Beyond Politics

Today, we’re going to take you on a journey down into some of the most insidious, infuriating, and un-American skulduggery that has gone on in this country. And then, we’re going to talk about how we’ve started to turn the tide, and how maybe, maybe we can finish the job. Our guide on this trip is David Daley. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and the author of two recent books, one that takes us on the journey down, the other that takes us on the journey back: Ratf**ked and Unrigged. This is the explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting, and how a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters’ revelations might provide a blueprint for what must be done to keep American democracy afloat.

I do a regular show with financial advisor Mike Morton about personal financial planning.  Today, he and I got into a bit more of a politics, policy, and tax discussion around the idea that we could tax the ultra-rich to pay for social investments. It's a conversation about practical politics, how hard t is to come up with a rational tax policy, and how the ultra rich avoid our best efforts to get them to pay their fair share. 

Far more than the high-profile antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan—and yes, even bigger than Donald Trump’s "Big Lie”—our guest today says that it is anonymous, often corrupt politicians in statehouses across the country who pose the greatest dangers to American democracy. Our old friend David Pepper is the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Born and raised in Cincinnati, he’s served in city and county offices, run statewide in Ohio, and has a law degree from Yale. But he’s also an accomplished author of works that are eerily prescient about American politics. He's written Laboratories of Autocracy, a chilling new account of just how bad things have gotten at the state level, and what we can do to fix it. 

The way we run political campaigns has changed drastically in the last two decades. Today, political campaigns spend three times more money and leverage far more sophisticated data and media tools, paired with an unnerving amount of information on voters. But those extraordinary powers have mostly been used not to have a more nuanced, persuasive public conversation, but to stoke outrage and election turnout. It is possible to argue that way we run campaigns has been a huge factor in how angry, divided, and dysfunctional our country has become. Today, guest Michael Cohen – author of Modern Political Campaigns – argues that a “Moneyball”-like search for smarter ways to win might actually drag American politics back away from the extremes and toward a more reasonable center.  He also explains how the role of political parties has changed, what is working and not working in campaigns today, and whether things like yard signs are ever helpful to winning.

Matt talks about his recent Newsweek op-ed with West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe of The Watchdog.  Will Trump run in 2024 (yes!), if he does are there any good outcomes (no!), and if the threat to America is so big, is there anything that can be done about it right now (yes!)

Congressman John Yarmuth has served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee since 2019, and was one of the key architects of the $1.9  American Rescue Plan that is lifting 5 million American children out of poverty, saving millions from losing their homes, and saving lives every day by getting people vaccines. He's also the hidden force behind trying to wrangle Democrats together on Build Back Better.  In this fascinating interview before his retirement from Congress next year, Chairman Yarmuth shares what it was like trying to herd cats between moderates and progressives in the negotiations over the Build Back Better bill, what Mitch McConnell is really like, and what the unseen physical demands of being a member of Congress are. 

Do Democrats actually have a chance to hold on to their majorities in the US House and Senate in the midterm elections in 2022? History is not on their side. Since 1946, the average number of seats in the US House of Representative lost by the president's party in the midterm elections is 46. Projections by our recent guest David Shor show that in 2022, if Senate Democrats somehow manage to beat Republicans by a stunning four percentage points they’d only have about a 50-50 chance of holding onto the majority. If they win only 51 percent of the vote, they’ll likely lose a seat — and the Senate. But our guest today says the Democrats can give themselves a fighting chance by employing the right strategy and focusing on the right places. Colleen Loper is the Senior Director of Political Strategy at Way to Win, an organization founded after the 2016 election to channel more funding from Democratic donors into organizations and campaigns that focus on voters of color.  They’ve raised $165 million to do just that, and they recently posted an in-depth study called How 2020 Shapes 2022. Colleen breaks down where the best opportunities for Democrats lie, and also shares insights from her time as a Texas-based strategist on whether Democrats can finally win a major race in the Lone Star State.

In recent weeks, there's been one person driving the discussion in Democratic circles: David Shor.  Big profiles in the New York Times and Politico have further elevated this rising political star, along with his stark warning that if Democrats think they're sitting pretty for the coming years having beaten back the forces of Trump in 2020, they're deluding themselves.  Three months ago, we interviewed David on this show, and today, we bring you a re-release of that terrific episode, in which David explained his argument, his evidence, and his interpretation of what we're seeing around us.  The discussion included this summary from David of his outlook: "We actually aren't winning the war of ideas as much as we think...and the Republican Party is more popular relative to the Democratic Party than people think.  The Democratic Party brand and agenda has shifted a lot in the last four to five years, and it's gone  in a direction that a lot of voters aren't comfortable with.  People can easily overestimate how much support there is for the Democratic Party." Check out the whole show for more from this fascinating interview.  Shor is a data scientist who consults with progressive groups around the country and is one of the most trusted and  widely respected voices on what’s actually happening with the American electorate. He's the Head of Data Science at OpenLabs R&D, and previously was the director of Political Data Science at Civis Analytics, overseeing a research and development program that  interviewed millions of people for hundreds of individual campaigns and electoral organizations.

One year ago today, political scientist EJ Fagan published an article called "End the Algorithm" on Tech Policy Press in which he identified the basic problem with Facebook: that it is powered by machine learning algorithms which favor outrageous, inflammatory, and degrading content.  Now, new revelations from Facebook product manager-turned-whistle-blower Frances Haugen have rocked the company, drawn the attention of the world, and completely confirmed everything that Professor Fagan wrote. The algorithm --  which feeds Facebook's basic business model built around maximizing engagement from users -- is a one-way ticket to warping our brains and shaking the foundations of democracy. Dr. Fagan joins us to discuss what we have learned, how deep the problem goes, and whether anything can be done to fix it. 

Is something fundamentally wrong with American journalism? On the right, we know that there’s all of the “fake news” propaganda: Fox, the New York Post, and right-wing radio. But on the left, a growing number of experts believe that something has also gone badly off track. Our guest today says that what’s happened is that mainstream news is not liberal anymore; it’s woke: propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago. So is this actually real? And how big a problem is it? BATYA UNGAR-SARGON is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Before that, she was the opinion editor of the Forward, the largest Jewish media outlet in America. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, the New York Review of Books Daily, and other publications. She has appeared numerous times on MSNBC, NBC, the Brian Lehrer Show, NPR, and at other media outlets. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her new book is Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.