Launch Week

Hello, I hope that all has been great!  

I had a busy week launching “The Last Election,” the new novel I wrote with Stephen Marche about a campaign manager of an independent presidential candidate, a journalist with a big story and how American democracy’s last days unfold. 

First I went down to D.C. for a book talk, a launch party and a flurry of press.  Then I came back to New York for another set of events and interviews.  CBS, CNN, ABC, FOX, TMZ – it’s been quite the media tour.  

The best part has been getting feedback from people who have already read the book.  Some of my favorite quotes:  

“I couldn’t put it down.” 

“It scared me, but in a way that made me feel more prepared.”  

“I was surprised by it, in a very good way.” 

“I do politics for a living and I learned a lot.”  

It’s also heartwarming to see so many people come out to support the book.  Having your Mom at your book launch party is a wonderful feeling.

I’ve written 3 non-fiction books and each of them represented years of work.  This has been different on several levels because it’s a story with a message.  It’s also my first collaboration, which I enjoyed more than I’d expected.   

I’ll admit that my mind has started to move to what could happen next in the world depicted in “The Last Election,” so close to our own.  Could we visit these characters again?  I’d like to, and I have some ideas for what happens next.  Maybe there's room for optimism.  

I’m excited to have “The Last Election” out in the world – get your copy today!  Click here for an excerpt.  And thank you to those of you who have bought the book or spread the word – it means the world to me.  

The Last Election

When I was running for President, my team would often say to me “Bio” before I spoke at a rally or did a press appearance.  What they were saying to me was “Use your biography” because people didn’t know who I was and your trust and interest goes up if you feel like you can relate to someone. 

Human beings tend to operate in stories: stories that political figures tell about themselves or stories that include us.  Narratives are very powerful, more naturally powerful with most audiences than, for example, facts or statistics.  It’s a lesson that I need to constantly relearn. 
 
A while ago I interviewed Stephen Marche, the author of “The Next Civil War,” and we connected on our shared concerns for the future of American politics.  How could we get people to see, and perhaps do something about, the dangers that lie ahead?
 
We needed a story. 
 
We decided to write a novel about the next election, or the last election, which could be the same thing.  And we wanted it to be entertainment, to engross people who aren’t likely to care about the latest Op-Ed.  In many ways, the book is meant to answer the question, “What happens if a major independent presidential candidate decides to run?” 
 
The writing process was a lot of fun.  Stephen would interview me, my campaign manager Zach Graumann and others for hours on end.  He would draft pages based on interviews that delved into painstaking detail.  I would read what he produced, edit, respond and suggest changes or additions.  We would repeat this process until the pages felt like a version of the future I recognized. 
 
“I’d say this book is the most accurate depiction possible of the inside of a campaign during the last election, where American democracy actually collapses under the weight of distrust and the weight of a collapsing electoral system.  It’s a paranoid political thriller that’s accurate,” says Stephen.  “It’s a very unusual book.  I don’t think there’s another book like this one.  It’s a straight thriller that also contains intimate information about political life, and that’s a fun read.” 
 
I’ve run for President, written three non-fiction books, put out countless social media posts, interviewed dozens of thinkers and write a weekly newsletter that you’re reading right now.  Will a novel – a story -  get a message out to people who wouldn’t understand it any other way? 
 
“The Last Election” is my attempt to find out. 
 
To buy the Last Election from the publisher click here – the code LASTELECTION will get you 30% off.  For my interview of Stephen Marche click here. 
 
Never forget. 

The Rally

Hello, I hope that you are doing great on Labor Day! 

The novel that I wrote with Stephen Marche – The Last Election - arrives next week!  It’s about the campaign manager of a third-party presidential candidate, a journalist hunting a massive story, and the near future of American democracy.  Here’s an excerpt below describing a campaign rally for Cooper Sherman, the Maverick Party presidential candidate.  Hope you enjoy it! 

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February 7th, 7:43 pm, Target Center, 600 First Avenue North, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“Topeka bodega topeka bodega topeka bodega topeka bodega,” Cooper is saying over and over again. Mikey and Cooper have been chasing each other around the green room throwing and catching whiffle balls. Cooper just imbibed a cocktail of Nyquil, sugar and nutrients.  Cooper is shirtless and Mikey can’t stop giggling. Above them, as random as thunder, comes the boom of twenty-five thousand strangers cheering.

The opening act was Stipe Miocic, UFC fighter and Cleveland firefighter. Now Jesse Ventura is talking about independents and Minnesota and Minnesota as a state for independents. The laughter is huge. The applause is even huger. Ventura is killing. He always does. 

Nellie has been watching Mikey and Cooper roughhouse like an amused au pair. The message comes to her headset and she passes it on: “Showtime.” 

Mikey towels down Cooper’s sweaty chest, and they throw on his shirt and jacket, pin the mic to his lapel and then tuck the cord into his jacket pocket, and they head up through the backstage area. 

Cooper stops Mikey on the stairs. They embrace. Then there’s the hot first staccato beats of Call Ticketron from Run the Jewels, and the crowd is howling wildly by “Kumbaya” as Cooper strolls up beaming into the spotlight. Mikey goes down, underground, to the control center. Above him the roar of the crowd fills the air, the stomping of tens of thousands of feet. Just before Mikey plunges down the corridor, he hears the opening line: “They told me I’m not supposed to swear.” There’s a huge laugh, then he is alone. He makes his way underneath the stadium as secretive and determined as a Jesuit on a mission. The sounds of the wider world, the muffled ecstasies of the crowd, are distant. He is too far underground to hear them, climbing back and forth up stairs used to the heavy treads of tens of thousands of Minnesotans. 

Sarah Ren is monitoring a bank of screens in the control booth. “How we doing?” Mikey asks. 

“Look at this drone shot,” she says. Sarah is happy; Mikey’s never seen her happy.

The shot passes over a massive crowd all waving Maverick party signs towards Cooper’s beaming face. The cold made the air clearer, emptier, and he looks defined, imperturbable, feeding off and feeding into the great wave of mass love. It’s going to look great in ads.  

Cooper’s speech is majestic, rapturous. “The reason I started down this path,” he is saying, “the reason we began the crazy adventure that is this campaign is that I see what you see. The system isn’t working. The country works but the system doesn’t. This great country, the most productive country in the world, a country built on openness and frankness, is turning into a country where only guys like me have a shot, where everyone wants to close down the other guy, where our words have been caged in shame. Enough. Enough. It’s time to take a risk, because in politics, just like in life, the real risk is not taking a risk.”

Thirty-six seconds of applause by Mikey’s watch.

“And let’s be real honest here. OK, we got one party that has stopped believing in democracy, and you got another party that will be pointing at the rulebook as the world burns. And you know as I used to say on television ‘Do the math.’” 

The crowd begins to chat “Do the math. Do. The. Math. Do. The. Math.” 

“This won’t do anymore, man. This isn’t going to work out.”

Sarah is holding Mikey’s hand, gripping it, twisting it.

“You feel it?” she asks.

“I feel it,” Mikey answers. 

They are feeling the rush of the crowd’s ecstasy overtaking them, spreading through them from this stadium to the world. They can feel their reach extending. They can feel the onset of power. 

“We need to be clear. We need to be clear about our successes as much as our failures. The problem isn’t the American people. The problem isn’t the American spirit. We are, today, as much as we ever were, a nation of strivers, a nation of liberty-lovers, of fighters for a cause. We’re the country of innovators. Why can’t we innovate our system of government? We’re riding into the twenty-first century on a dying horse-drawn carriage.”

The crowd laughs at this lame joke. They now await his cues.

“And I’m going to tell you something. The moment we get a system that works, we will be unstoppable.”

Cooper coughs. Somebody from the crowd shouts out: “Say it!” And Cooper looks at him, smiles. There’s enough time to throw a whiffle ball. 

“You want me to say it?”

There are a few more shouts. “Nah, I can’t. There’s a fine.” He’s smiling now. The crowd is calling for him to say it. “All right, you know what? I’m going to say it. The time has come to unfuck America.”

The roar overtakes them all, and it overtakes Mikey and Ren in their booth. Maybe they’re going to win. Maybe the Republic isn’t going to end. Maybe they’re going to build a new America out of the Maverick Party. And there is nothing like American politics for a rush of tribalism, a crowd overwhelmed by a vision of themselves and their country, and by its neverending dream that a new world is possible.

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I hope you enjoyed this – you can pre-order your copy today!  If you use the code LASTELECTION you can get a pre-signed copy directly from the publisher! 

Recoding America

I talked this week to a military veteran who was frustrated by the level of service she receives for a health condition.  
 
How are we going to solve our problems and make government work better for us?  One of the foremost experts on this subject is Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of Code for America and former deputy CTO of the US.  Jen wrote an excellent new book: “Recoding America:  Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.”  I interview her on the podcast this week.  If you want to understand why many of us find government to be so ridiculous and frustrating, you should read her book. 

Jen has spent over a decade trying to speed up our government, both among cities and states and in DC.  “For a long time I thought of our government’s lack of digital competence as an unhappy mishap, a mistake to be corrected . . . I eventually realized that many others inside the Beltway regarded it more as the natural order of things – inevitable and immutable.”  
 
Jen shares the story of improving the intake form for veterans to apply to the Veterans Administration (VA) for healthcare benefits.  The catalyst was a video of a military veteran, Dominic, trying and failing to use the webform which only worked on Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader.  A senior official upon seeing the video said, “This is unacceptable, let’s update the form so it’s more usable.”  They replaced the form, and applications for services shot up to 10 times the previous levels.  People within the VA started saying, “Bring back the old form!” because they weren’t used to getting such high volumes.  Happily, the leadership stuck with the new form.  
 
In another story, a VA web page struggled with latency in loading – it took up to two minutes to load a document or new web page.  So they defined latency to mean anything less than two minutes instead of the more standard few seconds; they solved the problem simply by changing the definition. 
 
Jennifer catalogues a number of reasons why government struggles with technology.  First, all of the energy and focus is on crafting or arguing about policy; actually delivering the policy to citizens is considered implementation and not deserving of attention.  “We want to talk policy and leave implementation to the mechanicals.  That didn’t work out well for the White House [rolling out healthcare.gov] and it’s not going to work out for the American public.”  Meanwhile, the website, whether it works or not, becomes the policy to Americans.  “No one reads the legal code, they just go to the website to apply for benefits.”  
 
Second, there are layers of policy that get added, but never subtracted.  “It takes 25 years for someone to become expert in processing unemployment benefits in California because they have added rules and workarounds and never taken anything away.  Someone after 17 years said that they were only partially expert.  It’s like archaeology how some of these systems work; it’s layers and layers of legal code causing complexity, before you even get to the software code.”  
 
Third, the policies tend to err on the side of completeness rather than user-friendliness.  Jen cites a foodstamp questionnaire of 212 questions that included questions like “Do you own a burial plot?”  When Jen explored the rationale behind that question’s inclusion, the drafter said, “Congress asked for a list of assets, and a burial plot is an asset.”  It’s safer to follow the letter of the law rather than to use common sense. 
 
Fourth, career civil servants and bureaucrats operate in a culture that makes sticking to process safer for their career – if they deviate from the rules, they could be punished.  If they stick to them they’re fine, whether or not the service works or ‘makes sense to people.’  “They’re in a job for twenty years and see taking criticism as simply part of the job.”  Jen describes many well-intended people in government that feel constrained by a thicket of rules and bad incentives.    
 
Fifth, tech products are designed using a waterfall development process – you figure out what it’s supposed to do from the policy down and then can’t go backwards/upwards to make changes.  Everything flows down from policy.  “This results in building something over ten or more years that no longer makes sense at very high expense,” Jen observes.  Most companies now use something called agile software development where you get feedback from users and iterate and improve.  Jen’s colleague coined a new law – “Byrne’s Law” - that most government tech products could be developed at 85% efficacy at 10% of the current cost; unfortunately no one has the authority to determine which 15% you could leave by the wayside.  
 
Sixth, there are major actors that prefer the current mode because they can bill the government enormous amounts of money with little accountability.  A VP at Oracle wrote that “Government’s expertise should be procurement, not technology itself,” in part because Oracle has become expert in government procurement practices and delivering an effective technology product becomes secondary.  Jen writes, “When I told her I thought the [new $600 million IT project] would likely fail, she replied, ‘Do you think I don’t know that?  The last seven IT projects in this state have all failed.’” 
 
Seventh, there is a cultural attitude that government is bad at tech and techies should head to private industry to solve the real problems, make money and develop their careers.  Meanwhile, Jen helped form the US Digital Service, which employs hundreds of coders and engineers to help modernize government.  “Victories aren’t always easy to come by, but when they do they are immensely satisfying because you know your work impacts millions of people in a very important way.” 
 
Jen’s book is a compelling insider account of why government often doesn’t work as well as it should.  Unlike others, she doesn’t just throw up her hands – she is grinding away to change things.  “It’s easy to complain about government but more satisfying to help fix it.”  She also thinks that the mission is critical as Americans are losing faith in our own ability to solve problems.    
 
“When systems or organizations don’t work the way you think they should, it is generally not because the people in them are stupid or evil.  It is because they are operating according to structures and incentives that aren’t obvious from the outside,” Jen writes.  “The bewildering assumption is that more of what came before will get us different results.”  
 
Truer words are hard to find.  
 
For Jen’s book click here and for my podcast interview of her click here.  To join Forward to help improve our government’s incentives to deliver for us, click here.  For my upcoming book, “The Last Election” about how the next election could turn out, click here – it comes out in two weeks!

How Trump Wins

Hello, I hope that your summer is going great in the home stretch!    
 
A couple weeks ago I looked at the Republican Field, which is yet dominated by Donald Trump, the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee despite all of his legal troubles.  I named Vivek Ramaswamy as the most likely candidate to breakout, potentially at the Republican debate this week. 

But let’s say Trump gets the nomination, which is still the most likely outcome.  What are Trump’s prospects in the general election, should he make it there? 
 
Recent polling has Trump and Biden tied at about 43% apiece nationally.  In other words, neck-and-neck. 
 
But it’s not likely to be just the two of them.   
 
Cornel West is running on the Green Party ticket. Will he be a factor? 
 
Howie Hawkins of the Green Party got only .3% with ballot access in 30 states in 2020.  That seems very low. 
 
However, Jill Stein got 1.1% in 45 states in 2016, and is now running Cornel West’s campaign. I think that West is a stronger candidate than either Hawkins or Stein were, and 2/3rds of Americans are not excited about either Biden or Trump.  Cornel West is polling at 4 – 5%.  I’d project Cornel West at somewhere between 1 to 3% in the general election, with the vast majority – maybe 70% - coming from Joe Biden and the Democrats. 
 
Keep in mind the tiny margin of victory in the key swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin in particular.  The race is likely to be determined by tens of thousands of voters with a difference of less than 1% in these 4 states.
 
Cornel West could easily swing any and all of these states. 
 
Will there be other candidates?  RFK Jr. has been polling at about 13% of the Democratic electorate in what passes for the Democratic primary.  In my view, it’s quite likely he says, “Look, the Democrats did not give me a fair shake.  My campaign will continue to the general election!”  His choices will be to run as an Independent or as a Libertarian, with the latter being much easier because they have ballot access in all 50 states. 
 
What would be in it for the Libertarian Party?  If a minor party gets 5% in a presidential election, that party gets federal funds of approximately $10 million to use for party building infrastructure in the next election cycle.  This is one reason why the Reform Party was a viable vehicle in 1996 after Perot ran.  So the Libertarian Party would likely welcome RFK Jr. with open arms in an attempt to get 5%. 
 
I’d put RFK Jr. at a similar level as Cornel West of 1 – 4%, with a slight majority of his voters coming from Joe Biden – his last name is Kennedy after all and a lot of Democrats remain reverential of the family. 
 
There are also consistent rumors that Joe Manchin of West Virginia is considering a presidential run on the No Labels Unity Ticket.  I take this very seriously, as his alternative is to run for Senate re-election against a popular GOP governor in West Virginia, a state that Trump took by 38 points in a cycle Trump is on the ballot, on behalf of a party that barely tolerates him.  Or he could make his swansong a country-unifying Lincoln-type presidential run alongside a Republican like Larry Hogan.  If you were 75 years old looking for a final act, which would you choose? 
 
You could easily have 5 presidential candidates on the ballot, with each being a significant factor:  Biden, Trump, West, Kennedy, and Manchin.
 
I think Joe Biden manages to eke out a narrow win against Trump one-on-one if he doesn’t have a health/age problem and there isn’t an economic setback.  But with West, Kennedy and/or Manchin on the ballot, he probably loses to Trump. 
 
I view Trump winning as a catastrophe.  Someone asked me what the smartest thing to do in this situation – I answered “Run the craziest person you can think of to weaken Trump.”  That’s what this system is giving us. 
 
Another plan would be to rally hundreds of thousands of independent swing voters in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan and Nevada to vote for whichever candidate offers real reforms of the dysfunctional political system.  Changing the primary system to allow all voters to vote for all candidates could actually be on the ballot in both Nevada and Arizona in 2024.  This will be the Forward Party’s plan – I hope that you will be a part of it. 
 
In 1860, there were 4 presidential candidates that got 39.8%, 29.5%, 18.1%, and 12.6% respectively.  The winner?  Abraham Lincoln.  That time, the right person won even as the country was fragmenting.  We are heading back in that general direction, with the two parties losing credibility at breakneck speed.  Will it be for good, or the opposite? 
 
Check the Math.  What a ridiculous system.  Let’s modernize it as quickly as we can. 
 
If you want to build a new direction in politics, check out Forward today.  For a fictionalized account of a third-party presidential campaign and where it leads, check out “The Last Election” my new book with Stephen Marche that comes out September 12th!  

Visiting the Picket Line

Hello, I hope that you are having a great summer!  August is a phenomenal time to get some rest and family time.  
 
This past week I visited the SAG-AFTRA picket line in Los Angeles.  The actors have been on strike since May fighting for a fair deal, joining the writers who were already on strike.  Actors and writers are trying to make sure they don’t get displaced by AI among other things. 

I met Bryan Cranston on the picket line – he made an impassioned speech recently on behalf of the actors.  But the vast majority of the people on the line and in the union are anonymous and often holding part-time jobs in order to be free to audition for roles.  87% don’t work enough to have health care through their work in the entertainment industry – which means they earn $26,000 or less.  
 
Actors and writers are among the approximately 10% of U.S. workers who are in a union – chances are that you’re in the other 90%.  The fact is that the vast majority of workers will simply feel the effects of automation without having a negotiation or conversation.  They will just show up to their place of work and find a smaller team and a new process that requires fewer people.    
 
The actors and writers are thus in an unusual position where they may be able to beat back these changes.  I suggested two tacks to them.  First, they should start their own studio with fair work and rules regarding AI.  This would in some ways be history repeating itself, as United Artists got started similarly about 100 years ago. In this era, the studio is much easier to replace than the talent, as financing, production, marketing and distribution are easier to procure. 
 
Second, they should head to Sacramento and agitate for rules regarding use of AI in movie and TV production.  The actors and writers are much more sympathetic to politicians and the public than the studios, who have done a great job alienating people.  Every major Democratic Senate candidate in CA has already sided with the actors and writers and the state legislators are 75% Democrats.  California already is leading the country in privacy and data rights regulations; it could take the lead here too.  
 
I posted a video from the picket line with a couple of the actors: one of them said, “We just want a fair deal, we’re not trying to ask for the world here . . . most of us are part-time, we have a passion that we’re working part-time on . . . we’re like the working class and something has got to give.”  
 
A lot of Americans feel the same way.  

My new book ‘the Last Election’ arrives in September – check out the first review and pre-order today!  And click here to see what Forward is doing in your area.  

Campaigning in California

Hello, I hope that your summer is going great! 
 
I’ve spent the past month or so campaigning in California.  People love it here.  But there are consistent concerns. Some have left the state because of housing costs.  Folks have to commute for hours to get to work.  Families are afraid to go to certain neighborhoods because of homeless people struggling with drug addiction.  Cars are routinely broken into in San Francisco.  Public schools are underperforming.  It’s expensive and getting harder to justify. 

How will these problems turn around?  One thing that could help is real competition and choice in our politics. 
 
California is a state where Democrats run just about everything – 75% of state legislators are Democrats.  In most of the state, there isn’t any question as to which party is going to win.  Special interests know what they need to do. 
 
Yet even Democrats I talk to are getting fed up and frustrated, much less Independents and Republicans.  It’s more and more the people vs. the machine. 
 
If this sounds like you, here is our way forward – change your party registration to Common Sense Party of California, who we are partnered with here in CA. 
 
It’s easy to do, and thanks to the California top two primary system it doesn’t affect your ability to vote in anything but the presidential primaries (which are unlikely to be meaningful in CA). 
 
After we get to 73,000 registrants, Common Sense will be a recognized party in California and will be able to support candidates at every level.  You even get a membership card from the Secretary of State.  It’s the pragmatic party most Californians want to see in office and a break from the machine. 
 
This is how to make it clear to the political class that you want real change, and that you’re not going to settle for politics as usual where the money keeps flowing but the problems don’t get solved. 
 
Common Sense in politics in CA?  It’s within our grasp if enough of us simply choose it.  Register today and let’s make it happen!   
 
I’ll be in San Diego on Saturday if you or friends are in the area.  Let’s move CA Forward with Common Sense!  See you soon,

Trump vs. the Field

Hello, I hope that your summer is going great!    

I get asked every day for my take on the ’24 presidential field.  Trump was indicted again last week by the Department of Justice.  Yet he remains the Republican frontrunner by a mile.  Will he become the nominee in March? 

The first Republican debate takes place on August 23rd.  Thus far 7 candidates have qualified:  Trump, DeSantis, Scott, Haley, Ramaswamy, Christie and Burgum.  Mike Pence and Asa Hutchinson have the polling of 1% but not the donations.  Francis Suarez is giving away $20 gift cards to donors; he and Will Hurd are currently on the outside looking in. 

The RNC has already announced that the polling threshold for the next debate in September will be 3%.  That will make it highly unlikely for anyone who misses the first debate to make the second one.

So realistically the Republican field looks increasingly set.  Who could potentially emerge as the Trump spoiler? 

The conventional wisdom was that Ron DeSantis was the best positioned to defeat Trump based on both polling and money raised; that has deflated a lot in the past month as voters have actually met DeSantis.  “Trump without the jokes,” is how one person put it.  Most of the money raised for DeSantis is actually with his PAC: $100 million vs. the $12 million his campaign has on hand. 

There are major limits to what PACs can do; traditionally most of the money has gone to advertising and events.  They’re not allowed to officially coordinate with campaigns. PACs also pay higher rates for advertising than candidates do.  Basically, PAC money is not nearly as valuable as money on hand for a campaign. 

When enthusiasm for a candidate wanes, PAC money is ordinarily not very helpful.  In 2016, Jeb Bush’s PAC had tons of money that it burnt on ineffective advertising down the stretch as Jeb faded. 

Can DeSantis turn around his campaign?  I’m dubious.  Their pivot hasn’t changed much, because it turns out the candidate is who he is.  And people aren't buying.  

So who is actually the most likely Trump spoiler?  In my opinion, it’s Vivek Ramaswamy. 

Vivek has genuine grassroots enthusiasm based on a distinct and - to Republicans - positive message.  He’s smart and quick on his feet.  He may be the best thinker and political athlete in the field.  He has energy for days.  When voters see him they like him.  And his wealth allows him to self-fund as a bridge.

Some people underestimate Vivek’s chances based on his being unconventional and not an elected official.  The thing is, Republicans don’t care about either of those things.  Only 15% of Republicans have a high trust in media, for example.  He’s reached 3rd or 4th in polling due primarily to his ability and message.  Donors chase momentum.  When he gets a wind at his back, which he will, Vivek is more likely to breakout and consolidate the field than any other candidate. 

Tim Scott is right behind Vivek.  He’s positive and appealing and has a very relatable set of experiences.  There is a set of very wealthy donors that are willing to pump money into Tim Scott’s PAC to the moon.  Scott will have every opportunity to make his case to both voters and donors.  I’m just not as confident about Tim’s ceiling as his message and appeal seem to be the wrong fit for this cycle; voters don't want to feel good about the institutions, they want to blow them up. 

Doug Burgum is actually a dark horse.  He’s steady and a billionaire; think Mike Bloomberg from North Dakota.  His campaign is competent - they got both the polling and the donors because of good execution.  I think the August debate will be great for him as an introduction to millions of voters who right now don’t know he exists.  He’s smart but not terribly exciting.  I think he breaks 3% and makes the September debate. 

Nikki Haley hasn’t made a mark and feels like a conventional politician among a base that doesn’t want one.  Chris Christie is running a very lean, effective campaign – I donated to help him impede Trump – but is well-defined amid Republican voters with very high negatives. 

And that’s the field. 

When I ran for President last cycle, candidates would dropout and it felt sudden, but then sensible and inevitable at the same time.  Beto.  Kamala.  Cory. 

The Republican Field will start shrinking as soon as Labor Day. 

Trump is the heavy favorite to be the Republican nominee, no matter his legal challenges.  If you want to reduce his odds, you want to help Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott and/or Doug Burgum breakout among the Republican primary electorate in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. 

Does that seem like a tall order?  That just shows how rough this cycle looks to be. 

The first debate is in two weeks.  We’ll see if it moves the needle.    

If these choices don’t thrill you check out Forward today. I will be in Los Angeles tailgating on Tuesday and San Diego on Saturday – would be great to see you.  Also my new book ‘the Last Election’ arrives in September – check out the first review and pre-order today!  

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P.S. Mike Pence also made the debate but has a low ceiling as the Trump sidekick now running against his boss.

Year 2

Hello, I hope that your summer is going great! 
 
This past week we celebrated the 1-year anniversary of Forward Party joining forces with Renew America and Serve America Movement last summer.  600+ activists, volunteers and leaders celebrated via a webinar with special guests and speakers.  We raised $20k from grassroots supporters that was immediately matched by donors – it was an incredible event! 

We’ve accomplished a lot over the past year: hundreds of thousands of supporters, tens of thousands of volunteers, 48 states with leadership chapters, 12 states with executive committees, 6 states with legal recognition, and 20 elected officials affiliated with Forward including mayors and state legislators.  All of these numbers are set to grow quickly in the days ahead as dozens of candidates and current officials are poised to join us. 
 
It’s invigorating to talk to everyday Americans who sense that the status quo isn’t working and want to build a new approach.  These are passionate and optimistic Americans driven to do what’s right for the country and their community.  
 
If you want to see what Forward is doing, now would be a great time!  Click here to check out the Forward Party in your area or to stay updated. 
 
One of the newest members of the Forward Party is Kerry Healey, the former President of Babson College and Lt. Governor of Massachusetts, whom I interview on the podcast this week.  Kerry has had quite a journey – her last job was running the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. 
 
“I was motivated to improve things for families and children.  That’s what got me started in politics – issues around domestic violence and child abuse.  I ran for state representative in Massachusetts and lost but impressed some people.  Later, I was asked to join state leadership and became Lieutenant Governor with Mitt Romney.  We accomplished a lot together for families.” 
 
After leaving office, Kerry became President of Babson, one of the most entrepreneurial colleges in the country.  “We have a mandatory class on entrepreneurship that all of the students take their first year where they start a real business with real money in teams – and if they make money the get to keep it,” Kerry describes.  I ran an entrepreneurship organization for a number of years so I appreciate her work a great deal.  We’re going to need a lot more entrepreneurs in this era of economic transformation. 
 
Kerry recently joined the national board of Forward:  “It’s funny – for someone who has been in politics for a long time, I’ve always felt politically homeless.  It’s exciting to build a place for people like myself, and I know more and more Americans feel the same way I do.  I want to do this for the next 20 years.” 
 
It’s amazing to work with people like Kerry and volunteers around the country.  I personally think it will take us a lot less than 20 years to make an enormous mark on this country, especially if Year One is any indication.   
 
For my conversation with Kerry click here.  To check out the summer Forward gear click here – we sold $10k of it in its first day!   
 
I’m in San Francisco Monday night and then in Los Angeles the following week if you have friends in either place.  Enjoy the summer! 

Power and Progress

Hello, I hope that your summer is going great.  I’ll be in San Francisco for a public event on July 31st. 

One of my favorite economists and thinkers is Daron Acemoglu of MIT.  Daron has been researching poverty and prosperity for years and co-authored the bestseller “Why Nations Fail” a few years back.  I cite Daron’s work in the War on Normal People about how lifespans are getting shorter in the United States. 

Daron’s new book, co-authored with fellow MIT professor Simon Johnson, is “Power and Progress: Our 1,000-year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity.”  It explores whether technological innovation naturally results in broad-based well-being.  That is, when we invent things do people in general do better?  Or are the benefits hoarded by a relatively low number of people who have access to the new technology? 

In reviewing innovations from modern agriculture to the industrial revolution to microchips, Daron and Simon find that, generally speaking, there are a relatively small number of people who benefit while the general public is left on the outside looking in.  For example, during the medieval era the development of agriculture left 90% of the population as peasants and serfs working farmland owned by a handful of landowners.  In more modern times, computer and Internet-enabled productivity gains haven’t raised the real incomes of most Americans even as they have given rise to incredibly valuable firms.  “This is the opposite of what a lot of the dominant public discussion would indicate,” Daron said during our interview this week.  “We are conditioned to think that a rising tide lifts all boats.” 

Of course, their findings are significantly more pressing in the age of AI. “What if AI fundamentally disrupts the labor market where most of us earn our livelihoods, expanding inequalities of pay and work? . . . AI appears set on a trajectory that will multiply inequalities” they write.  Most Americans instinctively sense that, while AI may indeed create a lot of value and a boom for certain companies, the average worker may not be among the beneficiaries.  

Of course, there have been instances when technology has given rise to a general increase in living standards, for example during the post-WWII period in the United States.  Daron and Simon argue that this didn’t happen by accident, but because of popular movements that fought for better work conditions and broader distribution of the benefits of new technologies.  “Electoral competition, the rise of trade unions, and legislation to protect workers’ rights changed how production was organized and wagers were set . . . they also forged a new direction of technology – focused on increasing worker productivity rather than just substituting machinery for the tasks [people] used to perform,” they observe. 

They posit that a few things would need to happen for the gains of AI and new technologies to benefit most American workers: the first is changing the narrative about how the tech is and should be used.  The second is to build a coalition of interest groups that can agitate for better outcomes.  The third is to have policy solutions based on the new narrative.  “A new, more inclusive vision of technology can emerge only if the basis of social power changes.” 

How optimistic is Daron that we are up for this challenge?  “It’s a tall order.  The tech industry and large corporations are politically more influential today than they have been for much of the last hundred years . . . A social movement to redirect technological change away from automation and surveillance is certainly not just around the corner.  All the same, we still think the path of technology remains unwritten.” 

It's hard to argue with so much history: “A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing abundantly clear; there is nothing automatic about new technologies bringing widespread prosperity.  Whether they do or not is an economic, social and political choice.” 

For my interview with Daron Acemoglu of MIT, click here.  To help build a popular movement for adaptation in the face of new technologies, check out Forward today.  Forward has its one year anniversary event on Thursday – click here to join us with special guests! 

Trump the Sequel

What would a second Trump term look like? 
 
That is in many ways the focus of “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump,” the new book by Miles Taylor.  You likely know Miles as ‘Anonymous,’ the author of the NYTimes Op-Ed warning of the dysfunction and venality of the first Trump administration.  Now Miles is back with a sobering insider look at what a Trump sequel would look like.

Miles ran Renew America, which joined with the Forward Party last year. Miles and Renew America sought to return the Republican Party to some degree of normalcy and principle.  “We failed miserably,” Miles comments wryly.  “MAGA has taken over not just at the federal level, but at the state levels and within the base.” 
 
What would happen under Trump the second time around? “Federal agencies would be weaponized against his political enemies,” Miles warns.  “Trump is running on retribution.  One official I interviewed said ‘It will be a revenge machine.’  You would see MAGA loyalists from the America First Policy Institute being brought in to run agencies as opposed to experts.  Trump learned his lesson last time not to bring in qualified people.” 
 
Miles details some of the ideas that Trump considered in his first term and would return to.  “Trump would cut off undocumented immigrant kids from public schools that receive federal funds.  That’s something he wanted to do last time. He also wanted to gut the Veterans Administration to save money.  He got talked out of that idea as bad for his re-election bid.  This time there is no re-election to consider.  He sees military veterans as ‘suckers’ because he dodged military service himself.” 
 
How realistic is it that Trump wins?  “It’s very realistic,” Miles says.  “Oddsmakers have it at 30%, which is a little bit low.  But he was at 9% in 2016 when he actually did win.  Biden won by only tens of thousands of votes in the swing states and the data shows that the energy among Democrats for Biden is low.  He could win one-on-one, and there are other candidates who could change the math.” 
 
I agree with Miles that Trump’s chances are being underestimated in some quarters.  I think that Biden and the DNC are making a mistake running an 81-year old incumbent with low approval ratings without a competitive process.  I also agree that a Trump return would be disastrous.  
 
Miles has direct knowledge of just what’s at stake.  A second Trump term would be the end of many of our institutions’ tenuous hold on credibility or viability.  And Trumpism is unlikely to end with Trump – the base of the Republican Party enjoys having control and doesn’t want to give it back.  There are two things that need to happen at the same time; we have to strengthen and modernize our system to make it more resistant to authoritarianism and demagoguery.  And we have to keep Trump out of the White House.  They’re both real challenges and time is of the essence.
 
For my interview of Miles on the podcast click here.  For Miles’s book click here.  To help Forward modernize our democracy click here.  

Summer Update

Hello, I hope that your summer is going great!  I'm writing this from Ohio after celebrating Independence Day at a barbecue upstate.  

Here in Ohio I met with Forward leaders and volunteers and got to introduce Dave Chappelle at his comedy show in Yellow Springs. It was a blast complete with epic fireworks.  

I’ve gotten great feedback on my talk at Aspen Ideas Festival on why we need a new party – so much so that we turned it into the podcast episode this week.  You can listen to it here or watch it on YouTube here.  
 
While I was in Colorado, the mayor of Fort Collins, Jeni Arndt, joined the Forward Party!  It was a massive win, as Jeni is a former state legislator who just wants to deliver for her constituents without having to play the partisan games.  That brings the number of elected officials who are affiliated with Forward to 15 – and there are more on the way.  Stay tuned. 
 
It’s been an exciting time for Forward, as we welcomed new Board members Krist Novoselic, co-founder of the rock band Nirvana, and Kerry Healey, former Lt. Governor of Massachusetts and President of Babson College among others.  These are serious, amazing people and leaders who are committed to making politics work for the people of this country.  Our CEO Lindsey Williams-Drath is continuing to put us on a path to success with the help of Matt Shinners, Joel Searby and many others. 
 
I saw a couple Forward team members, Kait Saier and Ali Backsheider, when I was in Ohio this weekend.  We met with local activists and leaders and had a lot of fun.  
 
This week I’m in New York for a few meetings before heading out West for a month or so.  I’ll also be pre-signing copies of my new book, “The Last Election,” a political thriller that I co-wrote with novelist Stephen Marche that comes out on September 12th.  It’s hard to believe that’s in two months. It’s about the campaign manager of a third party presidential candidate, a journalist who gets ahold of some juicy info, and what could happen in a system that doesn’t evolve with the times.  Could our next election be our last?  The book is already receiving positive reviews and I hope people enjoy it!  You can pre-order a signed copy today from the publisher here with the discount code LASTELECTION.  
 
The summer has been busy, but we are getting in our fair share of family time.  I hope that you are too.  Enjoy yourself – these are the times that we should relish and take advantage of!  There’s much to be grateful for and a lot to do.

To check out Forward in your area click here.  To check out summer movie times near you click here.  And wear sunscreen!    

Coming Apart or Coming Together

Hello, I hope that you are having a wonderful summer thus far!  4th of July is always a phenomenal holiday. 
 
What path is America on?  One of the thinkers who has influenced me the most these past several years is Peter Turchin, a Professor at the University of Connecticut who started out as a theoretical biologist.  He has since helped develop a science of history and societies measuring various data points to find relationships and patterns in big historical cycles.  I cite his work in both the War on Normal People and Forward. 

Peter has observed that societies typically have periods of integration followed by disintegration, each measured in decades.  He has developed a model that measures political stress that incorporates income and wealth inequality, wage stagnation, national debt, competition between elites, distrust in government, social mobility, tax rates, urban density, demographics and other factors that have led to instability and conflict in other settings.  Unfortunately we are now at Civil War levels: 

Turchin has a new book out, “End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration” that we discuss on the podcast this week.  “America is a plutocracy at this point,” Turchin says.  “Some people might not like to hear that, but that’s who has power and influence in the current system.”  “The top .1% or 1% or 10% of have reaped enormous benefits this past number of decades while things haven’t changed or have even gotten more unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans,” Turchin notes.  He calls this process the wealth pump; it exacerbates inequality while immiserating the vast majority.     
 
Peter describes an ever-growing group of aspiring elites that are left on the outside looking in.  “Think of it as a game of musical chairs, only the number of players keeps growing while the chairs stay the same.”  Peter argues that this predictably leads to political instability according to the experience of other societies.  He distinguishes among elites who have some combination of physical coercive power, economic power, administrative power and soft power of culture and influence.  In each, there are growing numbers of people who feel themselves on the outside looking in. 
 
He writes, “[H]uman societies follow predictable trajectories into revolutionary situations.  But how are these crises resolved?  Now that America is in crisis, we want to know what could happen next.”  Peter’s model projects surging political violence in the 2020s with repeating cycles of strife and exhaustion.
 
What does the model recommend to change this path?  Peter says, “The most direct thing you could do to help would be to increase the relative wage for most Americans.  This would reduce both the immiseration and elite overproduction.” 
 
I expressed to Peter in our conversation that popular frustration is manifesting as political polarization; we are told to blame the other ideological side.  He agreed and said, “One of the ways to push toward the positive path is when people on different political sides put aside their differences and start working together to address the root problems.”  That’s what most Americans want.  Unfortunately, if Peter’s data is an indicator, things might get worse before they get better.  Let’s spur a new form of politics as quickly as possible. 

For my conversation with Peter, click here.  To help Forward break us out of this cycle, click here. For my recent talk at Aspen Ideas on why a new party is needed click here.

AI, Regulation and Humanity

Hello, I hope all is great!  Forward is still buzzing about the news last week in PA. 
 
I appeared on CNBC last week to talk about the need for an AI-dedicated federal agency.  AI and its implementations are evolving so quickly that it needs to be the sole focus of knowledgeable regulators. 

One of the most prominent AI experts making a similar case is Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at NYU and founder of an AI company. Gary called for an International Agency to govern AI in a widely seen TED talk last month.  “These tools are so good at giving convincing narratives about just about anything.  I’m deeply concerned about misinformation.  Bad actors will use AI tools to threaten democracy.”
 
Gary took his message to the US Senate where he recently testified.  He said to me, “A ton of Senators from both parties showed up; there’s a clear desire to understand what the impact of AI is likely to be.  That was encouraging.”
 
Gary sat down with me in a podcast interview this week.  Among his proposed policies  - licenses for AI models. “I think licenses for AI models are a good idea.  They’re going to be used by millions of people, so it stands to reason that someone should make sure they’re not doing something destructive before they’re rolled out.” 
 
Gary’s big calls at TED were to synthesize both symbolic systems and neural networks in next-generation AI and to establish an international regulatory body.  Gary is skeptical that sentient reasoning AI – often described as Artificial General Intelligence (“AGI”) - is around the corner.  “I’d be very surprised if AGI is achieved in, say, the next decade.  But we have enough to be worried about with the current generative models and their uses right now.” 
 
I agree with Gary on just about every front.  There is a massive need for international collaboration on AI as well as a more coherent federal approach that includes a dedicated agency.  “91% of people think that we should carefully manage AI,” Gary notes.  I hope that our government rises to the challenge.   
 
I sometimes joke that Washington D.C. is on a twenty-year tape delay, in part because of the advanced ages of many of our leaders.  Legislators have been asleep at the switch when it came to social media for the past 20 years.  We’ve all paid for it.  Policy and politics are now often at cross-purposes; delivering good policy is more likely to exact a cost for individual actors than to reward them.  That’s what we have to change. 
 
I hope that we break from our recent pattern where AI is concerned.  It’s no exaggeration to say that our future is at stake.  Let’s make solutions politically rewarding and back those who want to do the right thing. 
 
For my interview with Gary click here. 
 
Click here to sign up as a recurring donor to Forward and get invited to a live zoom with me, Lindsey Drath the CEO of Forward, and many others this Wednesday! 

Forward in PA!

Hello, I hope all is great!  On Tuesday I attended the Cure concert where I met one of my childhood idols.   Then on Wednesday, I was a part of political history. 

In Harrisburg, PA two state senators – Anthony Williams and Lisa Boscola – signed up to become affiliates of the Forward Party!  With press and the public in attendance, they signed a pledge to work together with us and those who want to restore genuine pluralism and the ability to work with people of diverse party backgrounds. 

Their reasons were both personal and familiar.  Said Senator Williams, “The people I represent don’t care about politics, they’re just trying to heat their homes.  We’re not different teams, we’re all Americans and we’re supposed to represent the people that send us here!” 

Senator Lisa Boscola said, “I’ve been serving the people of Pennsylvania for decades.  They just want us to work together and get things done.  I’ve been the same person, but politics have become more and more divisive, and we need real leaders to turn it around.” 

It was a phenomenal event that has the potential to change politics nationwide.  Pennsylvania is an evenly divided swing state with a narrowly divided legislature – imagine a dozen state legislators from both parties that are committed to true pluralism and finding solutions, as well as reform measures like ranked choice voting and open primaries.  That could be pivotal. 

What’s happening in Pennsylvania could also be a template around the country.  There are hundreds of state legislators and officeholders in other states who are aligned with our goals and are looking for a way to improve our political incentives.  They will look at what Senator Williams and Senator Boscola did and think, “That’s what I want to do too!”    

We are succeeding in identifying a coalition of both voters and officeholders who want to end the hostility and hate toward people of another party or tribe and come together.  Being American or a good person doesn’t reside in one party or another.  Let’s make it safe for our leaders to make this case. 

Senator Boscola said, “A ton of the people I represent aren’t so much political, they’re independents.”  She’s right.  And she’s willing to act on her principles. 

There are others like Senator Boscola and Senator Williams.  Let’s find them and make it easier for them to do what they want.  Our future depends on it. 

Donate to Forward today to help us back Senator Williams and Senator Boscola and others like them!  With your help, we can make it safer for leaders to do right by all of us instead of just toeing the party line.  

Texas is Moving

What a week! 
 
I visited Dallas, Austin and Houston this past week to meet with Forward Party leaders and those who want to build a brighter future in the Lone Star State.  I met with people who had just arrived in the state a few years ago to those who have been there for generations. 

Everywhere I went, there was a massive appetite for change.  People know that politics in Texas is not serving them and isn’t representative of what most want.  The current political system is dividing the state up into noncompetitive red and blue zones, suppressing popular will.    
 
Yet there is a path; 43% of local races in Texas go uncontested and the majority of county seats, school board seats and other posts are nonpartisan.  If we take our blue and red hats off and make common cause, we can give rise to a new force in Texas that doesn’t subscribe to the ideological back and forth that serves to divide us rather than solve problems.    
 
You know how many Texans it takes to start a new major party?  82,000.  That’s very doable.  With that many people signed up, candidates could run for any post in the state under a new banner that doesn’t turn 50% of people off from the get-go.  People would have to listen to the candidate and regard them as an individual rather than just a team jersey. 
 
At the same time, the Forwardists of Texas will back reform-minded Democrats and Republicans who back measures like Ranked Choice Voting.  We are open-minded and practical; many people who have joined Forward remain registered Democrats and Republicans. 
 
Will this be easy?  No.  But imagine running 50 candidates in local races and having 10 of them win.  And then do it again.  Before you know it, you have a real coalition of change-making leaders who can be a fulcrum at every level. 
 
I came away from Texas 100% confident that there is an enormous need and hunger for reform.  The people who joined Forward at these events were phenomenal.  Our state leaders are revved up.  I’ll be back in September and I expect the movement will only be bigger and stronger.   
 
Does this sound like you?  Please do check out TexasForwardParty.org to connect with the incredible people in Texas fighting for a better future.  Even signing up for the mailing list will be a plus. 
 
What is the path toward better politics in Texas? 
 
It’s not left or right, but Forward.  Let’s lead the way.   

In a Bad State

One of the biggest stormclouds on the horizon for the US economy is empty office buildings.
 
$1.5 trillion in commercial mortgages will come due in the next two years – and midtown Manhattan office buildings have a reported 50% utilization rate according to Barbara Corcoran.  If you walk the downtowns of New York, DC or San Francisco, the foot traffic remains low as office workers have shifted to remote or hybrid. 

This has dire portents for regional banks, which hold 70% of bank-held commercial mortgages.  It also signals rough times ahead for city and state budgets, which rely on taxes on office buildings that are about to fall in value. 
 
What happens when the federal money runs out and cities and states have to tighten their belts?  That’s one of the main questions considered by David Schleicher, Yale Law Professor and author of “In a Bad State:  Responding to State and Local Budget Crises,” whom I interview on the podcast this week.  City and state budgets have been flush since 2020, when the federal government sent out billions in aid packages.  But that money is, in many cases, being clawed back, spent, or has already been committed to new programs. 
 
“When you have to bailout a city or state, you’re left with three choices,” David says.  “I call it a trilemma.  One, you can bail them out with federal money.  The problem is that everyone thinks that cities and states that get into trouble will get bailed out, which leads to bad behavior both from politicians who will continue to overspend and lenders who give them access to money.  Two, you can choose austerity.  The problem there is that you will cut workers and services, generally when things are already going badly, which makes a bad time worse.  Three, you can default on the debt.  This raises the cost of lending to cities and states, who build virtually all of our infrastructure.” 
 
“In our history, we’ve done all three,” David comments.  His book details how the US has handled local budget crises in the past, from Hamilton assuming state debts in the 1830s to Detroit’s managed bankruptcy and Puerto Rico today.  His argument is that there are ways to mitigate the downsides of each of these approaches with elements like conditional aid that push more responsible accounting and behavior.  “If each approach has a major problem, you can do a little of each: a little bailout, a little austerity, a little default.”  He uses Detroit as an example, where there was a bankruptcy but also state and philanthropic aid immediately afterwards. 
 
David cautions that states and cities are often set up to be vulnerable fiscally by what he describes as their ‘broken politics.’  “The central problem of state and local politics is that they lack functional popular politics.  Most voters know little and care less about state politics, with state elections outside of gubernatorial races largely serving as referenda on the president of the United States.  The lack of broad public engagement with state politics leaves state and local politicians in hock to the narrow set of voters and lobbying groups who dominate low-information elections like legislative primaries or off-cycle local elections . . . state and local officials do not seek, and do not receive, a public mandate from ordinary voters.  They are instead responsive to narrow and unrepresentative groups of voters and interests.” 
 
Basically, local politicians have to listen to special interests because they're the only ones paying attention.  That leads to financial precarity over time.  Who would make a tough call for the public good that antagonizes a powerful interest group?    

As David put it in his recent piece in the Atlantic, “We have ignored state and local politics, assuming that everything will work out fine.  Once federal cash stops flowing and budgets worsen, the costs of having done so will be all too clear.  Whether and how we respond are up to us.”  

Sounds like a challenge worth responding to. 
 
Want to improve local politics?  Check out Forward in your state!  For my interview with David click here. 

The First Review

The first review for ‘The Last Election’ is in and it is great!! The book got a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly:

Former Democratic presidential candidate Yang (The War on Normal People) teams up with novelist Marche (The Hunger of the Wolf) to craft a frighteningly plausible “what-if” scenario in this taut political thriller . . . Yang and Marche masterfully ratchet the tension to near-unbearable levels. The outcome, in this worthy 21st-century update of the 1962 classic Seven Days in May, is just possible enough to give readers nightmares.

As an author, you always are eager for the first bit of feedback. The Last Election is a new format for me as my first novel. I thought that a narrative would be a compelling way to convey a message as to what’s to come, and how we can improve on it. I’m excited to get this story out into the world.

The Last Election comes out on September 12th - you can pre-order your copy directly from the publisher here. Use the discount code LASTELECTION for 30% off and I’ll sign all pre-ordered copies. My plan is to go to the publisher’s office for a day in August with a few sharpies. ;)

Here not taking our elections for granted,

The Presidential Field Forms

The past week was a big week for the Presidential field. Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum declared as Republicans. Chris Sununu decided against a run. Cornel West also declared in the People’s Party as a 3rd party candidate. And of course Trump was indicted by the DOJ for mishandling classified documents.

In the short run, other Republican candidates are rallying to Trump’s side while hoping his legal troubles make him seem increasingly unelectable in the general election.

People aren’t giving any of the 3 new Republican candidates much hope. I agree on Mike Pence – it’s very hard to see the appeal of someone who was Trump’s loyal sidekick only to break with the base and strike out on his own against his old boss. The evangelical base will be split among a number of candidates and Pence’s base is unclear.

Some feel the same way about Chris Christie. I was on a panel with Chris Christie a number of months ago and I think he can contribute a lot to the race. Unlike some others, he’s done this before. He fills a room. He has a mission. He’s tough, battle-hardened and can crack a joke. And he has been gearing up to give it to Trump on a debate stage for literally years.

Having been on the debate stage myself, it’s an odd environment. Most people will come across as phony or rehearsed if they mount an attack. Chris Christie will seem entirely natural. That will go a very long way. He’s going to have all sorts of memorable exchanges – if he gets there.

The first Republican debate is on August 23rd – the criteria to make it are 1% in 3 polls and 40,000 individual donors. Only 5 candidates seem assured of making the first debate: Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy, and Scott. Christie should make the polling but will struggle to get 40,000 individual donors in 10 weeks.

Doug Burgum has a fascinating profile; he sold Great Plains Software out of North Dakota to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001 and stayed there through 2007. 9 years later he ran for Governor as an outsider and won twice. He has a combination of vast wealth and political experience that could make him a factor if everything clicks. His campaign video seemed tailor made for Iowa in particular.

Money has a ton of advantages. You don’t have to waste time fundraising; other candidates will disappear from the trail regularly to hit the money centers. You can hire a top-notch team. You can spend online to grow the following. But money also is a barrier to support in that no one wants to give to the campaign and candidate that is super rich.

Burgum, like Christie, will have a tough time getting 40,000 donors by August 21 and he will probably struggle to get 1% in polls too. He at least has some fans in North Dakota as the current governor that can give him a boost to his donor numbers.

Chris Sununu, like Larry Hogan before him, saw this field and thought that he’d be splitting the anti-Trump vote. Look for Chris to try and help non-Trump candidates wherever he can. The conventional wisdom is it’s Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and everybody else. Other candidates will be trying to break into the conversation.

On the Democratic side there will be no debates even as RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson climb in the polls. And now Cornel West is running with the People’s Party.

One thing that most people don’t realize – in most states it’s a lot easier to run for President as an Independent candidate than it is on a party line. Cornel is making a very specific choice, as People’s Party has to get on the ballot for someone to vote for Cornel.

Forward Party is going through a similar process trying to get party recognition and ballot access around the country. We have party recognition in six states, executive committees in twelve and state chapters in forty-eight. If you’d like to sign up to help, click here. We would love for you to join our efforts!

I sometimes catch wind of what different candidates are going to do; some of them call me up to take my temperature ahead of time. I’ve heard from several others who are considering running. I didn’t know Cornel was declaring until the day of. This probably means that more candidates are on the way. Trump’s second indictment makes that all the more likely.

Want better from our politics? Check out Forward Party today!

The Writers Strike

When I wrote “The War on Normal People” a number of years ago, I was deeply concerned about the impact AI would have on all sorts of jobs.

One job I didn’t talk about much is writers – yet the Writers’ Guild of America strike is very much now on the frontlines of what is happening with new technologies. The strike was initially thought of as the Streaming Strike because of writers being compensated more poorly with the shift to streamers. But now AI is front and center as studios want to retain the right to use the technology to produce scripts. Writers understandably want to restrict the use of AI and its ability to develop models based on their work. “This town is going to be leveled by AI” is how one friend in LA put it to me. That’s in part what the writers are going on strike to prevent.

There are about 11,500 writers in the writing strike.  This week on the podcast I interview one of them, Michael Jamin, a showrunner and writer for such shows as King of the Hill, Beavis & Butthead, and Just Shoot Me (I’m a big Mike Judge fan).  “It takes a while to become a good writer.  You learn a lot from the veterans in the room.  You need to spend time not just in the writers’ room but on set if you’re ever going to run a show,” Michael comments. 

Michael continues, “We want to make sure that writing continues as a profession.  It’s gotten harder and harder for anyone to make a living as there are fewer episodes per season with the streamers.  They’ve also put in mini-rooms where they have you write scripts that may or may not be used and say, ‘we should pay you less because we might not use these.’  Our argument is, if I go into a grocery store can I pay less because I might throw the banana away?  It takes the same amount of work to make it whether you use it or not.”     
 
There’s a notion that Hollywood writers are all rich.  I can say with authority that that’s not true, as I know a few of them.  “A lot of us don’t know where the next gig is going to come from.  Some people have other jobs to tide them over.”  Even some writers with noteworthy credits are essentially on the edge. 
 
That said, the writers seem very determined.  The last strike in 2007 went on for 100 days.  How long might this one last?  “Keep in mind it’s not just the writers who are going without pay due to the strike.  It’s the caterers, the set decorators and carpenters, the countless small businesses that benefit from a film shoot.  This is disrupting a lot of lives.”  The content pipeline would really dry up if the Actors join the strike later this year; SAG-AFTRA is voting to authorize a strike right now. 
 
The media landscape is being quickly transformed as tech firms grow in prominence; Amazon and Apple essentially have major studios stapled onto them as marketing arms, and the content producers are competing for finite attention and dollars.  They want to manage their costs.  On the other side are the writers.  What role will human creativity play in the future of storytelling?  I told Michael that good writing is what distinguishes the good shows from the not-so-good ones; who will be doing the writing in the future?  And if the most skilled creatives are in danger of being commoditized in the 21st century economy, who is safe? 
 
We essentially turned a blind eye when automation came for manufacturing and industrial workers.  It’s coming for more and more of us.  The Writers are an unusual group to be on the frontlines of the tug-of-war between tech-fueled efficiencies and humanity, but here they are.  They’ll have more company soon.    
 
For my interview with Michael, click here.  For my book “The War on Normal People” click here.  To join Forward to humanize our economy, click here.