50-50 Nation

Hello, I hope all is great with you! Votes are yet being counted from Election Day; Congress is close, with the Republicans expected to win a slight majority in the House. The U.S. Senate will stay with the Democrats with close wins in Nevada and Arizona. Democrats outperformed expectations in much of the country.

9 Forward-endorsed candidates won their races, but perhaps the biggest win for Forward was that the ballot initiative Question 3 in Nevada passed! It shifts the state to non-partisan primaries and ranked choice voting, which also allows independents to vote in the primaries. It will be on the ballot again in 2024 to make the change permanent.

Yes, Nevada may follow Alaska’s example and do away with the party primaries that are distorting our politics and empowering extremists. For those who think that we are trapped, Nevada shows that there is indeed a way out. The people of Nevada spoke and they want a better way. Congrats to Cesar Marquez and the entire Nevada team for helping make it happen!!!

This week on the podcast I discuss the midterms with my former campaign manager and author of ‘Longshot,’ Zach Graumann. Some of our takeaways from Election Day:

1. The odds of a Trump – Biden rematch in 2024 went up considerably. Trump, despite a mixed-at-best showing in the midterms, will likely declare any day now. Joe Biden, vindicated by a surprisingly good result, is now much more likely to run for re-election. Biden took a victory lap this week, a sign of how he’s feeling about defying expectations. Joe will likely make a decision and announce early next year.
   
   I tweeted, “I think Joe Biden is misinterpreting dislike for Republicans as enthusiasm for him.” He sees it as his God-given responsibility to defeat Trump, and doesn’t believe anyone else can do it. I think he takes his time and decides to run.
   

2. Candidate quality mattered. In several swing states we saw a stronger candidate vastly outperform a weaker one on the same ticket. Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race was decided by 14 points while its Senate race was 9 points closer. In Georgia the governor’s race was decided by 8 points while the Senate race was neck-and-neck.
   
   Speaking of Georgia, Herschel Walker performed 5 points worse than Governor Kemp on the Republican ticket – now that it’s just Walker will Republicans feel as energized to head back to the polls in a few weeks? Meanwhile Raphael Warnock won a runoff just two years ago; I’d give Warnock the edge in the runoff in part because he’s a better candidate.
   

3. Florida is now red, as Republicans won by 16 points. So is Ohio. Iowa too. These were quintessential swing states only 8 or 12 years ago. The battleground map is shifting to Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia joining the traditional swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Losing Florida in particular will have national implications for Dems.
   
   There is talk among Democrats of shifting the primary calendar for presidential nominating contests. Iowa’s case to go first gets weaker as it gets less purple. Nevada and New Hampshire are vying to go first with Michigan and Minnesota trying to replace Iowa.
   
   Of course, the above assumes that there’s a genuine Democratic primary, which I’m not sure there will be if Joe Biden runs for re-election. As I discuss with Zach, I think the DNC will be highly reluctant to entertain challengers to Joe with Trump coming up the other side. I think they might pre-empt any competitive nomination contest, as the RNC did in 2020. On the other side, I expect Trump to roll through a crowded primary field among the Republicans.

Looking ahead to 2024, the next cycle is a terrible map for Dems in the Senate. There are two seats where Trump won the state by 16 or 28 points – Montana and West Virginia – where Democratic Senators are up for re-election. That’s two brutally difficult races in a Senate where every seat counts. There is every reason to expect polarization to continue.

Election Day was not the wave that many expected, but the reality is our country remains split 50-50. Perhaps wave elections are a thing of the past as Americans become hardened into opposing camps. This is a lot of what Forward is trying to move us beyond. Political independents chose balance. One election ends, and now we have a year to prepare before the municipal elections of 2023.

We are building toward our first ever national convention next summer, and aim to have ballot access in 25+ states by the end of next year. These midterms have been a relief for many – they have been smooth for the most part – and we should appreciate the moment. Nevada's ballot initiative passing is a huge deal. The voters have given us an opening there, and elsewhere. 2023 and 2024 will be upon us soon. Can we get beyond the two parties in a deadlocked country? Now for us, the real work begins.

Election Day 2022

Hello, I hope you are doing well on this day before Election Day. 

I voted last week – if you haven’t voted yet make sure and get your vote in!

I vote in New York and the suspense is generally not that high – registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York about 2 to 1.  This time though, there is a surprisingly contested gubernatorial race between Lee Zeldin and Kathy Hochul; Zeldin is running on crime and public safety and getting a lot of traction. 

New York is not unusual, as the top issues for Republican-leaning voters are inflation/the economy, immigration and crime/public safety.  For Democrat-leaning voters the top issues are democracy, health care and abortion.  Most prognosticators and polls have Republicans with an edge as their issues are more prevalent in headlines and the national mood.    

It’s telling that voters of the two parties are animated about different issues entirely; in many ways we are having two different conversations on different wavelengths. Around three-quarters of Republican voters say immigration (76%) and violent crime (74%) are very important to their vote.  Only 36% and 45% of Democratic voters see these issues as very important.  On the flip side, health care and abortion are at 79% and 75% importance among Democrats, while only 42% and 39% of Republicans feel the same according to Pew Research.

Even as these two very different conversations gain in strength, most of us live someplace where one party controls everything, as it is in New York.  There are 37 states where one party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government: Republicans control 23, Democrats 14.  The number of states with one-party rule has risen over time; it went up from 33 in 2018. 

 Three-quarters of the country lives under one party or the other.  It’s one reason why so many people are getting agitated and polarized.  The political climate continues to deteriorate, with the most dramatic example being the attack on Paul Pelosi last week. 

Even as the run-up to Election Day highlights the clash between Democrats and Republicans, a poll came out on 538 last week that said that a majority of Americans don’t think that either party has earned the right to govern.  If you have that feeling, you’re among the majority.  

The fact is that most of us know that life isn’t black or white, and real progress will require a different approach than either party currently offers.  Neither has to truly deliver results to eke out a win – they just need their issues to achieve relative importance or the other party to turn people off a bit more.  The pendulum swings back and forth while people become more inflamed and problems get worse not better.

The Forward Party has endorsed 27 candidates around the country, most of whom are running as Democrats or Republicans.  But there are independents such as Evan McMullin who has the chance to change our politics in the U.S. Senate, and I’m writing this from Nevada where I’m campaigning for non-partisan primaries and ranked choice voting on the ballot.  There are opportunities for real change.  Forward Party’s goal is to be on the ballot or recognized in 30 states by the end of 2023.

Even as Democrats and Republicans vie for control of the fraction of contested seats, some of us are working to make this the last Election Day where there are only 2 meaningful choices on the ballot. This Election Day will not resolve the nation’s divisions; it will likely only deepen them.  That’s the dynamic we have to reverse. 

 Vote, donate and volunteer – but at the same time let’s remain focused on changing a system that’s not working.  That’s the real struggle beneath the headlines that more and more Americans are waking up to.  I have the feeling the days after Election Day will be that kind of wakeup call for many Americans.  

Forward’s 1st Election Day

Hello and Happy Halloween! It’s always a big holiday in our household because our older son was born on Halloween. He’s very scary.

Election Day is next Tuesday, and it’s a pivotal day for our country. I’ve been campaigning for Evan McMullin in Utah and am going to Nevada this weekend for both local candidates and to support the ranked choice voting ballot initiative there.

What is there to be done in this final stretch?  First, get out and vote!  I voted early and it always feels great.  Make sure you get your vote in and that your info is up to date.  

Second, pick a candidate or two to support, either locally or nationally. Forward Party has endorsed 27 candidates who are Democrats, Republicans and Independents, almost all of whom are running against extremists.  For example, Adam Frisch is running against Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd district and the race is very competitive.  It turns out most people in Colorado are turned off by Lauren’s brand of turning everything into an ideological statement. 

This week on the podcast I interview Matt Shinners, CEO of Forward Party about our top priorities next week.  The first is Evan McMullin, whose race could be a template for transforming our country’s politics.  Evan is running neck-and-neck against Mike Lee, a Trump-endorsed incumbent in a state that Trump won by 21 points in 2020.  The race is competitive largely because Democrats decided not to run a candidate, and Evan is building a coalition of Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans who want to move away from Trump. 

How many U.S. Senators does it take to influence policy in a polarized country?  Perhaps just one.  Evan McMullin could be that one, while also demonstrating a new way to compete against previously untouchable incumbents.  If Evan wins, the independent political movement will have a wedge in the U.S. Senate in January and will have already achieved what most think is impossible. 

As an operator and movement builder, you look for high-leverage opportunities.  Evan’s race is the biggest opportunity one can imagine.  If you have any friends in Utah, let them know how important this race is and feel free to send Evan a few bucks here.  Let’s do all we can to take advantage of this. 

The second biggest opportunity is the ballot initiative in Nevada that could switch the state to nonpartisan open primaries and ranked choice voting.  We saw last month in Alaska the impact of this process change when Sarah Palin lost her primary and Lisa Murkowski won hers despite voting to impeach Donald Trump.  Now, Nevadans have the chance to make the same change, which could lead to more states adopting the same. 

Replacing party primaries with non-partisan open primaries may be the single best way to depolarize our politics and make our leadership more reasonable, accountable and truly representative.  Reformers are investing $17 million in the Nevada ballot initiative.  If it passes, non-partisan primaries will continue to sweep the country.  If it fails, people will think that we will truly be stuck in our party politics forever.  Polling has it at 50-50 right now. 

I will be going to Nevada to try to help push it over the top.  If you have friends in Nevada, let them know to vote Yes on 3.  And you can volunteer to call or text Nevadans every day in the run-up to Election Day. 

I hope that these are half as exciting to you as they are to me.  Most of our country is once again being told the sole fight is between Democrats and Republicans.  We know that there’s a different struggle as well – a fight to improve our politics so that people and principles matter more than the letter next to one’s name, and to restore the connection between people and families and the leaders who are meant to represent them. 

As I’m writing this, the news is coming in that Paul Pelosi was attacked in his home.  We have to lower the country’s temperature as quickly as we can. 

I’m pumped up for the possibilities, but they won’t happen without people working on them.  Let’s work hard through Election Day.  Pick something and do it. 

The Rise of the Rest

Hello, I hope the Fall is going great for you and yours! The Forward Party has endorsed a host of candidates all over the country – please do check them out and support those who you feel would be great leaders and representatives! Your help could make a big difference. I personally was campaigning for Evan McMullin this past week in Utah which was a blast.

Long before I got into politics, I was a social entrepreneur. I started an organization called Venture for America in 2011. Our goal was to revitalize communities through entrepreneurship – we recruited energetic recent graduates to work at startups and growth companies in Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Birmingham, New Orleans, St. Louis and other cities around the country. I traveled the U.S. – primarily the Midwest and the South – from 2011 until 2017.

When Trump won, I switched gears to run for President, largely because I had seen the aftermath of the automation of manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other states. But I still have many friends who are engaged in trying to make these communities better places through startups and entrepreneurship.

Steve Case is one of them - the founder of AOL, Revolution, and the Rise of the Rest, a venture fund that invests in entrepreneurs away from the main coastal hubs. Steve grew up in Hawaii and started his career in Ohio and Kansas before moving to Virginia and founding AOL, the original Internet company.

“We spent a decade trying to convince people that the Internet was the future. It was a tough slog – but then it took off,” Steve told me when I interviewed him for the podcast this week about his new book: “The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places Are Building the New American Dream.” I first met Steve back in 2012 when he was running the Startup America initiative.

“Part of the reason our country is so divided right now is that many people feel left behind in the new economy. When tech innovators in Silicon Valley boast about disruption, many in the rest of America see job losses in their communities, ” Steve writes. In 2014, Steve started taking a bus to Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Nashville and other cities on the Rise of the Rest bus tour, where he would meet with local entrepreneurs and host pitch contests where entrepreneurs would get investments of $100k or more. There have now been 9 tours and the Rise of the Rest tours have invested millions of dollars while highlighting local success stories and gathering people together. Think about it as a roving “Shark Tank” for 43 cities and counting.

Steve is convinced that the next wave of innovation will be led not by Silicon Valley, but by companies in Chattanooga (freight), Fayetteville (agriculture), Denver (aerospace) and other cities as tech converges with different industries to create major opportunities. He cites four major trends leading in this direction:

1. The emergence of tech centers around industry expertise;

2. The rise of more job-creating startup hubs.

3. The pandemic-fueled acceleration of innovation trends; and

4. The increased engagement of government as a catalyst.

He notes that regional entrepreneurial ecosystems have a number of ingredients: startups, investors, universities, government, corporations, startup support organizations and local media. He has seen each of these actors engage or form in more and more places around the country. And of course Steve has tried to bring them together wherever he goes and invested where possible.

Why is Steve doing this? “I truly believe that a key to unifying America has been – and will be – unleashing innovation and growth.” Steve says. “Government can – and must – play a role, but it’s clear we can’t rely solely on government to fix something that’s wrong in the marrow of our communities.’

He’s right on both counts. What is needed to bring Americans together is a sense of optimism and possibility, rather than the atmosphere of pessimism and dysfunction that has overtaken too many quarters. And while I’m passionate about the need to reform our political system, much of the energy necessary to re-energize our communities will come from people working in every part of American life.

I spent 6 years working alongside Steve, and am truly grateful that he has continued to do all he can for so many cities and towns over the past decade-plus. It’s that kind of grit and perseverance necessary to make great things happen in just about any important context.

I’m pumped for the elections in a couple weeks, but we all know we’ll be at this for quite a while. That said, we also know that sometimes things grow at a linear pace – and then take off very quickly.

For my interview with Steve click here, and to check out the Forward Party endorsements click here.

Of Boys and Men

Hello, I hope all is great on your end!

I spent this past weekend campaigning for Evan McMullin in Utah, which was phenomenal. I met some fantastic people and am even more excited to have Evan in the U.S. Senate! Evan is one of the amazing candidates endorsed by Forward this past week – you can see them here and maybe even go out and support a candidate near you.

This week on the podcast I interview Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, one of the top public policy thinktanks in the world. Richard recently published an important book, “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It.”

As you may know, I have been passionate about the issues facing boys and men in America for years. It was one of the themes of ‘the War on Normal People’ and the subject of an OpEd I wrote for the Washington Post this year. It’s probably related to the fact that I have two little boys myself, ages 7 and 9 and the fact that I recall my own struggles.

Richard painstakingly catalogues the reality of how boys are falling behind academically. Boys now average one letter grade lower in high school than do girls. Women are now nearly 60% of college students, as well as 60% of master’s degree graduates. Richard pegs slower brain maturation in boys as one of the factors impeding their success in school.

Simultaneously, the job market has turned against men by decimating opportunities in manufacturing, transportation and construction, all of which are predominantly male. In 1979, the weekly earnings of the typical American male who completed his education with a high school diploma was, in today’s dollars, $1,017. Today it is 14% lower at $881. Relatedly, more young men now live with parents than with a significant other.

One surprise – apparently myriad policy responses have had little to no effect in helping boys on either front. “I have discovered a startling number of social programs that seem to work well for girls and women, but not for boys and men . . . this seems to me to be a big deal.” He cites offerings like free college, preschool programs, summer reading, mentoring and other programs that have been applied to both genders that girls benefit from but seem to bounce off of boys. This makes the challenge all the more daunting.

Richard does suggest a number of measures that he believes could make a real difference: holding boys back in school one year (i.e. start kindergarten a year later), recruit male teachers (demonstrated to be helpful), invest in vocational and technical schools, and try to funnel men to HEAL positions (healthcare, education, administrative, literacy). All of these suggestions are borne out by data and should be explored or adopted.

I'm grateful to Richard for making this case. His contributions are particularly valuable given our politics. He notes, “In the current political environment, highlighting the problems of boys and men is seen as a perilous undertaking . . . Progressives refuse to accept that gender inequalities can run in both directions [while] conservatives appear more sensitive . . . but only as a justification for turning back the clock . . . Politics has become like trench warfare, both sides fearing even the slightest loss of any ground. While moms and dads worry about their kids, our leaders are trapped in their partisan positions.”

I believe this is where Forward can help. In a polarized environment, the problems of boys and men become a political football to be argued about, denied, or weaponized rather than a problem to be solved. Our society is not a zero-sum game; helping men helps everyone, just as helping women helps everyone. As Richard writes: “We can hold two thoughts in our head at once. We can be passionate about women’s rights and compassionate toward vulnerable boys and men.” This is the kind of sane policymaking and cultural environment that Forward strives to make possible.

Richard ends his book with this appeal: “My hope is that away from the heat and noise of tribal politics, we can come to a shared recognition that many of our boys and men are in real trouble, not of their own making, and need help.” Let’s do all we can to make this hope a reality.

For my interview of Richard click here, and to volunteer for Forward to fix our politics click here.

The Good Life Movement

Hello, I hope that you are doing great. The Forward Party is sending volunteers to communities around the country to support some awesome candidates – I’ll be heading to Utah to campaign for Evan McMullin later this week! Want to join in? Click here to volunteer.

I’ve been an enormous proponent of mental health for decades – I saw a counselor as a teenager and my brother works in the field as a professor. When I was running for President I encountered hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who were struggling.

How do we turn this around? I thought abolishing poverty would help. Studies bear out the fact that money influences your happiness a lot if you’re stressed with day-to-day needs and make below a certain amount. My presidential campaign became a feel-good movement for some who loved the idea of putting buying power into people’s hands.

I hope that the Forward Party can become a positive, uplifting movement and community for people who want a different, more humanizing approach to politics. The connection between people, families and our well-being and what is actually being legislated has been broken. Restoring it is our best hope.

This week on the podcast I interview Andrew Frawley, who is starting a movement to advocate for mental health – The Good Life Movement. “There is a mental health crisis in America. Everyone knows it. After COVID-19, everyone seems to care about it. So, why are we not seeing a major political presence for mental health? Why are we not seeing major legislative reform? Many people think the problem is that we do not have the science or policy to transform our mental health. This is not true. While there is more research to do, we know more than enough to improve outcomes and save lives.”

He’s certainly right on about the depths of the problem. One in five American adults experiences a mental illness annually. Depression is worsening and is now 10 times more common than it was 50 years ago. Suicide is now a top 10 leading cause of death. Fundamentally, people are dispirited. 25% of Americans say they do not have a strong sense of meaning in their lives and 58% say they are lonely.

We know there’s a problem that millions of people are both affected by and passionate about.

"The reality is that the mental health crisis is like a house on fire. And with mental health care the way it is, it's like we haven't even built the fire department." Andrew is also right that there are many things that we could do that would help people live better lives. These range from teaching social and emotional learning in school to equal insurance coverage of therapy and mental health services or expanding the suite of urgent care services to include things like mobile crisis teams. "To end the crisis, though, we must think bigger and stop individualizing societal problems," Andrew says. “Health care itself only explains a small portion of our health outcomes. We must rebuild our communities by focusing on meaning, social determinants, and whole person solutions." This means that The Good Life Movement could also make a case for measures like the Child Tax Credit or more park spaces or paid family leave.

“Mental health is bi-partisan and resoundingly popular because everyone is affected by mental health issues, whatever your politics, whether you’re rural or urban, military veterans to kids,” Andrew says. “Despite this, our leaders are lethargic. The main thing that’s missing is thousands of people taking action to pressure politicians to pass legislation they already have. That’s what The Good Life Movement can provide. Think March for Our Lives for mental health. It's shocking but no one is doing this.”

I personally love the idea of millions of Americans advocating for common sense measures that would lead our people to live better lives. It’s not coming from within our current politics, because we are meant to blame each other and clash only on certain litmus test issues. Mental health has the chance to be a unifying issue that can bring people together. How our kids and our families are doing ought to be the point of our policy. What is keeping us from living the Good Life, indeed, and how can we change it? It will start with us and other everyday Americans.

To support Andrew or find out more, go to GoodLifeMovement.org.

To check out volunteer opportunities at Forward Party, click here – I’m heading to Utah this week!

Liberalism and Its Discontents

Hello, I hope all is great on your end. This week I was in D.C. for an American Promise event trying to get dark money out of politics. I also hosted an event for Evan McMullin, whom I see as one of the most important candidates in November.

Today on the podcast, I interview Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University, one of the most prominent political scientists in the country. I’ve admired Frank’s work for years and cited him in my book ‘Forward’, which comes out on paperback tomorrow. His most recent book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, puts forward an important case.

Frank argues that classical liberalism – the institutions that arose to govern diverse societies to avoid conflicts over religion and nationalism – is now under assault from both left and right. “[Classical] liberalism lowers the temperature of politics by taking questions of final ends off the table: you can believe what you want, but you must do so in private life and not seek to impose your views on your fellow citizens . . . the most fundamental principle enshrined in liberalism is one of tolerance: you do not have to agree with your fellow citizens about most important things, only that each individual should get to decide what they are without interference from you or the state.” In America, classical liberalism takes the form of the Constitution, the rule of law, Congress, the courts and other mediating institutions.

Today, classical liberalism is being challenged all over the world. “Modern democracies are facing a deep cognitive crisis,” Frank writes. “If the US doesn’t fix its underlying structural problems, it will not be able to compete effectively with the world’s rising authoritarian powers.”

On the left, classical liberalism faces a series of critiques, many of which are born of the contemporary version of identity politics, which originated in academic circles. Frank writes that earlier popular movements began as attempts to have liberalism live up to its own ideals to include, for example, the rights of women, African Americans, the LGBTQ+ community and others. Most prominently, the Civil Rights movement was about reforming institutions to include those that they should have included decades earlier. These were positive movements that helped institutions advance and evolve.

These movements on the left, however, have more recently morphed and shifted to instead assail institutions as irredeemably racist or biased and unable to address prevailing inequities. Instead of seeking equal treatment while accepting the institution’s ability to improve, the new approach is to attack and undermine and leave little hope for progress.

The elevation of various identity groups above any other consideration or affiliation eats away at one of the core premises of classical liberalism. “At the heart of the liberal project is an assumption about human equality that when you strip away the customs and accumulated cultural baggage that each one of us carries there is an underlying moral core that all human beings share and can recognize,” Frank writes. Liberalism assumes that we are all fundamentally equal and deserving of equal consideration.

On the right, there has been both an assault on the veracity of institutions – think election deniers - as well as those who have prioritized overriding economic freedom in the face of public well-being, even when practices have run afoul of any other consideration. “There is no reason why economic efficiency needs to trump all other social values,” Frank writes. Indeed, some of the triumphs of liberalism involved the cultivation of broad-based economic prosperity after World War II, some of which involved deliberate policies.

Most fundamentally, some on the right now argue that liberalism’s separation of the state from religion reduces the impact and meaning of nationhood – even though managing diversity of faith was one of the original purposes of the liberal order.

Frank ends his book – and our conversation – with a call for institutions to modernize and adapt to contemporary circumstances while also championing a belief that both classical liberalism and its principles remain the best hope for diverse societies to thrive.

I agree with Frank that we must indeed try to improve and upgrade our institutions while remaining optimistic about their ability to evolve.

Some see the Forward Party as simply a challenge to the existing order. It is actually a popular movement to modernize our institutions and political system to live up to their ideals for all of our sakes. It reflects a very deep belief in our ability to evolve with the times – because the alternative is one we do not want to experience.

Want to help Forward? Join the movement here!

For my interview of Frank click here. Forward comes out on paperback Tuesday!

Longpath

What an incredible event in Houston! Hundreds of people came together to celebrate the formation of Forward Texas and our national launch. It genuinely felt historic and it was wonderful to meet so many active and fired up volunteers and leaders from all over the country.

Between now and Election Day we will be getting out to support candidates and ballot initiatives as well as working to gain ballot access in15 states. If the people in Houston were any sign we are the team to do it!

This week on the podcast I interview futurist Ari Wallach, who wrote the book “Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs, An Antidote for Short-Termism.” I’m passionate about trying to move our policies away from continuous reactivity and short-term thinking, and Ari makes a compelling case on how to move toward thinking bigger.

Ari believes we are in a period of dramatic transition that will ‘reset the defaults of how we think and operate as human beings,’ similar to the Enlightenment or the First Industrial Age. It’s a period of ‘both crazy creativity and crazy danger.’ He writes: “All around us we see that the old ways of being and doing no longer work . . . meanwhile, we also see new, positive ways of thinking, doing, behaving and organizing popping up . . . the old ways are dying hard deaths, but the new ways are still in the process of being born, and being in the in-between can sort of suck.”

Ari posits – as we all know – that short-term stresses dominate today, in part because of social media. “Our short term tendencies are getting worse . . . The rapid pace of technological development exacerbates presentism . . . [our] brains become so addicted to the dopamine rush that “ding!” offers them that it takes more and more to satisfy them. The brain is in a perpetual stance of awaiting the next hit.”

Ari’s appeal is the opposite - Longpath wants us to embrace long-term empathetic thinking that prioritizes future generations. Many will come after us, after all. “We need to focus on a vision of the future that’s very much about the humans we want to be – the pro-social intergenerational way of being and feeling in the world that we spread through our everyday actions.” Ari emphasizes individual behavior as much or more than macro change; in this way Longpath becomes something of an approach to living your life as opposed to advocating for a specific policy shift.

Ari’s stance reminds me of a talk by the writer Sebastian Junger I attended recently, where he instructed everyone to throw their smartphones in the nearest body of water. We laughed but I think he was serious.

The other big principle of Longpath is that the future is fluid, not fixed, and we should be deliberate in trying to determine not just what lies ahead but our purpose. Why do we do what we do? What is the future that we want? “The unexamined future is not worth fighting for,” Ari writes. He also says that the 'official future' that we are presented with is not something that we should accept, especially given that it tends to be more dystopian than the opposite.

I agree with that – the idea of a movement of people who are both thinking and acting with the long term in mind is just what we need to move our trajectory in a more positive direction. Ari compares this tribe of long-term thinkers to a trim tab that turns a submarine by redirecting the flow of water: “If you’re willing to go against the flow, a very small change can turn something very big around.”

I hope that Ari's book helps bring people together and get them thinking both bigger and longer-term. Let's plan on being here for a while and being positive about what's ahead. It starts with a plan.

Can Forward move us toward a better future? Click here to join us and find out.

The Return of Facts

‘Forward’ comes out on paperback on October 4th!  Here is a never-before-published excerpt from the book.  I hope you enjoy it and will consider buying a copy! 

The Return of Facts

I ran for president on a platform of eradicating poverty. In order to compete, I became a character that was at first marginalized and has now been normalized.

There have been times when I’ve felt like the Black Mirror character in the episode “Fifteen Million Merits,” where the protagonist played by Daniel Kaluuya rages against the system and is then given a weekly TV show, plugging into the system again in a different way.

At the beginning of my presidential campaign, way back in October 2018, I spoke at an Iowa Democratic event, the Johnson County Democrats’ BBQ fundraiser. It was billed as a gathering of potential presidential candidates, though I was the only candidate who had actually declared: the speakers were Tulsi Gabbard, the Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington, and me.

I spoke directly after Jeff Merkley. His speech had a series of applause lines invoking health care, drug companies, Betsy DeVos, Brett Kavanaugh, separating children from families at the border, internment camps, climate change, voter suppression, corruption, Democratic majorities, and blue-collar working families, among other topics.

My introduction was not great: the county supervisor said to the crowd, “Keep an open mind, there may be twenty-five candidates running, it’s our job to start weeding them out. This man has some very interesting ideas.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement. I delivered my usual remarks about automation, a transforming economy, and universal basic income. My speech cited several facts about Iowa and job loss: the state had already lost forty thousand manufacturing jobs and twelve thousand retail jobs. The country’s largest truck stop—Iowa 80—was in Walcott, Iowa. What happens when the trucks drive themselves? I got very limited applause; my main applause lines were when I referenced health care and the value of parents.

I walked offstage thinking, “Huh, did I not do a great job? Am I not a fit for this state?” In most cases politicians are communicating with their most active partisans in the most activating language possible. They are throwing out a red meat list of issues they know will elicit a fiery response.

A year later I would give a similar speech in Iowa at the Liberty and Justice Dinner at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines for about fourteen thousand people. By then, attendees were able to shout answers to my questions.

“One state has had something like universal basic income since 1982,” I proclaimed. “And what state is that?”

“Alaska!”

“And how do they pay for it?”

“Oil!”

“And what is the oil of the twenty-first century?”

“Technology!”

Eventually, my facts had become symbols that brought with them their own responses. I had managed to introduce a new language and new applause lines to the people of Iowa. It had taken a year.

I’ve had thousands of conversations with Americans of all political backgrounds. If you sit down with the average person and ask a question like “Hey, do you think prescription drug prices are too high?” or “Do you think you should have health care even if you lose your job?” most people will agree with you regardless of their political affiliation. But if you use loaded terms like “Do you think we should have socialized medicine?” that have been coded as negative, many people will dislike it intensely.

Michael Grunwald wrote in Politico in 2020, “There is a line of thinking that America has entered a kind of postmodern political era where the appearance of governing is just as politically powerful as actual governing, because most Americans now live in partisan spin bubbles that insulate them from facts on the ground.” Passing laws, solving problems, and measuring impacts don’t matter anymore. You can simply argue for your version of reality and aligned media outlets will trumpet and reinforce that narrative to your people. Value statements and virtue signaling have assumed the role of laws and policy for many in the day-to-day back-and-forth of cable news.

Instead of achieving results, our leaders are asked to demonstrate the correct moral approach by evincing sadness or anger, invoking certain words and issues, and inveighing against the excesses of the other side. Speaking to a group is now an enormous expression of alignment or allegiance. Neither side can pass laws, so we are reduced to warring languages and symbols.

The former Michigan congressman Justin Amash observed of fellow members of Congress in 2020 that there is now a “performative aspect” to their activities and “the sad truth is that the majority of them prefer this system . . . If they bend the knee to leadership, say we’ll go along with whatever show you’re doing, you’re putting on the Democrat Show, you’re putting on the Republican Show . . . As long as they play along and do the performance, they are taken care of, they’re babied.”

In his book The Righteous Mind the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt tried to answer a fundamental question: Why is it that well-meaning people can disagree so violently when it comes to politics? He argues that there are six fundamental human values that cross all cultures and constitute our universal sense of morality: caring, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Haidt posits and observes that people on the progressive side of politics naturally use arguments that emphasize the values of caring and fairness: “Every child deserves a quality public education” or “Women should have equal rights.” Conservatives acknowledge caring and fairness but are much more likely to make appeals to loyalty, authority, and sanctity: “Protect our troops,” “Respect law enforcement,” or “Preserve American families and values.”

You can see this dynamic play out in issue after issue. When it comes to separating children from their parents at the southern border, progressives are outraged at the shocking mistreatment of families. Conservatives are more likely to question why immigrants are breaking the law by entering the country illegally. The first point of view is about caring and empathy. The second is about authority.

Haidt argues that conservatives’ ability to use and appeal to all six values gives them a broader moral palette that gives them an advantage in political communication. They can hit more varied notes that ring true to different types of people.

Case in point: I remember sitting in the waiting room before one Fox News appearance watching the programming before I was to be interviewed. The hosts were showing images of the remains of soldiers arriving back in the States on a flight from Afghanistan after being killed by an explosive device. The MSNBC stories while I was waiting in their greenroom were generally about Trump officials’ malfeasance or families separated at the border. There is a specific symbolic language that works for people on each side. Fox News ratings are typically about 60 percent higher than MSNBC’s or CNN’s; more Americans self-identify as conservatives and enjoy appeals to loyalty, authority, and sanctity than caring and fairness.

Our media organizations relentlessly push us into tribes with our own applause lines and sources of outrage. Our leaders are transformed into characters to either cheer or boo, to catalog their steps or missteps. We are degenerating into a set of characters in a play, with the media mapping our relative rise and fall while our communities at home fall apart. As the author Philip Howard put it, we are playing games of “You lose, I lose,” passing the ball back and forth while the people lose no matter what.

While campaigning for president, I met many people who voted for Donald Trump; this group includes some family members of mine. The vast majority of them struck me as good people. Many seemed open to supporting me or at least listening to me because I adopted a language that was neutral in their view; it wasn’t coded either positively or negatively. It was for the most part just numbers and economic trends. Later, a January 2020 survey of my supporters indicated that 42 percent of them weren’t planning on supporting the Democratic nominee if I didn’t win the nomination. I was using a different terminology and moral language and thus reached people who weren’t traditionally Democratic or, in many cases, even political.

I awakened a significant group of people who were not politically engaged. In the book Open Versus Closed, the political psychologists Christopher Johnston, Howard Lavine, and Christopher Federico tested responsiveness to various political opinions among those who did not follow politics. They found that disengaged citizens had less of a fixed political identity based upon their psychological profile. They were more pragmatic and practical when presented with a question. They reacted to a policy by trying to answer “what will this policy do for me?” They heard “$1,000 a month” and did the math.

Meanwhile, those who are more politically attentive were more likely to try to answer “what will supporting this policy say about me?” They are joining a group.

This indicates something very important—that political engagement ends up forming an allegiance based on perceived values and identity as opposed to perceived advantage or disadvantage of a policy. If you watch a lot of Fox or MSNBC or listen to conservative radio, you actually get pushed into tribes that are completely distinct from how you might be affected by, say, a tax cut. It’s one reason why some voters seem to “vote against their own interests”; they define their interests based on what their vote says about them rather than what they think their vote will do for them.

My appeal—which struck many partisans as ridiculous initially—was to say we should give everyone enough money to get by. The politically disengaged heard this and responded, “Hey, that would help me a lot.” This appeal was initially dismissed because it didn’t fall into an existing group narrative or language structure. But eventually this idea made headway among the more engaged as well.

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‘Forward’ comes out on paperback on October 4th – get your copy today!

Democrat to Forward

Hello, I hope all is great with you! I spent this week in Wyoming at a Democracy conference – it’s like walking onto the set of Yellowstone the moment you get off the plane. I recommend it.

Some fun news – Forward comes out on paperback on October 4th! I used to wait until books came out on paperback before picking up a copy myself.

Perhaps most exciting - over 1,000 people have signed up for the Forward Kickoff in Houston on September 24th!  Let your friends in Texas know that’s the place to be this Saturday.  It’s on! 
 
I left the Democratic Party almost a year ago.  I didn’t think much of it at the time – I simply changed my voter registration to ‘Independent’ and wrote a blog post.  I did this because I had become convinced that what was needed was structural reform that would not happen from within the two-party system. 
 
I was surprised at the reaction.  Headlines were written.  People I didn’t know seemed to project all sorts of strange things onto me.  The tribalism was evident. 
 
In some ways, the reaction made me feel more confident that I was doing the right thing.  One friend I admire a great deal called me to express his appreciation.  I felt that the right people would see what I was building with Forward and would come to join the effort. 
 
It was true.  Phenomenal people have come to help.  One of the most important is Kait Saier, whom I interview on the podcast this week. 
 
Kait grew up in Kentucky and came to politics the hard way – through personal tragedy.  Her brother was shot in the head when she was 18 years old.  “I was always a Democrat, even growing up in Kentucky.  But it became personal to me after what my family went through.”  Part of her work was with Everytown for Gun Safety pushing for sensible gun violence prevention policies.  She also worked for a senior member of Congress and a Democratic governor, spending a decade in Democratic politics as a fundraiser. 
 
Why did she consider leaving? “I didn’t feel like I was making a positive difference.  I saw the dysfunction of the system up close. I said I’d give the Democrats one more cycle, one more cycle but it kept getting worse, not better. I saw that if they had a choice between a messaging bill that wouldn’t pass but would win a press cycle versus a compromise that might help people, they would choose the messaging bill.  Things like that would happen over and over again.  There are good people who came to it for the right reasons, but the system isn’t rewarding solving problems or helping people.  It’s rewarding politics as usual and blaming it on others. I just couldn’t keep doing it and still feel true to myself.” 
 
Kait goes on,  “I still have tons of friends and family here in Kentucky.  I felt all of the time like I was having to try and fight to include the perspective of someone like me who maybe grew up in a reddish part of the country around people who might be working class.  I would get into arguments about language and approaches all of the time. It became exhausting.  I went to school in New York and lived in Boston so I’ve seen both sides.  There really is a bubble.” 
 
Still, it wasn’t an easy decision.  “It was terrifying to leave the Democratic Party because I had spent a decade building a career, and I need to make a living.  I need a job.  People called me trying to discourage me or even intimidate me.  Some said things like, ‘I would never have the guts to do that.’  But I reflected on why I got into politics in the first place – to help people.  And I became convinced that Forward is exactly what the country needs.” 
 
When Kait reached out, our little team was thrilled.  Kait and I have traveled the country together for months making the case for Forward.  We have roadtripped in a tiny rental car (her choice) and almost went on a hot air balloon ride.  She’s great at her work and also a joy to spend time with.  I’m grateful to her for doing what she thought was right for the country. And, I’ll confess, I feel a certain responsibility to make sure that she never feels like she made the wrong decision. 
 
On that front, people like you who have helped.  “I’ve been in politics for a long time, and I’ve never seen energy and people like this.  People want it.  I wake up every day feeling good about what I’m doing.  I haven’t regretted it a single minute.” 
 
Let’s keep building the movement that Kait wanted to see when she joined. 
 
Click here to get your copy of Forward on paperback and here for the Houston event info on the 24th!  Or click here to join Forward and check out the Forward chapter in your area.