A Professional Bridge-Builder
It’s a difficult time in America. We feel more divided than ever, with guns and abortion laws now top of mind. Imagine if your job was to bring people of different beliefs and backgrounds together every day to find common ground?
I hope that you are doing great this Memorial Day with friends and family.
It’s a difficult time in America. We feel more divided than ever, with guns and abortion laws now top of mind. Imagine if your job was to bring people of different beliefs and backgrounds together every day to find common ground?
One of my favorite organizations is Braver Angels, a non-profit dedicated to building bridges between people of different parties. It started with a workshop of 10 Trump supporters and 11 Clinton supporters in South Lebanon, Ohio in December, 2016. The workshop was structured by co-founder Bill Doherty, who had decades of experience as a family therapist. Yes, the events are essentially like family therapy for our country.
Braver Angels’ Chief Storyteller is Monica Guzman, whom I interview on the podcast this week. Monica is one-of-a-kind. She grew up in New Hampshire before starting an award-winning community news and event site “The Evergrey” (‘things aren’t always black and white’) in Seattle. She is a self-described liberal but her parents voted for Trump twice. She brought dozens of Seattle progressives to Sherman County, Oregon to meet with dozens of Trump voters to see why they voted the way they did. That event was named: “Melting Mountains: An Urban-Rural Gathering.” Minds were opened on both sides. Some rural voters in attendance were motivated by things like health care costs and water rights.
Monica has written a new book, “I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.” She argues that the antidote to our current sorting, othering and siloing are curiosity and real conversations.
“Secondary sources are never as good as primary sources. So why do we accept the answers [the media] gives us about who other people are and how they think?” Monica argues. She maintains that the only way to truly understand someone is by talking to them. “As conversations generate fuel, they also spin up something else: a connection. If two people are talking, they are in a relationship that has the potential to grow deeper. Always.”
As you’d imagine though, having a productive conversation is easier said than done. Monica has a wealth of experience in this and provides a ton of guidance in her book. In her view, quality conversations need time, attention, parity, containment, and embodiment. Containment – that it’s just you and the person – runs afoul of many of our modern interactions. It turns out that our social media comments are as much about the people looking at the conversation as they are the recipient. Private conversations often sound different than conversations for public consumption. Embodiment – ideally being fully present – requires, well, your physical body, which is something we often forego nowadays in the Zoom era.
Even if one is able to sit one-on-one with someone, conversations aren’t easy. Building traction and trust, avoiding assumptions, not trying to convince or win arguments, embracing complexity – each of these run against the grain of how most of us ‘talk’ to each other nowadays. Indeed, it may be why we all prefer to be sorted, where we simply interact with people we can make comfortable assumptions about politically. For Monica, if you engage thoroughly enough the goal is to have multiple “I never thought of it that way” type of moments perhaps in a given conversation.
I appreciate Monica’s perspective a great deal because she is literally walking the walk every day. It seems like a lot of work. But if enough of us become genuinely curious, it just might keep our fractured society whole. After all, what happens if we stop talking to each other, perhaps for fear that even talking to someone somehow legitimizes their point of view or that those with another perspective aren’t worth the time? The stakes are high. “We know what happens when the people we love don’t think we really see them; they go find someone who will. Someone who might exploit that basic need we all have to belong, to matter . . . Misinformation isn’t the product of a culture that doesn’t value truth. It’s the product of a culture in which we’ve grown too afraid to turn to each and hear it.”
For my interview with Monica click here.
Longshot
Chances are if you’re reading this, you were interested in or excited by my presidential campaign. The campaign would not have happened without Zach Graumann, my co-host whom I interview on the podcast this week on his new book “Longshot: How Political Nobodies Took Andrew Yang National – and the New Playbook that Let Us Built a Movement.” It’s his first book and it’s a joy to read.
Hello, I hope all is great on your end.
Some big news this week – Zach’s book on the campaign comes out on Tuesday!
Chances are if you’re reading this, you were interested in or excited by my presidential campaign. The campaign would not have happened without Zach Graumann, my co-host whom I interview on the podcast this week on his new book “Longshot: How Political Nobodies Took Andrew Yang National – and the New Playbook that Let Us Built a Movement.” It’s his first book and it’s a joy to read.
Zach’s book is obviously personal to me, as it’s about my presidential campaign but also written by a close friend whom I went through a war with. It’s a wonderful book guaranteed to make you laugh and grimace and appreciate what it takes to build something that catches hold of the popular imagination using 21st century tools and media.
The book starts with Zach’s decision to join the campaign and goes on to catalogue our early struggles, how we found our footing, podcasts and social media, the birth of the Yang Gang, #MATH, planning rallies, making and prepping for the debates, wrangling with the media, campaigning in New Hampshire and Iowa and much more. Zach also distills the key decisions of the campaign with marketing principles around Identity Branding, the new Attention Economy, Authenticity and more.
Here’s a sample passage from Longshot:
“We’re calling it . . . Yang Gang.”
Our five-person team was gathered in a standing circle in our high-ceilinged Midtown HQ in late September 2018, and I had just proudly announced the name of our new political army.
The responses were less than supportive.
“’Yang Gang’ sounds like ‘gang bang.’”
“Pretty sure people don’t wanna join a gang.”
“This is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
I was undeterred. I raised my voice to be heard over their grumbling and continued. “When people voted for a Republican candidate in 2016, what did they say?”
Crickets.
“They said, ‘I’m voting for Ted Cruz,’ ‘I’m voting for John Kasich,’’ I answered.
More crickets. I kept going.
“But what did they say when they were voting for the Donald? They didn’t just say, ‘I’m voting for Trump.’ What’d they say?”
Blank, slightly skeptical looks all around.
Finally, Frawley came to my rescue.
“I’m MAGA,” muttered Frawley.
“Yes!” I jumped, excited that someone was at least pretending to follow along. “It was visceral. It was Part of you. It is something you identified with.”
“Yeah, but Yang Gang sounds stupid and childish and no one will like it,” Carly piped.
“Can’t we find something better?” asked Shinners as he rolled his eyes.
“I’m pretty sure Yang Gang is already a thing in Korea.” Said Frawley, looking at his phone.
No one on the staff was sold.
After some back and forth, I declared, “Well, this is only a semi-democracy.” “Yang Gang it is until you pick something better. You have one week. Otherwise . . . Yang Gang, baby!”
They didn’t come up with anything better, because Yang Gang was brilliant. We needed to differentiate to create our identity brand, and Yang Gang was a creative way to give a unique identity to our supporters and welcome them into something that felt like a community.
I can call Yang Gang brilliant because it wasn’t my idea. (I’m not always the best at generating ideas, but I am very good at seeing an idea’s potential and putting it into practice.) The name actually came from Instagram – someone posted #YangGang in the comments on one of our posts, and I immediately loved it. So catchy. It rhymed, implied community, and invoked a sense of identity. It was perfect. Maybe it wasn’t the best name for supporters of a serious presidential contender, per se, but it was perfect for us.
My speech at Columbia
I was invited to give a commencement address at Columbia Law School, from which I graduated in 1999, on Monday. I tried to make it helpful. I've included my remarks below - hope you enjoy them.
I was invited to give a commencement address at Columbia Law School, from which I graduated in 1999, on Monday. I tried to make it helpful. I've included my remarks below - hope you enjoy them.
Columbia Law Graduation Speech, May 16th, 2022
Hello everyone, it’s a pleasure to be here addressing you today. As you know, I graduated from Columbia 23 years ago. There are graduations one attends that aren’t that big a deal. I’ve now been to a pre-k graduation for example. But this one is meaningful.
I’m told that one of the reasons I’m here today is based on student voting, so thank you for that. It’s the first election I’ve won.
You all are among the most talented intellectual products that our country has. Among the people I graduated from law school with, some became advisors to the President, the good one. Others became professors and entrepreneurs. Some others became layabouts, but let’s not mind them.
I’ve been reflecting on where I was when I was in your shoes. After I graduated I spent the summer studying for the bar, which you all will pass, and joined a law firm here in New York, Davis Polk and Wardwell. I practiced for 5 months and left to start a dot-com that flopped. It was the year 2000. I went from law firm associate to failed entrepreneur in record time.
I worked for another startup that ran out of money. And another one after that. On the side, I started throwing parties and taught test prep. This is an unusual path; you could call it unconventional and even unwise. My parents told their friends I was still a lawyer for years. I didn’t socialize much with my peers from law school during this time because I was self-conscious about the fact that I wasn’t making much money.
Years later, I would become CEO of that test prep company, which grew to be #1 in the country and was bought by a public company when I was 34. Around this time my parents started being proud of me again. I then spent 6 years training young entrepreneurs as part of a non-profit that I’d founded called Venture for America, which won me a couple of awards from the Obama White House. I got to introduce Evelyn to the President, which made my in-laws happy for about a week.
But we all know I’m not here today because I’m the former CEO of Manhattan Prep or of Venture for America. I’m here primarily because I ran for President of the United States. And if you were to track down my classmates from Columbia they would tell you that I was one of the last people they’d imagine doing something political. I was a good student but I wasn’t very social or particularly altruistic.
I ran for President because, after Trump won, I thought “Wow, things are not going well, and I should do something to help.” Very few people early on thought my presidential run was a good idea. But we ground it out until we found an audience, raised $40 million from over 400,000 Americans – and I sense that at least a few of you were among that number, so thank you - made it to 7 debate stages, mainstreamed Universal Basic Income and cash relief as a policy solution, and helped expand what people think of as possible in politics.
I was also the first Asian American man to run for President as a Democrat. Asian Americans are the most underrepresented group in the country in elected office, for reasons that some of you understand, and to the extent that I can help change that I’d be very proud. If you’re Asian, I know what your first thought was when you heard about my campaign, “Please let him not be terrible.” For everyone else, you probably thought, “Huh, that’s different.”
So that’s why I’m here speaking to you all today. Not my 5 months in the law or my startup career. And the question is, what wisdom can one take from someone who has made objectively unwise career decisions repeatedly in his career?
I know where you’re coming from. Law school graduates tend very strongly to be institutionalists. You’ve spent 3 years learning legal arguments and a degree of intellectual discipline. You are trained to be experts in rules, and rules require structures and institutions to support them. You will be recruited by high-resource firms and organizations that need smart people who can work hard. And yes, you also have certain expectations of your own careers and advancement and opportunities.
And yet, this is an era of institutional struggle. We can see it and feel it around us every day. For some of you, this is daunting and you look forward to getting into an environment where things make sense as long as you work hard and produce results. For others of you, you sense opportunities but don’t quite know how to pursue them. And at the same time, you each have your own personal lives to figure out, as you come to a point when your life decisions begin to have import and weight.
My advice to you is threefold. First, ride this new Columbia Law degree for all its worth. What does that mean? Now that you have a Columbia Law degree, people will assume that you’re smart. That means, to truly maximize the value of this degree, you have to do some things that make people question whether you know what you’re doing. Think about it: if you just did smart things from now on, then what is the point of this degree? You could have done smart things without the degree. Now that you have it, you have to make use of it. Think of it as having a “Get out of Jail free” card for the rest of your career.
Now, some parents here are groaning at this – you thought those days were over. Well, my Mom is here to tell you, those days are never over. They go on forever. But if your child plays it right, they too can be the 25th most well-regarded political figure in all the land.
Second, find a problem that you can work on for years and feel good about dedicating your time to. It could be a market-based problem. It could be trying to improve treatment for a particular group. Right now, I’m pursuing 2 related problems: alleviating poverty and reforming our democracy. These are very big projects that I can work on for years and feel good about.
Right now, you might not know what drives or animates you. That’s fine. When I was your age, the problem I was most consumed with was getting a date. I never did solve that problem until 7 years later when I met Evelyn. You can just do good work on what is in front of you while you wait, but keep an eye on what you find yourself reading about and caring about. One of the enormous virtues of your new Columbia Law degree is that, if you show up on someone’s doorstep saying, “I want to work with you to help solve the problem you’re working on” they will be THRILLED to accept your help. And I can say with total confidence that if it’s a significant problem, someone is working on it right now. Indeed, perhaps the greatest challenge that lies ahead is actually figuring out what you care about, because this process typically takes years and evolves over time, and the market will try to hide it from you, not show it to you. So lie in wait for it. Stay the person who cares about important problems and can show up on someone’s doorstep and say, “I’m here to help.”
And that leaves me with the highest ambition – have confidence that you can do what you want and make the market follow you. What do I mean? Most all of you were recruited by firms with big budgets as second-years and are going off to work for them after graduation. That’s fine. I did it too. That is the market for people like you. But eventually, you may find yourself in position where you want to do something but the market doesn’t exist yet. Know that if you work hard, you can create that market for yourself. When I ran for President, no one knew whether there was a demand for a candidate running on an idea like Universal Basic Income. I thought it existed, but I needed to work hard to find out. It took time. Now, I’m looking to do the same for a new independent approach to politics and measures like ranked choice voting. There will be times in your career where you’ll do what the market wants you to do, and there are times when you’re going to have to stand up and go against it. But if you push in a certain direction that you care deeply about and work hard enough, the market will follow you. It will spring up around you. People will reach out to help you. It’s the best feeling in the world when it happens. You form lifelong relationships. And the more of you who have that feeling, the better off our world will be.
What’s funny is that this market I’m describing is really the people around you right now. You’ll each receive a call or message from a classmate at some point in the future saying, “Hey, I’m going to run for office” or “I’m going to start this new initiative.” When you get that message, do what you can to help. We all have a role to play. If you’re on the inside of an organization, lend a hand, gather some people together, and invest some resources. We don’t all have to quit our jobs, but we do have to support the person who is trying to discover if good people care enough to move us forward.
So those are the three guideposts I have for you – make the most of your degree by testing people’s belief that you know what you’re doing, find a problem to solve that’s significant enough that you’ll care about solving it each day, and have confidence that if you do what you want and work hard at it, the market will follow you, not the other way around.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of civilization may rest on the choices you all make. Find that voice inside you, apply yourself with the same energy you have to reaching your goals thus far, and I have no doubt that you’ll do great.
Congratulations Columbia Law School Class of ’22! Let’s do all we can with what we’ve been given and build a future we’ll be proud to pass on.
The Power of Crisis
When I was running for President, people would occasionally ask me questions about foreign policy. I confess, my natural focus tends to be more domestic, as I think we have plenty of problems of our own to wrestle with that will make accomplishing our goals abroad harder and harder unless we overcome them.
When I was running for President, people would occasionally ask me questions about foreign policy. I confess, my natural focus tends to be more domestic, as I think we have plenty of problems of our own to wrestle with that will make accomplishing our goals abroad harder and harder unless we overcome them.
One of the people I turned to for guidance on foreign affairs was Ian Bremmer. This week on the podcast I interview Ian, one of the world’s foremost experts on geopolitics as the President of the Eurasia Group and GZero.
GZero refers to an idea Ian proposed 10 years ago, which is that there used to be 7 Major Democracies – the G-7 – that essentially ran the world. The G-7 consists of the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK with the EU as a ‘non-enumerated member.’ Ian posited that as the West’s dominance declined, no one country or group could project a unified global agenda, and that we were living in a GZero world of different countries pushing different interests. The relative rise of China, India, Russia, Brazil and other emerging powers led to a more fragmented world order.
Ian’s new book, “The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – And Our Response –Will Change the World” catalogues some of the biggest problems facing us all and how different countries could collaborate to combat them. What are the three threats that Ian is most concerned about? Pandemics, climate change, and disruptive technology, including AI.
With each of them, Ian suggests international collaboration. COVAX is a global initiative to ensure access to Covid vaccines in developing countries led by the World Health Organization among others. The Green Marshall Plan is an initiative proposed by the G-7 last year to help developing countries transition to sustainability. And the World Data Organization would create rules of the road for AI and use of consumer data.
Ian reserves some of his strongest language for tech and AI: “We’ll turn to the greatest threat that faces our species: the unchecked introduction of profoundly disruptive technologies . . .We’re inventing new tools, new toys, and new weapons that are changing our lives and societies faster than we can track, study, and understand their effect on us . . . lethal autonomous drones, cyberwarfare, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence (AI) are no longer the stuff of science fiction . . . These technologies are shifting the relationship between the citizen and the state—and between us and our fellow humans—in ways difficult to predict. In the process, they’re changing what it means to be human.”
In our conversation, Ian said, “Look, if one country announces that it has successfully developed quantum computers, it could invite a pre-emptive attack.” He writes, “If governments don’t keep cyberweapons out of the hands of unstable states and terrorists, the economy and security damage they inflict could be unprecedented. If governments don’t share data on developments in quantum computing, one government will eventually gain the power to defeat encryption on a global scale, rendering every other country defenseless. Even the threat of such a breakthrough could trigger World War III, which would threaten the survival of the human race. That’s why this moment is much more dangerous than the 1930s. A next world war will be fought with weapons far more destructive than tanks and fighter planes—or even atomic bombs—and the conflict won’t be limited to ‘theaters of war.’ It will be universal.”
Ian is constructive but a realist. His book opens with the importance of improving America’s politics. “Domestic politics inside the United States, still the world’s sole superpower, is broken.” Indeed, Ian’s book opens with a passage called ‘Uncivil War.’ He writes: “Americans no longer look abroad for their most dangerous enemies. They find them across state lines, across the street, across the hall. They see members of the other political party, neighbors, and even relatives as hateful, ignorant enemies who must be checked . . . It’s difficult for citizens of other countries and their governments to see the United States as a source of solutions to global problems when tens of millions of Americans consider tens of millions of other Americans to be violent radicals or irredeemable fascists.”
Yet, he observes in our interview, we are seeing Finland and Sweden join NATO as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which would have been fairly unthinkable not that long ago. Sometimes a crisis can bring people together quickly. That is Ian’s hope; that we make the most of these crises by coming together and getting ahead of them.
Still, for us the work starts at home. The moral of the story may be that if we want to tackle the world’s most pressing problems, we need to get our own house in order first. Let’s do all we can to make it happen; the world needs us to succeed.
For my interview with Ian, click here. You can also click here for my talk on the Forward Tour on how we can overcome polarization.
The Unmooring of America
Why does it feel like Americans have become unmoored? Decades-old laws are undone, extremes dominate, comedians get attacked onstage, and Americans are unable to agree on whether a President was rightfully elected or not.
Why does it feel like Americans have become unmoored? Decades-old laws are undone, extremes dominate, comedians get attacked onstage, and Americans are unable to agree on whether a President was rightfully elected or not.
Jonathan Haidt wrote an excellent piece for the Atlantic “Why Americans Have Lost Their Minds,” which attributed much of the problem to social media. “Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three.”
Haidt calls it the ‘fragmentation of everything’ as “Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”
Haidt identifies ‘extensive social networks with high levels of trust.’ What had been the mortar that held towns and communities together? One part of it was the local paper. People reading about high school sports or the bridge needing repair or the local charity drive were sharing an experience and perspective.
At the same time that social media was rising, local news was dying. More than two thousand local newspapers went out of business between 2005 and 2020 – over thirteen hundred towns and counties now have no local news source at all. We talk a lot about journalists in American life but the reality is that thirty thousand rank-and-file reporters lost their jobs between 2008 and 2019, and the local reporter is increasingly an endangered species.
Local papers have been tied to higher turnout in local elections, more candidates running, quality of governance and even lower cost of municipal bonds. Said a former city council person to me in a medium-sized town, “I remember when we had city council meetings. Then, because of budget cuts, the reporter stopped coming. You could sense a change immediately. People’s professionalism slipped. We were more likely to cut corners. We got less done or more done with less care.”
Even more fundamentally, it’s hard to have an identity tied to your local community if your town doesn’t share stories.
Recognizing the magnitude of the problem, some people are trying to fix it. Elizabeth Green started Chalkbeat, a non-profit periodical to cover local educational issues. Steve Waldman co-founded Report for America, another non-profit to fund young journalists.
Tara McGowan, whom I interviewed on the podcast this week has a different approach. Tara started out as a journalist for CBS on 60 Minutes. She worked in Democratic politics for years on digital strategy. At some point she became deeply concerned about both local news deserts and misinformation.
So she founded Courier Newsroom in 2019. Courier operates digital local newspapers in Iowa, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and other locations. Courier is a left-leaning civic journalism company that delivers political information around fact-based articles like “21 spots to go on a daytrip.”
Says Tara, “Disinformation is most dangerous in a vacuum . . . if we don’t protect democracy nothing else matters, every business’s interest is tied to this, every philanthropist’s interest is tied to this - if you’re not addressing the information ecosystem problem and incentive structure in this country, you’re not addressing any of those problems [like climate change] in a meaningful way.”
Some could take issue with the fact that a publisher like Courier with an express political bent is furnishing local news. As you’d imagine, propagandists from the right have been fast and active in filling the local news vacuum. For example, in 2020, 80 local news sites in California were identified as a “pay-for-play” propaganda network tied to Republican operatives and corporate P.R. firms who wanted to place favorable stories. Sinclair is often regarded as a right-leaning purveyor of local news. The void will be filled by those with the most to gain.
In my mind, we should see local journalism as a public good that is funded philanthropically or via public-private partnerships. A number of representatives have proposed the bi-partisan Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which would help give local newspapers tax credits and a fighting chance. As usual given the dysfunction in Washington, the bill’s prospects are dim.
How do we give Americans a sense of cohesion and stability again? It’s going to be tough to get the country on the same page again. It certainly makes sense to build from the ground up, and start with your hometown.
The New Megatrends
The world is changing quickly. Elon Musk is buying Twitter. The personal and the corporate are merging together in unprecedented ways.
Hello, I hope that you’re doing great.
The world is changing quickly. Elon Musk is buying Twitter. The personal and the corporate are merging together in unprecedented ways.
It’s very hard to place our trust in any individual, particularly in a polarized time when 50% of Americans despise the same person that the other 50% venerates. In America today we are more comfortable with – and accustomed to – being failed by faceless bureaucracies than with trusting people.
What does our future hold? I interviewed trendspotter Marian Salzman on the podcast this week for her new book, “The New Megatrends: Seeing Clearly in the Age of Disruption.” Marian is someone who travels the world determining what’s coming.
Marian describes a time of chaos, division and uncertainty. “A critical reason we perceive a higher degree of chaos today is that we don’t feel up to the challenge of meeting current and future crises . . . this pervasive sense of pessimism is new . . . without the drive that comes from confidence.”
She goes on, “At a time when we all face genuine existential threats, one might think people would come together to find solutions; instead, we focus on identifying convenient targets for our blame and condemnation. We live in an age of rage – an era of us versus them, writ large.”
Among the major trends that Marian projects are accelerating technology, a competition between the U.S. and China, climate change, and ongoing effects of the pandemic. One response will be a desire to return to nature and seek out a secure environment.
“The chaos of now and next is turbocharged, posing constant challenge to our mental health and well-being . . . The new luxury is the simplest of all: breathing space. Time to find oneself and to restore order in a world overloaded by the clutter of materiality, uncertainty, and emotional burdens has become a premium. We all crave a secure space—physical and mental—in which to absorb the trials and tribulations of modern life.”
She believes people’s attention will turn to what works for them, first and foremost. “Self is at the center. With social and cultural institutions in flux, our focus has turned inward, emphasizing personal experiences, growth, and branding. People will endeavor to create or join new institutions and systems in which individuals 'like them' are front and center—both to safeguard their interests and devise and implement what they consider the best solutions.”
Marian also notes increasing inequality as a source of conflict and instability. “Society is egregiously unbalanced in most respects, none more so than wealth and access to critical resources. A select few have an abundance, while the rest have an excess only of anger and resentment at the inequities of their lot.” That's a tough atmosphere to manage.
I found Marian’s projections very incisive and perceptive. She sees our challenges clearly. As to our possibilities, she remains tentatively optimistic. “I always return to the first truth of our contemporary predicament: we may have stone-age minds, but we live in a space-age technology world. And that brings not just challenges but potential solutions.” In a time of institutional failure, change can happen more quickly than most believe possible.
She asks, “Which future will you champion – the Great Divide or the Great Reboot?” I know which one I’d prefer to fight for. I hope you will too.
To hear my conversation with Marian click here. You can also find my book talk from the Forward Tour here.
The Independent Senator
This weekend there was enormous political news out of Utah. The Democratic Party declined to run a candidate for Senate against Mike Lee. This leaves one opponent – Evan McMullin who is running as an Independent.
Hello, I hope you’re doing great.
This weekend there was enormous political news out of Utah. The Democratic Party declined to run a candidate for Senate against Mike Lee. This leaves one opponent – Evan McMullin who is running as an Independent.
First, you might have heard about Mike Lee in the news as one of the Senators who colluded with Donald Trump to overturn the election on January 6th by text messaging chief of staff Mark Meadows. Mike Lee is that kind of Republican, a two-term incumbent running for his 3rd term who has been endorsed by Trump.
Evan McMullin is a true patriot. He was a CIA operations officer in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia for 7 years before returning to the States. He ran for President in 2016 as an Independent because he believed that Donald Trump wasn’t fit for the office. Many moderates who didn’t like Trump turned to Evan. He received 734,737 votes nationwide including 21.5% of the vote in his native Utah. He then co-founded the Renew America Movement to back principled, pro-democracy candidates.
I’ve met with Evan and he’s the genuine article. He never imagined a career in politics – he first tried to recruit others to run before stepping up to do so himself. But he’s deeply concerned about the future of the country and is doing all he can to make a positive difference. Now he’s running against Mike Lee for the same reason.
You would ordinarily think that would make Evan the 3rd candidate in the race. But the Democratic Party made the nearly unprecedented decision this weekend to get out of the way and let Evan take on Mike Lee unopposed.
Why did they do this? Utah is a red state - Trump won Utah by 21 percent - so there’s just about zero chance of a Democrat winning. The Democrat would likely have been more of a spoiler than a true contender. Evan is a better fit for the state, and has a much better chance to unseat Mike Lee, than a traditional Democrat.
Still, this was a controversial decision for the Democratic Party in Utah, as you can imagine. There was a candidate, Kael Weston, vying for the Democratic nomination to run against Mike Lee, who obviously opposed the idea. Some Democrats complained that not having a candidate for their party effectively disenfranchised them. Others warned that this would split what was left of the Democratic Party in Utah. The motion to not run a candidate – and essentially back Evan – won by 782 votes to 594, largely because Ben McAdams, a senior Democrat in Utah and former member of Congress, backed and endorsed Evan over running a Democrat who was sure to lose. They put ‘country over party.’
Evan McMullin’s candidacy is an historic opportunity on several levels.
First, Evan could singlehandedly change the political dynamics in Washington. Imagine a deadlocked Senate with 49 Dems and 50 Republicans or vice versa. Evan, as the lone Independent, could literally be the person who sets the agenda. I said in my book talk, “How many Senators does it take to control things in Washington in a polarized country? Only One.” Believe it or not, I had Evan in mind when I said those words.
Second, it could demonstrate that Americans are eager to reward a different approach to our politics. Instead of staying stuck in our two lanes – with 90% of races foreordained in the general due to uncompetitive districts – we can build new coalitions. If Democrats can team up with Independents in Utah to unseat a Republican, resulting in a Senator who maybe doesn’t agree with them on everything but will be much more independent and principled, then the same thing could happen in Nevada, Alaska and other states around the country. People who don’t now have a voice could gain one instead of being locked out.
Third, Evan could show that, yes, Independents can win major races and the duopoly doesn’t control everything. The single biggest thing holding back third party candidates in this country is the sense that they can’t win. If Evan wins, he would immediately be a national figure that others would look to as proof Independents can compete and defeat incumbents in high-profile races. It would be a sea change for third-party politics in our country.
But Evan’s race will not be easy. Lee has more than $2.1 million in cash reserves and has been endorsed by Trump. Evan outraised Mike Lee in the first quarter $1 million to $523k so Evan has momentum but he needs our help. I’ve donated to Evan and I hope that you will too. You can also volunteer and tell your friends in Utah at https://evanmcmullin.com. Let’s go all in for Evan.
Can there be a new approach to our politics that leads the right kind of people to Washington? We are going to find out in Utah in about 6 months. Let’s show the nation that there’s still hope for good people like Evan to rise up, run for the right reasons, put country over party, and win.
The Great Experiment
This week on the podcast I interviewed Johns Hopkins professor and writer for the Atlantic Yascha Mounk on his new book: “The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.”
Hello, I hope all is great on your end.
My book talk from the Forward Tour in NYC is now available on YouTube and I’m glad to say people have been loving it. Some of my favorite comments: “Came for the Forward talk, stayed for the stand up comedy” and “I’m YangGang and I’m refreshed and energized!” You can check it out here.
This week on the podcast I interviewed Johns Hopkins professor and writer for the Atlantic Yascha Mounk on his new book: “The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.” If you’ve been keeping up with me you know that I’ve been very focused on the imminent failures and challenges facing American democracy. So has Yascha.
“The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment, for promoting human happiness, by creating a reasonable compact, in civil Society,” George Washington wrote in 1790. Mounk takes this experiment as applied to increasingly diverse societies, more diverse than Washington could likely have imagined.
Does diversity make democracy more difficult? Mounk posits that it does for a couple reasons. “First, clashes between different identity groups have historically been one of the major drivers of human conflict. For many societies, diversity has turned out to be a stumbling block rather than a strength. And second, democratic institutions can do as much to exacerbate as to alleviate the challenge of diversity. In many cases, rule by the majority has served to enflame violence between ethnic or religious rivals . . . “ Mounk assumes a level of difficulty that I think Americans are now waking up to after years of taking stability for granted. Humans are tribal. Democratic failure can lead to anarchy, domination, and/or fragmentation.
Mounk observes that the first challenge is to overcome negativity about both whether diverse democracy can work and whether we are making progress. “Refusing to see significant progress in the past half century, [pessimists] naturally have little hope for the next half century. In their minds, ‘whites’ and ‘people of color’ will always face each other as implacable enemies . . . if the great experiment is to succeed, we need to develop a more optimistic vision.”
Mounk proposes a new metaphor for a public park, where different groups can come and congregate both themselves and interact with others. This is distinct from the ‘melting pot’ in which people assimilate or the ‘salad bowl’ in which groups remain separate elements. He recommends investing in patriotism, both civic and cultural. He regards mutual cultural influence as a positive thing in terms of music, food and art, and eschews cultural purism (i.e. he thinks the concerns of ‘cultural appropriation’ are commonly misplaced and unconstructive). Emphasizing what we share is worth investing in.
Mounk in particular argues that the fixation on demography as destiny is a recipe for conflict; i.e. that a Democratic voting majority based on people of color is a foreordained conclusion based on the increasing diversity of the country is neither necessarily accurate nor a path to success. Rather, the goal should be that politics don’t morph into proxies for fixed groups. He cites the different experiences and mindsets of different groups as examples – e.g., mixed race individuals identifying as white, Latinos who are conservative on immigration, etc.
I felt this critique was very important; how many breathless articles have we seen about shifting demographics and their political implications? If the media stopped treating ethnic groups as monolithic voting blocks with uniform attitudes it would be an immeasurable improvement. If Democrats started competing hard for rural whites and Republicans started appealing to voters of color we’d all be better off and democracy would be far more secure and resilient.
We should not be defined by the color of our skin, politically or otherwise.
Mounk writes, “An overwhelming focus on the importance of ethnic identity and the irreconcilable conflicts between whites and ‘people of color’ is quickly becoming part of the ruling ideology of the American elite. One of the most pressing questions of the next few decades is whether this elite will succeed in imposing its view of race on the rest of the population - or whether ordinary Americans drawn from every demographic group are able to counter with a more inspiring vision of our collective future.”
Indeed, this may be the question of our time. It also sounds like a mission statement for the Forward Party to me. Let’s do it.
Check out the Forward Tour video on YouTube and the podcast convo with Yascha Mounk here.
The Abraham Lincoln of Today
When you think of Abraham Lincoln, you probably think of the Emancipation Proclamation or the Gettysburg Address. Maybe you consider his tragic assassination. You almost certainly think of one of the great Presidents of all time.
Hello, I hope that you are doing great. I just got back from Miami where I spoke at the Bitcoin conference and had a reception for the Forward Party. Tonight in New York I'll be receiving an award from Fairvote for championing Ranked Choice Voting - it should be a phenomenal night.
I interviewed John Avlon of CNN on the podcast this week about his new book, “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.” There were many lessons from the book, which I found to be a fascinating read. When you think of Abraham Lincoln, you probably think of the Emancipation Proclamation or the Gettysburg Address. Maybe you consider his tragic assassination. You almost certainly think of one of the great Presidents of all time. I remember visiting the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. when I was 12 years old with my parents and being strangely moved by it.
What you don’t think of is Third Party President. Yet that is in essence what he was – Lincoln ran on the brand new Republican Party ticket in 1860 and won with 39.8% of the vote in a 4-candidate race, something that would seem unthinkable today. He also ran in 1864 as a Republican on a unity ticket, with Andrew Johnson the Democrat as his Vice President.
John writes about Lincoln at the time, “As a new president from a new party, Lincoln was often disrespected and demonized. Newspapers called him ‘weak and wishy-washy,’ an ‘imbecile in matter, disgusting in manner,’ and an ‘obscene Illinois ape.’”
Lincoln responded to this criticism, and even to the Southerners he would find himself warring against, with empathy and understanding. He said, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend . . . on the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, he will retreat within himself, close all avenues to his head and his heart.” All too true.
John writes, “[Lincoln] did not demonize opponents, even as they called for his death . . . he disliked interpersonal conflict and a disarming number of his colleagues commented on his ‘childlike’ heart . . . even his enemies admitted he was honest. It was a core quality that could not be credibly denied . . . his honesty was leavened with humor – a disarming combination. Lincoln’s jokes were reprinted in newspapers across the country, enhancing his popularity and reputation for backwoods common sense.”
He continues, “Lincoln was a temperamentally moderate man, a reconciler in a time of radicals and reactionaries. As a young man, he warned that ‘as a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.’ As president, Lincoln asked Americans to rise ‘far above personal and partisan politics.’ To his fellow Republicans he said, ‘even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper.’”
Of course, Lincoln combined this sense of empathy with a great moral resolve around the questions of his time, which were ending slavery and keeping the country together and whole. Today, we may not have something as obvious as slavery rending the country apart, yet many of us fear it is happening just the same, being driven by perverse political incentives, media tribes and the hollowing out of the American middle class.
It is no accident that John decided to write this book during a time when we are more polarized than ever. “Part of the reason I went to history isn’t only because I love history . . . but we can talk about politics through the prism of our history and it gives us perspective on our problems and our politics.” It’s his hope that people will examine our past, embrace Lincoln’s legacy and rally behind a similar figure today. It may not be one person. Perhaps it will be a collection of people or a movement. But there will certainly be individual leaders. Our task is to identify, elevate and support them.
People talk all the time about how a 3rd party challenge hasn’t been successful in quite some time. But in our most crucial time, it was. It brought us Abraham Lincoln, who is rightly venerated as one of our most important leaders who helped mend a country. Politics as usual won’t work. But I believe a new politics is around the corner. Let’s help make it so.
Get Off the X
Polarization is overtaking our society and people are feeling it on both sides. One person who wants to bring us back together is Will Hurd, who was on the podcast this week.
Hello, I hope all is great.
This past Friday I was on Bill Maher talking about boys and men, polarization, third parties, local news and other topics. Afterwards I received a flurry of messages expressing support.
Polarization is overtaking our society and people are feeling it on both sides. One person who wants to bring us back together is Will Hurd, who was on the podcast this week.
Will has a fascinating story – a black computer science major from Texas turned CIA operative. He became a rising star at the CIA over the next 9 years working as an operations officer in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. When he was briefing members of Congress in Afghanistan he was struck by how little they knew of the situation on the ground, and decided to run for Congress himself. On his 2nd try, he won a seat in 2014 at the age of 37 in Texas’s 23rd district which includes the area from San Antonio to El Paso.
Will became known for working across party lines, including co-sponsoring a compromise immigration reform package and roadtripping across the country with Beto O’Rourke. He was one of only 8 House Republicans who voted in favor of the Equality Act in 2019 and was at one point the only Black Republican in the House. Will served 3 terms before deciding to leave Congress in 2020 to, among other things, join the Board of OpenAI to ensure that artificial intelligence is used responsibly.
As you can imagine, Will is deeply concerned about what’s going on in the country and wants to help. At the age of 44, he’s been mentioned as a potential next-generation presidential candidate in the Republican primary. I confess that I picked his brain about his time in the CIA on the podcast because I thought it would provide fascinating insight.
His new book, “American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done” opens with a story from his CIA days. He was performing a Surveillance Detection Route on the way to meet an asset in India. While inching along in his Toyota Tercel he mistakenly ran over a woman’s toe. His car became surrounded by an angry mob who began pushing on the vehicle.
As he relates, “The CIA had taught me about situations like this. The first thing you are supposed to do is get off the X. The X is where something is going down - an ambush, a riot, or general chaos erupting or about to erupt. Staying on the X is the last place you want to be.”
Will unexpectedly got out of the car. He found someone who he could communicate with and put the woman in a rickshaw directed to the local hospital with some money.
The mob calmed. People started clapping and helped Will back into his car. He writes, “I’ve had years to reflect on why an incensed mob went from rage to happiness within minutes. I have concluded that the mob appreciated a show of warm-heartedness from someone they did not expect to show kindness . . . their rage was checked when they saw an act of compassion – me getting out of the car, trying to do something about the situation I had put the woman in.”
To Will, the U.S. is on the X right now due to polarization, and we have to get off of it. He’s right about that. And he wants to help.
I’ve met a number of figures like Will who want to restore a sense of principle to our politics. I think structural reforms are necessary. But those reforms won’t happen without people like Will working to lead us in a better direction. If his past is any indication, I wouldn’t bet against Will - he's got a track record of turning around bad situations.
I often see characterizations of Democrats and Republicans that paint people with a broad brush. I personally find it impossible to generalize across a group of tens of millions of people, most of whom don’t resemble the cantankerous back and forth on social media every day. Will’s experience representing his constituents in Texas is that if you show up and talk to people and work hard on their behalf, they’ll consider you regardless of party affiliation. “The letter next to my name should matter less than my message . . . if you want to get back to normal, you need to get more normal people to vote in primaries. Most people aren’t nuts. They want to solve problems.” That sounds awfully Forward.