the point where you have to put your kid into protective custody? Right. Like we, yeah, we have to make sure that we’re communicating to people the stakes, because although we are disorganized, disinterested and not motivated are, and there are few in number, but they are all of those things.

    How right-wing activists use mainstream media to push their message through manipulation

    BITECOFER: And they also are very strategic. I lay it on the book, how they made CRT a household name using not only right wing media ecosystem, which is 1 part, but by getting our mainstream system to validate. The crazy stuff that they want to talk about. Okay. And, we see that last night too, with the, dirt her report for Joe Biden there, they’ve been pounding this narrative, trying to paint him as senile.

    And now they’ve got this great report that they can point to. It’s none of it is an accident guys. Like it’s all intentional. And I was reading a book from another ex conservative [00:37:00] activist. I was talking about, Hey, I, everything that I was indoctrinated with, I thought like the left had.

    All this stuff that was like, similar to the stuff on the right, all the strategic infrastructure with long term plans and goals that were, rolling out step by step radical plans. And then she gets out of the conservative movement into the, other side and realizes, okay, no, actually there’s no liberal conspiracy there because there’s no, nobody’s doing

    SHEFFIELD: it.

    Yeah. And there isn’t even a liberal media. No. Like, Right.

    BITECOFER: There’s just a media that has been like, since the sixties, we, changed the model from, for media in America so that it had to turn a profit. It used to be that the networks we keep it when we’re talking about a very different environment.

    So it was CBS, NBC, ABC, basically at the beginning, those networks in order to use the public airwaves had to air Public affairs programming as a public service, the news, things like that, even though those [00:38:00] things were not very profitable or didn’t turn a profit. It was kind of, the cost of doing business to access the American mind for entertainment and make money.

    Okay, after we move away from that model. Suddenly the newsroom is faced with a problem. The corporate owner of the media station is saying, Hey, we need you to be profitable. We’re not going to operate you at a loss. And once that happens, they have to meet what people want psychologically. And people don’t want hard news, dense stuff, serious conversation.

    We’re conditioned, we’re human beings and we’re conditioned for certain things. And at the end of the day. If you are operating a new station with a mandate to maintain a profit margin, you’re going to give people what they want, not what they need. So we stopped eating our civic vegetables a very long time ago.

    And now we’re, really harvesting the ice. We’re harvesting now was planted back then in the 80s and 90s.

    Right wing messaging can impact people who aren’t even conservative

    SHEFFIELD: [00:39:00] Yeah. No, it’s true. And we’re seeing this on so many ways when it comes to different issues, like, and I think most principally currently with the economy that, you have, it’s just amazing to me how ignorant economists are about media studies.

    They know literally nothing about it. And they don’t understand that, when you going, like ever since right wing media became enormous in roughly like 2012 or so Republicans, when you ask them, if the economy, how is it going with the economy? They say it sucks. It’s horrible.

    It’s a depression. If a Democrat is the president and that’s irrespective of how it’s going, you could have, 10 percent GDP growth and, 1 percent unemployment. And they would say it was depression. Yes. And in fact, they did do that. We know for a fact that they, when, the after Obama was reelected, the economy was going great.

    It’s been fantastic. And, but Republicans [00:40:00] said it was horrible, the worst ever. And and we’re seeing that over again now with Joe Biden. And it. And that constant, and this is just purely a repetition of the message. So they all believe it. And then that sort of is a. Infectious belief to people who don’t know anything.

    Like if you’re a political person, their right wing neighbor tells them, Oh, we’re in a depression right now. We’re in a recession right now. What do they know to say otherwise? And who, who have they heard to tell them that’s not true? So they believe it. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s why we are where we are with the economy, but you know, like your average economist, they’re like, Oh gosh, that just must be inflation.

    That’s all it is. And it’s like, you guys haven’t looked at any. Actual polling other than the usual ones you look at and

    BITECOFER: just to reiterate how powerful the effect that you’re describing is. [00:41:00] And I do this every transition, like, every time the party switches in the White House, because the Gallup data goes back forever.

    So you can do it for a long time. It’s much stronger of an effect in the polarized era, but it’s always been there. You have a let’s say outgoing Republican Trump, right. In December, November of the election year, you have an incoming Joe Biden. When you look at that four months of Gallup data, almost immediately upon the inaugural, you will see the Republicans that thought the economy was wonderful under Trump suddenly dropped down to 10 percent and it inverts completely, right, because Democrats are less tribal, so they’ll be more honest.

    There’s still a partisan thing to it. And so, Trump is in office. The economy is awful. Trump’s out of office, even though we’re in a pandemic, Democrats are much more likely to say the economy was good even before it actually became good again. Right. So it, partisan, when I talk about partisanship and my frustration and my motivation to even become this person that I am [00:42:00] today, it’s, because it is so powerful.

    And yet we ignore it in almost all of our analysis. We don’t understand. Like I did a survey once at the Watson center, my polling firm, I wanted to see like, okay, can I, since people don’t know anything, they, know maybe the Republicans and Democrats, the position on guns on abortion, but beyond that, not really.

    Right. So I ran some policy questions by voters in an experimental survey design where I would rotate. The party proposing the policy to show people when you get, look at how Republicans act for a policy proposal. They’re told it’s a Republican that wants to do it massive support, but at the same policy description is assigned to a Democrat.

    Collapse, I mean, and not just little changes, 5, 10, I’m talking 40 point movement on that. Okay. And so it really is completely [00:43:00] underestimated and understood how much partisanship matters. And in a modern public mass opinion. What we’re seeing in a lot of survey data now that we, this didn’t used to be so much of an issue is, basically a measure of latent partisanship.

    So you have the partisans and then you have the lingerers that are basically closet partisans. And really, if you wanna know how the public

    SHEFFIELD: is, , partisans in denial

    BITECOFER: is what, right? And so if you really wanna know, like, not necessarily how the public is feeling, but how. Like the top level, top of mind awareness narrative in the independent bucket is, you have to suss out those leaners from your independence and sample enough that you can look at pure independence only.

    And that’s where you can see things like how successful Republicans have been defining Biden as senile and having dementia when we all know that Donald Trump has much worse mental acumen problems.

    How political branding influences people who consider themselves "independent"

    SHEFFIELD: Absolutely. One of the other things that I think a lot of people who do [00:44:00] left-leaning politics is that they, don’t understand that the political.

    Viewpoints of people that they were more of an X, Y graph rather than a left to right graph. And, once you have that realization, I think that, you, you understand, like when you look at and on the screen, we’ve got a graph for those who are listening, you want to check the show notes to see the graph.

    But basically like libertarianism can be perceived as both left and right. It, because most people, they don’t really have. A sound conception of, well, the government should spend more on this five things and not on these and less on these five things. People don’t think in those terms.

    They think in terms of, who do I, what do I prioritize society or the individual, or do I prioritize reason or tradition? And so, and I, and it’s relevant to this discussion because I think there are a lot of people out there who are, they have a libertarian standpoint. And we’re seeing, we’ve seen during the Trump years that a lot of libertarians have come [00:45:00] home to the right wing. Whereas before they, they have maybe a more secular outlook. They’re not religious fundamentalists. So they saw the Republican party as disgusting full of, theocrats. But then under, like with the rise of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren AOC, the Democratic Party is kind of relearning its former economic populism that it had for a long, for a long time.

    And these Republicans who, or these libertarians, they’re, disgusted at that because in their viewpoint, everything should be about the individual. And so in their case, if they’re, if the, party that’s saying less regulations and less lower taxes, then they’re going to go for that.

    And that’s why I mean, I think the news media is, Filled with people like this the mainstream media that you know, they thought the rich Christian right was gross But now they’re saying oh their Democratic Party has become [00:46:00] too extreme. They’re just out of control. What’s wrong with them? Communist woke stirs

    BITECOFER: Well, keep in mind.

    I mean we’re talking about A branding operation of now steady for 14 years, 2010 on that have been defining making sure to elevate the squad. Right? I mean, so let me, let’s look at this thing. Right?

    The "both parties" critique of politics is completely disproven by actual data

    BITECOFER: I study stuff in quantitative form and we have great measurements of polarization and we can see which party has an extremism problem.

    The Democrat, every party is going to have a base of ideologues that are nuts. Okay, but the question is about proportion how much proportional control and how much power do they have? Yeah to those bases have and so when you look at the Democrats, right? They’ve got the squad and the whatever the Hamas 11 you But it’s a lot of people dude 11 11 And they don’t have any committee chairmanships and they don’t control anything.

    And they certainly aren’t running [00:47:00] the RNC, the DNC, and they don’t have a president in the White House. I mean, they’re basically neutered and the Democratic Party remains pretty much where it’s been the last 2, 20 years, which is predominantly dominated by moderates. Okay. It’s a 70 percent moderate party, a 30 percent ideological liberal party and on the other side.

    Okay. 10 years ago, this was the truth for the Republican party, 70 percent establishment Republican, 30 percent Tea Party base, right? When that began in 2010 and what has been so remarkable as a political scientist is to see that invert. Okay. And it’s happening only on that one side right now where it’s actually the base, that’s the majority population.

    The 75 percent of the Republican party that’s pro Trump, pro MAGA, pro christofascism, whatever it is, been, it dwarfs [00:48:00] the Mitch McConnell part of the party now. And, that’s the big difference, but the image. It’s very easy to make, to paint. I mean, that’s why I’m, it’s frustrating. Right. I haven’t had to write a whole book.

    Like how can Democrats let themselves be defined by 10 people that have no power where the Republican party has all these extremists in charge and we’re not even telling people we’re not defining them around these crazy people. And these crazy people are actually running the ship.

    Right.

    SHEFFIELD: So we, yeah, Mike Johnson, Donald Trump.

    BITECOFER: Yeah. That’s exactly right. And I, it is just a mathematical fact. Polarization is asymmetrical. Democrats are less polarized either, both in the mass public and in, voter, member of Congress behavior. And, at the end of the day, we’re now up against a real Radicalized party in the Republican party.

    These are people that are living in a world in which some, truths are self [00:49:00] evident. Number one, Joe Biden stole the election and is illegitimate. Number two, the COVID vaccine is more deadly than COVID. Number three, Donald Trump is an innocent man. Who’s never done anything wrong, right? Those things sound loony.

    Okay, but that’s the that is the truth that many millions of Americans are living in day to day. And that’s why we’re under this existential threat level in 2024.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and but what’s. Terrible is that the, the vast majority of Americans don’t have those opinions. Almost all of that majority doesn’t understand that Republicans believe those things.

    That’s right. And because if they did, they would be. Exactly.

    BITECOFER: And we know it because we did that. We told people in two states in 2022 in Arizona and in Michigan, we told people what, what was happening with the modern [00:50:00] Republican party and made them see. And they rejected them. I mean, bye. September, it was clear that Michigan was uncompetitive for Republicans and that gubernatorial race.

    So it, it’s clear to me, like once people find out about, but right now what they, most people who are going to go cast an R ballot in 2024, all they know about Republicans, honest to God, it’s low taxes. They have impressions. Low taxes, good for the economy, good on national defense. We both know that’s not the case for the last 20 years.

    And yet those images, those issue ownership effects are still very profound in data. They’re going to remain so until we rebrand the Republican party and define it as a extremist cult.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Now, and I’m glad you mentioned the idea of issue ownership. Ownership, because that is something that you do talk quite a bit about in the book and it fits into the larger point that, for most people, [00:51:00] they, you know, they, don’t have a coherent idea about what the parties think about things.

    And even under the, huge propaganda operation of Republicans telling them lies about what Democrats think, they still, all the people who are kind of, who are, will vote for Republicans, all they know is that the Democrats are extreme on that issue. They don’t actually know what, even an exaggerated version of what they, of what Democrats think.

    They don’t know it. All they know is Democrats are extreme on education. Democrats are extreme on X. And that’s all they know. And like, and it is, when you, and I think anybody who has a MAGA relative or a Republican in denial relative or friend, like that’s all they really know to say to you about anything that Democrats are, Godless, communist, transgender, black people, radicals, or black [00:52:00] radicals.

    That’s all Democrats are. And, if you don’t, and again, because like, because Democratic leaders, they know that’s an absurdly stupid idea, and it’s lies. It is, outright lies. They think, and you talk about this, that, This idea. Democrats are obsessed with the idea. Well, the American people will figure that out, right?

    But will they figure that out?

    BITECOFER: Right? That’s the whole like, if you had to sum up what the book is about. That’s what it’s about. Right? No, they will not figure it out. American people are plenty smart, like all civilized Western democracies living through the greatest period of human development ever. Okay.

    There’s no human that has ever walked the earth that is more fortunate than you living in the 21st century. We can grow new livers out of pig kidneys and right? Like humanity is Peak [00:53:00] freedom, peak individual liberty, like libertarian friends. I have to tell you the entire right era of individual rights is a liberal concept.

    It comes from the liberals, not from the Republicans. And yet no one knows that, right? No one understands that we’re living through this incredible time period of Massive calories, massive, people used to starve to death dude in the West, like all the time, millions and it’s so different now.

    And we, we don’t do a good job of telling that story and making sure that people understand. how benefited they are from to be alive right now and be living in America, but that it’s all very, new, very. Very new. I’m the first generation as a woman born in 1977, that was born with the actual legal equality.

    Okay. Because prior to that, women couldn’t maybe get a credit card. They couldn’t do bank loans. They couldn’t get birth control in the 60s. You couldn’t even get it as a married couple until the [00:54:00] Griswold decision said that actually it’s a privacy matter and people should be able to make their own decisions.

    So if you’re big into individual rights and liberty, Okay. I’m telling you, you’re looking at the wrong party if you’re thinking about voting for Republicans.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, definitely true.

    Why humor and mockery are so important in political communications

    And one of the other things as a co host of a comedy news panel show, I certainly agree with you. You talk about the idea, the importance of mockery as a political strategy.

    SHEFFIELD: So what do you, why do you think that is so important?

    BITECOFER: Yeah, so, I was greatly concerned. Headed into this new Congress, because I knew that they were going to weaponize the government and use the committee process to try to politically damage Biden and other Democrats and I, the media has always assisted them every time, like, no collusion memo.

    Or Benghazi and butter emails or whatever, right? The media will treat things that are delegitimate as legitimate, and once you do so, [00:55:00] you have legitimized it. CRT is a case in point of that. The Democrats kept explaining how it’s this and that, and it’s illegal theory and not about, it’s not even in the schools.

    Now you’ve legitimated the stupid rando thing that Chris Ruffo basically steals from some freaks PowerPoint, right? Like you so mocking. Is about preventing the legitimization of the false premise of their b******t investigation. And it’s so critical to our survival because when we, meet they’re crazy with a factual rebuttal.

    All we have done is legitimated the crazy. And so mocking the crazy is a way of making people see it. Number one, but number two, it’s about making people feel like, I don’t want to be with stupid, right? So if we’re making fun of them and making, highlighting how ridiculously stupid they are, it’s much more likely that people are going to be like, oh, That’s [00:56:00] crazy.

    They’re crazy people. And instead of trying to define why it’s wrong.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And the reason for that is that you can’t, fact check your way out of delusions. Like, and if, you disagree with that goes, try to have an argument with the schizophrenic about their hallucinations, whether it’s exactly

    BITECOFER: exactly right.

    And so, when you look at like the lead, like the Democrats on the house oversight committee have been just tremendous at this, right? Every committee hearing that they’ve had, they have strategically mocked. Yeah. The Republicans and prevented them from painting a false narrative about what is a delusion.

    It is a delusion to argue that Joe Biden was selling porn interference with Hunter Biden. Okay. And the way to deal with that is to make sure people see it as ridiculous. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: And. When you do that, like, it irritates the hell out of them. Yes, it does. And you certainly see that in those hearings. [00:57:00] They are constantly losing their minds when they’re fact checked like that.

    Well, they’re so used to like Both

    BITECOFER: mocked and fact checked. Yeah, they’re so used to us swinging on their pitch, right? So, like, it surprised them. That they couldn’t get the media to legitimate these Hunter Biden allegations. Okay. It’s the pride them that Democrats didn’t come in and like, grow the witnesses and dah, And accept the premise, the false premise that instead they use their state. They use their committee hearing time as a stage. Right. And they made their strategic mocking. The point of the coverage, and it was so it’s been very helpful, though. We’ve got lots of room to improve. There are signs of improvement, both on the electioneering and my work and others on team reform, pushing these reforms, because I’m certainly not alone and in the terms of media.

    Being at least a little bit more wary of, carrying the Republican water when they serve [00:58:00] them up something. But, we’ll see how this her memo continues to be covered. It was last night was a real backslide, in my opinion, the media jumped right on it and treated it as a legitimate conclusion and not a political document designed to get them to say that Joe Biden’s senile.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, exactly. And and, I think one of the other things that, that the right wing is very good at is pushing and, you do talk about this also, that pushing a simple message. So like Republicans don’t run on their agenda. They don’t actually tell you what they want to do, except for maybe on immigration, that’s right at this point.

    That’s all they, will tell you about what they will do on every other issue. They don’t ever talk about it. They don’t talk about what they want to do with taxes. They don’t talk about what they want to do on regulation. they don’t talk about spending. They don’t talk about anything else except for immigration.

    And so it makes it easy if for people who are really into that issue to be really [00:59:00] motivated to support them, but it also makes it so that the voters that they don’t have to debate their positions because nobody even knows about them because and so they have no. So, like, there’s, this idea in in warfare of the idea of an attack surface that when you that you want to have as small of a from an aerial bombardment, you want to have as small of a surface possible.

    And that’s basically the, core strategy of Republican politics is to minimize all attack surfaces of their own, and then maximize the attack surfaces of Democrats. And they’re remarkably successful

    BITECOFER: at it. Yeah. And we have to be too. So like, like to me. Nothing frustrates me more than, well, we’re Democrats.

    We just can’t do that. No b******t. We can, we must, and we will. And if we don’t, if we don’t, we’re all, we’re going to be looking at some serious hurt for especially Brown people in this country. The Republican party has been very clear. [01:00:00] That they’re coming for communities of color day 1, they’re talking about route mass deportations and roundups and folks.

    There’s no way you do that without really trampling on the rights of Latino Americans, many US citizens and people who have legal. Entry are going to be terrorized if we do this, if we let this happen. So it’s now or never when, Republicans go low, we got to hit them where it hurts.

    SHEFFIELD: All right.

    Well, there you go. You wrap that up very nicely there, Rachel. I thought you’d appreciate it.

    All right. Well, so we’ve been talking today with Rachel, bit of cough. Ah, dang it. coffer. I’m going to, I have to do that again. So God, I always, it’s because you only have one F in there. It just makes

    BITECOFER: me famous so I can never get rid of it. That sucks.

    SHEFFIELD: Okay. I have to do that again here. So, so we’ve been talking today with Rachel bit of coffer [01:01:00] and she’s the author of the book, hit them where it hurts.

    And you can get that everywhere now on the internet wherever you want to including bad places like Amazon, but other places.

    BITECOFER: Where if you really like my capital, you can listen to the audible. I recorded

    SHEFFIELD: it myself. Okay. There you go. And then you are also on various social platforms at Rachel Bitterkofer.

    That is with one F for those who are listening. And so you can I encourage everybody to check you out over there. And then you also have a podcast and subset called the cycle, so people can check that out as well. So, all right. Thanks for being here today.

    BITECOFER: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Matthew.

    SHEFFIELD: So that is the program for today.

    I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And of course you can always get more. If you go to theoryofchange.show, you can get the full episode archive with the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if [01:02:00] you are a paid subscribing member. You get complete unlimited access and you can sign up on either Substack or on Patreon.

    If you go to patreon.com/discoverflux you can subscribe that way if you don’t like Substack. And then of course I encourage everybody to go over to flux.community where this show is part of the Flux Network and we have several different podcasts and articles to check out about politics, religion, media, and society.

    And how they all intersect and get our help, get this let’s do that again. And you can go to flux.community to get more podcasts and articles about politics, religion, media, and society and how they all intersect. And we need to band together people who are opposing fascism in this country. And I appreciate everybody who is supporting the show.

    If you can’t support financially through a subscription just tell your friends or family about it. And I really appreciate that. And if you can leave a written review [01:03:00] on Apple podcasts in particular, that is super, super helpful. I really do appreciate those. Thank you very much.



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  • President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union speech on Thursday, but most of the focus since then has been on Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, who delivered the Republican response. And with good reason. Her Handmaid’s Tale setting and melodramatic delivery were so disturbing that even party apparatchiks couldn’t contain their disgust.

    “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” one Republican strategist lamented to Daily Beast reporter Jake Lahut. Veteran right-wing operative Roger Stone called Britt’s performance “godawful” in a tweet which he later deleted.

    Saturday Night Live memorialized the humiliation for the ages in a brutal parody delivered by famed actor Scarlett Johansson which portrayed Britt as a “scary mom” who randomly alternated between being seductive and on the verge of tears.

    None of this was supposed to happen, especially because Britt doesn’t normally talk like the caricature she portrayed on Thursday.

    Her strange demeanor was a deliberate choice, one that’s reflective of the tenuous connection between the Republican political class and the angry Christian fundamentalists who comprise the party’s base voters.

    A protégé of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Britt has risen rapidly through the ranks, joining his leadership team as an informal adviser after only a few months in office. Republicans have been eager to put Britt forward as a young female face for a party that’s finally becoming associated in the public mind with no-exception abortion bans. She was even starting to be touted as a potential vice presidential pick for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

    Britt was seen as particularly useful by party leaders since she is the junior senator from Alabama, the state whose supreme court just gave embryos in a freezer full personhood rights. While this radical viewpoint is commonplace among Republicans—more than half in the House of Representatives have endorsed the Life at Conception Act which would place severe restrictions on in vitro fertilization—the vast majority of Americans disagree. A February Ipsos poll found that 66 percent of respondents believed that zygotes should not be considered as people, with only 30 percent of independents agreeing.

    “She looks like the moms at school drop off who would typically vote Republican but who’ve been convinced by Instagram that the GOP is taking her sister’s IVF away,” far-right Christian commentator Allie Beth Stuckey wrote in a comment praising Britt’s response “optics” while condemning her delivery.

    Being an overtly anti-feminist party’s ambassador to women is a fraught but essential task. Besides having to deny and obfuscate about the Republican base’s authoritarian vision of controlling women, they have to make excuses for a presidential candidate found legally liable for rape who has been accused of the act by 17 other alleged victims.

    Trump made it clear that women voters are on his mind during a Saturday campaign speech in North Carolina.

    “They talk about suburban housewives,” he boasted as members of the audience cheered. “Women love me. You know, I protect women. I protected. I protect.”

    Britt’s mission was so important to Republicans they sent out instructional talking points to right-wing commentators ahead of her speech comparing her to legendary public speakers like Ronald Reagan and hailing her as “America’s mom,” before she had even said a word.

    Contrary to the preemptive praise, however, Britt’s performance this year recalled the breathy speeches routinely given by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another youngish female Evangelical often touted as someone who could allay women’s concerns. Noem herself has been hailed as a more intelligent incarnation of Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor whose bizarre cadence and compulsive winking proved chronically befuddling to political observers in 2008.

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    While Palin’s shtick was off-putting to most Americans, her antics were well-received by White Evangelicals, the plurality demographic of the Republican base, which loved her obstreperous insults and crass Christian supremacism.

    This was the core demographic that Britt was trying to reach on Thursday, reactionary Christian women who have either used in vitro fertilization or know someone who has. Unlike Palin, however, the Alabama freshman senator seems not to prefer the native tongue of these voters. A lifer in the Republican political class, she is one of many right-wing women who, like Serena Joy Waterford in The Handmaid’s Tale, have built careers serving a movement that attacks women’s rights.

    For decades, professional right-wing activists were able to bridge the gap between their rabid base and the (usually educated) minority of independents and Republican-leaners who falsely believe the Democratic party is more extreme. But now that Trump is openly embracing violent and totalitarian rhetoric, this task has grown increasingly difficult to manage. Republicans’ core voters have become so bizarrely hateful that appealing simultaneously to them and the broader public is becoming nearly impossible. The two sides are so far apart culturally that trying to reach both is off-putting to everyone.

    This is why Katie Britt’s speech has been so universally panned. Her use of what progressive activist calls the “fundie baby voice” accent that is so common among women reared in reactionary Christianity came across as bizarre and freakish to everyone else. At the same time, Britt also seemed inauthentic to many hard-core Trump devotees since she was engaging in a form of code-switching, away from her daily dialect of highly educated political professional.

    “No one was surprised that McConnell’s handpicked senator resonated so poorly with the base,” one Trump-aligned strategist told the Daily Beast, calling Britt’s delivery “the stuff of nightmares.”

    Far-right activist Laura Loomer concurred with that sentiment in a Twitter post:

    The GOP thinks they know what women like.

    So they actually thought it would be a good idea to put Katie Britt in her kitchen reading a script with forced emotion and fake outrage to get to suburban women vote.

    Women like men. Actually, We love strong men. We don’t need a woman in a kitchen who failed acting class to tell us our country is a mess. Now the GOP is a laughing stock because of the awful optics of last nights’ SOTU “rebuttal” by Katie Britt.

    I saw shadows of this happening last year in Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s Republican response to Biden. While she did not deliver her talking points in baby voice, the words that she spoke were filled with right-wing slang terms like “CRT” or “woke mob” that she never even bothered to define, rendering her message almost incomprehensible.

    Expect more of this to happen as the various election contests continue to move forward. Republicans are having to become stranger and more extreme to maintain the loyalty from their base voters. If Joe Biden’s team is smart, they will highlight this process every step of the way.



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    22:34 — Mike Lindell loses in court after trying to avoid payout to man who debunked him

    Cover photo: Residents of Lee County, Alabama are seen along the roadway as they welcome Donald Trump and Melania Trump. March 8, 2019. Credit: Andrea Hanks

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  • This episode is a very special one because I'm excited to announce that here at Flux, we are adding another podcast to our network, The Electorette, hosted by Jennifer Taylor-Skinner.

    To introduce Jennifer to the Flux audience, I wanted to bring her on Theory of Change to talk about her program, and to discuss a big news event, the retirement announcement from Sen. Mitch McConnell, who will be resigning as the Republicans’ leader in the Senate. There's a lot to talk about with his legacy. And I think it's pretty clear at this point that Mitch McConnell paved the way for Donald Trump in many, many different ways, and we'll get into that.

    The video of this episode is available. The conversation was recorded March 1, 2024. The transcript of the audio follows. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

    Cover photo: Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican Leader, at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Richmond, Kentucky. October 11, 2023. Credit: PEO ACWA/CC 2.0

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    Related Content

    * Republicans are banking on a fusion of Trump autocracy and McConnell nihilism, but will it work for them?

    * The Senate filibuster hasn’t just stopped progressive legislation, it’s also radicalized Republicans

    Audio Chapters

    00:00 — Flux is adding a new podcast to our network, "The Electorette"

    05:06 — Mitch McConnell announces he's retiring and didn't designate a successor

    09:49 — McConnell attacked democracy for decades but he is despised by far-right Republicans

    21:15 — Although Donald Trump and McConnell hate each other, they were still close allies

    24:49 — Nikki Haley's doomed presidential campaign is an echo of the death of Republican foreign interventionism

    30:33 — Haley and the quandary of right-wing women being in a party that wants to control them

    39:37 — Alabama supreme court granting full rights to embryos is the latest example of how extreme Republicans have become

    43:22 — Issues and ideas to watch in the general election

    Audio Transcript

    The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

    MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Jennifer.

    JENNIFER TAYLOR-SKINNER: Thank you, Matthew. I'm happy to be here.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's, exciting, and I'm glad to have you as a member of the Flux Network.

    And so before we get into the topic of the show, though, can you tell my audience and the Flux audience just a little bit about your show and how long you've been doing it and what you do there?

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Sure. The Electorette, it's a play on the word electorate, of course, Electorette. I started the podcast, I think in mid or late 2017, a lot of things were happening in 2017. We know what the biggest thing was, of course, it was, Trump's inauguration, the election after the 2016 election. For me, I was really frustrated at all of the misogyny in the media and in the political discourse, directed at Hillary Clinton.

    And we don't need [00:02:00] to revisit that. There was a huge problem. I mean, there was a huge problem. And one of the primary reasons why I believe that she lost. And what I wanted to do with the electorate was to get people used to hearing women in leadership roles. Hearing women express their expertise in the context of politics, because I think that's, that, that's part of the problem.

    If you look at some of the statistics, like very few of the experts back then, at least who were talking about politics on television were women. Right. And so I wanted to kind of change that with the electorate. And so what I do is on the electorate, I interview only women or people, anyone who isn't a, man, about things that are really important in politics right now. Anything that's important to social justice or any cultural issues. And we kind of have these in depth conversations about, what's happening, and that's what The Electorette is. And it's been really helpful for me.

    Actually, it's been kind of cathartic for me after that kind of post [00:03:00] 2016 PTSD or trauma we all have. But yeah, so I've been doing it for a while now. It feels like it hasn't been that long, but it's been a while. So that's what The Electorette is.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's also and it's also important, I, do want to say, from my standpoint, that I feel like that the podcasting space, especially the political podcasting space, doesn't have enough women in it as well, and that's a serious problem.

    A lot of men, regardless of what their race, they don't have as much at stake when it comes to these far-right policies that are being shoved on everybody now with increasing frequency, like a lot of them, they just. It just doesn't, it's not as real to a lot of men.

    And that's why I personally, try to have as many women on my shows and, work with women because it is an imbalance that needs to be corrected, I think.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Yeah. And I just want to clarify that it isn't a lot of people when they think about podcasts, [00:04:00] like The Electorette, they think it's a show about women's issues and it's not because all issues are women's issues, right?

    It's about all issues, we can talk about the economy. We, we talked about climate change. The thing is that the, conversations that you're getting are through the lens of women, right? So climate change will affect everyone of all genders, all races. It'll affect some people more than others, but the solutions will look different through the lens of someone who is.

    We'll be more affected through the lens of someone who's marginalized through the lens of a woman. So that's what I wanted to do. So it isn't just about women's issues. I mean, if you want to categorize abortion as a woman's issue, it's, sure, that's fine. Abortion isn't just a woman's issue.

    I just want to make sure that's clear. So it isn't just issues like that. It's anything that you can think of, but through the lens of, women. So men, listen to The Electorette to, or if you're not a man, anyone, everyone's welcome.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, and yeah, I'm excited for people to be able to do that in a [00:05:00] somewhat greater numbers. So I'm, glad to have you on board.

    Mitch McConnell announces he's retiring and didn't designate a successor

    SHEFFIELD: All right, so the news topic that we're going to go through today, I think is that it's one that is pretty significant is, which is that Mitch McConnell who is now the longest serving Senate majority leader in history announced this week as we're recording that he was going to be resigning.

    In November and that he would serve out his, term in office but he would step down as the leader of the Senate Republicans and, and it's it's a little weird because I feel like to some degree, the. It didn't get as much coverage as I thought it would. Did you feel that way at all? I mean obviously we have this hellish news cycle.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right, we have a hellish news cycle. I mean I feel like, so granted it only just happens, right? And like you said, we have a hellish news cycle. I think there was a, [00:06:00] bombing or a, a, bomb scare, I think in Alabama that happened, on the same day around the same time.

    So there's a lot of things to cover. And honestly, that maybe there was probably more coverage of it online between, Politicos and, going on about, why they're so happy that Mitch McConnell is stepping down. I think that maybe some of the, joy on the left, on our side was maybe a little kind of premature or misplaced because, Mitch McConnell, when he does step down as majority leader, he's going to be replaced by someone who is younger and who's probably more extreme.

    I'll just say that.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, definitely somebody who will be more even more, beholden to Donald Trump. Because he's going to work very hard to try to put his stamp on that Senate leadership election.

    Trump, of course, was very instrumental in getting Mike Johnson to be the Speaker of the House because before originally the, guy who was going to take over from Kevin McCarthy was [00:07:00] going to be Tom Emmert, who Trump explicitly said he did not want him to be the Speaker.

    And, magically the party that, that, that claims to hate cancel culture, Magically, they canceled this guy and he did not have a chance at it.

    And so, Trump's it'd be interesting to see who he tries to put, put his finger on the scale for but that's definitely gonna, it's probably gonna be a thing.

    That's going to be a months long kind of summertime. Discussion, perhaps whoever can kisses ring the hardest, I guess,

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: The only exciting thing that I see the thing worth celebrating in relation to Mr McConnell stepping down is that regardless of who replaces him, he was pretty effective in bringing forth this kind of right wing Christian nationalist vision across the country, right, on a national level, just in relation to his [00:08:00] judicial appointments and reshaping the Supreme Court.

    And so why I think that him stepping down is, a good thing for, our side is that I can't imagine anyone replacing him who will be that effective. Right? I mean, he, if you're on their side, he was really, good at what he did. Just thinking of the Supreme Court judicial appointments, the way that he finagled getting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and denying, Obama, a chance, President Obama, a chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice and, with Merrick Garland's and then flipping the script when Ruth Bader Ginsburg got died.

    And then within weeks having hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, like that was kind of. If not, I hate to use the word evil, but you know, it was kind of masterful and I can't imagine, I can't envision anyone on the Republican side being as effective as he's been. Right. So if anything, that possibly could be a good thing for [00:09:00] Democrats.

    We'll get someone, it's kind of a circus right now, thinking of who's, left, who's remaining.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And that is actually a good point because when you look at the House side of things, they're just incomplete and total chaos and they all hate each other and they're all constantly going after each other and tearing at each other's throats.

    And as a result, they really can't pass anything like this, because under the Johnson speakership, this has been the most unproductive Congress in terms of bills passed in a very, long time. I think depending on the metric at least, in the past 100 years or and I've heard somebody claim it was since the civil war, but I didn't look up the stat on that.

    But yeah, no, and I think that's a great point.

    McConnell attacked democracy for decades but he is despised by far-right Republicans

    SHEFFIELD: And it's also, funny though because. Yeah. The right wing hates Mitch McConnell and and it was funny because when I was on the, in, in the right wing media space. I liked Mitch [00:10:00] McConnell because I did see him as effective and skilled at at, legislative strategy and tactics.

    And I would tell that to my fellow Republicans who hated him and they just, they did not want to hear it.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right, right. Well, look what we have now, right? I mean, lots of people did see Roe v. Wade being overturned, but you can chalk that up to Mitch McConnell, right? It's on his plate. He did that, right?

    Affirmative action. All of those really huge decisions that have gone through the Supreme Court are due to his remake of the Supreme Court by, not only did he make, over 200 judicial appointments broadly, but, he, there were three big Justices on the Supreme Court under, Trump due to Mitch McConnell and his leadership, I guess, and speaking of, yeah, speaking of the house side we were mentioning the house Hakeem Jeffries had.

    Nancy Pelosi is his mentor, presumably, right? They work very closely [00:11:00] together, and he's been very effective. He will be very effective, if, Democrats regain the majority there. Whoever takes over for Mitch McConnell, because Mitch McConnell is His health status is kind of questionable. We don't really know what's happening with him.

    They're not being very transparent with that. We're not really sure if there will be that kind of back and forth mentorship. Right? Will he be able to mentor someone to be the kind of leader that he has been in the Senate? I very much doubt it. So that's another good thing for Democrats.

    Hopefully.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and on the judiciary side of things besides. Reshaping it, in a pretty much a wholesale fashion because of how long he was the leader. He, the, what he did with that is, is really important because. He, I think he understood before almost any other Republican that the public isn't going to vote for their explicit agenda.

    So, they're not, the [00:12:00] public isn't going to vote for privatizing social security. They're not going to vote to. Criminalize abortion. They're not going to vote to get rid of same sex marriage. They're not going to vote to eliminate the department of education. Get rid of the affordable healthcare act.

    They're not good. They don't want any of these things that Republicans have been obsessed with for decades. Right. Those those ideas are unpopular, but McConnell figured out that if he could rig the judicial system in favor of Republicans, they could still get Those outputs through the courts in a way that would also not jeopardize their electoral futures.

    I mean, it is incredible what he figured out in that regard, because basically that strategy has allowed, cause the Republican party is very different compared to right wing parties outside of the United States in the industrialized world, [00:13:00] they're much, much more radical. They're much further to the right.

    And that happened because of Mitch McConnell, even though he, was not on the, he wasn't directly aligned with the Freedom Caucus types. He protected them through the filibuster and through his takeover.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right. Right. Right, exactly. And, although you can't get the majority of the public to vote for those specific legislative aims, right, you can get them to vote for Donald Trump. For some reason, there's a disconnect there.

    And presumably it's because Donald Trump doesn't really talk about legislation at all. Right. If he kind of skirts around it, he basically just talks about his grievances when he does rallies. He's only recently started to talk about abortion saying that, he's up for it.

    Like a 16 week abortion ban. I think he's reduced it to 15 weeks. But the people who are steadfast Trump voters are not really, I don't think they're really listening to that. Right. [00:14:00] They're just voting for their man, Donald Trump. So. Yeah, it was a really good merits there. Trump and McConnell together to kind of remake the country in, their image.

    It's not really good, great for everyone else, but actually it's not really good for anyone. It's not good for anyone. Even the people who are voting for Trump, it's actually terrible for them. And, hopefully someday they will wake up and see it. I doubt it, but yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and it is, and that combination, it is, it's been really important because I think the other thing about McConnell is that, because he is You know very, he's very intelligent.

    He, is well dressed, he's well spoken, he's articulate. I mean, he's not particularly exciting, but you know, he, his stature within the Republican party gave permission to a lot of people who are, sort of white collar upper middle class people to, be like, well, see, this is still the same [00:15:00] Republican party that it was always.

    That Trump didn't, he didn't take, he didn't become a dictator. We constrained him. We, hemmed him in and, and, he really gave them permission to think that. And so like, it'll be interesting with him gone, if that affects anybody's permission structure. I don't know.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Huh. That's interesting because I think Mike Johnson also gives that same appearance, right?

    They give this appearance of kind of these, non emotional, rational, intellectual Republicans. But if you step back and you look at their positions, they're essentially the same. As Donald Trump, right. Mike Johnson is a very extreme. I know we're talking about the house again. He's a very extreme.

    I mean, we don't need to go into him, but but yeah, I could see how Mr. McConnell, has that image of, being kind of a non reactionary, comparing him to someone like, I don't know who's on the Senate now that

    SHEFFIELD: Josh Hawley.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Yeah. That's a great example. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:00] And so, and he has a better, and it's, who knows what the guy believes because he never really talks about it in terms of religion.

    Right. But, at the very least he knows not to wear it on his sleeve the way that a Josh Hawley or, some of these other people, very much are interested in doing And that's important because and, I'm speaking from my own personal experience here that, when I was on the right wing, that as a secular conservative person, I really wanted to believe that people like me, were equal partners in the party or even slightly above.

    I didn't want to, I desperately did not want to think that I was You know, in some sort of junior arrangement with religious fanatics. Because I mean, the reality is, the people who have these extreme, viewpoints about whether it's suppressing women or going after non Christians or anti LGBTQ stuff or [00:17:00] racist stuff.

    Like they, fortunately they are still a pretty small, they are a minority in the United States but they're, they have a lot of power in the party and Mitch McConnell gave them that power. He knew who they were, he knew what they wanted and, he decided, well, I want to be the Senate majority leader, so I'm going to go along with it.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: And you're right. He is kind of a closed book. It's hard to know what he's thinking. I think the most emotive I've ever seen him was, during the Obama administration, during Obama's term, he said, my, my goal is to make, Obama a one term president.

    That's probably the most emotion I've ever seen from the man. It was, like boarding on anger, I guess, perhaps. But yeah, it's, he's a, closed book. That one.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I think he said that he believed his most significant accomplishment was keeping Merrick Garland off the [00:18:00] Supreme Court, which, that's probably accurate to say, and certainly unfortunate as well.

    So, but I mean, the other thing about McConnell that I think is worth thinking about and talking about is in the context of him as sort of the. The last survivor of the Ronald Reagan republicanism.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: When I think about those years, one of the things that I do remember about Mitch McConnell is that, and that's really relevant in the battle that's happening right now with aid for Ukraine is, he used to be a staunch supporter of NATO, and that used to be an issue that you could count on, either side of the aisle, right? Republicans and Democrats, during those years, he was a staunch supporter of NATO. And now that's all off the table. And that's specifically due to whatever Trump has going with, Putin.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's also that. McConnell was, in his line of thought, it was more of the, robust militaristic foreign policy tradition, whereas Trump clearly identifies more with [00:19:00] the, libertarian isolationist kind of thing.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Yeah. I mean, I'm not really sure Trump thinks about foreign policy that deeply.

    I mean, that's another conversation. I mean, I think that he's just taking direction from some unknown, invisible, source. I really don't think that he thinks about foreign policy that, yeah, I don't think he has a philosophy. I don't think he, even libertarianism, the isolation, if he is an isolationist and, he arguably is, it's not an idea that came from his own head.

    It's disadvantage the, disadvantage democracy to disadvantage us in some way, but I think, what I'm getting at, and, again, that's a whole other conversation.

    SHEFFIELD: We could talk about the specific people if you want, but to be honest, like those articles, and I've seen a couple of people do those articles, I don't know that's necessarily going to be the only candidates that are going to be along because like RFK junior, for some reason, endorsed [00:20:00] Rand Paul to be the Senate majority. Yeah, so what do you think? Do you think it's worth talking about these other people or not?

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Not really. I mean, because honestly, I've seen the names have been floating around mainstream media or the people who might replace McConnell, but I have a feeling that it's going to be a wild card. It's someone that we haven't thought of kind of like Mike Johnson, right? And whoever that person is going to be, they're going to be younger and they're going to be very extreme.

    The only thing that I think that we might have going for us is the fact that they, won't have that strategic mind that Mitch McConnell has, and they'll be less effective in the end, right?

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it'll, I think that's right. I think that's what will happen. And probably we'll have more chaos in the Senate Republican caucus, which, it's certainly bad for America, but it is good that they can't get their act together.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, in some [00:21:00] ways, yes. We do need two functioning parties.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Although we don't need a strong Republican party. Thank you.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: No, we don't. We don't need a strong Republican party.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

    Although Donald Trump and McConnell hate each other, they were still close allies

    SHEFFIELD: I guess before we move on from McConnell though, I did want to touch on that in some of the, valedictory coverage or review of McConnell coverage that you're going to see this idea that he was some sort of opponent to Donald Trump.

    And I think that's only barely true. So to the extent that they opposed each other, it was a matter of particular strategy for specific events. It wasn't their overall agenda. They agreed on most things overall, because they're in the same party and. And I mean, ultimately, when Mitch McConnell had that chance.

    To go after, to get rid of Trump, he could have gotten rid of him during that second impeachment, because the house [00:22:00] explicitly impeached Trump before he had left office and left several days for that trial to happen while he was president and Mitch McConnell deliberately refused to try Donald Trump during that time window and then after Trump had left office and then after Trump had left office, explicitly said, well, we can't vote to convict him because he's not the president anymore.

    And then not acknowledging at any point in time that, oh, and I made it so that, that was the case. I mean, it's just really, dishonest. And, like, ultimately he never opposed Trump in any meaningful way. And I really hope that the mainstream media doesn't do that. Doesn't lie about that or get that wrong.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right? I mean, the thing is, if there's 1 consistent thing about Mr. McConnell, or 1 reliable thing is the fact that he, is interested in furthering [00:23:00] conservative power, no matter how that happens. And I think that he realized at some point that. Supporting Donald Trump, supporting him by just being quiet or like letting him get away with things was helpful in him furthering conservative power for the longterm, right?

    He probably didn't like. Donald Trump's style, he's probably a bit of a snob in that sense, but he realized that, A, they, like you said, they, neither of them have scruples. That's the one thing they have in common and they kind of made, an uncommon, atypical pairing that kind of worked well for furthering this extreme right wing agenda.

    On a national level, they kind of worked well together, even if they're nothing alike, even if they don't like each other personally. And so I think Bishop McCollum at some point realized that Trump was, useful in helping him further that agenda, maybe faster than he realized that, he could do it on his own.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's, it's One of the things I often say is that it's important [00:24:00] to, for people to distinguish that most of what calls itself conservative in America is actually reactionary. It is not conservative because a conservative is somebody who wants to keep things how they are, whereas a reactionary wants to roll back modernity and attack the foundations that everyone.

    Except as their, as, as our current way of life, like a conservative would be in favor of keeping Roe versus Wade rather than wanting to overturn it. And, and McConnell, I think, it really illustrates that, The partnership of, between conservatism and reactionism that they are allies ultimately, and that, and that a conservative generally speaking is not willing to oppose reactionism.

    Nikki Haley's doomed presidential campaign is an echo of the death of Republican foreign interventionism

    SHEFFIELD: And I guess the other person though, that kind of is at that intersection is Nikki Haley though. And for, if McConnell was sort of the last empowered conservative in [00:25:00] Republican politics, she's kind of like the. I don't know, like the dying breath of, that Reagan conservatism if you will.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: It's really hard to pen Nikki Haley down. Right. I, can't really get a good sense of who she wants to be politically and who she wants to be seen as broadly, in some senses and in some ways, she wants to parrot the most extreme.

    Right wing talking points. Right. When she was given a chance to clarify the Republican or the conservative position on, what was the cause of the civil war, which was clearly, slavery. She said something like it was just freedoms or some, something random. Right. She didn't give the right answer.

    She knows what the right answer is. She knows what the right answer is, but she performed the most extreme right wing answer. That she knew was floating around at the time and the same thing with IVF, if you'd asked Nikki Haley about IVF five years ago or three years ago, she would not say what she did the other day in [00:26:00] her interview with her interview.

    I think it was on MSNBC. She said, I think of embryos as babies. Let me get her exact quote. She said you can cut this out. She said, in her interview, I think it was on MSNBC. She goes, Embryos are babies to me, embryos are babies, newsflash that's the wrong answer.

    That's the wrong answer, but it's the extreme answer, right? And she's in this really interesting position where, you know, people who are at the far extreme of conservatism right now, usually fall in line under Trump. they fall on their, Trump voters, their MAGA. But she is also.

    Taking these extreme positions, but she's also one of the only Republicans who, is, openly and publicly speaking out against Trump, right? So I'm not really sure what, who she's hoping to capture, who her audience is and what she's planning to do. I mean, one theory I have is that she's hoping something will happen.

    she's hoping something will happen to Trump. And that, that, that's my longstanding [00:27:00] theory that she's hoping that, one of these cases will come through in her favor and she'll be elected because she's not winning any of the primaries. but I don't know. I, she's not in touch with who the conservative base is right now.

    I think it's clear to them that. She is just parroting these points and she may or may not actually believe them. So anyway, that's my first take on Nikki Haley. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and when you look at the, exit poll results, I mean, yeah, to your point that she's, getting nowhere, anywhere close to the majority of, self identified Republican voters in the primaries and, she's getting independents and Democrats that's who is voting for her.

    But she also doesn't want to speak to them or like actually court, like, figure out, well, why are these people voting for me? What do they want? How can I give them what they want? Instead she keeps, grasping [00:28:00] in vain for the MAGA coalition, which despises her. And that's been, and she'd been doing this and all the Republican candidates who ran against Trump, except for Chris Christie, they all followed this same strategy.

    They refused to tell the truth about him. And then, as a result the, voters kind of, well, they didn't choose them. Like it's, hilarious that Republicans, Republican consultants always love to say. But you need to draw distinctions between the parties and the candidates.

    And that's what will make voters go to you if you do that. But they never did that with Donald Trump. They never, and, they were all afraid. They were all afraid of, him. That he would attack them. Even though, of course, he still attacked him anyway. Like that was, that's the even more absurd situation about it is that.

    They thought somehow that if they didn't attack him directly or, in a, tough fashion, that it would [00:29:00] somehow redound to their benefit. And it never did. And this didn't work in 2016 either. It's just, it was amazing to me, the incompetence and, timidity from Republicans with him.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Another interesting thing about Nikki Haley's place right now in the Republican party and, also running against Trump in this primary is that. Donald Trump never has to say her name. He laid the groundwork for how his base feels about people like Nikki Haley, long before she ran against him.

    He laid the groundwork for how conservatives and Republicans feel about people like Nikki Haley. Way back in 2015, arguably, and he was making all of those misogynistic points about Hillary Clinton. He was telling his base how to feel about women as leaders, right? And that is, that's the context within, where Nikki Haley is stepping into the Republican party and conservatives do not like women, arguably they've never really liked women and they like [00:30:00] women even less thanks to Donald Trump.

    Right. So he doesn't have to utter her name. They don't like Brown people. Nikki Haley, of course is Indian American. They don't like Brown people. They don't like women. And also, he's been making comments about the way women look, if they aren't, young and blonde, like his daughter.

    Yeah. That's also a strike against them. So he's laid the groundwork. She, he doesn't have to say her name at all. And I think that's one of the challenges among many that she has.

    Haley and the quandary of right-wing women being in a party that wants to control them

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, good point. And she herself also is kind of illustrative of this quandary that right wing women are all in because, like, when you, when I was on the right wing that all the women that I knew who worked in Republican politics, all of them, with the exception of two, I knew hundreds of women. All of them, except for two were very religious. All of them. Because like, if you're not super religious, there just [00:31:00] isn't really any incentive to be in the Republican party if you're a woman.

    And because the party is, as you said, it is actively hostile to you. It is trying to take, control of your body. Late last month, there was a controversy on the right wing about a video that was posted on TikTok of some women dancing.

    And these reactionary Christians and, their incel allies. They were enraged about this, it looked like some sorority had put together a group event to go to a Mardi Gras party. And so they were dancing to this local rapper who wrote a song about a guy that just goes around and films Louisianans having a good time.

    And does, and really, and like that guy, the guy actually is is a fun It's really a fun personality because, what he does is. It really does show like there is something that is special and unique about the culture of Louisiana especially in regards to the South. Like [00:32:00] it is a really integrated place.

    Where people of all races are hanging out and having a good time and acknowledging and sharing in each other's humanity not just you know, sharing a drink or a cigarette but you know, like Actually being there with each other and hanging out with each other Like that is my favorite thing. Absolutely about New Orleans and that whole culture Which of course is why the right wing was so angry about it because you can't have A bunch of white women dancing to a rap song that's not allowed.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right, right, right. Wow. That's a whole other show we could go on about that. Yeah, I agree with you about New Orleans. I love New Orleans. It is a place where, there is a lot of, cultural intermingling thing about that video and the sorority girls or the sorority women, rather it's a white women, dancing to this rap song.

    When I first heard about that story, I mean, the first thing that came to mind is that their, ire, [00:33:00] their anger towards Taylor Swift. I don't know if he made that connection, but they have an expectation. They have an expectation of white women, right? Especially white women who look a certain way, that they adhere to certain cultural values, right?

    And so publicly they were saying, Oh, Taylor Swift were mad at her because she might endorse Biden, right? That doesn't really, that never really made sense to me. What they're angry about is that I, think this is just my theory that they are that they are. That's the word of the guy had a great word in my head that they suspect that, or they are upset that she is a, I guess messing with the NFL, but her boyfriend, Travis Kelsey he is kind of very similar to that culture that you might see in New Orleans and that, he's kind of, has one foot in black culture, he's not, he's not Tom Brady.

    Right. His longtime girlfriend before Taylor Swift was a black woman. Right. And I think that's just a little bit too cold. I don't know if you know that. Did you know [00:34:00] that? I didn't know that.

    SHEFFIELD: No.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: And so I think, so that's been my theory about one reason like maybe they're not aware of that. I think Taylor Swift is just, flirting too close culturally outside of what they think white women should be and how they should behave.

    If that makes any sense.

    SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah. I mean, throughout history, it has always been the case that, reactionaries, especially religious fundamentalists, one of their top priorities is controlling the bodies of women. And whether it's controlling them, what they can do with their reproduction, but also just what they're allowed to do in public that, they basically, should be kept, that they are communal property. That's what women are. They, do not, they are not human. They have no human rights.

    They are there to serve men. And, by this, this collection of women just out there having, and, and, maybe they didn't know that this was from a Mardi Gras clip. [00:35:00] Perhaps they didn't know that. And that's what this I mean, you go to anyone goes to New Orleans in February or the entire state of Louisiana. That's you're going to see this scene, hundreds of times because that's just what it is. But, like, let's say they didn't know that shorn of the context.

    Yeah, it was a violation of the social contract that they envision yeah. For their women and they think of them as their women that women do not have agency. They do not have yeah, they don't have agency over any aspect. They should not have agency over any aspect of their life. That's what this really, the freakout really was about.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right. But I agree with that. And, bringing this back around to Nikki Haley. So there is no, environment in conservatism where a woman could really, truly be in leadership. Right. Cause you can't not have agency and also lead. So I'm not really sure what she's doing. [00:36:00]

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I mean, and, it says, in the Bible explicitly that, a woman should not be over a man and a woman's desire should be to her husband and, like that's, and, I'm always love, watching that interplay between right wing women, because like that was, seeing all of that rage against these women just for dancing and public and having a good time and they were not being sexualized in any way in their behavior. Not really at all.

    They were modestly clothed if if that's a thing that you're supposed to do, but whatever, like there's not really any basis that they could have criticized them. And they weren't doing drugs

    but so a lot of these right wing Christian women, they looked at that, that this outrage of the far right Christians, especially the men, but even some of the, a lot of the women, like they looked at that and, they were appalled by it because it was going [00:37:00] against everything that they're trying to do, which is to keep, because like, basically like there's this saying that right wing Christians have about and, that have about people who are lesbian or gay, which is.

    They cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. You ever heard that one?

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Oh, no, I haven't. I've been away for long enough, thankfully I haven't heard that one.

    SHEFFIELD: And that's not true needless to say, because of course there are plenty of people who are bisexual, or even who, might identify as exclusively homosexual, who might occasionally have heterosexual sex, like, that's not true.

    Independently of that not being true. They themselves, the Christian right is actually in this situation now where they actually cannot recruit because like there's, and I would love to hear from people if you know of anyone of a woman who has willingly, converted to far right Christianity.[00:38:00]

    I just don't see that happening, unless you were brainwashed from an, as a girl into having some guilt and, desire, desire that this is the right thing for you to do. Unless you, if you had no contact with, A Christianity of any kind. I don't think that any woman is gonna sign up for far-Right Christianity.

    So. And then at the same time, their, ideas are also so, there's claims about the world, evolution is not true, the earth is 6, 000 years old, there was a flood of Noah, and there was a burning bush and, I mean, all this stuff that just ludicrous and, more mature Christians don't believe happened.

    there were no ancient Jewish people in Egypt that massively came out like none of that's true. And so like mature Christians don't believe that. But because those beliefs are so absurd and so obviously absurd now. People are not signing up for this stuff, so they [00:39:00] can't recruit and so they must reproduce like right of this situation.

    And so, and like, and I think that ultimately is the, main reason why they are so obsessed with controlling women, because if they can control women's ability, to have children. And, do it at their command, then they still have at least some semblance of a chance of the future because they sure as hell aren't getting Congress in the United States.

    Alabama supreme court granting full rights to embryos is the latest example of how extreme Republicans have become

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right, Which I guess brings us around to what happened, I guess, was it earlier this week, or was it last week, the IVF decision out of Alabama, which sorry, I just shifted the conversation on you.

    SHEFFIELD: Oh, no, it's all right. Yeah, well. And that's another example of that, that, and I think Tommy Tuberville, when he was asked about it, he was like, well, we need more babies. And it's like, [00:40:00] who, says that? Nobody says that we have plenty of people in this country and there's plenty of people coming in, like if, it's not your business however many babies there are and if you really believe that you would give incentives for.

    You would approve mandated maternity leave and federally funded maternity leave and paternity leave. If you actually believe that, you would do these things.

    They're not, they don't have any consistency of being pro life, quote unquote, because they love the death penalty. Then, and, even with the IVF stuff, like you are seeing that the national party is, at least pretending to support IVF because I mean, as a polling matter, like there's plenty of Republican families that have done it.

    But this is a great example of how, this is a party that has become so much more radicalized, just in the past, let's say 10 years or so, maybe since the tea party.

    That are, 10, 12 years [00:41:00] that, they have to maintain this fiction for people, right? I think, and especially for women, like, I mean, is that in your own travels and work and whatnot? Like, have you seen women who have this? Fiction about the Republican party. What are, have you seen that?

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: I personally don't know anyone in my sphere of friends. Or, because I think that it's obvious, right?

    I think it's, very obvious, right? We have people saying, I mean, you think about, five years ago, even just, I was going to say 10 years ago, but even five years ago, the idea of granting an embryo. In the freezer personhood would be, we would have laughed at that we would have literally laughed at that, 10 years ago, so I don't know anyone who can't see that the 2 parties.

    Are not the same, right? And I'm kind of thankful for that. Yeah, [00:42:00] so that's all that. that's the answer to your question. I don't know anyone who thinks that thankfully, right? I mean, it's just so obvious and so many different levels, right? And so many different ways and legislation. So,

    SHEFFIELD: yeah,

    but unfortunately, though, like, I mean, the national media to a large three does operate under that fiction in a lot of ways.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Yeah. And I'm not really certain why they do that. I think maybe, part of our conversation, I think we were having it earlier offline about, some of the editors or people behind the scenes could be more conservative than they are liberal or progressive.

    I don't really understand how they aren't, I mean, I understand in that they believe that they should report on the parties equally, but that's under normal circumstances. We, aren't. Under normal circumstances, right? We are a skirting with a reporting with rather authoritarianism, right? And, having these extreme ideas and legislation take over the country.

    So they have an obligation to report [00:43:00] that the 2 parties are not the same. And, and I think, for the most part, and it's just be just because. It could be biased because of the news stations that I'm watching that, the reporters that I'm watching aren't really saying that, but enough are that it's not really making it out to, all the constituents.

    Issues and ideas that will likely have an impact in the 2024 presidential election

    SHEFFIELD: All right, well, I guess maybe let's wrap then. What do you think are kind of the big themes that we're going to see emerging in the general election and the presidential contest?

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Oh, wow. Oh, the general election. It's, I'm curious as to where this IVF case will land in terms of voters, particularly white women.

    I mean, me as a Black woman, I'm always thinking, so when I go into general election, the thing that's foremost on my mind, I'm not thinking about what will Black people do, right? That, doesn't worry about me, right? I worry about, how will white. women vote, right? Because they've been kind of voting for Republicans for a really long time.

    And because they're voting against their [00:44:00] own interests, it kind of affects all of us. So I think we have to watch for that because the IVF decision, the majority of people who use IVF are white women. It's that demographic that the Republicans rely on. Um, their, affirmative action is also something that will affect them.

    So I think it's something to watch out, like, where is the needle going? And I'm curious if, If we look deeper at that breakdown of voters for Nikki Haley, those kind of independents or those, people who are voting for her over Trump. I wonder if those are white women who are hoping to, not bring on another Trump term, but can't bring themselves to vote for Democrats.

    So that's something to watch out for. I guess the second thing that I'm, that's foremost on my mind is misinformation and disinformation. Right. That's a huge one. It's kind of this invisible monster. Thinking back 3 years ago. I can't remember how long it's been since Elon Musk took over Twitter, for.

    The X, formerly known as Twitter, but, we were all hand wringing about the [00:45:00] disinformation that's going to, kind of be proliferated in that space. And we just we stopped talking about that. And I think the assumption is that it's something that's going to happen in the future, right?

    It's kind of in the back of our minds. It's something that's going to happen. We're in the middle of it right now. Right. Every time you watch a video or you get a headline or some, you read something online, especially with, all of the upheaval, in relation to our foreign policy, you should assume that information has been manipulated in some way, and you should always double check.

    Right. So we are in the middle. Of the disinformation age of social media, specifically on Twitter, you're living it right now. Right. And I don't really know if there are any measures to counter that. I mean, Twitter is a private company, but that's something that kind of, frankly, keeps me up at night. So that's, probably the second thing.

    And I guess I guess, a close third would be, foreign interference in our election. And that's, [00:46:00] related to the disinformation. We still really haven't gotten to the bottom of, that, what happened in 2016. Actually, I think we have gotten to the bottom of it, but, the media doesn't really cover that.

    I had a guest on a couple of weeks ago on the electorate, Jackie Singh, and she's a cybersecurity expert. And we were talking about that and how. Whenever you talk about this information or whenever you talk about foreign interference in an election, cycle, there's kind of this collective eye roll, I think, among people, especially people on social media or people who think that they're really tied into into social media.

    SHEFFIELD: Russia collusion hoax.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Right, exactly. And it's just like, well, it's. These are conspiracies. There have been legitimate organizations who've uncovered that these things have happened. And I think that, frankly, the collective reaction has been a part of the manipulation that we've all been under, right?

    If we've somehow been taught to dismiss it and to downplay it, right? Doesn't really make sense to me. Yeah, so that's, [00:47:00] those are the three things. And I, honestly, if there's a fourth thing, I guess I'll lump those last two things together as number two, but the, third thing I think is, there are judges planted around the country, conservative judges who are willing to they had a playbook from 2020, they know what to do and what not to do to help, Donald Trump when, take over an election that he hasn't actually won. And I'm just, I'm, a little nervous about how that will play out. state legislatures. Exactly. So I'm very worried about how that will play out. There are people who are sitting in, willing and waiting to help Donald Trump.

    Still an election. Yeah, exactly. I, try to avoid saying that word because they also accuse us of stealing an election. But I mean, it's like, they're the ones who sold the election. But anyway,

    SHEFFIELD: yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, no, I think those are definitely all things to keep an eye out. And, I think that we yeah, it's been a [00:48:00] great discussion and

    I look forward to having everybody see a lot more of you in the future flux and on this show and some of the other the other ones that we're doing. So I'm really excited.

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Matthew. It's really fun. I love talking to you.

    SHEFFIELD: And so for people who want to keep tabs on what you're doing on social media, what's, the best way for them?

    TAYLOR-SKINNER: Well, I'm mostly on Twitter, fortunately, or unfortunately at Jay Taylor Skinner, right.

    Or Twitter formerly known as Twitter. I went on X as Jay Taylor Skinner, right. I don't really do Facebook that often, but yeah, find me on Twitter. Ranting or two N's about something, two N's. That's right. J. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Okay. Awesome. All right. So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the conversation. You can always get more. If you go to theory of change dot show, you can get the video audio and transcript of all the episodes. And if you are a paid subscribing member, you have unlimited access.

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  • The video version of this episode is also available.

    Audio Chapters

    00:00 — Trump wins South Carolina but 40% of primary voters rejected him

    05:33 — Hunter Biden’s lawyers say federal prosecutors mistook sawdust for cocaine in photo

    09:18 — Former NRA CEO found guilty of scamming members, must repay millions

    16:36 — FBI informant who lied about Joe Biden says Russia told him what to say

    22:15 — Far-right Christian Canadian family realizes Russia is terrible after moving there

    27:51 — Tiffany Haddish claims she's going to investigate Gaza war and find a husband at the same time

    34:46 — Texas anti-abortion group is protesting a statue it says is “Satanic”

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  • Introduction

    The automotive industry is in a state of turmoil right now, as a number of manufacturers, particularly Ford, have scaled back the production of both vehicles and battery technology. But nonetheless, all of the companies have said that they will be continuing to move toward an all electric strategy, which makes sense.

    But the last part of that response is something you certainly don't hear about in the right wing media coverage of these developments. And then there is, of course, another interesting and bizarre development in the electric vehicle industry, and that is the political radicalization of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, who has gone from being a proponent of clean energy technology, and somebody who was widely respected in the industry to somebody who is a full scale radical right wing lunatic.

    What does that mean for the future of Tesla? What does it mean for the electric vehicle industry? And have governments themselves also made mistakes in terms of what policies they have implemented in order to facilitate the transition to clean energy vehicles, something that must be done in order to protect Earth's environment from climate change?

    There's a lot to unpack with all of these developments. And so I wanted to bring in a friend of mine named David Roberts, who writes a newsletter called Volts, which focuses on electric vehicles and other and other environmentally friendly products and services and regulations that we're going to need to have to really create a holistic solution to our climate change problems. David is a former writer over at Vox, but now he is exclusively writing over at Volts.

    Theory of Change is part of the Flux Media network, please support our work and get more content like this by subscribing.

    The video of this episode is available. The conversation was recorded February 8, 2024. The transcript of the audio follows. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

    Cover photo: A photo of the 2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV.

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    * How today’s disinformation economy was built on the lying techniques of Big Tobacco

    * As libertarianism has radicalized, some of Silicon Valley's biggest names are turning toward fascism

    * Social media moderation standards are more about epistemology than technology

    Audio Chapters

    0:00 — Introduction

    02:52 — The automotive green energy transition is only just beginning

    11:46 — The myth of a "free market" in vehicles

    18:21 — How the initial success of Tesla made automotive manufacturers misunderstand their own business

    25:32 — The role of hybrids in the EV market

    29:42 — Why open standards are a necessity for new technologies to mature and spread

    38:35 — The political radicalization of Elon Musk: The elephant in the room

    41:58 — Climate scientist Michael E. Mann's legal battle against climate change deniers

    52:56 — The future belongs to those who will make it

    Transcript

    The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

    MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And now joining me today is David Roberts. Welcome to Theory of Change. David.

    DAVID ROBERTS: Hey man, how's it going?

    SHEFFIELD: Good. Well, so the car industry, it is really in turmoil right now. They have made mistakes with regard to electric [00:03:00] vehicles and there's a lot to talk about in all this. I guess let's maybe start with the right wing basically is giddy, I think, with all this news of manufacturers scaling back their production whether it's Ford, or especially Ford. What went wrong first?

    ROBERTS: Sure. I would just like to start with a broad point. So, and this will be the theme today, which is EVs are inevitable. They're taking over in any large scale transition like this, especially as it's just getting going, there are all sorts of short term bumps and side paths and mistakes and fluctuations.

    And that's what we're going through right now. And they're interesting to talk about. But this is all like five years from now, 10 years from now, we'll look back [00:04:00] at the conservative giddiness about all this and just roll our eyes. Like, it's like saying, Oh, you know, DVDs are a fad or, Oh, cell phones are a fad because like one cell phone manufacturer, lost money one year.

    It's all silly. These things are all going to iron themselves out in short order and EVs are going to take over. That's the big picture point I would make. Yeah the smaller picture point is and it's, how much of this is automakers screwing up and how much of it is just like the situation they were stuck in, it is debatable because right now we're in a situation where, because of this loophole in our fuel efficiency laws, which I'm sure most people are familiar with at this point, which basically gives light trucks, i.e., SUVs, a different economy standard fuel economy standard.

    So, automakers started making more and more SUVs because they [00:05:00] could sell them for more and make more money. They make more money on big cars than they do on little ones and they didn't have to make their big cars efficient like they had to make their little cars efficient. And so they just been making more and more big SUVs.

    And then of course, like. If the market is flooded with big SUVs, all the advertising is about big SUVs and all the deals and discounts are on big SUVs. People are going to start buying big SUVs. And then like the people who don't buy big SUVs are going to start getting nervous because they're surrounded by big SUVs.

    So they're going to buy big SUVs. And then you're going to have a bunch of people come along and say, Oh, look. Americans love big SUVs. It's just in their character. It's just in their, it's just in our national character that we love this. This is a goofy bit of economic analysis that we do in lots of areas.

    Like, it's like sprawl and single family homes and sprawling suburbs. It's the only thing we're building. It's the only thing available. [00:06:00] And so that's what people buy. And then we conclude from the fact that people buy them. Oh, this is what people want. It's just in our national character that this is what we want.

    No, it's just all that's out there anyway. So, so right now, like Ford and GM, the big us automakers are making money hand over fist on giant SUVs.

    SHEFFIELD: And that's and medium sized ones as well.

    ROBERTS: They're in there and they've been writing that high on the hog, for several years now. So they are understandably loathe to give that up.

    And so what they've been trying to do is, just make giant EV SUVs, make giant high end expensive SUVs. And I think you get the exact number, something like right around 35,000 is the sort of midway point that cuts about 50 percent of the market is below that about 50 percent of the auto market [00:07:00] is above that, and everything that's been made almost without exception, except for like the Leaf and the Bolt basically are above that threshold.

    So half the market's been locked out. So that's a mistake. And then also we're just in sort of an awkward period. Like Ford only has two EV models to speak of the Mach E, which isn't really taking off. And then the Ford F150, which was supposed to be a big deal, but has run into supply chain issues and cost issues and ended up costing a lot more than they thought it would. And so it's not selling as fast as they thought it would.

    And they're just in the midst of working on a bunch of new models. So they're in a sort of awkward pivot point right now. GM is in an awkward pivot point because right now their most popular EV is the Bolt. People love the Bolt. I have a Bolt. I love it. And that's just the little hatchback. It's like the only little hatchback EV available. So people are [00:08:00] buying and buying it.

    They tried to, they're trying right now to shift to a new battery platform called Ultium that's going to be a much better battery with much better range. And all their new EVs are going to be built on that platform.

    The Bolt is built on the old platform. They tried to shut Bolt production down so they could pivot and focus on this new battery. And then everybody got super pissed and like, there was like a revolt, popular revolt. The only thing that was affordable. Yeah. Yeah. So, so they've been forced to keep making the Bolt, but anyway, like there awkwardly in the midst of pivoting and just putting together new models. Do you know what I mean? It's just like a weird time in the market.

    Whereas like, I think people should pull the lens back, look at like in China, their EV manufacturers are offering like 30 to 50 different models and there are chargers every couple of blocks, and it's just like, it's just [00:09:00] the idea that and they're standardized also. And they're standardized. And there are lots and lots of low cost models. Like there are models at every sort of point, price point along the, at every price point.

    So we're just in, we're on our training wheels now and our big automakers are scrambling to catch up. And this is like Toyota's big mistake, Toyota for some reason clung to the dream of hydrogen cars for way longer than is sane or rational. I mean people have been pounding the table, trying to tell them hydrogen cars are going nowhere for literally decades.

    But they clung and clung and now they've kind of let that go. And now they're frantically trying to pivot to ease and their latest line is, well, it's going to be plug in EVs are going to be the big thing. And they're still sort of resisting full battery [00:10:00] electric.

    I think that will last another year or two. They will see which they will see how things are going and they'll scramble and catch up. So sort of like all the big—so my point is all the big U.S. automakers are for a lot of sort of idiosyncratic reasons in a strange moment of pivoting right now, and that's why you see all these fluctuations.

    That's why you see certain models getting dialed back other models in development. And so, and Tesla, to Tesla dominating dominates this market and has been, but they only have 5 models and they really only have 2 mass market models.

    SHEFFIELD: And they're, and the platforms for them are pretty old.

    ROBERTS: And they're like four or five years old. Yeah. So they are also frantically working on a low end mass market, 35, 000 or under car,

    SHEFFIELD: [00:11:00] Which was originally what the S was supposed to be. because if you remember—

    ROBERTS: If they're really going to do it. They're really going to do it this time. It's really important for them that they do it this time because if they don't, because right now, all these big Chinese automakers are staying out of the U. S. market because they don't qualify for these big tax breaks that we've implemented. And there are giant tariffs on them. Like, we're doing everything we can to keep them out. But if, like 2026 comes and Tesla has not come out with a mass market model yet and no other automaker has yet either.

    I wouldn't be surprised if BYD or some other big Chinese automaker doesn't start selling low end SUV or low end EVs in the US market.

    The myth of a "free market" in vehicles

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and just to step back to a point you made kind of at the beginning there one of the things that you often hear Opponents or like fossil fuel proponents say in regards to [00:12:00] fuel, in regards to cars is that they claim that they want a free market and but the reality is the United States with its electric vehicle policy is not a free market.

    Because again, like these, you get special benefits if you make an SUV, you're exempt from the higher, more stringent cave standards. And so it's not a free market. It is actually a market that deliberately, well, maybe not deliberately, but at this point it's deliberate because nobody's changed it.

    But at this point, the market subsidizes and encourages SUVs. So it's not a free market, but they don't, they never admit that. There is no, there is no market of national significance that is free. I mean, there's no such, there is no such thing. The entire auto market. I mean, even beyond all the regulations and subsidies and gifts that these, like these automakers, if they want to cite a battery [00:13:00] factory in your town, these towns and states are giving them breaks on taxes billions of dollars in subsidies to cite things different places.

    Like, it's just like. Regulations and subsidies from top to bottom, and that is inevitable. There's no way around it. So we have the market that we created, right? We have the market that we designed and we designed a market for large.

    And that's what they're making their money on. And now, and even beyond the internal sort of subsidies and regulations in the market itself, there's infrastructure. Like we built infrastructure around and for certain kinds of vehicles, and now we need a new infrastructure and the free market is not going to create infrastructure.

    That's not what it does. I

    never did. In the first place, like the American and the freeway system. Yeah.

    ROBERTS: Gas station, freeway system, gas stations are hugely subsidized. Like it's all, I mean, [00:14:00] it's all designed and we designed it and and what happens is you design a market, you end up with certain incumbents, with power in that market.

    Mm-Hmm. . And then they fight changes. And that's what's been going on. That's why we're late to the EV game in the first place. That's why we're sort of slowly stumblingly pivoting in that direction is because they are writing this cash cow of large SUVs and they do not want to let it go. So that's the tension where we're seeing, but yeah, there's no, no free market anywhere in this vicinity

    SHEFFIELD: And in any country for that matter.

    ROBERTS: Any country, in any large market.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah no, that's right. And so it's and it's an it's a point that I do think gets lost. A lot in the, Economist type articles the Economist magazine that, they, there's just this, it's just this fiction and elaborate fiction.

    [00:15:00] And everybody just assumes that the current conditions were natural and they weren't, we, we made these things on purpose,

    ROBERTS: this is not unique to the car. This is not unique to the car, right? Like what happens is powerful people set up systems to their benefit, and then it's also to their benefit to pretend that the system they set up descended from heaven or grew out of the earth, just natural and organic, the way things work, like any powerful incumbent is going to say that, like, I use the.

    The coal industry as a, as an illustrative example of this. So like coal has been subsidized up and down the wazoo from the time it was discovered in this country. Mines were subsidized, production subsidized, consumption was subsidized. And coal was on top for a long time. And then when other cheaper alternatives to coal emerged,

    SHEFFIELD: even the healthcare of the employees also let's

    ROBERTS: fight off any attempt to regulate or [00:16:00] change the energy industry by saying, we believe in the free market, the free market should decide we shouldn't pick winners and losers, right?

    Like once you've been picked as the winner. You have every say, ah, no more picking winners and losers. Let's just leave it here. And then the minute cheaper alternatives came along and started out competing coal, all of a sudden the free market rhetoric vanished and it became about heritage and the hard workers that we have to protect and they need subsidies.

    And they just came with their 10 cup banging for more subsidies. No one truly supports free markets. The idea of free markets is a disguise that incumbents use to to obscure their privileges. It's just what I would say. And that's what's going on in energy. It's what's going on in EVs, but the F and the flip, I think people need to make, I think the sort of popular impression of this is [00:17:00] you have a market free market just shaped by consumer demand and then along come. The lefties and the climate people that and the do gooders that want to come interfere in this market and pick winners and losers and distort. That's the word, right? Distort the market with their preferences, but that's not what's going on right now.

    You've got, and this is true in energy and it's true in evs right now. You've got products that are better. And cheaper on a life on a lifetime basis, then once they're competing against, and the reason they're not, the reason they're having trouble is because the incumbents are so heavily subsidized and protected, it's not do gooders coming along, trying to insert.

    Inferior products in a great market. It's inferior products being protected by incumbency, by power, by regulations, by subsidies against better [00:18:00] products coming along. And that's true in electricity to, it's true. And it's true in home heating, like in a bunch of these areas. Where there's the clean energy fights going on.

    It's better products coming along, trying to break into markets that are very well protected where incumbents are very well protected and that's very true in the car market too.

    How the initial success of Tesla made automotive manufacturers misunderstand their own business

    SHEFFIELD: Well, now at the same time, I mean, there are, it is interesting also to just to step a little bit further back in the history of, of electric vehicles that when they were first being explored as an, as a consumer product the initial electric vehicles were very small and were, they were trying to be as affordable as possible.

    And as a result, they did develop a bad reputation among people for being slow and small and Yeah. I mean, and they were doing what they had to do because that was the technology that was available. But nonetheless, like, so when Tesla came along and of course as everybody I [00:19:00] think who is watching or listening knows it was not Elon Musk's idea.

    Thank you very much. . We have to say that you did not the car. No. That what they did though was that it did, that idea did bring a different orientation to. The electric vehicle market, which was to say that, which was to acknowledge the fact that when you have a engine that can generate instant torque that can use much develop much higher horsepower for the weight distribution, et cetera, more equal distribution, that those are things that are useful and great in a sports car.

    And a performance vehicle. And so like, kind of reoriented things. But and they kind of reoriented it too far. I feel like, which to your point, like they, they completely got out, almost everybody got out of the low end electrical, the affordable electric vehicle market and was like, no, we're going to make a supercar with a thousand horsepower.

    And they all decided that [00:20:00] why do they have problems getting into the truly big market of sales?

    ROBERTS: I mean, I give all praise to Tesla for what they did, which is precisely what you say. And this is not, I mean, this is just because battery technology got better and better, right? I mean, the early EVs, I mean, the early EVs were like in the 19 hundreds, like 1910, like there was a big, there's some fascinating history. There's sort of a, one of these sliding doors moments at the very beginning of the 20th century where electric cars were competing against gas cars. And it's funny, you go back and read. You go back and read about that debate, and it's almost the same debate, like the advantages of electric cars were the same then that they are now.

    They're cleaner, they're less loud, they're more reliable, but it was just range. Batteries weren't. Good enough. And ultimately that plus a lot of, again, subsidies, et cetera. And so gas cars one. And so when EVs came back, like the nineties or whatever, [00:21:00] it was again, with very sort of underpowered batteries.

    And so you made these small cars that didn't go very far and didn't go very fast. So what Tesla did really is just take the improvements in battery technology, which have been. Lately rapid and mind blowing and just show us consumers like, no, you can do this with, you can do this with batteries.

    Now you can go really, really fast. You can go really, really far with batteries. But as you say, I think a lot of people took the long, wrong lesson, which is like, oh, like there's this huge market in high end luxury. EVs, let's all heard into that. because that's where we can make our money. because it's hard to make that.

    You make more money on a big SUV. You don't make as much money with small electric cars.

    SHEFFIELD: Or a smaller ICE car for that matter.

    ROBERTS: They're better for everyone except for car companies. So. So you need pressure to make them, but yeah, like we're [00:22:00] rapidly, I mean, again, I emphasize over and over again, we're in a weird, awkward, early, we're like preteens in this market.

    So there's a lot of sort of awkward stuff that's going on. That's going to work itself out like in short order. EVs will be able to go farther than gas cars. That's not far away. That's less than five years away. And then range is gone, right? And then charging is very difficult and we're doing it poorly here in the U S relative to Norway or or China or other markets.

    But that's like, the market logic of all these EVs, profusing all over the place is going to drive charging. And in five years, like that's mostly going to have settled itself. You know what I mean? Like this stuff is short term. The range worries are short term. The charging worries are short term.

    The, Oh my God, it doesn't work in the cold. Like all that stuff, all this stuff is going to [00:23:00] look silly. Within five years, we're going to figure the batteries are getting better and better. They're Toyota's about to says they're coming out with a solid state battery that goes much farther, has much better range than existing batteries.

    So all like the range issues are going to disappear. The charging worries are going to disappear. And all of these sort of like the idea that these are deal breakers or some sort of substantial barrier in the way of this market, it's just silly. The market has overcome these barriers. In other parts of the world and can easily do so here.

    It's just a matter of time. So, a lot of these, a lot of this is just noise short term noise. I, I just want to emphasize that over and over again. Yeah,

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and, and the, kind of rejection of these. High end electrical vehicles that actually is a free market response because outside of this country where the manufacturers make and present [00:24:00] smaller electric vehicles to consumers, they buy them.

    ROBERTS: And so imagine that far as I can't afford it is like a free market decision. Yeah, I don't have enough money. That's a free market decision. Yeah. Like I, I mean, we could barely afford our Bolt, but in China, like, again, like I just encourage people to read a few articles or go watch a few videos about the kinds and range of EVs available in China.

    It's not just that there's all different sizes of cars and all different sort of focuses of cars is that the technology they're putting in the cars, like the cool thing about an EV is it's like an iPhone on, on, on wheels. Right. And so it gets Updated with new features the same way your iPhone does.

    Like this is something Tesla is doing already. Like the big updates in Teslas are mostly over the air over wifi. It's mostly the sort of internal technology of the screen. And so the stuff they're doing in Chinese cars with [00:25:00] stereo systems and voice recognition and all the different screens and technologies, they're just like way ahead of us.

    Like really cool stuff is coming that people have not seen. In cars before, like, right now, we're just sort of like. I think to the average American, an EV is just a normal car, right? It's just a car you drive and it looks and basically operates like any other car, but the technological possibilities inside an EV are unlimited.

    And we're just scratching the surface of that stuff.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.

    The role of hybrids in the EV market

    SHEFFIELD: Um, that's true. And, but I do want to talk about hybrids though, in this context because the other thing, so I don't agree with Toyota's hydrogen fascination, but at the same time,

    ROBERTS: I think they finally let go.

    SHEFFIELD: I think they seem to be.

    Yeah. Well, but in terms of hybrids, I think that they do have a point, especially in particular markets that are rural in country is already in countries that have very [00:26:00] little electrification period. Like there's a, there, I think they're right about that for some markets to, to say that, EVs cannot always be the answer, but of course they need to be in the longterm, but right now, this is, they shouldn't be criticized, I think for saying, look, hybrids are okay for some circumstances here.

    ROBERTS: Well, let's distinguish here. There are hybrids like the original Prius. And then there are plug in hybrids. Plug in hybrids, I think are going to be big and are big in other countries. Like, we've seen in the last couple of years, sales numbers on what they call PHEVs, plug in hybrid electric vehicles.

    Those numbers are starting to go up. And it is. I think ultimately a temporary solution, right? It's a gap filler. And this is a car that will go all electric for a certain number of miles, excuse me, and then flip over to gas. And that's it. And given that like 95 [00:27:00] percent of car trips are three miles or less, despite what people.

    Despite what people seem to think, the vast majority of car trips are short and can be done all electric. And then you have the gas engine in there for your longer or like if you're rural or whatever. So it is a good gap filler and it is, I think, going to be big. Just the question is. How long right? So, if you're an automaker, how long is this gap going to exist?

    How long will it be before EVs and EV infrastructures are so ubiquitous that you just don't need this gap filler anymore? Is that going to be. Three years, five years, 10 years, like, swinging your production line around and designing several new models of car is no small. Yeah, it's no small. So, so it's just a big, it's all like, this is true in so many areas of clean energy.

    It's not a matter of [00:28:00] what's going to happen. It's just a matter of speed. It's just a matter of. How long do you think it's going to take and that can make a very big difference in your short term investment strategies in your short term success as a business like those. These are not small things like it's societally long term.

    It's clear where we're going. But in these short term fluctuations. Yeah, like, so I think there is a big market for plug in hybrid electric vehicles. Like, like, we're considering 1, we have a we have a 2nd vehicle that's on its last legs and we have an and yeah, we'd like a car that is capable of going on long road trips in the charging infrastructure, especially, once you get in the interior of the country, some areas.

    It's not holding up yet. So, we've thought about it but, I would just emphasize, this is not a resting place. Like P haves are not where we're going to end up. It's just a matter of bridging here to there. And so there will definitely be some successful, he have models and they're [00:29:00] already taking off.

    And again, again, we have like in the U S like two or three, like. Our choice of P has our choice of plug in hybrids is so sad compared to what they already have in China. Like in China, there are make they're making plug in hybrid electrics that will go almost 100 miles. On pure electric before they switch over, which is like 99 percent of your of everybody's, literally just has the gas engine in there as like, as a backup.

    So there, there's already way better plug in hybrids available in other places. And those will get here eventually. Yeah.

    Open standards are a necessity for new technologies to mature and spread

    SHEFFIELD: And one of the other infrastructure things and we talked about a little bit is the, the idea of the charging station. And this is yet another example of American political leaders failing to understand, take understand how things work in the rest of the world.

    And, like in the [00:30:00] United States, right? And this is, so I will bring in the comparison of cell phones here that, for the longest time, Apple had their lightning standard for phone plugs and tablets and lightning sucks. It's a terrible Android. It delivers lower voltage.

    It's slower from a data perspective. The plugs are less durable. It sucks, but they were continued to allow to make it, and they were only making it just as a way to force. Apple customers to buy Apple products and make it more costly to you to leave their ecosystem

    ROBERTS: and charging like 35 bucks for replacement.

    SHEFFIELD: Yes. Yes. For worse, a worse product. And so, the European commission, they finally got tired of that. And they said, look, everybody, if you want to sell a cell phone or a tablet in our, in our governing area, You're going to have to use USB C as your connector and, Apple and their, apologists and [00:31:00] fanboys and girls, they said this was horrible in the end of the world.

    Apple couldn't possibly do this. Couldn't possibly use USB C. This was wrong. It was, communism. And then, when the law came out and flipped over, Apple said, okay, yeah, we're going to, we're going to do it already.

    ROBERTS: They're on already. They're on to complaining something else is communism now, and nobody's thinking twice about lightning cables.

    And that's the cycle of life. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing is like big economies. Making big transitions plan. They need to plan. They need to do things on purpose. They need to figure out where are we going and what's the most rational way to get where we're going. We just don't do that here. We pretend.

    Like we have a free market. We pretend like we don't plan. So our planning ends up being ad hoc, reactive, shoveled through the tax code. So it's opaque and nobody knows [00:32:00] how it freaking works. We just do planning poorly. And so we stumble and back our way. Into these things like, yes, the entire transition to evs could be a lot smoother if there were some sort of national plan.

    And if there was some sort of like, planning about where what parts of the country are best. Where should we start with EV infrastructure? What highways should we start with? We just need to do some planning, but we don't do that. So we're just sort of, blindfolded hacking our way into the future.

    We'll get there eventually, but it would all be more sensible if we had. Some sort of national plan for how to switch over from gas stations to EV chargers. I mean, another the backside of this problem, the front side is how do you get enough EV chargers enough places that even people who can't plug in at home.

    Right? This is the big. The big dilemma, who can't plug in at home, have enough charging around them [00:33:00] available at work or wherever that they can manage without it. That's the front end. The back end is as you're switching over to to plug in hybrids and then eventually to, to EVs the amount of gas cars in the road is going to eventually start shrinking.

    And it's in all the high end consumers, all the wealthy people are going to have nice new EVs and it's going to be. Poor people left with the gas cars. And then as there are fewer and fewer gas cars, gas stations are going to start disappearing. And so what do you do to avoid the situation of the country's poorest people being stuck with cars that they can't find fuel for?

    How do you dial down gas station infrastructure in a rational way? In a just way that isn't just a mess of inequality and, sort of like, who gets caught holding the bag? Nobody's even really talking [00:34:00] about that yet. But again, it would be nice to have some sort of plan or guidelines or at least rules or at least some, like, if we could just discuss openly nationally, this is going to happen.

    Here's how we'd like to see it done. Here's the way we could do it where the fewest people would suffer. We just don't do that. So, so gas station is going to be an interesting phenomenon in like 5 to 10 years.

    SHEFFIELD: So just with regard to the electric charging standards it is

    still the case that there is no government mandate for charging standards and there needs to be. And I mean, fortunately though, at least Tesla did finally open up their standard as a as a thing that manufacturers

    ROBERTS: kind of forcing the issue. It's everybody, like this with the other automakers are like, fine, we have no choice.

    Like these are the, they brought their such total market dominance. That they effectively were able to [00:35:00] force their charging standard on everyone else, which is fine. We need, you're right. We need a good one and it doesn't matter that much which one it is.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and these are things that, that again are inevitable.

    And part of that planning that you're talking about, because when any new technology is in the process of becoming pervasive. Standardization is a requirement for full penetration, full establishment, and that was true with railroads, that was true with, railroad gauges, that's true with electrical plugs for just for normal use, and just a variety of things.

    ROBERTS: Yeah, exactly, standardized IP addresses, like, that's what enabled the Internet to work.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so, and, and the reality is sometimes, these private organizations can get that job done. But sometimes the government has to put their hand on the scale because at the end of the day, proprietary systems are advantageous to the proprietors. That's what it comes down to. [00:36:00] And so, but they're not, a monopoly is not a free market either. And so if you want competition, you have to have open standards. And you have and, so at least we're finally, everybody's. Seems to have adopted at least in, in North America the Tesla SAE J 3,

    400 plugs.

    So that's good.

    ROBERTS: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I used my first level three charger the other day. First time, first time ever. I got a level two installed, when we got our car, but I've never actually stopped, I've charged at home. So I've never actually stopped on the highway. So I had to stop on the highway for the first time ever the other day and plug into a level three and it's.

    Easy peasy smooth took me 10 minutes. I peed. I peed, got a cup of coffee and I had, whatever, 100 miles enough to get home. It's already, it's already. On the verge of easy enough, especially in some places, but yeah, we're, I mean, we'll standardize over time and and charging will come along and charging will get more powerful and faster and we'll get batteries that are able to charge faster.

    Like they're [00:37:00] already talking about these, like one and two megawatt chargers that can like zap you up in 10 full, a full charge in 10 minutes. Like that's, those things are huge draws on the grid. So.

    SHEFFIELD: And that's what it yeah, what you repurpose the gas stations for with those like any new gas station constructed will have to have to charging ports.

    That's yeah, I

    ROBERTS: think that will be standard. That will be standard. But what I wonder is like, as gas stations go away. Maybe this is just like a gen X thing, but like convenience stores in gas stations are this weird thing in America that are, they're so ubiquitous and so much a part of my life.

    Like so many of my memories. Rotate around them, even though they are manifestly kind of ugly and unpleasant. They never, never nice ones, they're all very like utilitarian, [00:38:00] but they're so familiar and so, like so many movie scenes, just like so much of our culture. Revolves around gas stations and convenience stores.

    I wonder what's going to, like, are they just going to vanish? And you know what I mean? This will be something where our

    SHEFFIELD: kids, high power chargers. That's what you do with them, man. That's a, that's what I think you turn them into.

    ROBERTS: Yeah. Well, I don't know if the placement like geographically is going to be right.

    And we're certainly not, I don't think we're going to need as many as we have gas stations. I don't know. I just find that whole, I'm so curious to see how that plays out. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, I mean, we'll have to see.

    The political radicalization of Elon Musk: The elephant in the room

    SHEFFIELD: So, I guess one of the other things though, that, we got to talk about who the person who is the elephant in the room in electric vehicles.

    And that is Elon Musk. He really has gone from somebody who was widely respected in the industry and among environmental advocates to somebody who, actively He is consorting and funding and boosting, some of the people who [00:39:00] opposed his entire business. That's really what this guy's doing.

    And I, I honestly, I have to wonder how much, how can he even stay like, can't, will he be forced out? Do you think what's interesting

    ROBERTS: is made to shut up? We've all been watching his. Which I think is a very familiar arc, right? It's, there's nothing particularly unique about the arc he's been on.

    Like people getting red pilled right in front of us is a familiar, it's pretty familiar dynamic at this point. But the question is like the end of the road. Of that, the end of that red pill road is climate change is a hoax and fossil fuels rule. Right. And so he's getting swept along so quickly.

    And he started saying, not quite that, but like things in the vicinity of that. So I'm wondering if he's going to get so red pilled, he's going to end up in opposition to his own [00:40:00] business. And I would like. I would not be surprised at all. It would not. I mean, he came out the other day and said, all we need to do on climate change is a carbon tax, right?

    So, and this is a very familiar sort of conservative line, like all your regulations and subsidies and standards are just market distortions and all you need is a carbon tax, but if that were true. If all we had ever done is a carbon tax, Tesla would not exist. Tesla is a creature of subsidies. It is a pure creature of us government subsidies that would not exist without the loan programs.

    Office. It would not exist without a deliberate effort on the part of US policymakers to accelerate the EV space. So it's wild to sort of just on a sociological level, psychological level to see how far he'll get red pilled and whether he'll end up opposing himself, whether he'll end up trying to tear down his own business [00:41:00] because he's gotten so far up Joe Rogan's ass.

    I mean, and I'm, I don't know the question of like, is him being an extremely public. A hole going to hurt Tesla's sales is interesting. I go back and forth. I don't know that it really has yet. Like there are bigger forces that, that Tesla is going to, like I said, like they need to make this mass market car.

    They need to nail that, that the cyber truck is just that. Absolutely embarrassing, ridiculous time, self own waste of time, ridiculous. So if they don't get that mass market vehicle, right, then they're kind of screwed. And I think that's gotten, little to do with public opinion of Elon Musk's tweets but yeah, it's a, I mean, it's a remarkable thing to.

    It's a remarkable thing to watch. Yeah.

    Climate scientist Michael E. Mann's legal battle against climate change deniers

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and, and related to that [00:42:00] very much so is legal judgment that was recently rendered in favor of the environmental scientist, Michael E. Mann against two right wing columnists for slander. And this is something that he kept out for 12 years and has It's incredible that he stuck at it but he won and against two guys yeah, and against Ran Sin Sinberg, who was a writer at Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian sort of junk science place and then against another guy named Mark Stein, who I guess, Not don't see much of him nowadays, but he was a Rush Limbaugh substitute host and he wrote something at a national review.

    And basically, yeah, so I compared Michael Mann to a child molester. And yeah. And called him and I'm actually, I'm sorry, I don't remember which one called him a fraud or a child molesters. People can look that up

    ROBERTS: of fabricating data. I mean, yeah, [00:43:00] the funny thing about this is. Just, just narrowing your view just to climate stuff, the right wing from Limbaugh on has been right wing media has been nothing but a giant cascading torrent of lies and slander.

    That's all it's been. This is like, like you go, you could go throw a rock at the internet 10 years ago and hit. Slander, like it was constant in unending and still is constant and I just think it's I just think it's there's something funny and sort of quixotic about Michael Mann being such a cussed stubborn guy that he's like, I at least in this one instance, at least these one, these guys, I am not letting this go.

    I am. I'm going to pursue this until there's some accountability. And this goes to show you like, yeah, [00:44:00] Any one of that massive cascade of lies and slander trying to get some accountability for it is a 12 year, ordeal. And like that dude has been through a lot. He's been subject to a lot of harassment and all the usual threats and stuff from the right.

    And it's been financially difficult. And like, it was not easy for him. Like he really had to pursue this. And that just goes to show you like. The massive asymmetry here, the massive, massive asymmetry, just like lie and lie and slander all, like a thousand times a day and any one of those trying to get anyone, any third party authority to come in and say definitively, yes, this was a lie and slander takes 12 damn years.

    So like, it's just like. It's just such a massive asymmetry. It's disheartening, like I'm glad he won, but it's just like, it's such a pebble in a. It's such a [00:45:00] pebble in a waterfall, you know what I mean? Yeah,

    SHEFFIELD: well, and and actually I had a previous episode for people who are watching or listening about how the tobacco industry kind of pioneered a lot of the tactics of disinformation that were later put to use on climate change and later on COVID as well.

    And I mean, like. And this is yet another example, though, of how, a lot of times, people will on the right or there, because there are so many people out there who call themselves moderates, but who are actually conservative and they're very, very overrepresented among elite.

    National media editors, I would say they're conservative. They're not moderate. And, but what they have

    ROBERTS: is reactionary centrists. That's the term. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, but the thing about them is that they fetishize this idea, of free markets. So they have, they call it the marketplace of ideas.

    And they say that anything is up for debate, but the reality [00:46:00] is, yeah. These people, who are out there committing slander routinely, saying some, so and so is a pedophile or, a fraud or, whatever slander they're doing. Those are, that's not how a real life marketplace works.

    It's like, have you guys ever been to a farmer's market? Like you have to have a permit to be there. You have to, like people inspect your products, like people, and people are allowed to return things to you if they don't like it. Like these are all rules that are imposed on your free market, your marketplace of ideas.

    All markets have to have rules. Otherwise they cannot function. And the same thing is true with regard to information markets. That if everything is up for debate, then nothing is up for reality. Then there is no reality because I can literally say, you can literally, I mean, we got people now that are saying the earth is flat and that, the moon landings were fake and all this stuff that.

    You would think that we wouldn't have to talk about this s**t on [00:47:00] the, people that are doing fact check websites wouldn't have to waste their time with it, but they are.

    ROBERTS: Poor souls, poor souls. It's amazing. Those facts haven't worked yet. They keep fact checking the same stuff over and over again.

    Is that going to stick? I mean, here's what I would say. Go back and read your Milton Friedman's, your Hayek's, your whatever, your Adam Smith's and read about the characteristics Of a free market, what it takes to create a free market. Part of that is ease of entry and exit, right? You have to be able to get into the market.

    You can't be excluded from the market by non market forces, et cetera, et cetera. So if you have. A gang of billionaires who is taking your entry into the marketplace of ideas and putting millions of dollars behind it and buying up the largest cable network in the country and buying up all the local newspapers and buying up [00:48:00] all the local tv stations and buying effing twitter and pumping your lie Through all those channels and excluding other voices, you, by definition, do not have any kind of free market.

    Those are market distortions. Those are monopolies. Those are, this is like, it's a classic, classic market distortion, like the reason those idiot ideas. Still are circulating and still have to be fact checked over and over and over again is not that they're succeeding on their merit. It's that they've got a bunch of malign right wing billionaires pumping money behind them, forcing it out into the public again and again and again and again, that's why they're still out there.

    Like I, at this point, like. They are as refuted as refuted could be. All the conventional mechanisms for assessing ideas have been brought to bear. Like this question is settled. If there were anything like a referee [00:49:00] of any kind left. They would have stepped in and said in blown the whistle and said, yeah, this is over like TKO.

    You guys are done. Let's move on there. But they have very deliberately for decades now destroyed anything like referees, slandered referees, tried to claim that every referee is actually secretly biased for the left. I mean, this was Limbaugh's thing, right? He's like government, the academy. Science.

    All of it is just the media. It's all just secretly leftist. So anything that looks like a third party referee who's ruling against you, you don't have to trouble your brain about that. You don't have to trouble yourself. That's just it's a lie. It's just another. The only person you can really trust is me and they've succeeded in doing that.

    So there is not, there's just science. There's no mechanism now for ending any debate. There's no mechanism now for anyone winning. There's [00:50:00] no mechanism now to settle. Yes, this is true. Let's move on. So you can like you can throw out like, Oh, it's cold today. So much for global warming. And then some poor intern will put together, a beautiful, presentation or video about.

    Why that's nonsense and everybody will watch the video and be like, Oh, that's nonsense. And then a year later, they'll come out and say it again. Like, you can't stop them saying there's no one now. There's no mechanism for settling things. And so things just go on forever. Arguments just go on forever.

    This is why, I mean, I'm, I know at this point I'm very much preaching to the choir, but like. This is what they learned from Watergate, right? They're like, Oh, like, like it looked like a partisan back and forth, but then this sort of set of institutions and hearings and officialdom stepped in and officially settled that it actually happened and imposed some [00:51:00] accountability and settled the thing, right?

    Like, like they called it. And so this is what the right wing learned from that is like, we got to get rid of those. Not let's stop lying and cheating, but we got to get rid of those referees. We got to get rid of anything that looks like a third party referee that could, that could vote against us.

    And they started with media. They, we just have to create our own media and that's what the whole thing spun out of. And so now like you can have. Trump take documents, openly steal documents, say he's stealing them, say he wants them, he's like, yeah, all the facts laid out in front of you as clear as day, but no one can come in and just say, Oh, that's settled.

    That's wrong. Here's your accountability. There's like nothing left that can do that. So we just can't settle anything now. And everything looks like. An endless partisan back and forth scrum. And that is [00:52:00] what they want. That is what the tobacco people wanted. That's what the anti climate people want.

    They don't want to convince the public that they're right. They, because like, what would that mean? They're right. Like anti climate people have like. 50 different d*****s talking points that don't fit with one another. Like climate change isn't happening. It's happening, but it's not bad. It's happening, but it's not caused by humans.

    Like what are they supposed to be right about? They're not. Not, or it's good. They even say that, . Yeah. Or it's good. They're not trying to convince that they're right. They're just trying to create the impression that this is just a big, nasty, endless grinding fight that you moderately engaged average voter.

    Just don't want to mess with like, you just don't want to think about it. You want to like, you want to get away from that. Let's just make it unpleasant. So that people just don't want to deal with it, and that's what's happened on climate.

    The future belongs to those who will make it

    ROBERTS: It's not that they've convinced people that climate denial ism is [00:53:00] true.

    They've just made the entire subject so viscerally unpleasant that people don't want to engage or think about it at all. Like, that's the success.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and ultimately, I think that's the takeaway. That I want people to have is that, their goal is to get you to give up.

    It's to get you to walk away. It is, as Steve Bannon said, to flood the zone with s**t. And ultimately they're not trying to win through persuasion. They're trying to win through perseverance. Two can play at that game and they should

    ROBERTS: Well, can they, like, are there other Michael Manns out there?

    Like he's, he's such the rare exception. This is such the rare exception to see,

    SHEFFIELD: That's why I said it should!

    ROBERTS: At this point, the only really institutions. Like this has been my experience of the Trump years. It's just like one institution after another, just incredibly disappointing. Just failed to stand up, failed. Like when their time came, [00:54:00] they failed miserably and like pretty much the only institution left that is imposing any kind of accountability or establishing any clear factual record is the judiciary is the courts. Like they're the only ones now restraining Trump in the right. Which is why the Federalist Society exists.

    It's precisely why they are going directly after the judiciary because it's the last referee standing and they want all referees gone. And that's what filling the judiciary with hacks like Eileen Cannon is all about. It's just to make the legal arena just like everything else. A vicious It's Endless ambiguous scrum that no one wants to deal with.

    They want to make it, so that to me is the, is it's kind of like the last fight. It's the last it's like, we've retreated and retreated. And that's like the last institution standing. So, I wish people would, and they've taken over the Supreme [00:55:00] court and they're busy, like undoing a century's worth of laws and they're.

    Enabling Trump and already like the court is half gone. I just like, to me, if the court goes, that's, if courts become thoroughly corrupted like this and become thoroughly partisan, that's kind of it. Like there's nothing left. The media is. Completely capitulated the academy is got its tail between its legs is in full retreat.

    As you can see all around you, like, science, like, there's just nothing, there's almost nothing left to stand up to the tide of a BS reactionary BS. Sorry. Not a very optimistic.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I mean, I will say though, like if you look at polls of younger Republicans, at least on when you regards to climate change, they actually do believe that it's real [00:56:00] and they do believe that humans are causing it. So--

    ROBERTS: I'm so curious about that. I'd love to interview, I'd just love to interview some of them.

    Like, what do they mean? By that, like if you take what the IPCC says, seriously, what they say is. If we want to keep a safe atmosphere, a safe operating space for human beings, we need to stop emitting greenhouse gases. We need to get to zero as rapidly as possible, which involves revolutionary, rapid change directed by governments.

    And if you don't, so what does it mean? What is conservative believe in climate change mean? Like, how do young conservatives propose to get to zero emissions? As rapidly as possible if they don't believe in government, I'm [00:57:00] genuinely curious and baffled by the whole phenomenon.

    SHEFFIELD: I don't. Yeah, well, no, it's a good question.

    I mean, I think to some extent, you look at early Ron DeSantis. His gubernatorial, his governor term for the first term, he actually had some pro environment policies. So like, I don't know what's, well, I don't know what the future holds for these guys. because you know, having been a former Republican, you're constantly any, who has any sort of heterodox viewpoints, you're constantly afraid of being canceled.

    Like that's the biggest thing no one ever talks about is that Republicans love cancelling people. They invented it, in fact.

    ROBERTS: I mean, it's not like, like right wingers, fundamentalists, reactionaries impose uniformity. This is not a, this is not some unique thing to the present moment. This is like a, this is like a truth of history going back to, going back centuries.

    Like the whole idea that the left. Which is literally pushing more choice, [00:58:00] more diversity, more freedom for more kinds of people like this weird funhouse mirror image that they're the ones trying to be tyrannical is such a bizarre. It's bizarre to me that it persists. Like, of course, right wingers want everyone to think the same way.

    That's sort of what it is to be a right winger. Like you want a male. White, Christian, landowning, hegemony. Like that's, and that's one kind of thing. That's a monoculture. That's what fundamentalists everywhere want is a monoculture. This idea that it was ever anything else is bizarre.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

    Yeah. Well, I mean, and I think overall. I mean, the demographics are not destiny, but you know, there's a reason that the right wing is freaking out so much is that, because I, no, because I'll tell you, I that, huh? I used

    ROBERTS: to, well, no. Like I, for instance.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, but it only [00:59:00] happens though if you make it like the future belongs to the people who make.

    And so there are trends that exist that are both positive and negative for either side of the spectrum, but they can't become real unless they are made to happen. And so, like, that's my message to the Democrats is you guys have to understand that, you can't alienate your voters. You can't forever force a choice between the lesser of two evils.

    You have to give people things that are good. And if you do. They will like you.

    ROBERTS: Well, it's will they, because Biden came in and like engineered the greatest economic recovery of any country in the world and sparked a manufacturing renaissance precisely in those areas of the country that were hurt by globalization.

    Like he did a bunch of, he did a bunch of good things. And doesn't seem to have gotten f**k all political credit for it. Like it's not clear to me that

    SHEFFIELD: one knows that he did it though.

    ROBERTS: That's yes, [01:00:00] this is the thing is the media, I hate, I harp on it over and over again to the point that people make fun of me, but like objective circumstances are not driving what's going on.

    In this country, like people don't know what Biden is or has done because the media is a grossly distorting filter. And so they only get negative. They only get negative news about Biden. And I just like think to anybody who thinks that some, that there's some magical other candidate that could come in at this point that the media would not find some.

    Like they found her emails. They found his age. They would find something about Kamala Harris. They would find something about Pete Buttigieg and you'd get the same dynamic. It's a structural dynamic. It's not unique. The Biden is just what I would say. And the final thing is anybody who takes comfort in the idea that demographics are slowly going to [01:01:00] crush the right.

    I would just say that like reactionary movements that are responding to their own perceived inevitable obsolescence have created some of the worst. Historical crimes in history. You know what I mean? Like a cornered shrinking movement is extremely dangerous. Like it's maximally dangerous at the moment when it's maximally in peril.

    So, like, I just think people need to boost their tragic imagination about what could happen in the next few years, I really think people do not. Appreciate how off the rails things could go when this sort of white male Christian establishment is in a panic about it's reducing power and influence.

    They could make. Lots of really bad things happen. We should not [01:02:00] feel any sense of comfort that like demographics are slowly, but surely going against them. That's precisely when they're the most dangerous.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And people, yeah, people need to keep in mind what's at stake and what.

    Could happen because yeah, there is no bottom for the reactionary right.

    ROBERTS: I mean, I mean, Trump's out there joking about the kind of s**t that would literally start a world war. Like it sounds fantastical to even talk about it, but like the idea of a world war breaking out of a nuclear exchange, like all of that is on the table.

    If he wins, no, no tragedy is off the table. If he wins, I just don't know if people are really, if that's really sunk in.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, but I mean, I guess we can only do what we can do, right? We can only pot at the

    ROBERTS: clouds.

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and I got, I got clouds in the background here on our video. All right. Well, David it's been a great [01:03:00] conversation, so people can keep up with you on social platforms at dr volts.

    That's a D R volts. If you're listening and then over on volts dot W T F. So thanks for being here. Thanks a lot, Matt.

    All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And if you want to get more, you can go to theoryofchange.show where you can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you're a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support.

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  • Introduction

    The 2024 presidential general election is looming large now that Donald Trump has all but vanquished the remaining putative opposition that he faced from people like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

    But at this point, many Black Americans are still not very satisfied with President Joe Biden and many Democrats as well, even if they may not like Trump. So here at Theory of Change, we’re doing a mini series on Black Americans and their political views. If you missed the first episode of this series with Steven Robinson, which focused heavily on the Democratic Party and what it is or is not doing correctly for Black Americans, be sure to check that out.

    This episode is going to focus on some of the larger trends. And there are some unique and interesting dynamics at work compared to other racial demographics. One of them is that Black Americans who are less religious are also slightly more likely to be Republican. And that is the inverse of White and Asian groups, where those who are more religious are more likely to be Republican.

    So why is that? Well, we're going to discuss that on today's episode, and then we'll also take a look in this discussion at the state of Black media in America.

    For the longest time, much of the media that Black Americans consumed, in newspaper format especially, was via outlets that were locally owned and operated, in some cases originally by churches. As Black media, like all forms of media, have become increasingly conglomerated, there is the question of what effect that is having on Black Americans, both in terms of their awareness of local news, but also in terms of their awareness and concern about national matters.

    Joining me to discuss are two guests: Tyson Jackson is the COO of Black With No Chaser, an independent media website, and we’re also joined by Marcus Johnson, who is a graduate student at American University in Washington, DC.

    The video of this episode is available. The conversation was recorded February 8, 2024. The transcript of the audio follows. The transcript of the audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the complete text.

    Cover photo: Worshipers at the St. James A.M.E. Church in Newark, New Jersey. December 19, 2018. Edwin J. Torres/New Jersey Governor’s Office.

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    Audio Chapters

    00:00 — Introduction

    04:28 — How independently owned media outlets shaped and informed Black public opinion historically

    09:29 — As Black media has become nationalized and conglomerated, it has become less political

    14:08 — How many Black elites became co-opted by social systems and policies that harm most Black people

    19:31 — Did Barack Obama’s rise impact Black political opinion and organizing?

    25:51 — Black churches provide a shared social narrative, in addition to inculcating theological views

    33:51 — Less religious Black Americans are more likely to be Republican, a big difference from non-religious people of other races

    36:06 — Kanye West and the potential appeal of reactionary Christian supremacism to some Black Christians

    46:29 — Will Black conservatives ever “come home” to the Republican Party?

    48:50 — Right-wing groups are flooding the internet with content starring reactionary Black people while the left is doing almost nothing in response

    54:14 — Republicans are using “voter depression” in concert with voter suppression to win elections

    Transcript

    The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

    MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome gentlemen, thanks for being here.

    MARCUS JOHNSON: Thanks for having us.

    TYSON JACKSON: Glad to be here.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right, so there's a lot to talk about here, and as I mentioned in the intro, I think there's a lot of recriminations out there in the progressive side media about, well, Joe Biden's doing this or that wrong with Black voters, or he is doing this or that right. And the reality is that there's bigger forces at work here. And I think [00:04:00] there's all this attention that's constantly, the national press is sending out reporters to tell us what the rural White people think in Ohio and Iowa. And there's not a lot of reporting going on, ‘well, what are the larger factors at work in terms of Black Americans’ political views?’

    And some of that is related to the fact that Black Americans, the media that they are using is different and has changed over time, especially with the decline of newspapers.

    How independently owned media outlets shaped and informed Black public opinion

    SHEFFIELD: So Tyson, let's maybe go to you first and then we just tell us about, how independent Black media has sort of falling, dying on the vine here in a lot of ways.

    JACKSON: Absolutely. And I think as you mentioned or even talked about, if we think about even some of the origins of Black media coming from church basements and understanding the first printing presses that we had were the printers at the churches for us to disseminate our news, and some of the oldest Black newspapers were started in those church basements, to where we are now with the decline [00:05:00] of Black media being a primary source of information in the African-American communities, to looking at how digital platforms, such as Black With No Chaser and other avenues in the digital forefront, or how we are getting our information nowadays, and I would say to the detriment, if you will, of some of those older Black newspapers and older Black publications who were not able to change when things moved to the digital format.

    Now we're looking at the diversity that's out there, but also a huge void of information that we can trust, and understanding where the information is coming from.

    So it's interesting to see kind of how things are shaping up and how we have the older generations, myself, I'm a millennial, but we have from the Baby Boomers and Generation X, still clinging to some of the more traditional media sources, to Millennials, Gen, Z, and then beyond, are more into the digital formats, which are kind of, in many different areas where they're getting the information from.

    SHEFFIELD: [00:06:00] Yeah. Well, and then also there's been just this real conglomeratization of Black media that's happened over time. So whether that is just the decline and death of many local Black newspapers, that's happened. But then it's also been the case that some of the more national platforms like BET have been absorbed into giant companies like Viacom or Paramount, I guess as it's known now.

    And that's had some political ramifications as well because these companies tend to be either, deliberately apolitical, or in some cases conservative, whether that's with the media owned by Armstrong Williams, who is a Black conservative Republican consultant and also a media owner. And I don't know how you square that, but hey.

    And then you've got people like Byron Allen who were kind of just as apolitical as you could possibly be. And he bought up a lot of of Black digital outlets. So he owns the Grio if I remember right.

    And then he owns a, a [00:07:00] couple of other shows as well. And . I, he had a sitcom, I don't know if it's on the air anymore now, but it was called Black President that kind of, it was ba it was basically like, sort of, well what if there was a sitcom version of Barack Obama? Did you ever see that one?

    JACKSON: He's had a sitcoms that were Byron Allen-ish.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, so, Marcus, before we get into your your research on this, did you have anything you wanted to add in terms of Black independent media, and how that might have affected things in your view?

    JOHNSON: I do see the same trends that you guys see that the internet and kind of the digital revolution has really changed and kind of fragmented the media space.

    A lot of these smaller newspapers have either gone out of business or been bought up and you don't see the, local newspapers that are related to, Black communities bringing issues that matter to those communities, to the forefront. A lot of news has been nationalized, [00:08:00] it's national trends and a lot of these smaller communities, a lot of these Black communities just, I don't want to say have been left behind, but their views and their opinions and the things that matter to them don't necessarily align with what gets mainstream coverage.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, a similar thing happened in a lot of rural areas, regardless of whatever racial demographic was living in them, that, like I used to live in, rural Missouri and where I lived it was mostly White, but you know, we had one newspaper in the county, and it was a weekly newspaper and it was the county seat of the county. Like there was all kinds of stuff going on, but you, would never know because they couldn't afford to print anything and they didn't, they had like almost no advertising. But we were lucky, if you live in, in, parts of Mississippi or Alabama, you don't have any newspaper in your community.

    You've got nothing telling you what's going on. Other than if you happen to catch something on your friend's Facebook that they're mad at some school district [00:09:00] b******t or whatever. That's the reality that a lot of people are living in. Because stuff that is either kind of numerically, percentage-wise smaller, it's just going to be slipping through the cracks. And then at the national level, that's also true, with whether that it's, you're talking about a racial demographic that's a smaller percentage. People are like who cares? I can't make money off that.

    As Black media has become nationalized and conglomeratized, it has become less political

    SHEFFIELD: As the national Black media has become conglomerated, it's also become more entertainment focused as well. So like back in the day, BET was had a lot of news coverage, especially in the presidential year, they were more likely to have stuff.

    Right. But that's, kind of gone to a large degree now. And and I guess and that, that's something that I, you've you have known somebody Tyson who has experienced that as well. You want to talk, tell us about that?

    JACKSON: Yeah, [00:10:00] so in, in thinking about it, just kind of BET and then thinking of the Black News Channel as it came, and even BET and it's different iterations. It, it first came out as a balance, if you will, to MTV, which was more about the music and the entertainment aspect of things. And as we become more politically astute in the African American community, you saw more news coming up because it was a demand that was coming from our communities.

    But as anytime as, is what we see throughout history, anytime we're, giving these tools where we are enriching ourselves and becoming enlightened, those tools are seen either taken away from us or diluted in many different ways. So I see that with BET as it, as things became more political, for us and we began to express our political views those avenues and where we are getting the information went away.

    But even in the terms of a Black news channel of thinking through, and I remember we. My wife and I, [00:11:00] we, met someone from Black News Channel before Black News Channel launched, and they told us that, they've been trying to get this going for 16 years. So all that time in between there to where they are now to you get shot Con who comes in who has no interest whatsoever in the Black community, puts money into it and gets it going and then takes it away that, that ends up for us, a huge void ends up in the community of where we're, where the information that we we're getting from there and where we're getting it from now with those things happening.

    So it's kind of, you see the rise and fall of this and now as you even talked about, just kind of that delusion of Looting the information. Well now it's more entertainment. Now it's more World Star hip-Hop. It's more the Shade Room where this information is coming from. We're seeing important things that are happening in the world, being.

    Reported to us by these sites that also have some of the most salacious things that you can see out there about African Americans or about anything [00:12:00] going on, period. That you have this men in between the two. So what is real, what's not real and what's exploiting us and what's benefiting is kind of the question that I'm left with.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And then, and I think it's also, even when you look at some of the people who are now nationally prominent in, what you could at least technically call, Black news whether that's, like, I mean, Charlamagne, the god, I mean like .

    This, a dude doesn't even use his real name. That I think in a nutshell, just that right there, shows you that this is not news. Like this is not Tom Joyner.

    JACKSON: Right. I mean, for what it's worth, the Breakfast Club, which, you, get Charlamagne to come from.

    . Has turned out to be pretty pivotal. And when it comes to just discussing things that are going on in our community and and, the entertainment aspect of it is there, but they're also they bring in a lot of people that we need to hear from as well too. There has been some really [00:13:00] dynamic interviews on this show, and Charlamagne, even though going by a fake name or, a name that's made up there and not his real name has contributed to the discourse that I think that is needed in some ways.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I, yeah, I'm not going to say he's, he is all bad, but it's, I get, I don't know. To me he reminds me more of like a Black Howard Stern than because Howard Stern, Howard Stern had politicians come on his shows all the time. . And journalists. So that's, because like, and he did some good stuff.

    I can't take that away from him. In addition, I think it's kind of like

    JACKSON: the Daily show if you'll, and the Daily Show for . It broke the mold when it comes to politics of us learning about things. But it did it in a way that entertained us. It did it in a way that brought us to the conversation with laughs and, not just something that's so heavy and serious.

    But then John Stewart was able to introduce us to many different people who have a different take on how politics should be delivered and how that news should be delivered. Yeah. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Okay. Well, I think that's a fair [00:14:00] point. you don't want to have only that. Yeah.

    You got anything you were thinking on that Marcus this topic. Well,

    How many Black elites became co-opted by social systems and policies that harm most Black people

    JOHNSON: Part of this to me speaks to like a broader trend of kind of, a lot of Black elites have been kind of co-opted into Profit-seeking and rent-seeking versus doing what's best for the Black community, even if it means that you don't necessarily make a profit.

    And I think that part of this trend of infotainment or entertainment as, news is part of the rent-seeking process where, news isn't necessarily as profitable as it maybe used to be. Some of the other types of education maybe aren't as profitable as they can be.

    And we have elites who are seeking out different ways to make money versus different ways to help out and improve the community. And I, think it's, a, a real problem for the Black community in that we have pushed kind of [00:15:00] this idea that, well, you just have to, make it, and it's kind of this individualized idea versus how can we help the community?

    What things can we do to improve education, to improve healthcare, to improve access to different types of resources, and instead as well, this different artist got this car, or this different person said this on the Shade Room or on this Instagram or Twitter or whatever. So, I think it's really an indictment on some of the Black or really the whole class of, Black elites that we've kind of turned away from revolutionary ideas and ideas that can really improve the wellbeing of the community towards ideas that can or kind of a narrative that you need to seek individualized gain that you need to be able to try to get the newest car or the newest house or whatever.

    So, I think that's a, I think part of this entertainment trend in media is really a, microcosm or kind of [00:16:00] a symptom of this larger issue that we have with Black leaders with, kind of taking a path that isn't beneficial to the broader group.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, let me just say, I'm going to cut this out, but like, anytime, like whenever the other person's done talking or anybody's done talking, like if you want to just jump in when, say whatever you want feel free to.

    So, yeah. So I'll let you respond to that Tyson if you want, and then we can move on if you don't.

    JACKSON: Yeah. Well, and hearing and thinking about like, when we started Black With No Chaser our first iteration that we did a couple of blogs and trying to get going. But right before Black With No Chaser came about, we had a blog called Emmett Trill.

    And so it combines Emmett Teal's thing with Trill, which is a, southern rap slang for something means too real, I guess, and trill. But so Emmett Trill and, but we were covering at that time from Trayvon Martin to to Mike [00:17:00] Brown, to the other police killings, extrajudicial police killings that were happening in the African-American community.

    We started covering that and it got really heavy and it was like, I, just, I didn't have the energy to write or even wanting to be there in that space because it was so, much trauma with that. So we, we began to think of. All right. We are funny people. We like to joke, we like to laugh, we like to experience life.

    We're humans. We are multifaceted. So we wanted something that showed that. So we thought about going to the entertainment route as well too. And, some of the ways that we were able to grow our audience as fast as what we did was because we had mixed in some entertainment stuff. However, we knew we didn't want to be a shade room.

    We knew we didn't want to be hip hop. We didn't want to share any of that negative stuff. So we chose not to do that, but we did bring through some entertainment. So I think that there is a actual value, if you will for that aspect of, I don't want to say news, but media if you will [00:18:00] today, that brings people to the table for that.

    But I do agree with Marcus, what you said when we think about the elites and we think about kind of the Black elite and kind of that hoarding, if you will, of that information and hoarding of that space. And the same thing we see in politics too, of them not passing the torch. But it's not passing the torch when it comes to news and media as well too.

    And it's kind of like they're just taking these things to their grave with them and it's not serving our communities.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, that, and I think that's a, and that is a problem with Democrats as well. Like, these people will not retire. They want to die in office. and the problem is, like it's going to drag everybody else down along the way because.

    And I think Nancy Pelosi is probably the best example of that. But you know, she just is so out of touch with what the, generic, democratic base voter wants or thinks about stuff. Whether, whatever it is. Like she just doesn't know what people [00:19:00] want. And, and she's most prominently demonstrated that with her, awful remarks about saying that people who were upset about Gaza, they're, being controlled by Vladimir Putin that was just, it was embarrassing.

    And, but this is, this is so, I mean, yeah, so like, but of course that was, I mean, we could talk all day about what the Democrats did or didn't do, but, you're right. Yeah. And I guess, but let, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but maybe let's, before we move on to Mark's research I did, I.

    Did Barack Obama's rise impact Black political opinion and organizing?

    SHEFFIELD: In terms of like this sort of transition to kind of a more of a respectability striver type politics that you're talking about, Tyson is it, is some of that related to the emergence of Barack Obama as the president, do you think? Did that change things in terms of what Black elites thought should be done?

    And I'll want you to weigh in also Marcus.

    JACKSON: Yeah. I, don't know if that changed things. I think what [00:20:00] we saw with Barack Obama being elected is a combination of a lot of their efforts along the way to make sure that African Americans are enfranchised and their fights in, in, in many different arenas for representation.

    And it, came through it just happened to be at a time where in the world I think things were changing. You had the undercurrent of the younger generation that was coming up. And also, looking at the election of Barack Obama, but that necessarily wasn't our candidate. It wasn't a progressive candidate.

    But we were brought into it because we were Black and we knew that what if you will the significance of in voting for a Black person in there, but the respectability politics of that era and that generation is something that it is always been there. And it's still here now too. It's just the populations are shifting now where, that generation is sunsetting where another one is rising up.

    So I think some of that respectability politics is being pushed out the door, but so much of it [00:21:00] is, still in place because they hold a lot of the resources. who has the money in the Black community? Well, it, happens to be those same people who are involved in a lot of respectability politics.

    SHEFFIELD: . Okay. All right. Well, Marcus what's your take?

    JOHNSON: Yeah. I think Barack Obama is kind of. A consequence of decisions that were made decades earlier. If you look at the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement and the leaders of the Civil Rights movement decided that we don't want to work outside of the system.

    We want to work within the system. We want to be inclusionary of what it means to be American, what it means to want to participate in the US government. And I think that in making that decision versus being people who wanted to make radical change, they decided to be people who are going to make incremental change.

    And I think that meant that they were going to produce a class of politicians who were a amenable to, the, American state and the American interest, and those things weren't always necessarily in Black [00:22:00] interests. And I mean, you see that over time. It's not like, Black wealth has dramatically changed.

    It's not like the amount of resources Black people have, radically changed that are stature in society or their social hierarchy. So, I think that Barack Obama is just a product and, really the Black political class at large is kind of a product of decisions that were made many decades ago.

    And I think we're starting to see the possibility for change in that the younger generations are saying that, Hey, this situation hasn't necessarily worked out for us. We don't have the money that we promised. We don't have this necessarily this American dream that we were promised.

    And we think that things should change potentially radically. So, I think that the younger generations are, much less likely to be favorable to Barack Obama or to be favorable to some of these other democratic politicians who are leading the party right now. And they want to see things change so that they can have the better life that they were promised.

    So, I think that even though [00:23:00] things have been, difficult for the Black community. I think that even though you have this, you're, staring down the spectrum, potentially another Trump administration. I look at the future and I'm, optimistic. I mean, I think that there's still the potential for a successful multiracial democracy where people really can make it.

    But I, I think that the current political class isn't getting people, the results or, young people, the results that they want. I mean, I think that you look at the relative living standards, I think that it's harder and harder to make it, it's harder to rent a, rent an apartment.

    It's harder to buy a house. It's harder to, live. So, people want change.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

    JACKSON: Yeah. it just, can I make one comment there? Yeah. Yeah. So, and, then I was listening to it, it made me also just think about kind of the whole defund the police kind of, thing that came out there.

    Right. And it was a younger generation said, we're pushing for this, and I'm, I'll just be clear, I'm an abolitionist, so I believe in destroying, tearing it down, and let's rebuild something better. And whatever that process comes [00:24:00] about, however, I looked at the messaging that came out defund the police, and how it was met with fierce objection.

    Mainly in the Black community by some of our elders. But then I was reminded living in Jackson Mississippi, that those are the same elders who fought for representation in the police department. It was their, their generation who were the first Black police officers, first Black firefighters, first Black what, have you in these spaces and how important that was for them.

    So when we come around and say, let's defund the police, and we're looking at a police department that is majority African American in a place like Jackson Mississippi, it, fell upon deaf ears. And I think that there's still, looking at it from being in this kind of wedge generation, I understand what they're saying on one hand, but I also fiercely understand what's being said on the other end of what the changes in the the reform that needs to happen within the police departments and how we need to look at police officers who are, who are responding to [00:25:00] everything and look at making sure that there's resources to really diversify who responds to what kind of things that are called for. So I just brought that up to say, okay, I'm looking at this older generation there, and they fought for so much and for many of them they're still fighting to this day because they still haven't seen the true change happen in our communities.

    That was promised by whoever organized them to get them started or, whatever ambition they had to get started. They haven't seen it being actualized, so they're still fighting. It's just the fight has changed so much and so more that much more dynamic. And I don't think they see where we are in our position in the fight as well as theirs, or if they think one is a priority

    SHEFFIELD: over the other.

    Yeah, there's still fighting the last war, basically in a sense. Yeah. All right.

    Black churches provide a shared social narrative, in addition to inculcating theological views

    SHEFFIELD: Well, so now in terms of the intergenerational dynamics here, that's something that you've been looking at a lot, Marcus, in your [00:26:00] research. And the stuff that you've been doing is really interesting to me. And it's a, you haven't published a paper yet, so, I can't we're not going to link to it yet for people.

    But I definitely will encourage people to check that out when it comes out. But the stuff you got, you and your research partner are looking at is sort of the religious dynamics in among African-American communities, and looking at how how majority Black congregations have functioned as kind of a political literacy program for a lot of people who now that.

    Participation in those commun and those churches has declined quite a bit among Black Americans, and it's also changing Black Americans political attitudes. Let's hopefully that's a good enough setup for you. Tell, us what, you've been working on with all that.

    JOHNSON: Yeah. Well, the Black church has really been this really important institution in the Black community for such a long time. I mean, going back to really the abolition of, slavery all throughout the rest of American history. So you look at the [00:27:00] Black church's institution and, historically it's been this central aspect of Black American life, and that is increasingly not the case.

    Religiosity is dropping throughout the country, kind of with all demographics, but with the Black community, the Black church has had such a strong impact on all aspects of life that we're really starting to see some, major changes. I mean, as I. Black church attendance declines.

    What we're seeing is that there's lower levels of support for Democrats. There's lower levels of democratic identification. And what we found in our research my co-author and I, Mark Tenenbaum, is that the Black church kind of functions as a place where social pressure can be exerted, where social and political norms can be established.

    And when people aren't going to the church, when Black people aren't going to, to the Black church and being surrounded by other Black Americans, they're not getting these social cues. They're not getting these social pressures, and so they're less likely to do things that are perceived as in the group [00:28:00] interest.

    And that involves democratic support. Now we find that, when Blacks are going to Black churches, they're more likely to support Democrats to identify as democratic. And when they go to White churches or multiracial churches, they don't get those same cues. It's been well researched by other scholars that White Americans who go to church.

    Typically have the opposite kind of effects. They're more likely to vote for Republicans, they're more likely to be conservative. And part of that's because they're getting the opposite social cue in those churches. And that's why you see kind of this the same kind of thing for Whites who don't go to church or who have left churches, that they're less Republican or less conservative on average than Whites who go to church.

    So, we're kind of interested in that psychological phenomenon, the, social pressure how it impacts political attitudes and political behaviors. And I think that we're kind of transitioning into a country that's going to be less religious, a country where you're going to have more people who are atheists and agnostic, or people who maybe are spiritual but don't attend church.

    And [00:29:00] what we find is that it's being around other people in institution, getting those group cues, getting those social cues, establishing those social norms. Those are places where people kind of figure out what are group expectations. What do other people in my group expect from me? And, that stuff matters for ideology and partisanship.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it does. It's, this comes out of the concept of what a lot of sociologists sometimes call linked fate or shared struggle. So for people who haven't heard those terms, especially as they relate to Black Americans, do you want to give a little overview of that for them?

    JOHNSON: Yeah. So linked fate is essentially the idea that what happens to other people in my group matters for me. So, what happens to Trayvon Martin matters for me. What happens to Mike Brown matters to me. And what scholars have found among Black Americans is that linked fate is particularly high, higher than it is for other racial and demographic groups in the United States.

    And part of that we believe is from the [00:30:00] social pressure component from being in institutions whether that's the Black church, whether that's HBCUs, whether that's Black schools or other kinds of Black institutions. You get those social, that social pressure, those group expectations.

    You want to do what's in the best interest of the group. What you perceive is going to not only help you, but help other Black Americans that are around you, around the country. And so, that's kind of the concept of linked fate. It's really the idea of what matters for, me also matters for other Black people in the community.

    Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: And some of that's essentially what we're describing as being lost here whether through these religious migrations that we're seeing. And one of those dividers is income, where, because that's another thing.

    And I, and you do you look at that a little bit also in your research Marcus with, the income that's for people who are Black in higher income, not being part of a Black church. It's like, this concept of that I've upgraded my life now I go to the White church.

    I don't go to the Black [00:31:00] church. At least, that's what people have said to me. And that's some of what we're talking about here, right? Like proximity to Whiteness, if you will. Right.

    JOHNSON: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would definitely agree with that, that generally as you go up on the income scale among Blacks, generally you're going to see less of democratic identification.

    A little bit lower levels of linked fate, not as much drop off on, linked fate, but a little bit of drop off with democratic identification. And part of that is because you don't have the social pressure component, you are more likely to be in White spaces. You're more likely to be in high income spaces where other Black Americans aren't around, whereas, middle class and poor Black Americans are likely to be in spaces where there's more Black Americans around and they get those group cues and, that social pressure that maybe higher income Black Americans aren't getting on a regular basis.

    SHEFFIELD: And the White Americans that they're around are also more likely to be Republican as well. That's despite all the propaganda of the Republicans about how, we're the working-class party, [00:32:00] etc.

    It's, the reality is when you look at income, the more a White person makes, the more likely there be to be a Republican. That's just how

    JOHNSON: it's that's changed a little bit though. I mean, I, think that you're seeing more wealthy White Americans

    SHEFFIELD: turn who have a, if that postgraduate education.

    JOHNSON: yeah, Education definitely plays a role. But education and income typically are correlated. So I think that income isn't the, as strong a correlate of partisanship among Whites as it has been in the past. I mean, in the past it was really strong that as got more money, you became more Republican.

    And I think that's still true, but not to the same extent.

    JACKSON: And I was going to say, I think it's interesting living in, and I live in DC now, but I lived in, Mississippi for a long time, and kind of the dynamics hadn't really changed. And it, I thought it was always interesting that, what you would consider Black elites, those who had the most money were still in the same neighborhoods, if you will, but the folks who didn't have money, it was like they were really accessible.

    Like that's actually a multi millionaire over [00:33:00] there that you could just walk up to where in other places, like those folks are just not accessible. Like the, division between economics is, huge as well too, within the Black community up lived in, in, in major cities like here, even in DC right? You see just in that division of folks.

    But in the south specifically, like places like Mississippi, Alabama, the segregation is so much that if you're Black, you live on this side. If you're White, you live on this side. So I. You're in intertwined and most of the time at the churches, the, Black elite families are the ones who are sitting in the front rows who are, heading the churches and doing different things.

    And they, have a certain regard and esteem, but they're there in the same spaces. And from my experience, what I've got a chance to see kind of in the south, I see that.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well I think that's a important point to Yeah. That it thing, this stuff can be different depending on where you're at.

    Less religious Black Americans are more likely to be Republican, a big difference from non-religious people of other races

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, in terms of Black non-religiosity, just to go back to some of your research, Marcus, among Whites and [00:34:00] Asians, it's definitely the case that people who are not religious are much more likely to be democratic. Whereas yeah, that correlation, it's, not as, it's almost the reverse among a lot of Black Americans.

    And that's, it's the only racial demographic group where that is the case. You want to talk about that a little bit? I mean, some of it you've already said on here, but there's some unique aspects here, right?

    JOHNSON: Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, definitely in the White community religiosity is really strongly found in the south in the old South.

    And so you're going to see the highest levels of church attendance among Whites who live in the southern states maybe going out a little bit west to like Oklahoma, above Texas and stuff like that. But that's generally where you're going to see church going among Whites in, the United States at the highest levels and the cues and the social pressure that they're getting when they go to church is to be conservative, is to be Republican, is to vote for people like Donald Trump.

    Whereas in the Black community, when they go to [00:35:00] church, they're hearing about social, the same kind of social pressure and, things of that nature, but it's things that are perceived to improve the Black community. So you're going to hear about, Hey, we need to vote for Democrats because we believe that Democrats are going to be.

    A better option for us than Republicans who we think are going to go out of their way to try to harm Black interests. And so when you are in these institutions that have a lot of Black Americans, and you want to be a good member of your group, you want to be in good group standing, you're going to go out and, do things that are in the best interest of your group, as, as far as you perceive it.

    So, it's not surprising to me that Black Americans who go to church less typically have lower levels of, Democratic ID now. I mean, they're still more likely to vote for Democrats than a lot of other groups, even if they aren't going to church. But you definitely see there's a difference, a degree between Black Americans who go to church a lot and, Black Americans who don't their level of support for Democrats and democratic self-identification.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and [00:36:00] now, but here's the other interesting thing is that on the kind of. Opposite extreme of religiosity.

    Kanye West and the potential appeal of reactionary Christian supremacism to some Black Christians

    SHEFFIELD: There has also been a bleeding among Black Americans. So, and particularly for Black Americans who are kind of involved in the, new apostolic Reformation movement or other Pentecostal type denominations, which are, it, I mean they were, hi, historically speaking, the, kind of the first real integrated religious denominations in the United States, but now they become completely overrun with the most radical, far.

    Christians in America, and they're coming for the Black church. And especially in the south with the Protestant congregations. And it's, it's, disturbing what they're doing. And they're doing the same thing with a lot of Latino outreach as well. Especially with recent immigrants.

    They target them heavily for recruitment because, like they don't have anything. They don't, they just got to the country. They don't know anybody. And [00:37:00] so they, these guys offer them a built-in network and, that's good enough for some people. And so it's, this is a thing that's happening on the edges.

    An example of this would be like Kanye West that, he was somebody who converted to this Pentecostal form of Protestantism. And, as everybody knows by now, he is off the chain insane.

    Basically fascist and well self-proclaimed Hitler lover. Like that's, this is a thing that is happening on, the margins. And maybe, people who, like you might have your friend from high school or college that they went off the deep end or something, but you also don't realize they also like Donald Trump now and Q or not.

    Would you guys have any thoughts on that? Tyson,

    JOHNSON: I'll let you go first on that.

    JACKSON: Kanye is always an interesting subject no matter what, but I think in, in, as Kanye there and just thinking about kind of how churches are formed from connected churches to, in the Protestant form of the disconnected churches that [00:38:00] you get within just more of the Baptist and in, ways that you have your new denominations that are popping up left and right.

    People are claiming themselves to be bishops. The same thing that you had with storefront preachers back in the day. Now they're just now using storefronts to just using social media to get out there and and, preach whatever message that they want to preach. But it's not necessarily coming from any lineage that is entrenched in the history that that.

    serve the African-American community is just more individualism than anything. And just seeing someone like Kanye get out there and do the same thing that we see others that are, doing that, that serves themselves and themselves only. And I think for us in African-American community especially thinking of the history and the lineage that we have there, a lot of what has served us has been more of a collective effort.

    And as you said there and as Marcus said, just kind of, how our face are, linked through kind of that process. But that collective aspect of who we are is very still very much important. And then you have a [00:39:00] Kanye and others who are, going against the grain of that. And it makes them at odds with the Black community.

    It's like, ah, man. Sold out. you done, sold out everything. You did, you just, you've sold out a hundred percent. And, even comes deeper into just kind of, thinking that comes from some kind of religious philosophy self-doctrine. Yeah. Yeah.

    JOHNSON: I mean, to, build on that. I mean, I, definitely agree a hundred percent.

    To me, Kanye West is somebody who is even more than a co-opted elite, like you said. I, would characterize him as a, sellout of somebody who doesn't care about the Black community and actively working against Black interest and can be probably characterized as anti-Black. And a lot of Black artists, unfortunately are like that these days.

    But there's always been movements on the fringe. There's always been 10 to 15% of Black Americans who vote for Republicans who are going to be supportive of somebody like Donald Trump are going to be supportive of other conservative interests. So, [00:40:00] even though these movements are under fringe, I, don't view them as necessarily care like.

    Characterized as having major support in the Black community. I don't think that there are going to be movements that are going to really pick up and, gain steam. Even though the Black church is in a slow decline or even more than a slow decline, I mean, you still see Black Americans who don't attend church are on average going to be more democratic than most other racial and ethnic groups.

    So I think that you still have a level of cohesion within the community, even though you're going to have some of these different fringe groups or fringe ideas kind of pop up. I don't think that they're going to have major play within the community anytime soon. I

    JACKSON: actually do though.

    If, just on, on the back of that, just kind of, from maybe, cursory research, if you will, or just kind of interactions within those who may not be in the mainstream political conversation. African-American community and much, and many of them are already supporting Trump. And they believed [00:41:00] that Trump was the one who got them their stimulus checks.

    They liked the fact that Trump doesn't hold, holds no bar. Sexy

    SHEFFIELD: red said that explicitly.

    JACKSON: Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Sexy red and, but she's not the only one. There are so many others that are there. And so, and they're going to repeat what a Sexy red says in, so many ways. But in the same time, this is just a conversation that's there.

    For the most part, the Democratic Party, for being a person who's worked in, in politics and worked on the Democratic side. And I say that I'm not affiliated with any party, even though most of the stuff I've done has been within the democratic and progressive movements. I've seen so many times of just neglect to that aspect of the community.

    We need to go and canvas over there and make sure that they're being a vote. They, don't vote. We're going to go after the ones who we know who vote, who are your older church-going people. And that's typically where the target is. So now you have all these people over here that are apathetic, that are not involved in any political process whatsoever.

    And now you get a Trump to come up. And I [00:42:00] seen the same thing happen on the other side. because it, the crazy thing is that remember we, in Mississippi, we still had the Confederate flag flying, and this is back in 2000, 15, 2016, we, led a rally to take down the flag. It was a pretty big rally the next week like the Sons of the Confederates did a rally down there in the same spot.

    So they had all the Confederate flags. We went out there and it was three of us. We went out there and had a conversation with them. And what they were saying was the same thing our communities were saying. They were mad at the the politicians or the legislators inside of Mississippi State House, just like we were as well too.

    But they were tricked in believing that it was us who were the, issue. So when I see that, and then when I go to the African American community and those who are not in on a political process, not necessarily Democrat or whatever, they're saying the same things that they were saying, and then you get a Trump that rises up, who begins to champion their message.

    And I think what we'll hear from Trump this time, he's going to co-opt a lot more Black folks into this, time. You're going to see a lot more rappers getting involved into it. You are going to see a [00:43:00] lot more people that are, that you wouldn't see normally in there because. Joe Biden has done zero outreach to them.

    The Democratic Party has done zero outreach to them to get them involved. And they come in the last minute where Trump, over these last four years of him not being president, they've been working their way and making inroads into that community. So I'll be, I'll, I'll, I'm bracing myself for a large part of the African American community to start saying that they're for Trump.

    JOHNSON: we'll, see. I mean, I think that. Polls right now are kind of not predictive because we're a little bit of the way out and people still think, in the back of their minds, maybe there could be some kind of change in the two candidates. But I think that as we get closer and people see that it's Trump or Biden, I think ultimately 85 to 90% of the Black community.

    Is going to vote for Biden. I think that they're not going to necessarily be happy about it. I think they're not going to be like super enthusiastic about it. But I mean, Black people [00:44:00] vote for Democrats not necessarily out of some major self-love, but that they know that Republicans are actively, most of the time actively against their interests.

    That Trump represents kind of, a reactionary White force that wants to go back to a time when there was less it's kind of part of what my dissertation is about, less competition over resources like jobs and income and, land and other things of that nature with minority groups.

    So Trump represents kind of the idea that. White people have to compete in a way that they shouldn't have to. That that these different minority groups are taking things and, and . Trying to get a place in a social hierarchy that they don't necessarily deserve or, whatever the case may be.

    And that's why you see Trump say things like, oh, these are shithole countries. Or, talk about other minorities not. It shouldn't have these types of rights or whatever. And so I, think that as Trump gets back on TV and he's, saying more of these things, the Republicans are saying more of these things.

    I think that the Black community, is going to look at that. And I think they're going to talk amongst themselves and say, you know what we don't always like all the things [00:45:00] Democrats do, they don't always help us a lot, but they're not going to actively go out and try to hurt us in the way that Republicans do.

    And I think that's honestly the story of democratic, the democratic party with, Black Americans for a long time is part of why you don't get to necessarily enthusiasm that maybe you should. But I think that in a two-party system, you're still actively probably going to vote for the party and candidate.

    that's not actively trying to harm your group.

    JACKSON: And I, overall agree with that. In, in looking at it just for political analysis Malcolm X said they put they put you last and you put them first. As political chumps. So that has been something that's been there the whole time.

    And we was talking about the Democratic Party back then as well as we're talking about the Democratic Party now. And so I overall a hundred percent agree and I think we're going see that dynamic, but I think we're going to see a little more of the African-American community especially those who probably historically haven't been voting trumpet Trump's message.

    I'm not going [00:46:00] to say they're going to vote that's going to, that's going to be the deciding factor right there. You could talk all that you want. Sounds good. You could put Sexy Red on TV and she could say, I love Trump all day, but did Sexy Red actually go vote? That's going to be the question. The, ones who are following along or are they actually going to go vote?

    Historically they haven't. And I don't think that the outreach is going to be done on the level that it needs to, actually get them out to vote. Yeah, it's money for sure.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

    Will Black conservatives ever "come home" to the Republican Party?

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and and one dynamic that I think when people are, looking at the post Obama Democrats that I think that there was a, there was an assumption among a lot of Democratic elites that how things were in terms of Black turnout and the percentage of the Black vote that Democrats got, that was the new baseline.

    And I don't think that's reality. And it never was. And they were completely wrong about that. Because, like, I mean, I had [00:47:00] several relatives who were Black and they, said they were only voting for Obama in 2012 because he was Black. They didn't really like him very much.

    They just didn't want him to lose from being the incumbent, the only, the first Black president to lose reelection. Well, they didn't want that. But they didn't really like him. And, whereas, and then of course, then you got, everybody after him who has been not Black. is it any wonder then that there would be some reversion to the mean that, there's a, I think the reality is there's a lot of, I.

    Black Americans out there who are, they would be Republicans. If the Republican party wasn't, deliberately and, unintentionally courting racists. I mean, that's, the reality. There's a lot of, of, , churchgoing, Black people who would vote Republican if they could.

    But they just feel like they can't,

    JACKSON: I mean, historically we have, I mean, even a kind of Lisa Rice, you, the reason why she was a Republican was because. Republicans were the ones who [00:48:00] got her her father an opportunity to vote. And so the Republicans were the ones back in the day.

    It was, before Barry. Goldwater and the whole switch and the Democratic, the southern strategy came about, and the, switch happened in politics. the Republican party's there, but that's still our older generation and many of them still harbor that, but they vote .

    Like you said, they vote Democrat because of the other aspects, but they truly are conservative, um . In their value in nature. And they would vote Republican if it wasn't for the racial aspect of things.

    SHEFFIELD: So whether it's, they don't like gay people or, they, think everything is woke or whatever, whatever's going through their head.

    I mean, that's, that there's a reality, there's

    JACKSON: a lot of people out there, so pull their pants up, that's what's wrong.

    SHEFFIELD: Yep. That's why poverty exists. It's only that.

    Right-wing groups are flooding the internet with content starring reactionary Black people while the left is doing almost nothing in response

    SHEFFIELD: But another potential factor and who knows what it is, and I'm curious to see what you guys think is that, the, to some extent the Republican party and, [00:49:00] reactionary groups are not a huge amount, but, to some degree, like, to, go back to what you said a little bit about, Donald Trump and rappers, I mean, whether it's so you've got Kanye, you've got now apparently Snoop Dogg saying he's, got love for Donald Trump.

    because he got, pardoned one of his former record label friends. And then, sexy red and . There, there's, and I mean, for, a minute there, and when Bush was the president, if I remember right wasn't 50 cent, didn't he like Bush? I think he did at some point.

    So, like I, I think there was something there and, maybe it's just a function of that these people get a lot of money and they want to keep it. Maybe that's what it is, but I mean, but, but you also see, these right-wing groups like turning Point, USA a lot of these right-wing re reactionary groups are propping people like Candace Owens or Rob Smith, or some of these other, Black Republican people. They're really putting them out there and, and by contrast, I don't [00:50:00] see a lot of progressive groups or donors or the Democratic Party.

    They're not out there flooding people on YouTube with, stuff. They're just not, like, if you watch YouTube, man, it's like one, almost nonstop, right-wing garbage in terms of the politics content, whether, and it doesn't matter what your race is, they got. They got a, fresh and fit for you if you're Black and, any number of them.

    If, you're White they don't care. Nick Fuentes, he'll have you too if you're Black. And he says that explicitly, I'll, take Black people over Jews any day. So I mean, I don't know, but, are these people just, are they going anywhere? Are they making a difference?

    what do you guys think? Yeah,

    JOHNSON: I think the Republicans historically, at least the last 20, 30 years have commonly done this, where they think they can kind of buy off a Black celebrity and that's going to really get them enrolled into the Black community. And I, just don't see it. I mean, last cycle you had Lil Wayne, you had Kanye West, you had a couple of these other Black [00:51:00] rappers.

    You had people like Diamond and Silk who tried to be, Black influencers who for Trump, and that, that stuff just doesn't work because they're, approaching the whole thing wrong. I mean, Black people are going into their different institutions and talking amongst themselves and their communities and saying, okay, well what's, they're kind of having a debate.

    They're like, okay, what's best for Black? What's best for the group? And so just buying off a celebrity and saying, Hey, look, I have this celebrity with me. Like, that doesn't change the nature of the deliberations within the group. I mean, you're still, if you're a Donald Trump should Republican party pushing anti-Black policies, you're pushing an anti-Black message.

    And at the end of the day I think that people see through that and I think that they're like, Hey, Democrats aren't going to go out and be permanently anti-Black in the way that Republicans are going to be. And I think that one thing that's interesting, and one thing I think that could have helped them if, Republicans had a lot more Black people and the Senate or in congress or in, in local state houses, and I mean, they really don't, one of the things that's was really [00:52:00] interesting, and I don't know, this kind of seems anecdotal, there might be some data to back this up, but it seems that whenever they run a Black candidate, like they had a Black, I think was the senator or governor candidate in, Michigan they kind of underperform.

    It seems like Black Republicans tend to underperform where they should be, where other White Republicans get their vote share. And I, think that sends a signal that, hey I. They might try to get a celebrity, they might try to buy off some, people from BT or MTV or whatever.

    But when it comes to really giving Black people political power the Republican party isn't really, they're not really a fan of that. So, I think that stuff matters more than the Black celebrities. I don't think that's the celebrity stuff's going anywhere.

    JACKSON: Yeah. And I agree with that.

    I don't think that actually is going to move the needle Actually, what is going to get changed anything is really if you're getting people to get out and vote and the only way you're going to get people to get out and vote is if you're knocking on the doors and you're really there and, having a ground game with that as well too.

    So having a little way and get out there and, say anything, is not going to [00:53:00] mean anything. And do they, and if we look at the political operations that are, put out there for the most part, Republicans are going to hire young White people to get out there and do that work, and, most part, they can't go into African American communities inconspicuously, if you will, to do the work that needs to be done. They're going to be, everyone's going to notice that you got some White folks walking around here and that means we about to shut our doors and we ain't going to open no for you.

    because we don't know who you here and what you're there for. So you, it's not effective strategy, if you will. because the whole the the whole aspect of, from having someone that influences people, but actually having the people that get out there and win the elections for the candidate is two different things.

    So yeah, I just don't see it necessarily a change thing. And, for what it's worth we've had sambos in our community for a long time. It ain't.

    JOHNSON: Really quickly. I mean, I think it's really a story of maybe Democrats not getting the Black turnout they want, and maybe Black people not being as [00:54:00] enthusiastic about Democrats versus Black people being enthusiastic about Republicans and really increasing Republican vote share.

    It might just be that Black people say, Hey, I'm not enthusiastic about Democrats. I'm not going to turn out, versus, I'm turning out for Republicans. Thanks,

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

    Republicans are using "voter depression" in concert with voter suppression to win elections

    SHEFFIELD: Well and that's actually, no, that does take me to one thing that I actually have been doing a lot of writing and. Research about, and that is there, there's two things that Republicans use to shape the electorate.

    One is, voter suppression, which of course, taking your ability to vote away from you. But then there's also voter depression, which is to get you to willingly throw it away. . And that's what the candidacy of Cornel West is about. And that's, like this dude directly got money from the big Republican fat cats.

    They're propping him up, and you look at like they love funding hopeless candidates, especially Black ones. And this was something that Pat Buchanan, when he worked in the Nixon White House, he wrote a memo explicitly [00:55:00] about we're going to find Black candidates and run them as third parties and give them money and prop them up in order to splinter the Black vote.

    And you see that to this day, whether it is over on Rumble that is owned by, in large part by Peter Thiel the far-right investor, he's paying people like Glenn Greenwald and he's paying people like Breonna Joy Gray to get them to prop up this hopeless, third party nonsense.

    Like, I remember I was on her show one time and she was telling me how Marianne Williamson, she's a real candidate, she's going to win well, and the day as we're recording this, she dropped out and ended her grift operation. She had

    JACKSON: beautiful hope, though. That is still one of my favorite quotes of all time.

    SHEFFIELD: Which one was that?

    JACKSON: What is it that we subconsciously let our light shine and let other folks shine their light? It, something like that. And I'll mess it up, but that's my only introduction to Marianne Williams because before, long before she ran for [00:56:00] president, I had that quote up and I had her name under it.

    So, so what I'm saying, oh, that's take, that's the quote lady. That's the quote lady. She had a great quote, but I, do, I think, I'd be remiss with if not to mention though Biden campaign right now sucks. And if it wasn't for Clyburn in, in South Carolina, I don't think we would have a Biden as president.

    But also, so the detriment of, us, we had South Carolina and and, Jim Clyburn kind of sell Black folks down the river. It is like, we got, this is the Black vote. And, for us as Black folks, a lot of folks, I'm like, that's not necessarily what I was hoping for.

    That's not what I wanted to see. And I think we are going to see a lot of that same thing now. And it's, not showing up and giving the true answers to the, or solutions to the issues that are going [00:57:00] on in our communities. And it's still ignoring it. And I think we're going, we have the binary, we won't have any choice, but you don't have a Biden or a Trump.

    But at the same time, I think we're still going to get the short end of the stick and we're not going to move anywhere. And I don't think that's going to bring more voters to the polls in the future.

    SHEFFIELD: Did you guys see that picture of that, that Republican pollster put on Twitter the other day of the, two Black man, one of whom has three arms?

    Do you guys see that? Well, I got to show it to you then. Just as an example of what you were talking about, that their outreach efforts are just so ham-fisted. Let's see here. Oh man. He deleted his tweet.

    JACKSON: You got to screenshot those.

    SHEFFIELD: Oh, yeah, No, people screenshot it, so don't worry about that.

    But there's nobody got it. Add it to the mix here. So let's see. Share screen. Here we go. [00:58:00]

    Okay. Yeah. And and, just to your point Marcus, to go back the Republican party and their problem with Black outreach, there was a Republican pollster the other day that he put out a tweet that said the Republican victory in twenty-twenty-four depends on their being able to do this.

    And he used an AI-generated photo, because he couldn't find any Black Republicans canvassing photos. And the dude who is being talked to in the second photo has three hands. So yeah, if that's what you guys are working with you, do have a problem here.

    And to that end, they also had a, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, he has a program now, he's it based doing Black outreach by telling Black people that Martin Luther King was terrible and evil. [00:59:00]

    So, in some ways it's good that they’re so incompetent because they are so awful.

    JACKSON: But I mean, I think some of that, it, it, starts to resonate and you, I'm thinking of this young person who hears this now and, how many years is it going to take to unlearn all of this BS, right?

    For them to be in a state where they can actually learn and be politically educated and, vote for and think about things in the best interest. Hearing this now that person who gravitated might be that 1%. As we, as we talk about a small percentage of the Black community that starts to hear this, but.

    How long is it going to take for them to get enfranchised and, be in a position of power to, vote in their own?

    SHEFFIELD: Well, especially if they hear no other alternative message. Right. Because like, because like ultimately, the Democrats’ problem with Black people generally is always the same, which is, which is also their ultimate problem with the larger electorate, which is right-wing media [01:00:00] now is so huge that it's bigger than a lot of the mainstream quote unquote media.

    You look on CNN.com, like CNN on YouTube, they don't have as many people looking at their stuff as the Daily Wire does. You look at Facebook, the Daily Wire is the number one publisher on Facebook. They got more hits on Facebook than the New York Times does. And any of the alphabet networks or whatever and like these, are serious issues in terms of what people are being subjected to.

    So I think that's a good point that you're making there Tyson, at how things stand. Now it may not be, doing too much, but when people don't have any alternative, especially if they're on YouTube, like you look at Andrew Tate, I mean, he is not on YouTube now, but, there's a lot of kids, I hear from middle school teachers and high school teachers, that they're like, oh yeah, all my boys, they worship him and believe whatever he tells them.

    And [01:01:00] I think a lot of that is coming down to misogyny in many cases, particularly in regards to Black women. Like that's kind of a way to, that Republicans think that they're going to peel off Black men, young Black men through hating Black women. And some of that, like Matt Gaetz, the Republican from Florida, he explicitly said that, he said, for every Karen meaning White woman that we lose, we're going to get a Julio and Jamal. And that's what they're thinking. Whether that's going to work or how soon it would work, I don't know, but it's something that people have got to take seriously, I feel like.

    JACKSON: You know what, as you said, I thought of the most diabolical thing that, that they're doing in the background because looking at Kushner and Ivanka and their involvement in bringing in Kim Kardashian with their involvement in looking at mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex of thinking of alternatives, but also thinking in the background that there's an ushering in of releasing Black people from or [01:02:00] releasing all these people from prisons, but putting ankle monitors on them and having them pay for this.

    So that is the, change and how this happens now is like, all right, we got you out of jail. You got to ankle monitor on, but you owe us something. So where are they going to get the Black, those votes for Black men? If most of the Black men, if you will, that possibly will vote for them, are in jail because of the mass incarceration, so it's like, all right, we let them out of jail, and we might have a new voting pool.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. But it's an interesting thought. All right, well, is there any other aspect here that you guys we want to cover or are you, are we good to wrap up here?

    JOHNSON: I guess I would just say that for the Republicans, they've had a long-term strategy of trying to kind of break up Democratic coalition because in absolute terms, I mean the Democratic coalition is just larger than a Republican coalition.

    The Republican coalition is a minority of the country, a minority of the electorate. And so they have to [01:03:00] do things to try to get to peel off Blacks or Latinos or Asians. And the problem is their message essentially is a message that We want to have White people have less competition with other minority groups, that we want White people to have kind of an unquestioned place in society and, culturally, politically, economically, and for a larger percent, like the demographics of the country are just changing and that's going to be harder and harder to do, even if they can peel off a few percentage of people.

    So I think that Republicans as dangerous as a lot of stuff that they're pushing is, I think that they're ultimately coming at this from a position of weakness. And I think that ultimately if you just played this out over the long term and the demographics change in the way that they're changing, it's going to be difficult for them if they keep their same essentially just pro-White message.

    They're going to have a hard time in the long term.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I think that's right and that's, part of why they're going so crazy right now is that they know that, they know that, the [01:04:00] demographics are not in their favor. But on the other hand, they have decided perhaps we don't have to persuade people if we can just get them to stay home.

    And that's why people who have a progressive viewpoint, you have to do more than just say lesser than two evils is what I would say. All right. Well, I think that'll do it for this episode. I appreciate you guys joining me. Let me put your social media up on the screen here.

    So Tyson you are on Twitter and other places at BlackNoChaser, so people can check you out there. And then Marcus, you are on most of the places at MarcusHJohnson. So I encourage everybody to follow your gentleman there. And thanks for being here.

    JACKSON: Thank you.

    JOHNSON: Thank you.

    SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more of this program if you go to theoryofchange.show. theory of Change is part of the Flux Media Network. So go to flux.community for more podcasts and [01:05:00] articles about politics, religion, media, and society.

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  • Programming Note: “So This Just Happened” is going to go on a brief hiatus after this episode, but we wanted to make it an extra special one so we invited Lisa Curry, Matt’s co-host on “Doomscroll” for a live recording. Please enjoy and we’ll see you in a while!

    Headlines

    00:00 — House Republicans finally pass an impeachment, and it's going nowhere

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    24:00 — Beyoncé Knowles doing country songs proves very triggering to some people

    31:21 — Stung by stepped up criticism about his decaying mental state, Trump now claims his gaffes are on purpose

    36:13 — Kentucky Republican state legislator claims that her white father was a slave, despite having been born in 1933

    41:06 — Democrats win George Santos’s former congressional seat

    44:56 — African Methodist Episcopal Church calls for ceasefire in Gaza

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    15:58 — Idiots are betting money that Michelle Obama is going to run for president

    20:47 — RNC chair Ronna McDaniel reportedly about to resign as party faces cash crisis

    23:49 — Budweiser parent company seems to have paid Trump to beg MAGA not to boycott

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  • Now that the pretense of a Republican presidential primary is nearly at an end, the second general election matchup between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is beginning to take shape.

    And while the race features the same candidates as in 2020, the political dynamics are different in several important ways, most prominently that we are no longer in a global pandemic.

    One other difference this time around is that each of the candidates’ support base seems to have lost some enthusiasm. On the Republican side, a significant percentage of people who voted for Trump seem to be sick of his raging incompetence and foolish statements, while also harboring genuine concerns about his criminal acts to cling to power after he lost in 2020.

    On the Democratic side, there is also a lot of discontentment with Biden, especially among black Americans. In a December poll sponsored by the Associated Press, only 50% of black adults said they approved of the job Biden was doing as president.

    For the most part, the Republican party is not yet gaining much support from black Americans so it’s worth pondering what’s going on here. And joining me to discuss all this is Stephen Robinson. He’s a writer and podcaster who does both of those things on his website, Play Typer Guy.

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    * Why many black Americans’ conservative and religious fundamentalist viewpoints make them uneasy with Democrats

    * How the Israel-Gaza war is dividing older black Democrats from younger ones

    * Former black Republican Ty Ross on why she became a Republican and then finally quit the party

    * Country music’s continued race problem is a product of the reality that American reactionaries are about Confederate Christianity

    * Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, and toxic gravitation🔒

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    Audio Chapters

    0:00 — Introduction

    06:33 — Democrats' dilemma: A party that must contain the entire political spectrum

    13:19 — Why polls are not always the best way of measuring public opinion

    18:29 — The importance of trust in politics

    25:24 — College education is not the path to political progress

    31:34 — Democrats need to realize they can't bully voters on Gaza

    40:00 — Because they don't spend money on advocacy media, sometimes Democrats are blamed for things they didn't do

    45:35 — Matt Gaetz reveals Republican strategy to use misogyny to market to black and Hispanic men

    51:35 — Do celebrity endorsements matter?

    55:02 — How much does Kamala Harris help or hurt Democrats with black Americans?

    01:03:29 — Why a economic message will never be enough for the left

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    MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me to discuss all this is Stephen Robinson. He is a writer and podcaster who does both of those things on his website, Play Typer Guy, welcome to Theory of Change, Stephen.

    STEPHEN ROBINSON: Hi Matthew. How are you?

    SHEFFIELD: Good. All right. Well, so this is I think this is a conversation that I don't see happening a lot in the mainstream media to some extent, wondering especially on, on cable television that, wondering what is going on with black voters and Biden.

    It's, it's just kind of under the surface and I, think it reflects a dynamic to some degree that in the Democratic party you're [00:03:00] not supposed to talk about what the guys at the top are doing wrong. What's your sense?

    ROBINSON: That's very much a case of that I've seen a lot. I've seen it. One of the reasons I've kind of gone independent myself, playtyperguy.com, at Substack, my shameless plug, is to sort of write about these issues without particularly related to race without being kind of, oh, no, you're going to make Trump come back to sort of have that Animal Farm reference whenever you would just talk about these issues.

    And I think talking about an issue doesn't make it worse, nor does ignoring it make it go away. So, One of the issues I think is that when we talk about discontent, I. Amongst any other certain groups of people, particularly like, when there was over particularly Covid lockdowns and then suburban white women [00:04:00] concerned about their kids being taught about racism or books.

    When we saw a lot of that in Virginia when Glen Youngkin won, those folks are often presented in the media to do the focus groups with them, but not just that more likely someone of that demo is going to be on a mainstream news program presenting that issue. If you look at sort of the black voter base and a lot of the folks and or where that discontent is, aside from some articles that, the folks who make it, and there often aren't a lot of people of color, particularly black people and black women who make it on the mainstream news shows are hardcore Democrats. They're people who argue for the party. And rightly so. because that's their point of view. Even myself, if you were to put me on Meet the Press, I'm going to be like, well, of course, they're going to vote for Biden. Here's why I think he's done a good job.

    Here's why we catastrophic if Trump won again, were to win. [00:05:00] Yeah. And but a lot of those voices, and as we said, these elections are going to be, this election's going to be won on the margins. They, the, last few have been. They were talking about, what is it, 40,000, 40,000 votes amongst the certain states determined that Biden won in 2020.

    And then it was actually more narrow than Trump's electoral college vote victory that in the states where he won. So yeah, I mean, obviously we should talk about turnout issues and we should talk about And hoping you can get into that as well, like the sense of the position of the Democratic Party is in now in, in trying to maintain a very large coalition.

    Especially to the extent that they are, have been for the longest time, wanting to get folks who, and I think you can speak to that, of who were once so white suburban, college educated [00:06:00] people who were once right leaning. We still are, but once voted Republican and said, we're alienated by Trump and MAGA and are now Democrats and so, or inclined to vote for Democrats.

    And so I think there's been a lot of focus on those group groups, perhaps to the detriment of really listening and doing the outreach with particularly working class non-college educated black voters, black and black men, specifically Latino men.

    Democrats' dilemma: A party that must contain the entire political spectrum

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, it's, and it is a really complicated dilemma that Democrats have because the, per the Democratic voting Coalition, the electorate is very different in its inside itself compared to the Republican coalition.

    So the Republican coalition, overwhelmingly. Christian, overwhelmingly white and now much more rural than ever [00:07:00] before. So there, so a lot of the things that they, the messages that they can give to them, they all intersect perfectly with each other. And so whereas for Democrats, are basically have to contain the entire political spectrum except for, reactionary extremists.

    And so it's, and this is also true with regard to black Americans, because a lot of black Americans are actually conservatives. But they're not going to vote for the Republican party given its, many decades of history of both, trying to court racist people on the sly, and then now of course openly doing it under Sure.

    Computer. So it's so trying to figure out, well, what, how do you appeal to black Americans? it's very difficult in some sense. What might work for a, twenty-two year old college student in, in, in New York City is probably very [00:08:00] possibly not going to work for a 7-year-old grandmother in Atlanta, Georgia.

    ROBINSON: Yeah. And well, that's part of the dilemma. Well, it's been 60 years or will, be this year since the civil Rights Act. And so this idea that there's a permanent sort of connection to the Democratic party and acknowledgement of what the party has done on race issues that black people will have forever is a dangerous, I think, assumption.

    I think younger black voters are a potential get from Republicans focusing on, again, those working class rule issues. And people will say, well, no, because they Republican party is overtly racist. Yet I think I've argue, my point of view is I find that argument somewhat insulting because you say that I'm from South Carolina, I'm from the rural south, and of course all of my family members are [00:09:00] Democrats, longtime Democrats.

    But if you were to say to them that, Hey, the argument I'm going to give to you, to my cousin for instance is Republicans are racist, Trump is racist, duh, come vote for me. But to your neighbor on the guy you work with, a white person who's also didn't go to college, also from the rural south, I'm going to have to, I'm going to try to like make an argument on the merits. And also I probably won't overtly state that they're racist. because Democrats don't usually do that. They try to say that like, Republicans, oh, they're for small government. They still, I mean Nancy, Pelosi I would get screamed at when I would write columns saying she shouldn't go around saying that we a strong Republican party.

    Like what does that mean? When were they, yeah. Useful allies and she's romanticized Reagan in the past and those things. And then, so you say that as if saying okay, well again, for the sake of argument, hey Matthew, you voted for Republicans in the past, you're [00:10:00] or maybe a Republican, but here's how we're going to try to win you over on the issues.

    because we don't think you're racist and we don't think you're willing voting for racist, but we're going to tell black voters that obviously you don't have that same choice as Matthew. because obviously you're a big dummy if you were to ever consider Like all these other issues that we think most.

    Is, that's driving most of our good friends across the aisle, as Biden says. And I think that becomes the dangerous sort of, well,

    SHEFFIELD: it's kind of Yeah. Patronizing basically. Absolutely. In some sense. Yeah. and there is kind of a similar messaging problem with, Hispanic Americans as well, that Democrats generally seem to think that Hispanics and Latinos only care about immigration.

    That they all care about immigration and it's, and that they want more of it when the reality is that a lot of people in that demographic have nothing to do with the immigration system. Oh, yeah. they're multi-generational family [00:11:00] and don't know anyone in an, who lives in another country.

    No, Yeah. And you're insulting them to imply that they do that they're not American telling them they're not Americans.

    ROBINSON: In some ways it's overtly racist because you're sort of saying that they. Without looking at as a class issue, like some folks would say, oh, because American is a class system.

    It's like, oh, I got here legally, and I don't, I look, as opposed to being like, oh, Trump's rhetoric is going to offend every Latino voter and, we're going to win Florida easily and we're going to win Texas easily. I mean, this was rhetoric in 2016. I'm sure you might have saw some of that, and obviously that did not happen.

    DeSantis like dominated when he was Ron DeSantis when he ran for a reelection amongst Latino voters, winning previous democratic strongholds because Democrats had been, their support had been eroding. I think what was happening with certain Hispanic voters particularly Latino [00:12:00] men.

    And working class has sort of. Potentially I said, would be a fear of happening with black voters. If that were to ever happen, that's going to be disastrous. But where, they don't have that long-term connection to the Democratic party of like, you've always been there for us.

    We'll be there for you. And what happened in 2020 was that it in Texas, Biden was doing very poorly amongst some border towns because of concerns about lockdowns. And I remember a lot of the dialogue from a lot of white liberal pundits during, covid was like, obviously the mitigation factors we, we did, we needed to do.

    That was my opinion. But the, there was often a sense of. Condescending from, of like, oh, come on, just stop whining. You're just sitting at home in your sweatpants is a wonderful thing. Whereas a lot of people were desperate [00:13:00] and scared, especially if their work was sort of entrepreneurial, which was the case for a lot of Hispanic folks in that area of like, they were desperate and concerned that lockdowns would, they couldn't do their jobs.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. They literally could not work. It was impossible to work. And yeah, no, there is.

    Why polls are not always the best way of measuring public opinion

    SHEFFIELD: And a lot of it is that I think the, Democratic party, and this is also true of the Republican party having been, on both sides, that, but the Democrats are more centralized in. The Acela corridor so that New York to D.C, and if you don't live there, then you're not really relevant and they don't want to hear from you.

    The only extent they want to hear from you is in a public opinion survey. But I can say having been a former pollster that polls can be very bad at, helping you understand public opinion because you have to understand how to ask the question [00:14:00] in a way that has the same meaning for you and for the respondent.

    And that actually can be very difficult in, a lot of different ways. So especially like when you ask people like about whether they're, their ideological position. So a lot of, black Americans, again, they have, they come from a very, fundamentalist Christian viewpoint.

    They, they believe the Bible is literally true. And they may think that homosexuality is a sin. And they'll call themselves conservative when you ask them. But then what do you do with that? What can you do with that fact about them? And that's where polling has a problem and how you, why you have to get out there and actually you listen to people like this is one thing that the, Republicans have really well for themselves is besides the fact that right-Wing media is now so huge and has such vast audiences whether it's, Joe Rogan or Daily Wire or [00:15:00] any of these talk radio people.

    It, it has a, huge audience to, to push the, propaganda out to them. But it also allows kind of a two-way push as well, because, these, especially the local talk radio hosts, they have, people calling in and telling them, this is what I think about Oh yeah. Trump or whatever.

    And, so you can get a, it's like having a profitable focus group and they've got, hundreds of them. And then, of course website comments are, good for that as well to kind of suss out public opinion in a way that's, that is organic. because like a lot of times people will be like, well we can just do focus groups.

    But you know, there's a lot of people who won't want to participate in a focus group. And even if they did, it's not a real forum. Like, you sitting around a table with a bunch of strangers being videotaped. Is that a real conversation?

    ROBINSON: Oh yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: I don't think it is.

    ROBINSON: Well, yeah, not at all.

    And [00:16:00] to what you are saying about that ecosystem I've called it an ecosphere of like the same type of dialogue that's being had for Republicans. Again, a white Christian cultural organization. Like that's its base and that's what it, and we can flatter them and say it's an identity.

    Yeah, exactly. And we can flatter them and say it's about small government and freedom, etc. Etc. And so forth. But like at that core and so just watching Fox News or just being in that, well, that is going to hit a good deal of that base and or, and, reflects what they're stating. We said that, Donald Trump was a midway stuff.

    The Fox News viewer made good. Because he was of that group. he wasn't simply like the, quote David Frum had where we thought Fox News worked for us and suddenly we were working for Fox News. Well, what happened was, Trump and then who came after him? People like Marjorie, the Green and others who had been out there, [00:17:00] who'd been the reliable voters for them.

    There's like, okay, well we don't need, we don't need the front people anymore. We're taking over. And, but they reflect those voters in a way that if you put, you took Nancy Pelosi without identifying her. Because I think, if you put her into a black beauty parlor in South Carolina and they, and the people knew she was Nancy Pelosi and they came with the cars and they'd be respectful for her and like her because they like her policy politics generally.

    But if you just put her there without them knowing who this was, I. How natural would the rapport be? How natural would the connection be? How their dialogue and, how, would that go versus dropping Trump in sort of a very rural bar somewhere in Ohio? Like the stuff he would complain about, the stuff that he would naturally sort of talk about while having a beer with a guy is [00:18:00] true.

    He would fit right in. Yeah, fit right in. I mean, I think Democrats have for years, so like almost twenty-five years now. So they complained about the Al Gore George W. Bush the argument of like, who'd you rather have a beer with? And it was like, that's ridiculous. I mean, Hamilton even made fun of it.

    It's like, the musical Hamilton made fun of that idea. And it's like, well, it's not just about the pop. I mean, obviously politics is a popularity contest because that's how people get elected, but it's like, I. It's also about trust.

    The importance of trust in politics

    ROBINSON: Who do I trust? If I trust you? That's everything. if I want to have this beer with you, if I trust you, if I think you're kind of like trying to sell me something, I don't trust you.

    And I think what has happened with that deterioration amongst rural white folks who had been voting democratic, who had voted for Bill Clinton in the past, even Barack, Obama, and then it just collapsed in 2016. And then, even as we're seeing with certain groups of, black voters and, Latino voters.

    What happens if you don't build [00:19:00] a trust? Democrats think, oh, I could just come in and pitch you on the issues. Why don't they get it? Why don't they get that? I care more about these issues than Republicans. Republicans don't care. Like we're going to come in and actually, when a tornado blows through Kentucky, we're going to come in and fix it.

    We're going to help you. And Republicans aren't. Why don't they care? It's like, because they don't trust you. Ultimately, everything comes down to. Who do we trust? And essentially having lost that trust has been the longest problem. But part of it is because as you said, it's at a cello corridor. You're like so far removed from the people you need.

    I once wrote about Democrats need more Lauren and boars and everyone, the immediate response was, what do you mean, nor idiots? More people doing well. no, Not the terrible stuff about her. Not her terrible politics. Just that if you look, the idea that this was a woman of a GED had worked as a waitress and worked small business owner then went to congress, young [00:20:00] name.

    The idea of more minorities who represent who are from that, as opposed to, I think Democrats can very much get caught into the model minority trap. So it's just like, here's our. Leaders who, and it's like, oh, well, she went to Harvard and Yale, and she yeah. In a graduate, it's a very, but

    SHEFFIELD: Barack Obama is a great example of what you're talking about.

    Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And no, actually no, that's a great point. And actually I've, been glad to see the rise of some of these younger democrats, like Jasmine Crockett, when I see her going out there and tearing into Republicans and doing it in a way that is just like a regular, a regular, average black woman from the South, Would do. and she's great at it. And, the other thing also is, that have that all these confederate, Republican old boys watching her do this to them, like they have got to be, tearing up inside.

    ROBINSON: Oh yeah, absolutely.

    SHEFFIELD: Seeing what's [00:21:00] happening. Like that's part of why also why I love it as well to see, but you're right about that.

    Yeah. there is, kind of this thought that we, can use polling to determine what people want and not actually have to talk to them and not actually be there because like, like, because there, there is I mean, there is a serious issue that they really are kind of isolated and Do their own thing and, they think that everybody agrees with them. Like, I think there was this, well, like for instance, they've, abandoned it. And this is more Latino related. like there, there was this propagation of the term Latin X. In a lot of democratic policy circles for a while, and nobody bothered to ask Latinos, do you want that term? Do you want to use it? And it turns out they did not want to use it. And so, so now it's actually been banned by various democratic organizations because they're like, well, when we use language [00:22:00] like that, no one knows what the f**k we're talking about. So no, we should stop that. We should stop that.

    ROBINSON: It's just a different, it's just a different language. I mean, republicans have been brilliant on language when they talk about things like parental rights and they talk about things of that which go back to the idea of conservatives blacks and Latinos when they were talking about those issues.

    The idea was that, oh, well obviously those groups are going to come out and force for us to get rid of Ron DeSantis because they obviously. He's racist with those, those books and arguments and whereas instead the stuff about the type of the idea of sexualizing stories and stuff like that, which all that being BS, but no one was taking the time to actually thread that needle because as you said, there were a lot of conservative minorities of states who are like, oh, I don't want my kid reading about.

    And I think what happens is Democrats are then shocked or then stunned because they haven't had the dialogue with actual reading class people. [00:23:00] I found that you were saying a party that was sort of living by polls forever to the point where, and it made me very frustrated because I remember in 2020 during the primaries where by a lot of Biden's value proposition was based on polls.

    Look at these polls of me against Donald Trump. Clearly I'm the best. Listen to these polls. And then, the past few months polls were like going poorly. For Biden, and there was a complete dismissal of polling data. And I was like, well, there's, we can obviously look, dig down, make sure polls aren't BS.

    The but to reject the science right out for like a gut instinct is very scary and often is what losing campaigns do. It's what Romney's campaign did in 2012 being like, oh, there's no way. Un the polls. Yeah, unskew them. And so with that, I remember a former colleague of mine, so a white male, the, poll came out of Biden [00:24:00] not doing very well amongst black voters comparatively to 2020.

    And his response was, if I may say the term b******t, like that's all he said, and I was like, okay, well why do you believe that? Why do you think it's wrong? Said no. Science was just like, no, there's no way. that's the case. And it's like, and the Crosstab is about work, working-class black voters.

    And I was like, and I drilled in and it was like, well you've, do you, have you spoken to or interacted with or interviewed as I have any of these people? because I don't presume to speak for black people who aren't from specifically my demographic. I talked to them, I interview with them, I and so forth to form this opinion of where things are.

    Yeah. And that just wasn't happening. It was this sense of, obviously they realized Trump is a literal, grand dragon of the Klan and that democracy is at stake and clearly this poll is bs. There's no [00:25:00] way that a black person is either going to vote for Trump or not vote. And that's dangerous because Trump did improve moderately his performance among black voters and Latino voters, particularly men in 2020. So, I was very concerned when I got that sort of response. It was very frustrating to me.

    College education is not the path to political progress

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, some of the, I think some of it is just that again, they, people who are, let's say highly have a professional job and or may have a college degree or higher there, there's, there is a real danger in politics to project your rationale and your thinking onto other people.

    and, I think you see that in particular with regard to college. Most Americans have never gone to college don't have a college degree, and that's always been the case. And yet so much of the rhetoric about. Opportunity or [00:26:00] career advancement or, retraining or, dealing with unemployment situations is, well, you should just go back to school and get another degree.

    And that doesn't work for most people. That's not going to work for most people. Most people can't take four, four years out of their life or whatever other, 2, 2, 4 years, whatever. They can't go and put that into college. Because they have to feed their family and feed themselves. And like, unless you're going to work to make college free, you should shut up about that.

    it's, just not relevant to, to a lot of people. And I'm not saying, that, I'm not saying I'm hostile to it or anything like that, but it's not going to work for people. And yeah, you have to have multiple solutions. To people because it isn't one size fits all.

    ROBINSON: Absolutely. And I, I, also support, college being sort of an extension of high school that where, we fund that all the way [00:27:00] through, I think there's a benefit or even vocational training or whatever.

    But what would also kind of amuse me about that argument is that many of the people saying college should be free, go to college, would then say, we need to have my student loans canceled or forgiven because I am like a hundred thousand dollars in debt and I make 50 thou, $50,000 a year.

    And so like someone who's like a plumber or works at a, factory or whatever, who makes more than that and doesn't have that near of debt, it's like, wait a minute. So your solution, even if I didn't wind up in the debt, I wouldn't, your job doesn't pay what mine does. Those are the jobs I'm losing.

    And I think that becomes a sense of, well. You've got to address the people who are like, all this technology has been wiping out types of jobs that are very valuable. And I think going back to what you said about not listening or not, I remember, and this was a big issue in 2020 regarding Medicare for All and those sort things, or dealing with [00:28:00] insurance companies and so forth.

    And it was shocking that, people who I really respect are sweet on the issue. Like Liz Warren or even Bernie Sanders were kind of unaware that a major demographic for the democratic party, black women also, disproportionately worked in the medical insurance industry, like sort of that, the administration aspect that they would go out and talk about how, well, this is the worst thing that, that's the worst part of it.

    And Medicare for remove all of that, so essentially they're talking about gutting a lot of jobs for their base. Now I think that's probably going to be necessary, but it was sort of like they hadn't thought about it. So, if you haven't thought about it, then you have no way. Everyone's like, oh wait a minute, she's talking about gutting my jobs.

    It goes back to trust, right? Because if I come in, if I've prepared for the meeting, and again, I've been worked in court, if I've prepared for the meeting with you and I know, okay, well [00:29:00] here's where we need to go. Obviously understand how you'd be impacted. Here's like either exit or here's a trade.

    Like somehow, but I'm at least prepared as opposed to my coming in. That's like the worst boss in the world, right? Like, okay, Matthew, here's our exciting new program. You're going to do this. And then, this department that handles the Theory of Change podcast will be sent to India. And you'd be like, well, that's my job.

    Like, how do you not know what I do? Like I hate you. And so I think sometimes there's that sort of sense of people not even listening or being aware of this. The very serious concerns that happened. Again, as I said earlier with Covid, where there was that idea that like all, Democrats are talking as if.

    Not just their voters, but all voters were like able to, as I was fortunate to just kind of ride out the pandemic. Working from home, you're still getting a paycheck, but the frustration is that you can't go outside and have a drink with your friends or do that. And so instead they were everyone complaining about the [00:30:00] lockdowns is spoiled because they want to go to brunch.

    There was a lot of liberals posting that or talking that way and it's like, no, There are people, it's great that you decided to start making your own bread at home and you took a cocktail course from YouTube or whatever, but that person, that human being who was, bringing the bread to your table at your favorite brunch stop or the person who was making drinks for you last year They are, scared. They don't know whether you know how things are going to go for them or. Yeah, what, or if there's going to be an industry for them. So I think that becomes, or what's next? Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's a sense of really not knowing, and I think that's one of the advantages that Republicans often have because they are often in the circle.

    It's, I find it very frustrating and Pelosi has done this, a lot of talking, well that's not, we are going to focus on the kitchen table issues. Which is [00:31:00] often seems like a very patronizing way of saying, this is what is really important. And it's like, well, no, I think, yes, at kitchen tables, in certain parts of the country, these were important issues to them.

    The issue of, trans, people in sports, what's being taught in the schools and so forth. And there's, I believe there's a right that we are on the right side of those issues, but we need to address it, not roll our eyes and be like, oh, and actually explain. Yeah. Yeah. So explain it. Yes. Yeah, that would be good.

    Democrats need to realize they can't bully voters on Gaza

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, you're right about that. And also stop telling people what they should be concerned about. Like that's their business, what they want to be interested in. If you want them to be interested in something else, then you need to explain why they should be interested in it and not try to shame them into it because it never, it doesn't work.

    Life doesn't work that way. If you're, you want someone to be your friend, you're not going to shame them into being your friend. You want to date someone. You, can't [00:32:00] shame them into dating you. That's not, that isn't how any of this stuff works in any other context. But, but Pelosi I do think is kind of an emblematic figure in this discussion.

    And I'm glad you've mentioned her a few times, but I mean, like most recently, of course, she has been, just completely denigrating people who are concerned about the situation in Gaza and, all the people being killed there, and the war crimes being committed by Israel. And basically saying that the only people concerned about that are being paid by Vladimir Putin.

    And you claim to be concerned about these other issues, and so you just need to, sit back and do what we tell you on Israel and. People are like, what? that's not an argument.

    ROBINSON: No,

    That's not

    SHEFFIELD: anyone. It's, it is offensive. And, and, recently there in, in the news there were several a bunch of, black religious leaders that had written a, petition to Biden to say, please stop this.

    You stop funding all this [00:33:00] awfulness that Israel is doing. Please stop it. And, like this is causing some real, tension. But the sort of Estella Democrats, they don't really see it. I don't, it doesn't seem to affect them.

    ROBINSON: No. It's a very serious issue. I mean, part of the problem is that, and I think you frame it well with the Estella issue because the presumption so often is that the only people making noise about it are these obnoxious college kids outside by window.

    And they don't, they're not connected to the real world. They're kind of, and granted you actually do need college kids, so it's not great to alienate them either. But it's that presumption, right? Sort of the idea of the, aimless hippies from hair musical Yeah. As opposed to the civil rights, the more organized and disciplined civil rights movement and so forth.

    But that's not what's happening. And so when the, I written about the Pelosi situation and I said [00:34:00] it was fascinating that she, gave that interview and made those offensive comments the same day that I'd read in the Sunday Times about the black pastors. And I was like. Joe Biden has been doing the circuit, going to these black churches to sort of drum up support.

    And it's like, black people, especially in, the South, especially in these church, they like Joe Biden. Do you know who they like a lot more? Dr. Martin, Luther King. Do you know who the FBI, investigated? because Pelosi was talking about FBI investigations into people and to state that without the history, it's like, well, calling for ceasefire is what Putin wants.

    So to connecting it because sure, he might want that. That's different from people of good faith who a long-term, pro-Peace Pro, any sort of resolution. And that was, the challenge for King and I and the, yeah, he was accused to be a Russian [00:35:00] student. Communist. Yeah. and I'd included these things from the FBI report saying like, what he said was con, communist talking points. It's what the com you know, it's what the Soviet Union wants to get out of Vietnam and to, and that threat. So that connection was very real. And to state that is such a disconnect of like, and it's different from, in a way, from as offensive as say, a Republican like Nikki, Haley saying that it's never been a racist country or whatever.

    It actually hits harder when it's someone like Pelosi who for a photo op will kind of link arms with other, black democratic politicians and do like, the imaging. The imagery of the civil rights movement. Like a lot of the, we shall overcome stuff and all of the, imagery of it, while also, again, when it's politically in my sort of king column that I'd written.

    For King's birthday was sort of okay. What I want people to remember [00:36:00] right now is he was not about, he was fully about peace. Because when you just think that calling for peace against, racist Southerners who are bombing your home, because he wasn't in some Ivy league, Ivy, Tower being sort of clueless about, calling for ceasefires or calling for peace or not responding in violence.

    These people were targeting his home. He was still sticking to his, principles. And, I think that speaks to something, and this had been an issue again, at a former place I'd worked and it, one of the reasons I'd gone independent was that there was a big uproar of just even talking about the issue.

    So shortly afterward, Margulies had made, the actor had made some really offensive comments about black people. Protesting against some of what Israel was doing in response to the attack and the sort of [00:37:00] the idea that like, we've been here for you. Why aren't you here for us? And I'd commented about how that was sort of paternalistic, also not actually reflective of what's the civil rights movement?

    Actual principles, yeah. And principles and so forth. And the response was like, how do you know? Essentially the response of you're an anti-Semite essentially try to shut down the argument. And I sort of said. Okay, fine. And one of the reasons I've gone independent and do independent journalism people know where to find me for that is that, okay, well I have to actually talk about these issues.

    One issue, Is that at the same time this is occurring and people are kind of like surprised that any, there's 10, black voters might not turn out or they're dismissing it or they were saying a lot of really offensive stuff about, well, any Muslims who stay home, well Trump's going to do, almost like trauma, like being [00:38:00] relishing in what Trump, a second Trump term might do to any Muslim or, Palestinian American or anyone who would not show up for Biden, well, you're going to deserve what Trump's going to do to you, which is a horrible thing to state.

    And I said, well, this is not constructive, this is not helpful. And. Again, if you were to pay attention to these people, if you go to these black barbershops, talk to these young black men who, for them, their lives haven't materially improved since the Trump era to through the Biden era. And I know we've talked about the economy improving, but it hasn't for some of these folks.

    But a lot of these people do see it as if, despite the rhetoric of that Democrats will make about what they will do for black voters. If black Americans and how we stand for them, they, it, they'll make it clear to the extent the ends they will go to [00:39:00] for, if it's Israel, if it's Ukraine and it is not being.

    Dis, and I've seen it dismissed of like, oh, well it's obviously more complicated than that. They should understand that, and this is, and make these, it's like, okay, well you need to sort of try to explain it, try to empathize why these folks with why these folks feel this way. But I wasn't, you weren't getting that.

    It was just sort of like to even think that they should be frustrated and not get that Trump is the existential threat. they don't have the right

    SHEFFIELD: to feel frustrated. Yeah, Yeah, and, some of the, I mean, there is, I mean, to be fair of people who are, frustrated with the frustration a lot of it is the case that, when people go and do these interviews and there's a, actually the New York Times has actually done some really good work lately on talking to dissatisfied black voters.

    So I have to give them some kudos in that regard. But.[00:40:00]

    Because they don't spend money on advocacy media, sometimes Democrats are blamed for things they didn't do

    SHEFFIELD: Like part, I mean some of the issue that people have with the Democratic party is a challenge of misinformation. Like they actually don't know that, various things that they would like were blocked by the Republicans. And or in the case, well, or in the case of the child tax credit blocked by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

    So like some of the things that people, that you see people in these, interviews are, expressing frustration to Democrats. They're not the fault of Democrats, but it is the fault of Democrats for not having told them,

    ROBINSON: oh yeah, this obviously and Donald Trump is scum and the Republican parties have sort of, obviously its base is very different, but.

    Republican voters certainly held Republican responsible for failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But one thing that was very clear that Trump did, I mean, he laid into [00:41:00] McCain, John McCain, who had cast that vote. Like it was clear. It was clear that he had, he said that he has betrayed Republicans, he's betrayed America, he's betrayed the cause.

    And Biden has always tiptoed around cinema and Manchin. It was always the, fear that they would switch parties will lose control. We couldn't get judges. And, a lot of those arguments could be legitimate. But at the same time, I think when you go in hat in hand to black voters and they're like, well, what happened to our voting rights?

    Because during this, these past four years, this is what I. What Republican-run states have been doing of trying to, suppress our vote. What have you done about it? It's like, oh, I couldn't do anything while having control because Cinema and mansion, but he does. But then, but like, here's this cool bipartisan infrastructure deal [00:42:00] I did with them or here's, I, will never say a bad word about them.

    And that can be a sort of mixed message. I understand why he had to sort of play it that way, but it can really have that sense of, Democrats aren't at weird situation. Some tremendously awful stuff has happened to key, to marginalized groups. So these anti-trans bills, these anti-gay bills, these, voter suppression bills obviously the horrible abortion bans that were passed on Biden's watch. Now we know that it's not as simple as it's, but at the same time it is as simple as on his watch. Even though it's about it did happen, it's, it, happened. And to run on the kind of, it seems sometimes de their Democrats are still trying to run on the more defensive sense of this is [00:43:00] what De Republic's going to do if you don't elect me, but I'm going to hold the breach.

    because that had been the abortion argument for years, right? And, but now that it happens, it has to be like, how are you demonstrably going to stop them from doing what they've already done? Which a slightly different argument. I think that can be very tough. I think, in a way Democrats can struggle with that.

    The struggle with like going, sort of the bare-knuckles brawl with Republicans on this and sort of, attacking them. I think again, it was something I'd seen a former colleague had written that had been about, there was a young woman in Florida who is trans and had just, I voted for, Biden in 2020 and like my, I've lost freedoms in the past.

    Four years. And it was more of just a primal scream. She wasn't necessarily, she was not going, wasn't necessarily saying that she wasn't going to vote for Biden or was, it's more of just like, I, I did what I [00:44:00] was kind of in a way supposed to do, and now it's still like, what can happen?

    And it was again, the response of you dumb idiot. Like, obviously you don't understand how politics work or that, Biden has no control over that. What do you, what's wrong with you? Why are you whining about it? And it's just like, that's just a really, to me, grotesque way of looking at this situation, especially whenever I see the idea that these people in these Republican run states who are living in tyranny should just pack up and move to.

    A Democratic-run date that's, incredibly more expensive. And it's like, well, that's not the option.

    SHEFFIELD: So how do you're going to get them a job? You're going to get them a house, you're going to get them a professional network that you're going to do all that for, 20 million people. Right. I'd love to see that.

    Yeah, no, it is, and it's, a, it's an issue. And so, and some of these things, Biden can't say, but if, Democrats had more media [00:45:00] and if there was an actual liberal media, they could say these things and delivered that message to people that maybe that Biden can't say just out of, reality.

    But yeah, they, but they don't. And like the right has invested now billions of dollars in right wing media, and now we're at this point where I. You know, especially they're targeting on YouTube. And YouTube has just become a right-wing cesspool from a political standpoint. And it's largely because the left hasn't even tried to do anything significant.

    Matt Gaetz reveals Republican strategy to use misogyny to market to black and Hispanic men

    SHEFFIELD: And like, and they're, and now they're pushing out, especially, it doing a big push in the realm of trying, to target. So like Matt Gates for instance, said recently that for every Karen that we alienate as Republicans, there's going to be a Julio and a Jamal who are going to sign up for this.

    And, that's bravado and it's ridiculous. But they [00:46:00] actually are going for this. Oh yeah. Like they actually are doing it. You see, like there's been this pro proliferation of, right-wing figures that are black that they're black men, that they're really pushing out there and spending s**t loads of money getting in them, in the faces of every black man that they can you know, and it's got to be having some effect.

    Otherwise, I don't think they'd keep doing it. Yeah.

    ROBINSON: Oh, well, totally Matthew and I, mean, Matt was more correct in that argument than I think Chuck Schumer was in Twenty-sixteen when he was kind of dismissing concerns about erosion of support for Democrats and amongst working-class white voters. He was kind of for, he, I think he literally said, for every.

    Voter like that, that we lose, we're going to pick up two more suburban soccer bombs. Which didn't happen, obviously. No. But it also was sort of, well what is that strategy? Because [00:47:00] your, strategy to become Rockefeller Republicans and yet still hold on to per, working, working class black voters and working class Hispanic voters like that seems, yeah.

    How's that going to work for you? Like, how is that, going to work for you? And, but with Trump, like MAGA specifically, so the MAGA movement, just very young, far younger than, the Democratic Party. Think of the Democratic Party as very sort of respect of your elders, respect of the leadership.

    Wait, your turn type added, the MAGA is very and people call it a cult, but it's also sort of will devour anyone who either steps out of line or it's not producing right? Like, if you've, you lost this election, we're going to get rid of you. You failed to deliver for us, we're going to, it can be ruthless that way.

    But it's also a sort of toxic masculinity. So I think when people talk about, dismissing what Gates had said there about like, getting, Julio, Jamaal [00:48:00] and, I, I made fun of him about this as well, but I said, well, he is recognizing that he's being very open about us. That, that it's a home, it's a homophobic, transphobic, a sojournistic toxic male movement above all, that's the theme that seems to be the, if you look, if you list, if you spend like, and God love you if you do this, but if you spent a week in right-wing media of different, any for, that's the theme more than anything. More than like, is there stuff about black people suck or that's always sort of racially charged or is it specifically homo, toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny is the, sort of the defining the unifying message.

    The unifying message. And then that's going to grab those folks. Because then it's sort of, especially with the classism, because then it's just sort of, I remember again, sort of that [00:49:00] Ivy league tower liberalism, the idea of like, oh, well, I. Obviously black people get that when, say someone on Fox or a Republican goes on Fox and talks about violent crime and talks about thugs.

    He's just saying the N-word. And it was just sort of, well, no, that's literally not the N-word because I just said thug. And I'm not saying the N-word, but also you are presuming that black people specifically in cities aren't concerned about violent crime and don't themselves talk about the thug that broke into my car or my house or whatever, or That, that red, so presuming often that this is the stuff that is, everyone knows is overtly racist, will have the same response. Yeah. And well, it's not like the sort of the coded language and that sort of, and so the idea that, Julio Jamal. Aren't potential gets for MAGA is to me very dangerous because that to [00:50:00] me reflects a lack of awareness of what the, sort of, yes.

    You said unifying message of the MAGA movement. Like a lot of like, like Trump running against Haley. I mean, his. The “Nimrada” stuff, for instance, is sort of racist and he's talked about going back where you came from. So like that. But overall, it's very misogynistic. It's male dominance. It's that type of, that's how he goes after people.

    In fact, in 2016, I would say people presume that hi, they acted as his whole campaign was, one of drooling racism and certainly that was there. But one would also argue it was essentially toxic masculinity, which is very appealing and dangerous and is a link to most fascist movements. I mean, that is just sort of, it's Unifying principle.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's, also useful for them with younger men as well, because [00:51:00] As religiosity has declined and as fundamentalism has declined. You're not, a young black man is not going to be interested in, oh, we have to save America for Jesus, because he'll be just as likely to say, f**k that.

    I don't believe in Jesus. It's all imaginary. So that has no purchase for him. But if you tell him, black women are uppity and they're getting out of control and they need to know their place. Some, guys are going to want to hear that because they think that already. And, this is an entree for them for the right wing with them.

    Do celebrity endorsements matter?

    SHEFFIELD: And, and I think you also see that with some of the outreach that Trump did with basically selling presidential pardons before he left office. He made it a point to go out and find people specifically who were involved in the hip hop, world, and try to get them pardons.

    And then it, paid a dividend even with, with Snoop Dogg recently who just came out and said that he's [00:52:00] got no problem with Trump. And likely, of course, related to the fact that Trump pardoned his first record executive friend from back, in the day with death row records.

    Like that's so, like there is, they're doing something with this and to just write it off. It's, very, it is very dangerous, as you said, I

    ROBINSON: think. Yeah. And there is, if you're a black person against the world, and I saw these voters, there is a sort of a condescending racism that comes from the white left that is sort of very similar, if not arguably worse in certain ways than what comes from the right.

    Everyone presumes that the right, they're all Klan members coming after you and so forth. And, I think what happens is for a lot of people of a certain income level or certain background for them is six, one half is the other. So they're going to be like, well, what other, what are the other ways that Trump is going to help me?[00:53:00]

    And is it, is it going to fit? Get me a job, gimme economy, or, whatever. Or he, is he going to actually even just listen to me? And I think that seems to, that seems to be important. I remember and I had written about this, it's like, Biden probably shouldn't list upon his list of achievements for the black community, what he's done for black people in the past four years to be a black Supreme Court justice and a black Vice president.

    It sort of is, those are great things. But for, and that Jamal, it's just what? Like, okay, I'm glad that very successful white me at all. Yes. Especially it's like, and it sucks that Ketanji Brown Jackson, who's wonderful, was nominated during this time, but it's like, yeah, the Supreme, nothing about the Supreme Court is good.

    And it's not like she tipped the balance or whatever. When Trump's gloating about Supreme Court picks, it's because I tipped the balance of the court and here's where we are kicking butt with the [00:54:00] courts. But here it's just like, yeah. So I nominated a black lady to the Supreme Court.

    I kept that promise. And then that same Supreme Court, I mean, she didn't vote for it obviously, but it's over that overturned Roe, v. Wade is not, it, winds up being that form of, I would say shallow identity politics, right? Because again, Jamal Julio, they don't care. Like they don't care that certain.

    High status people who wouldn't live in their neighborhoods anyway. Right. Even if they are the same race or, and that's sort of, and I think Republicans have been leveraging on that sense of the going after the elites and that sort of thing in a way, because it's yeah, why do this person doesn't even live in your neighborhood, won't stop in your neighborhood?

    And he's saying that like, look, I've, here's how I gave this person who was already well off a raise is not going to hit, doesn't hit in the same way. because they can't then translate it to a different specific way. Their lives have been improved. [00:55:00] Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, that's true.

    How much does Kamala Harris help or hurt Democrats with black Americans?

    SHEFFIELD: And well, I guess the, elephant in the room on this discussion though is Kamala Harris I think, it's. I think at this point, people seem to have realized that yeah, people don't really

    ROBINSON: like her. And

    SHEFFIELD: and that's true across races and geographies and whatever you want to say. I mean, it was,

    ROBINSON: I would, interject. I say I think I, I do think black voters think highly of her.

    I don't, that sometimes does not always show up in the approval polls. I think I, I think it's usually like Nikki, Haley likes to try to fear monger about a president Kamala. And I think when you do it that way, in a way that can really. Get sort of black voters more defensive of, supportive of Harris in a sense of like, okay, don't, trash her.

    That type of thing. Well, because she's using

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. because I mean that actually is a racist [00:56:00] attack, basically. Yeah. Because she's using anti-blackness as a way of propping herself up as a

    ROBINSON: non-white person. Yeah. But I think I would agree with you. Otherwise he's not sort of, and I've again gotten into lots of trouble for this as well, but I was like, yeah, I mean I, it was a sort of, I was writing about this in 2020, which was that, okay, well Biden's going to be Biden's mortal.

    Here's what eight years is going to look like. And that's the commitment you're making to eight years. Yet there was all these people talking about, oh, well Biden will retire, not run for again. Or they was like, well, none of that will happen. That does not happen. That will never happen. I. Are we going to commit to Biden for eight years?

    And then people made that choice, like, okay, we're committing to him for eight years. And then, four years later, people were saying, so do you think he's not going to run again? Do you think you're going to, no, that's not the, that's not going to happen. And I think there is some concern we don't know to the extent [00:57:00] that in key swing states, and I think that's what Haley would want it to be that it's winds up being this proxy fight between VP.

    Everyone's like, Trump's either going to go to jail or die, or Biden's going to die. And so it's really about Harris versus, but I think to the extent that a lot of Indy who might not like Harris or might be skittish about her in say, Wisconsin Michigan, the benefit of the Dobbs decision is that they will vote for.

    The policy, the people who are going to come out and Grant Stoneman is like, okay, well I want to make sure that there's no nor National abortion ban. I want to protect these things. I want to protect, this is a DA Republican party that can't govern. God forbid they get the White House. This is what I'm going to vote for.

    And so that I think helps us with moderates and independents in those areas. I mean, I think there are, I think the drawback, the [00:58:00] risk would be in those states if there are right-leaning, voters who say had voted for Romney, I. Gave Trump a chance in 2016. Just couldn't bear it in 2020 because they thought he was so terrible.

    But would gladly come back and vote for a Republican and support Republican policies if they kind of thought, okay, well maybe he'll then go to jail or die. And then Nikki Haley will be president. What's good though is that Nikki Haley's continued presence in the primary and infuriating Trump guarantees that won't happen.

    He will, in no circumstance, will he choose her. And I do think he's not going to choose any Republican who would present as materially less MAGA to voters. You've seen how his own MAGA surrogates have crashed and burned in in 2020, in 2022 and key states from [00:59:00] Kerry Lake.

    He candidates. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that if you were to pick, say. Obviously not even Carrie Lake, but I think Kristi Noem would not be a candidate who would do well as a VP for those already kind of done with MAGA Center-Right. Voters. So I do think that for good or for Ill, it's Trump Biden and only Trump Biden, there's no proxy there.

    Trump Biden, and I hate to say thank thanks for Dobbs, but in a way, Dobbs that ruling. Did I think, without that ruling, do Democrats carry this hold the Senate? Do they in 2022 I'm not, I, actually am not sure. So I do think that has motivated voters and given a singular purpose specifically to independent voters that can benefit us.

    And then in 2028, I think I, I find it highly [01:00:00] unlikely that Harris would. When a actual contested primary, but what's your thought there?

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it doesn't seem likely to me. I mean, she, I mean, she dropped out in 2020 before even a single vote had been cast. because she knew she was going to lose California.

    her own home state. And I think she is actually a really great example of kind of this, this is a Sella mentality and, demographic problem that the Democratic Party has. Whereas if you were to compare her to, let's say, Raphael Warnock or Val Demings, or, like.

    there, there are plenty of black politicians who are much better connected to regular Americans and of any race. and it's certainly in regards to the black like she just, she was always just doing her own. And, and it's not something wrong with her.

    I'm not saying that as a [01:01:00] criticism because she is who she is. But the reality is that people, they want somebody who is appealing and, who they trust, as you said. And, somebody who can explain themselves in a, way that is meaningful

    ROBINSON: and Yeah. And she doesn't have that.

    And, I don't give her will. Jasmine Crockett sounds like someone who's taught, like, I, I have no reason to believe. And I'm sure you're the same way that there was a staff that got together and said. Wrote her remarks like, oh yeah, this lion's going to kill and we focus, focus tested this. Yeah. She go out just from the heart.

    Yeah. And whereas most people, that's how they view that Harris is just from lines and so forth, and not particularly being authentic. And I know that it's supposed to be sexist to say that a candidate should be authentic, but I don’t know, these are still popularity contests

    SHEFFIELD: and there's plenty of women who are.

    ROBINSON: Yeah, exactly. Interesting Matthew because the writer and me again [01:02:00] in this plays and so forth, I do think there's with Nikki Haley's attacks against Harris I find fascinating because to me it's like, they are very similar in the sense of. I felt that there was no, they didn't themselves have a rationale for their campaign.

    I mean, other than wanting to win, which is, more people want to win, but you need more than that. because then when, whenever she, whenever Haley opens her mouth, sometimes it well, what is it? Who is this for? Who are you trying to appeal to? What is your strategy? What is your plan?

    And there was often some concerns, the same concerns I had with Harris. And, I think Haley is still there because there's obviously then there are donors and people who are desperate for Trump to not be the nominee in a way that wasn't there. So the money quickly dried up for Harris. So I, but without that dynamic, I do think, ha, I mean, Haley wasn't necessarily polling any better than Harris was.

    And certainly. Was is on track to lose her [01:03:00] home state. And it's a, you'd be a shocking state of affairs that Trump will get nominated again. It's it says a lot about the party that no one will say. Right?

    SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah, no, absolutely. And I guess maybe let's wrap with a, I want to talk about that. So there is, there, there is some dialogue about kind of this interplay that we've been talking about, this whole conversation here on the left.

    But

    Why a economic message will never be enough for the left

    SHEFFIELD: there's this idea, I, and this is especially true more with white leftist socialist types but not only them, like this idea that, you can just completely throw away

    ROBINSON: all.

    SHEFFIELD: Matters of, of race or of, sexism or, various identities that people can have of religion, whatever.

    But you can just toss those away. And what you need to have is only focus on, the economic message and the class warfare [01:04:00] idea. And if you just did that, it would work. And I'm, it is, it didn't work. It never worked for Bernie Sanders. So like But people are still saying this and it's just, it's like you have to say, you have to have more than one message.

    Because Oh,

    ROBINSON: absolutely. This is a big country. And I apologize for probably And these issue,

    SHEFFIELD: oh, sorry. No, and, the issues that they're linked as well, like, the people who want to oppress. Transgender people are also the ones who want to, EE step, take away the civil rights of black people who are also wanting to take away the civil rights of non-Christians.

    Like, it's the same people who are doing all this stuff. And if you can't understand these things are all linked together, then you know you're not going to, you can't build anything

    ROBINSON: if you, yeah, As I, I apologize. It's probably too complicated answer to get into. I'll just say quickly. I think that one of the issues is that sometimes in politics, personal was so mixed up with message.

    So there's issues of like, here are campaign [01:05:00] problems that Sanders had, I believed, does that dispute what his kind of larger campaign purpose might have been? Who knows? But as you say, it didn't work twice, right? But it also at the same time, you're like, oh, right, you, why did you do this? Why did you take this strategy?

    In kind of committing to that message, I do think that the, yeah, you are right. Like the argument is like, and Democrats have a problem with this as well, of fairness, so pushing fairness. So the idea of the problem with a lot of these anti-trans laws is not some sort of Ivy Tire thing. It's like you are pushing trans people out of the public sphere.

    They can't work, they can't live. And that is an economic issue. Like most of these issues are, there are ways to make it sort of, here's like the key, [01:06:00] because ultimately the scrimmage, I mean, that's where King was going before he died was idea of it. Things of like, I think he is even quoted as saying. What good is it to be able to enter the restaurant, to be able to ride wherever you want on the bus if you can't afford the bus fare, if you can't get into the re if you can't eat at the restaurant, right.

    So like there's, yeah, you want to get the, you want to get the rights, but you don't want to create it to a system of where the system is still a sort of, a, pre, a one where it's all about wealth. So it's like, oh, we fixed it so that me, I, myself as a well-off black person, I can live comfortably and, thanks for helping me, poor black person, but actually now you're, your life is not, I'm going to stay

    SHEFFIELD: in the talented 10th and you can stay down there in

    ROBINSON: the nineties.

    Yeah. And so I do think that becomes, that is a challenge, but I think threading that needle has been very difficult [01:07:00] for Democrats. And so, and actually connect, like what is, what does. Racism mean. So I think that's been a problem. The idea of like, okay, well don't vote for Trump, working class black person, Trump's a racist.

    Well what does that mean? And I think also for the Acela quarter person, it's like, yeah, if you're a white person, it's like you, it's like you probably don't, you've worked for your, you've probably worked for your first share of jerks, right? But not many of them were overtly racist to you as a white male.

    Right. But like the idea that, okay, well I've had, if you're a working class black person, it's like, I've worked with tons, I've had tons of bosses who I thought were racist, but some were better at making sure I got a paycheck every week than some of the others. And so it's, again, it comes to six of one half does the other thing, you need to sort of translate what Trump is doing in ways that are going to cater to that.

    Like making it about, oh my God, he got rid of [01:08:00] DEI, he got rid of these, CRT in ways. I mean, I do think Jamal is like, okay, what? Like, oh wait, like I don't necessarily know what those things are, and if I did, I don't study them in college, and I just This is, you're, not connecting to me on a way that motivates me to support, especially a lot of democracy is at And the risk type thing.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, that's, well that is definitely true. The, idea of telling people democracy is at risk. Like, what the f**k does that even mean? If you're, if you're a person, making minimum wage and you were working three jobs, what the, who cares?

    ROBINSON: Well, I just, it was such a, it was such a theme of people being like, well, if he follows Robert Mueller, we're going to take to the streets.

    It's like, why do you think anyone would like, how does that translate to, but yeah, so sort of the idea of our systems and our institutions. [01:09:00] That's what democracy is, as opposed to, oh, here's what a damaged Trump has done to our institutions and we won't have a democracy in these years.

    The problem is, it's like, well, do you think there was a, and I think a lot of white liberals have to answer that question. Do you think America was a functioning democracy in the fifties? Like most of the time you just think it's like the movie Grease. You don't, you think it was fine? In fact, when you want to sort of project the idea of a horrible, dystopian society, you use fiction like the Handmaid's Tale as opposed to a reality we've already had.

    And so you need to sort of thread the needle of like, here's how Trump's going to make it like 1955 for black people. I think that draws people out. But I think the idea that like, no, he's just going to fill the White House with cronies and, Yeah. Only have acting attorney generals. I think that just that scares the morning Joe crowd certainly, and me, but I'm not, [01:10:00] those voters are trying to win over.

    Yeah. If you

    SHEFFIELD: like. Yeah. If, you feel like in your own life that institutions have not helped you and they have failed you, and you just as assume based on your experience that racism is baked into the cake, no matter what, then these, messages mean nothing to you. So, but at the same time, you have to figure out a way to get people to understand like, this, these things are real.

    I like, I, think you know, the. To go back to the Dobbs case that, I think a lot of women were willing to vote for Republicans because they really didn't think That Roe versus Wade was at risk for them. And, of course, Republicans were lying and telling them they weren't going to do it.

    But now that it's actually happening, and a lot of people are, saying, they actually are trying to take away my rights. And they are, and they're, putting all these restrictions on me. And, they, all these ballot initiatives they pass [01:11:00] because a significant percentage of Republicans vote for them to protect abortion rights.

    And, it's, I mean, it is tricky. It's, there's, it's, there's no one, one answer, no one size fits all. But you got to, you can't put people into one box and tell them only one thing. I think that's the overall takeaway, if I may say, when.

    ROBINSON: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. All right.

    SHEFFIELD: Well I think that should do it for us here today. I appreciate you joining the program here. So you are on various social media places at SER-AT-NINETY-SEVEN. What is that? Signifying?

    ROBINSON: 1 8 9 7 was a storyline on the old Dark Shadows TV show. I am a fan of that TV show and one of my upcoming podcasts.

    I'll have a guest who will speak about that show as well. So thank you for bringing it up. Allowed me to make that very subtle p plug.

    SHEFFIELD: Okay. Awesome. And then of course [01:12:00] people can also get you at Playtyperguy.com as well. Thank you.

    All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the discussion. And of course, you can always get more episodes if you go to theoryofchange.show, you can get the video, audio and transcript of all the episodes.

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    And you'll also get access to the other two podcasts that I'm hosting right now, Doom Scroll. And so this just happened. So please do check those out and visit us over at flux.community as well. So that's it for this one. I will see you next time.



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  • The term disinformation is most commonly associated with the internet and social media posters spreading conspiracy theories, but when you really think about it, disinformation is actually just lying at an industrial scale.

    While various authoritarian governments have used lying and propaganda forever, the history is crystal-clear: In the United States, the modern-day tactics of lying to the masses were invented in the mid-20th century by huge tobacco companies desperate to stave off federal regulation of their disease-causing products.

    This is a history worth exploring because all of the disinformation techniques that Big Tobacco used have been subsequently adopted by fossil fuel companies to fight public accountability and then further adopted by Donald Trump into a political marketing program that is essentially a personality cult.

    Joining me in this episode to talk about the history of disinformation and the tobacco industry is Matthew Rozsa, he is a climate change journalist at Salon.com who’s written about Big Tobacco and propaganda and how its deceptive techniques were later adopted to oppose climate change mitigation policies.

    The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of the audio follows. The conversation took place January 25, 2024.

    Related Content

    Philosopher Richard Bett on the history of skepticism and why today’s online know-nothings are practicing a zombie Socratic method

    Disinformation researcher Renée DiResta on epistemology and internet content moderation

    Former libertarian activist Will Wilkinson on the many commonalities of atheist libertarianism and Christian fundamentalism

    The American right is at war with modernity itself and the struggle did not begin with Donald Trump

    How reactionaries invented canceling people while also pretending to believe in free speech

    Audio Chapters

    0:00 — Introduction

    03:00 — The History of Disinformation in the Tobacco Industry

    06:23 — Manufacturing doubt and building anti-epistemology

    08:33 — Big Oil and American reactionaries adopted Big Tobacco's disinformation techniques

    16:50 — How mainstream journalism's "both sides" paradigm facilitates disinformation

    21:43 — False dilemmas can protect false beliefs

    24:36 — Both tobacco and oil companies hid their private research on the harms of their products

    29:34 — Donald Trump's nonstop cascade of lies is the continuation of this dishonest tradition

    32:36 — Disinformation addicts mostly cannot be persuaded, so they must be opposed

    Cover image: An advertisement for Camel cigarettes featuring the cartoon character Joe Camel

    Audio Transcript

    This is a rush transcript that likely contains errors. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Some podcast apps may truncate the text.

    MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here today, Matt.

    MATTHEW ROZSA: Thank you for having me, Matthew.

    SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, the history that we're going to be talking about here today, I think, is a bit unfamiliar to a lot of people because advertising is kind of boring to everybody.

    I think, to the extent people know about advertising in the 20th century, they think of Andy Warhol and that's about it. But there's a lot more there, and Mad Men only scratched the surface, I'm afraid. [00:03:00]

    ROZSA: I would say if you're talking about Big Tobacco, you have to start in the early 1960s, when president John F. Kennedy was elected on what he described as a New Frontier platform, and he appointed people to positions of power that were idealistic and believed in an activist version of government. One of those people was the Surgeon General Luther Terry, and he became concerned about tobacco products in 1964 and in 1965. Because of his efforts and because of other investigations that validated his concerns, the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 was passed and it mandated that warning labels had to be attached to cigarette boxes.

    That should have been the end of it in terms of any pushback to the scientific consensus that cigarettes are linked to lung cancer and other deadly diseases. But tobacco companies [00:04:00] wanted to maximize their profits, so in the 1970s, they launched a campaign called Operation Berkshire. Operation Berkshire manufactured doubt, and that is a term that anyone who wants to study disinformation should familiarize themselves with—manufactured doubt.

    They made it seem as if there were legitimate scientific disagreements about the risks posed by tobacco products, even though that was objectively not the case. They created organizations like the International Committee on Smoking Issues, which later changed its name to the International Tobacco Information Center.

    They were very, very effective until 1994, when a Democratic congressman from California named Henry Waxman began an investigation of his own. He exposed Big Tobacco and there was a famous hearing on April [00:05:00] 16th of that year in which the executives lied under oath when asked if they knew that nicotine was addictive.

    This is extremely important because all of these executives were in various ways later forced out of their industry. They suffered legal consequences. And in 1998, 46 states and the four major tobacco companies signed the Master Settlement Agreement, which stipulated that tobacco companies had to pay states 206 billion over 25 years, as well as take steps to reduce youth smoking.

    That in terms of the story of big tobacco is still not the end of it, but that is where this becomes relevant when discussing other political issues, because other interest groups that want to do things which harm the public follow big tobacco's playbook. They use the same [00:06:00] tactics. They manufacture doubt rather than pat rather than even though they seem like they're presenting legitimate arguments.

    These are synthetic positions that exist for the sole purpose of advancing the economic. interests of the fossil fuel industry and those who otherwise are financially connected to it.

    Manufacturing doubt and building anti-epistemology

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and so the term manufacturing doubt, let's talk about that a little bit more. What does that mean? And, and how does it work and how did it work for big tobacco in terms of what they were doing with big tobacco?

    ROZSA: They. People, they paid scientists, they paid doctors, they paid activists to claim that the consensus about the dangers posed by nicotine products were either overstated or somehow questionable. And the reality is these arguments did [00:07:00] not come about through independent scientific research. These arguments, all of them were promulgated by Organizations that had an agenda that agenda was to make money for, in this case, tobacco companies and the public, which is not necessarily scientifically literate, doesn't know that when they read studies, they have to look for things like conflicts of interest that they have to not just accept that the byline is who that person says they are.

    They have to do a little digging. They don't necessarily understand. It. Even what a lot of this jargon filled language really means that makes it easy for bad faith actors to pollute the public dialogue. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and, and also to do it and to use, people who have actual real scientific credentials to deliver disingenuous arguments that some of which may even be [00:08:00] true in a limited sense.

    In other words, that. They may address one specific peripheral point. In regards to a scientific consensus but it's not in any way essential to it. So in other words, you might say, well, somebody, they might expose someone having fudged on some research, something, or, committed some plagiarism or something like that and claim, well, see, then this invalidates everything that the entire scientific community has saying about whether it's, tobacco and cancer or climate change or whatever.

    Big Oil and American reactionaries adopted Big Tobacco's disinformation techniques

    SHEFFIELD: That that's it's and the idea is basically to make it so that you can believe what you want and to destroy the idea of objective truth. Like, that's that's what's so ironic about this right wing. And I guess in their case, they weren't deliberately. It wasn't right wing originally in their case. But it ended up being that way.

    But you know, originally what they're trying to [00:09:00] do is sort of. Create an anti epistemology, if you will, a framework in which knowledge is impossible.

    ROZSA: I agree. I would also add to use to go back to something you said earlier. They will say something that has an element of truth in it, but presented in a way that intentionally confuses the issue to use 1 example when you're discussing climate change, the most important thing to know is that The primary cause of greenhouse gas emissions is humanity's use of fossil fuels for purposes like electricity generation and transportation.

    That is the primary cause of the problem. That doesn't mean that there aren't other factors that contribute to climate change. 1 factor that deniers like to bring up is volcanic eruptions. I wrote an article for salon where I talked to experts about volcanic eruptions. They do, in fact. Play a [00:10:00] role in climate change, but to quote one of my articles, this one is called how much are volcanoes to blame for climate change?

    And I wrote it last year. Flavio Lennar, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University told me volcanoes only emit small amounts of CO2 relative to how much humans emit today. Another possible factor of natural climate change are changes in solar radiation, but its fluctuations are too small to explain current climate change, plus it has been trending down since 1950, not up.

    He then proceeds to list other naturally occurring climate change variables, and indeed, deniers will say, what about solar radiation? What about all of these things that arguably could play a role? And. In many cases, do all of that can be used to confuse people who aren't familiar with the science and convince them [00:11:00] that, well, reducing fossil fuels.

    Is it necessary? Eventually eliminating fossil fuels? Is it necessary? Because we'll still have climate change. That is subjectively untrue. If humanity follows the path established in the Paris climate accords, we will you. Eventually see a improvement in this area. And that's what that's the point that I was making.

    Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, but to that, speaking of, sort of remedies that are proposed to, mitigate crises discovered by science. Part of the. You, you mentioned the, the plan that they had set up called Operation Berkshire. One of the things that they did later well, I guess let's let's go back to that.

    And actually, maybe secondhand smoking is how we can do it. Because, because I mean, essentially, there were. There were kind of three phases, if you will, in terms of regulation of Big Tobacco.

    One was [00:12:00] first, the first one was with children. And then the second one was with just establishing the link of cancer and publicly disclosing that. And then the third one was secondhand smoke. That was kind of the last domino that fell. So I'm just the reason why I want to focus on this a bit more and unpack it is that, I, I, I want to get into the relationship between the commercialized anti epistemology that we're talking about here, and then how. How that was then exported into other issues. That's, that's basically the intent of, of,

    ROZSA: of the episode.

    I, I see, I think I see, I mean, my answer to that question would be that the EPIs epistemologically, as you put it earlier, it's nihilistic. It's the idea that we can't have definitive answers to these questions, and therefore you may as well just accept the status quo. That in the case of Big Tobacco caused [00:13:00] people to doubt for it because if in the case of Big Tobacco, the psychological component of it is if people doubt whether we really know for sure that cigarettes can cause lung cancer, well, then I guess I might as well continue smoking and that same type of logic is applied in other areas.

    Big Tobacco is not the area that I've studied in depth. My area in depth has been climate change. I know that the strategies that were applied back in the 1970s after the original implementation of these tobacco regulations have been used by other private companies. This includes fossil fuel companies that do not want climate change regulations to be implemented or in some cases even passed.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well and and there is a direct link here because These techniques were, they were pioneered by commercial nonpolitical actors, but the people who came up with them and the companies, the [00:14:00] marketing agencies and ad agencies that created them, they were also had clients in the, in the right wing activists fear.

    And, and then as the Republican party, especially under Reagan became overtly obsessed with. Dismantling regulations and things like that. This became a natural fit for them and they and they did in fact. Get together and there were a number of, of organizations that were, being funded by big tobacco, such as heritage foundation and a number of other right wing groups that helped the launder of some of these messages especially as we got, into the into the nineties and, and eighties and, when, when the focus became on curbing secondhand smoking and things like that and so.

    Yeah. I guess what, what, and then, of course, as you mentioned, that they, they took those same ideas into the climate change discussion as well. And so it's, it's an [00:15:00] interesting act, though, in a sense, though, because everyone wants to think that they are open minded. That they do their own research like that's it.

    That is basically the paradigm that they were trying to tell you that big tobacco was using was that do your own research. You can believe what you want. You have the credibility and expertise. To dispute, a biologist who has been published in, 10 different medical journals more than they do because you have common sense

    ROZSA: or and I find because I interact with more climate change deniers than I can shake a.

    And the reality is they often will say, well, you have this scientist. What about this scientist? They don't. And then when you claim, well, my scientist is objectively correct. And your scientist is objectively incorrect. They make you seem like the unreasonable one. How can you claim that the matter is settled?

    Why are you afraid of new ideas? [00:16:00] Why am I not allowed to just ask questions? This is the type of. Reasoning and on a superficial level, that reasoning makes sense on a superficial level. Yes, we should be open to hearing new ideas to being challenged to questioning even our most sacred precepts, but there is a burden on the people asking those questions.

    And that burden is to have evidence based arguments. When you have scientists asking questions, not based on evidence, but because they're paid. By special interest groups to manufacture doubt, those arguments are not legitimate and should not be taken seriously. And when they are taken seriously, it makes it harder for the public to have intelligent conversations about these literal life and death issues.

    How mainstream journalism's "both sides" paradigm facilitates disinformation

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and I think it's, it's something that, that point that you just made. [00:17:00] It's something that I think people who have who are politically progressive and well informed about issues understand that innately and, have a generalized and daily appreciation of that fact.

    But I think it's a point that a lot of people who are not really political or don't pay attention to the news whatever their political orientation is. It's seems difficult to grasp and it's something that, it's related to the idea of this paradigm that, that they're seizing on and manipulating, it also exists in the news media as well.

    This, this, the infamous both sides epistemology of journalism where no matter what the Republicans do or what they say, you have to just portray them as, a routine regular. political party and well, we got to cover what they're saying and put it on there. And not really fact check it or say anything contrary to it because that's not our job.

    When in fact [00:18:00] it is their job and they are attacking you as a journalist every single day. I would argue. You hold your fire. Sorry,

    ROZSA: I know I shouldn't I was interrupting, but I very enthusiastic because the point that I make about this in terms of climate change specifically is they they further manipulate people by pointing to the scientific method and arguing that those of us who acknowledge the evidence are somehow being unscientific by insisting that those who deny the Climate change and deny humanity's role in climate change provide evidence of their own.

    That is the underline the bottom line that everyone needs to know in terms of climate change is that if humanity significantly reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, particularly climate Those that are linked to fossil fuels like carbon dioxide, we will be able to prevent a future [00:19:00] of intense weather disruptions, heat waves, droughts, food shortages, and other calamities.

    This is what we're trying to accomplish. It is at its core. A pollution reduction problem, and we're not able to have an intelligent conversation about how to solve that problem because people who are profiting from the status quo are manufacturing doubt, creating doubt, not based on evidence, but based on evidence.

    Flooding the zone with s**t, to use an expression that was coined by someone, and I have heard before, it refers to the strategy of the It was Steve Bannon, actually. Steve Bannon? You knew who coined that? Yes, it's a good expression. I'm actually also thinking, because, one of the pivotal points in the history of manufacturing doubt for climate change was in 2003.

    That was when President George W. Bush, at Vice President Dick Cheney's urging, fired [00:20:00] his Environmental Protection Agency head, Christine Todd Whitman. Whitman acknowledged that climate change was real, and although she preferred free market approaches to addressing environmental problems, she was not a science denier.

    Cheney and the fossil fuel industry of which he was a part through his connection to Halliburton Wanted her gone and in 2003 when she was removed from power That was the tipping point at which the mainstream within the republican party Stopped acknowledging that human activity is causing climate change.

    Before 2003, Republican presidents were not explicitly anti science. They preferred more conservative policy approaches to addressing environmental problems, but they didn't challenge the notion that scientific inquiry was in itself. Important. Now, there are millions of [00:21:00] people who distrust climatologists as a group, who distrust geologists as a group, who distrust whole branches of well established science that is based on centuries of research because philosophically it's incompatible with what they've been told to believe about climate change.

    That is a form of mass insanity, is it not?

    SHEFFIELD: It is, and one of the ways that they do that, and you, and you do talk about this, so, And just for reference we're, this discussion is built around two articles that you wrote for a salon, which will definitely be in the show notes. I encourage everybody to check those out after we're done here, but yeah, the

    False dilemmas can protect false beliefs

    SHEFFIELD: one of the, the techniques of, of creating this, thoughtless response in the to, to susceptible people is to create a false sense of urgency and to lie about mitigation efforts. And, and they did that [00:22:00] in the 90s when, when, when people were trying to say, look, secondhand smoking is, is killing people and giving them cancer they, they promulgated the idea that, well, you just want to ban cigarettes entirely and make them illegal.

    And you're going to create this giant, massive black market and you're going to, create all these crimes and you're going to subsidize the mafia with this and et cetera, et cetera. And, and then they recycled the same thing today with regard to climate change policies to reduce carbon, claiming that it would create communism, that it would destroy the market.

    And it's, they're, they're trying to create panic with people who don't really know anything about policy or or what would entail. And the reality is that, as the various renew deal proposals have demonstrated, these are not. Anti capitalist proposals that are being advanced.

    And in fact, people would be given lots of money rather than having their [00:23:00] livelihoods taken away because people, because climate change activists understand that you have to make it possible for people to do this. So, yeah,

    ROZSA: if I may, it reminds me of a quote from Dr. Michael E. Mann, a climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who I interview frequently and in my article, the one that we're discussing about vice president Cheney and his role in. Creating this movement of misinformation, so to speak man said it was a harbinger of things to come because, of course, after this, the bad faith attack by Republicans on climate science has now metastasized to our entire body politic and to the very notion of fact based discourse.

    That sums it up perfectly. Dick Cheney did not want Christine Todd Whitman as Bush's EPA head because her policies would cost fossil fuel companies money. And I do believe that fossil fuel companies are correct about one thing. [00:24:00] Eventually, we will need to transition entirely away. From use of fossil fuels, if you, if they do indeed acknowledge that the scientists are right, then they also have to acknowledge that their industry will need to be phased out.

    But the question, the obvious question is what matters more their desire to make as much money as possible doing what they've been doing for decades, or the species of the planet needing to survive without the climate being changed by greenhouse gas emissions.

    Both tobacco and oil companies hid their private research on the harms of their products

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and and there and there is another parallel between climate change denial and tobacco and big tobacco tactics earlier is that both of these industries had privately developed research, which showed that they were creating a problem for humanity through their products and they suppressed it and did not release it to the public. And can you talk about [00:25:00] that parallel? If you will.

    ROZSA: Absolutely. And in 1994, as I mentioned before, there was a famous congressional hearing where seven members, the seven dwarfs, so to speak, of big tobacco were brought to Washington to discuss whether their products were addictive and they weren't.

    Okay. Lied under oath, they perjured themselves. It was later proven through investigation that they had commissioned these inquiries, their own private studies into their products and knew through that independently financed research that their products were addictive. So when they told Congressman Henry Waxman that they did not think that their product was addictive, they were lying.

    This was not a legitimate difference of opinion. They were saying something that they knew to be false. And today, with climate change denial, it's the same thing. When I wrote that article about Big Tobacco, I was inspired because because fossil fuel [00:26:00] executives were appearing in Washington. They were much better prepped than the tobacco executives were in 1994.

    The purpose, though, was the same. Did they accept? The scientific facts, the fact that oceanographers and biologists and scientists from dozens of disciplines have, through their research, proved that the planet is getting warmer and that the primary cause is greenhouse gas emissions caught due to fossil fuels.

    And it's very, very difficult, obviously, because that hearing was not watched. By most people, most people weren't paying attention, having done all of the research and so that they could call out the lies that were being spoken, but that's, I guess, where, as a journalist, it can be frustrating because I know people personally who are climate change deniers who will talk to me [00:27:00] about misinformation they read and act as if that misinformation is as valid as falsehoods.

    The information that I received from scientists who spend years in the field, conducting research, having it peer reviewed, which means that, and that's what I think a lot of the public doesn't understand is that the peer review process, as long as it's done with integrity is very rigorous. It is you, there is no ideological agenda causing people to say that the earth is getting warmer.

    These are scientists who just engage, go out. Do the research, bring it back, and then have to have it tested by other scientists to prove that it is worthy of being published.

    SHEFFIELD: Well, and they also explicitly are testing alternative methods or alternative explanations for why phenomenon are happening. So it is the case, that not every single whether it's, insect population or erosion in an area or [00:28:00] whatever, like it's not always necessarily going to be because of climate change, whatever these things may be and but they are testing all of these alternative explanations when they're looking at something to say, well, why are there more of this particular species of grasshopper right now in this area?

    What's happening? Where did this come from? And so they'll go and propose. Well, it's maybe this 1. Maybe it's this 1. Okay. And, but the research in many of these cases keeps coming to, well, the climate is changing for these, organisms or for whatever the natural phenomenon was, and that's just the reality of it.

    Like you can, to your, I'm just underscoring your point there. You're, you're a hundred percent right with that and people it's it, but if you don't understand how science works and how it's made. It can seem like it's a conspiracy if you don't understand it.

    ROZSA: I would also like to quote something. I actually had the privilege of interviewing christine Todd Whitman for salon for an article.

    I wrote about centrism. I'll share the link with you [00:29:00] It was called where have all the centrists gone? And she said those who are yelling the loudest have gotten the microphone And those are the ones that get the attention of the press that Also succinctly encapsulates part of the problem when it comes to fighting misinformation is that they are the loudest voices and they are the voices which have the microphone.

    In this case, the funding of special interest groups that want their agenda to prevail.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay, great. Let me click that.

    ROZSA: So I love that. Okay, great.

    Donald Trump's nonstop cascade of lies is the continuation of this dishonest tradition

    SHEFFIELD: The techniques of disinformation, the, the methods of propagating it, the of spreading the idea of anti epistemology it's of course inherent in Donald Trump's entire shtick and his, especially in regards to his false claims about the 2020 election.

    And, there are millions of, of, of right leaning people in the United States now that they want to desperately believe that [00:30:00] they themselves and their belief system are not linked to Donald Trump. And what he's done inside the Republican party, that they think that he did this uniquely and just sort of came out of nowhere and made everyone in the Republican party insane. But as we're, we've been talking about today, like all of this has just built upon each other that once you've established that nothing can be true, that expertise is not real, that academics and scientists are lying to you.

    Then anything is possible. Anything can be true. Any belief can be you can believe whatever you want. And so that's why to this day, a majority of Republicans now believe that Donald Trump. Did not lose the 2020 election, and now we've reached the point where they believe that the January 6th Capitol invasion, the only invasion and refusal to concede peaceful transfer of power in American history was somehow Not inappropriate.

    That is the Republican belief. [00:31:00]

    ROZSA: I'm glad that you drew that connection because I think it's not, it's not only not a coincidence in one in ways you can understand one better through comprehending the other to understand how people can see footage of. These rioters pouring into the Capitol footage of Ashley Babbitt trying violently to murder the vice president of the United States, footage of, of police officers being abused.

    And somehow they'll just buy what a right wing media outlet tries to sell them through manipulated edits as an alternative reality. It speaks to an almost cravenness, a craven disregard for the truth. And once you understand that they want to not accept reality, it suddenly is a lot easier to comprehend how they can deny [00:32:00] Thousands of scientists and their research and deny what thousands of politicians, their own elected officials experienced because they want to believe that Donald Trump isn't a would be despot and they want to believe that they can continue using fossil fuels in the ways that they find pleasurable without it harming the planet and damn anyone who will tell me not to drive to the polls in an SUV on November, 2024 and vote for Trump. Yeah.

    Disinformation addicts mostly cannot be persuaded, so they must be opposed

    SHEFFIELD: Well, so what are you thinking that are for people who are aware of what's going on in this regard?

    Have you given any thought about, what can be done to sort of counteract this anti epistemology? And

    ROZSA: I have spent a great deal of time pondering that question because I. Like I said, I know a lot of people who are right wing. I care about them. [00:33:00] I don't think that they are bad people. I just think that they have been misinformed.

    But pride is a very difficult barrier for most to overcome. And at this point, my I'd say that the goal of most journalists in the climate change field is to just present the scientific reports as they come in as accurately as possible in a way that is accessible so that people who understand the problem are up to date with their information and people who are on the fence or just uninformed can receive accurate information. For the people who already swallowed the misinformation and only crave more, there is no hope. So we just have to create a political coalition large enough that their bad ideas don't lead to bad policies.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that that is That's [00:34:00] probably right. Especially because a lot of, the, the population just from a, from a age standpoint, I mean, the, the only age group that Donald Trump won in 2020 was people who were who were 55 and older, if I remember right, and or 65 plus and so, when you get to that age.

    It's really hard to change your ways. Most people have gotten to that point and feel like they have figured everything out, that they know everything about the world. I mean, there's, there's, it is an irony, an unfortunate irony of society that people mock, correctly mock teenagers for thinking they know everything, but They also do not recognize that the elderly don't know everything either.

    And are just as prone to being as arrogant and in that regard.

    ROZSA: I would also add that there are many young people who are aspiring to leadership on the right. People like Vivek Ramaswamy, who is a climate change denier. He is from our generation. He was born in [00:35:00] the 1980s, like you and me, but. His ideas sound like something that a crotchety old grandpa who watches Fox News 12 hours a day would spout.

    He is, he is, he is an octogenarian climate change denier in the package of a slick young millennial. Yeah.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so, and and there is some, some there's, there is hope to be derived from the fact though, that generation Z in having been faced with the horrible circumstances that, the, the Trump voting elders have created for them, that they are now.

    voting in self defense in percentages much higher than any other generation before them.

    ROZSA: My concern though is when will it be too late? Because, and I, I, I often joke that I feel [00:36:00] like I live in. A sci fi movie, but it's an apocalyptic disaster film, which is never the genre you would want to live in.

    And 1 of the themes of those films is that there is a countdown. And in this case, although we don't know exactly where we are in that countdown, there is a countdown. Once temperatures go beyond 1. 5 degrees Celsius above industrial levels, it is going to be much harder. To prevent a lot of the climate change related damage that will then occur, or at least mitigate its effects.

    There is a threshold that we are close to hitting, and I'm not sure Generation Z is going to have enough time to turn things around and fix the mistakes that their Trump voting elders made. I feel horrible for them. All of their anger toward us, very justified.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, no, that's true. And, [00:37:00] and I guess, and we were talking before we were recording that, I think the other, that re that reality with both climate change, but also other issues like gun safety and things like that or police reform, these are all issues that are directly, directly impacting younger people much more than people who are older than them and the, the, the right wing basically in, in a lot of ways, humans, we have kind of been stuck in sort of the controversies, the philosophical controversies of the, the early 20th century and never gotten past them. Whether it is, people refusing to, believe that human beings evolved.

    I mean, that to this day. remains in the United States, unfortunately, a controversial assertion in the views of many people. And like, even now, like in states like Oklahoma and others, they They mandate that textbooks have things in them that say [00:38:00] something like, well, evolution is just a theory it is, it needs, it needs more research to determine where did life originate and and I'm trying to remember what the exact verbiage is, but I'll, I'll find it later, but yeah, like it's, it, it just, they, they, there's this sort of continuing cycle where the right is sort of, it, Advancing Nietzschean nihilism and the American left and population at large never discovered existentialism, which is the antidote to it.

    ROZSA: I think that is an excellent point. In our prerecorded conversation, I also discussed the politics of aesthetics that is used by fascists, where they convince the working class to. Engage in artistic displays and performances and met modes of self expression that are indeed satisfying, but that don't in any way, substantively address the underlying social and [00:39:00] economic problems that have caused their suffering in the first place.

    That is the essence of fascist politics is to use this and then weaponize it. to help right wing dictators rise to power. That's the formula that they use. I would say what concerns me about the climate change issue specifically is this is one where denying the truth could radically alter the planet itself.

    To return to what you said about evolution versus creationism, obviously the creationists are just as anti science as the climate change deniers. But the stakes are lower because the species does not risk being significant is suffering billions of deaths and a radical civilization altering series of intense weather occurrences because people don't want to admit that humans evolved from monkeys.

    The stakes are lower. That doesn't mean that science is any less poor, but the stakes of the misinformation being promulgated are much lower.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, [00:40:00] that's true. Yeah. And I think that is unfortunately one. Problem with the, the, the moment that we live in where, in the past, the, the false beliefs, you, there, there, there weren't, there, there was, I think early, in the earliest stages of human history, if you believe, that diseases were caused, by being unholy or, whatever, whatever random thing that could be harmful to you but then as we sort of, you Achieve some sort of rudimentary medical science.

    Most people seem to get on board with that, right? They, they understood, you don't see almost anybody challenging germ theory, for instance, or, or things like that. And so the stakes for false. Scientific beliefs went down drastically because, Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster or, aliens or Area 51, that didn't affect you in any way, whether you believe that was true.

    If you believe that, the CIA shot [00:41:00] JFK, even like that didn't really. Impact your life or the rest of the society.

    ROZSA: But then you have the anti science rhetoric that emerged during the worst days of the COVID 19 pandemic. People would refuse to get vaccinated. People would refuse to wear masks.

    I always focused on the anti masker ideology because the anti vaccine ideology again. anti scientific, I under, vaccines are complicated enough that I can comprehend how someone might struggle to understand how vaccine platforms actually work. Especially mRNA as well. Yes, but by contrast, wearing a mask, it's obvious.

    That's why when you sneeze, you cover your hand, your nose and mouth because you don't want your snot. Spraying germs everywhere. It shouldn't require a PhD in biology or infectious diseases to understand why you should wear a mask to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses. Yet a lot of people [00:42:00] began arguing that I don't need to wear a mask.

    A mask, the scientific literature says masks don't even really help. And you shouldn't require scientific literature to tell you that masks help. What does it say about people's Ability to comprehend reality. And the answer is most of these anti maskers are right wingers. They're part of what one friend of mine refers to as the right wing griftosphere.

    And they don't accept that they can be duped into ignoring the evidence before their very eyes about something like wearing a mask to prevent the spreading of respiratory illnesses, because their ideological masters tell them to believe. And that extends to climate change, to the 2020 presidential election, to any, to cigarettes and lung cancer, any number of subjects.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and just on that point it is interesting that Republicans in the let's say 90s or in 2000s [00:43:00] were just as likely as Democrats to support vaccines. Actually and so they, but they became more radicalized on this point because. Their media told them to do it. They, they tell them what to believe.

    And while also telling them that they're independent thinkers. I mean, that is the horrible irony of this.

    ROZSA: They define an independent thinker as someone. It becomes a brand. It becomes a brand that is disconnected from the objective meaning of the phrase independent thinker.

    SHEFFIELD: Yeah, they became a herd of independent thinkers with all the same ideas.

    ROZSA: They did indeed. They did indeed.

    SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, it's been a good discussion here today. Matt, Matt let's well, we already got up on the screen. So let me say that again. All right. So it's been a great discussion today, and I hope the audience has enjoyed it as well. And for people who want to keep up with you, [00:44:00] you are on social media at Matthew Rocha.

    And if you're listening, that's M-R-O-Z-S-A. And and I guess they can get you on salon. com as well. Right?

    ROZSA: They can indeed.

    SHEFFIELD: Okay. Awesome. All right.

    ROZSA: Thank you, Matt. I appreciate this. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate you having me on. I'm looking forward to seeing this go up.

    SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And you can always get more of this program if you go to theoryofchange.show. You can get the full video, audio, and transcripts of all the episodes. And I also do encourage everybody to visit flux.community.

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    Audio Chapters

    00:00 — Rudy Giuliani defends Trump in the dumbest possible way

    02:04 — Brittany Watts, the Ohio woman almost prosecuted for miscarriage is speaking out

    08:31 — Wisconsin Republican cites his veterinary experience in debate about abortion

    12:40 — Supposedly AI-generated George Carlin comedy special was written by a human, co-creator admits after lawsuit by his daughter

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