What if the very structure of American politics is threatening democracy itself? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Jacob "Jake" Grumbach, author of "Laboratories Against Democracy", as we uncover the collision between national political parties and state-level governments in the United States. Learn how technology, changes in media, and fundraising have contributed to this unique situation, and understand the increasing importance of state governments in shaping the policies that affect our lives.
We'll also dive into the impact of nationalization on states like Wisconsin and Michigan, and explore the relationship between ordinary citizens and their local governments. Dr. Grumbach shares insights on the role of technology and media in transforming the political landscape, and the emergence of labor unions as a platform for collaboration across demographic lines. Furthermore, we discuss valuable advice for Gen Z on how to navigate this complex world of politics, emphasizing the importance of focusing on policy change over individual successes, and understanding the long-term nature of political involvement. Don't miss this enlightening episode that will leave you with a deeper understanding of the current state of American democracy.
Topics:
- National vs state politics in America
- The nationalization of state politics and why this is a problem
- Creating political change as a young person
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Professor Grumbach's research focuses on the political economy of the United States. He is particularly interested in public policy, American federalism, racial and economic inequality, campaign finance, and statistical methods. His book, Laboratories against Democracy, investigates the causes and consequences of the nationalization of state politics since the 1970s. Additional recent projects investigate labor unions, election law, and money in politics. Professor Grumbach teaches courses in statistics for the social sciences and in state and local politics.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Taylor Bledsoe (00:00):
Well, thank you so much, Dr Grumbach, for coming
on aiming for the moon.
I'm so happy you could come on.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (00:05):
Thanks for having me, Taylor.
Taylor Bledsoe (00:06):
Yeah, so you are the author of Laboratories
Against Democracy, which is areally interesting book, and can
you kind of give the thesis ofit to start off?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (00:15):
Yeah, absolutely, um, so there's a lot
to talk about there.
So the first being that, uh,this is a book about American
politics right now and what'sgoing on and how the political
parties in the US the Democraticand Republican parties are
operating within the rules ofthe US Constitution.
(00:36):
So, uh, one thing zooming outreally far to say is that, so,
the US Constitution that createsthe rules, so we have, you know
, the national government, wehave the White House, we have
the US House and US Senate inCongress and we have the Supreme
Court, and that's the nationalgovernment.
But then we also, reallyimportantly, have state
(00:57):
governments in the US, like thegovernment of New York or
Vermont or Texas, right, andthat's actually pretty unique
around the world.
So most other democracies don'thave both a national government
and these really importantstate level governments.
So that really matters.
And in the US, uh, this is notsome sort of natural occurrence
(01:21):
that we have state governmentsin a national government.
That's the product of battlesbetween political groups over
long periods of time to set therules of how American politics
works.
And then, right now, what wehave is we have two parties.
If I could really summarize thebook in one sentence, it's that
we have two parties that arenational political parties the
(01:44):
Democratic and Republicanparties but the US rules of
politics are really focused onnot national rules or national
governmental issues, but ratherthe state level state
governments.
So right now we're seeing thiscollision between these national
parties and state levelgovernments And to some extent,
(02:07):
it's threatening Americandemocracy itself.
Taylor Bledsoe (02:11):
So to not.
We have a diverse listener base, So not to alienate any
particular group of the listenerbase, but so you have these two
national parties And theinteresting thing about it is,
as you said, the laws weredesigned for state level and it
almost seems like obviously,this constitution in the bill of
rights were all written a longtime ago, Um, and they didn't
have things like the internetthat make globalization and
(02:34):
interacting with people on anational level really really
easy.
Do you think?
like, how did we get to thisproblem where there's this
conflict here?
Is that because of technology?
Is it just culturally like what?
what are some of the effects?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (02:45):
That's a really nice point, taylor.
So technology is one of themajor reasons the parties became
national, right.
So the democratic andrepublican parties you know have
existed the democratic partyfor a very long time, since
maybe the 1830s, the republicanparty since the 18th, since
about 1860.
Um, and those parties, uh, youknow, there was also always some
(03:10):
national elements to them, butthey were decentralized, meaning
if you were a democrat in, youknow, the 1950s, it really
mattered where you were from.
A democrat in the U S South wasvery different from a democrat
in the U S North.
right, the parties weredecentralized, just like the
rules of American government inthe constitution, right.
(03:30):
So decentralization meaning alot of authority for the state
level.
So states can be very differentCalifornia can be different
from Texas, which can bedifferent from Wisconsin, which
is different from New York, andso forth.
Um, so that's a uh, uh big, uhchanged sense over the past
generation is that the partiesbecame national.
(03:51):
And one reason, exactly like yousaid, taylor, is technology.
So the rise of national newsthrough cable TV, so the rise of
channels like Fox news or CNN,the rise of the internet and
social media, where people getmost of their political
information and news, and theinternet.
Even before social media, therewas Craigslist, um, and
(04:15):
Craigslist destroyed theadvertising revenue of
classified ads for state andlocal newspapers.
So now what you have is a sortof media and technological
environment where it's reallyhard to know what's going on in
your local level area And it's alot easier and more attractive
to us.
Like it's kind of a littlebit's our fault too, because we
click so much more on nationalconflict.
(04:37):
I'm much more likely to clickon, you know, some national
controversy.
Uh, you know that my politicalteam is can really dunk on the
other team.
Nationally is a lot moreattractive than boring.
You know, here's what'shappening with the POP holes in
this neighborhood And that's abig change And all that means.
(05:00):
So technology is one part ofthat, but also partially due to
technology changes in wherepolitical fundraising comes from
.
It's much more national, andorganizations like environmental
groups or evangelical sort ofconservative religious groups or
(05:21):
LGBT rights groups and alltypes of political organization,
gun rights groups and guncontrol groups they all became
much more national as well overthe past generation.
All of this contributed tohaving two national teams.
But what's really weird againunlike other countries around
the world that are democraciesis.
The US has these reallyimportant lower level of
(05:44):
governments, the state level,and what's happening now is,
ironically, as the parties havenationalized, the states have
gotten more important for youractual policies you live under.
Taylor Bledsoe (05:56):
So what are the effects of these national
parties?
now?
So is it?
what are the good sides?
and are there any good sides?
and then what are the bad sides?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (06:05):
Yeah.
so I wouldn't say that nationalparties are necessarily good or
bad, but I would say thecombination of having national
parties and sub national,decentralized rules, that's a
real challenge.
So I think if you have bothdecentralized rules and
decentralized parties, you couldmaybe make it work.
(06:26):
If you have what most countrieshave in wealthy democracies in
Europe and East Asia and thingslike that, whether you're Japan
or the UK or the Netherlands orsomething like that, you have
parties that are national, butyou also have the politics and
the rules are all national too.
That's a really different typeof politics.
(06:47):
So when something goes wrong inthe country, everybody can say
oh, the party that controls thenational government, they mess
this up, let's kick them out andget the other party in or the
other parties in many countries,whereas in the US you have your
local mayor, who's veryimportant.
you have your state level statelegislature and your governor.
(07:09):
So you have, if you live inNevada, the Nevada state
legislatures, like the Congressof your state, plus you have a
governor, plus you have thepresident and Congress in
Washington DC And if somethinggoes wrong like in COVID, things
go badly in your area or thefactories leaving your town.
(07:30):
Who do you blame?
Is it your mayor?
Did they mess up?
Is it your governor?
Did they mess up?
The president, is it the partyin Congress?
It's really, really hard toknow.
In the US political system.
So that disconnect betweennational parties and subnational
rules means it's really hard toknow who to reward and who to
blame, and that makes politicsand democracy a lot harder to
(07:54):
work for regular people.
Taylor Bledsoe (07:57):
The argument that I always hear in favor of
the federalist system, as it'scalled, is basically so yeah,
you might not be able to blameeveryone, but then they might
not have as much stuff to beblamed for.
So if there was one person incharge of everything, then of
course it, the blame would be onhim.
But like, well, that guy is allthe problems, he is all the
power.
So is there like what?
(08:17):
how do you answer this thing?
because you have the balance ofresponsibility, but then you
also have, well, obviously, theresponsibilities.
You don't want one person incharge of everything.
So how do you like?
what's your response?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (08:27):
such a nice point.
So, going back all the way tothe founders, like James Madison
, who wrote a lot of what'scalled the federalist papers,
this is when they're trying tosell the US Constitution to the
states, to the colonies.
Right, so it's after theRevolutionary War, the US is
gaining independence and they'resaying, you know, the elites at
the times, or the wealthy men,are saying how do we, you know,
(08:51):
create a new constitution for acountry?
right, the colonies all gottogether to fight this war
against the British, but they'rejust some independent colonies.
It's not really a country.
And there's this debate aboutsort of should we make it, you
know, important national levelgovernment and politics have
(09:11):
more of a unified country, likewhat's called a unitary system,
again what most otherdemocracies have, or should it
be really state focused anddecentralized?
and they met, they did pridemostly decentralization, but
they had some importantauthority for the national
government to sort of unify thecountry in a tackle national
(09:31):
problems.
And it's true that.
So one big argument fordecentralization was oh, we
don't want thisone-size-fits-all solution to
the whole country.
It's a very diverse big country.
Even at the time when it waslike only property owning white
men could vote, it was stilllike.
There are a lot of differenttypes of property owning white
(09:51):
men of different sort ofdifferent sort of Christian
religious sex.
You know, some were really intoslavery, some were kind of
anti-slavery at the time.
Different beliefs about.
You know how much taxationshould happen, how farms and
agriculture should be organized,how trade should happen, which
wars to start, all types ofdifferences, right.
(10:12):
So they said it would be greatif we could customize policy
based on the different sort ofcultures across the country.
So that's a important argument.
But on the flip side, what wehaven't emphasized enough, i
think, is the flip side of thatargument, one we just talked
about it's harder to know who toblame, so nobody really has an
(10:34):
incentive to actually fix anyproblem because you can always
blame somebody else, right?
whereas if you centralizedaccountability, you're gonna get
blamed, so you better do a goodjob.
That's one.
And then there's a lot of otherproblems as we get into the
modern era with moderntechnology.
So there are national andglobal problems like climate
change, or national problemslike COVID hitting the US.
(10:58):
National problems like aneconomic crisis which happened
in 2008 when I was in college,and then again during COVID.
So millennials, eldermillennials like me, definitely
got unlucky with that, but ingeneral that's hard to tackle
from decentralized states, right?
(11:19):
so in the beginning of COVIDthere wasn't much coordination
and governors were trying tocoordinate with each other.
Same thing in tackling climatechange, where it's really hard,
where you know, everybody kindof has to take a little bit of
tough action to stop carbonemissions and methane emissions
to avoid climate change.
(11:39):
But if you have a decentralizedsystem, it makes solving
national problems reallydifficult.
You don't know who to blame.
It's hard to coordinate acrossstates.
So at its extreme, back in theday, like really early on,
states had different currencies,right.
They had different forms ofmoney.
So when you crossed from, likeyou know, maryland into Virginia
(12:00):
, you somehow need to, likechange your currency to
different coins.
Like that's pretty, you knowit's not that bad anymore, right
.
And then, lastly, just reallyimportantly, when the parties
nationalized, a lot of thosesort of ideas that you're gonna
customize don't really workbecause when a party controls
your state, it's the same typeof party, no matter where you
(12:23):
are in the country now.
So again, you used to have verydifferent.
You know, in the 1950s northernDemocrats were pro-civil rights
and pro-labor unions andsouthern Democrats were pro
segregation, pro Jim Crow rightvery different, but in the same
party, whereas now that's notthe case.
If your state gets controlledby the Democratic Party now,
(12:45):
it's gonna be very similar toother Democratic states, and if
it's controlled by theRepublican Party, it's gonna be
very similar to Republicanstates.
So that's what happened instates like Wisconsin and
Michigan in the 2010s is theyturned Republican and those
Republican state governmentsmade Wisconsin, which was kind
of like a moderate sort ofliberal state, into a much more
(13:08):
conservative state, like thelonger term Republican states in
the South, for example.
Taylor Bledsoe (13:14):
The thing.
One of the things that's veryinteresting about it is would
this be solved if we had morecommunity and more relationships
with the people that we wereinvolved in on a day to day?
So we always look at politicson a global, international and
national level and we're alllike what's, who's the president
, who's going to the Senate,who's going to Congress, but in
(13:34):
reality, not all of that affectswhere we are in relationship to
our little town or our city orsomething like that.
So one of the ways, if we could, we balance this out by having
an increased community awarenessand level and interaction on
just the mayor level or just thestates in it level, or
something like that.
Is that a way to combat thiskind of weird once you've been
(13:58):
solved for either politicalparty?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (13:59):
Yeah, that would be great, So great, if
possible, i would say.
Like you know so I mentionedbefore it's really hard to do
that, it's really boring And foryoung people especially who
don't own homes for a longstretch of the time or you move
to go to college or somethinglike that, there's a reason that
that.
So, ironically, we tend tothink in a sort of mythology,
(14:23):
the local level is the mostsmall d democratic, where people
, ordinary people, come togetherand solve problems.
But actually the lower levelsis where we know the least and
is the most dominated by olderand wealthier homeowners rather
than everyday people of alltypes.
So actually, like ironicallyand sadly, like I wish that were
(14:47):
possible, but given thetechnology you mentioned, it's
just a really hard ask to tellpeople take go to local meetings
with your time, even thoughyou're working or going to
school.
It's really tough And retireeshave like unlimited time to go
to the local meetings, right,it's really really hard to do
that And we know much morebecause of the way media covers
(15:09):
politics.
Like you, taylor, and yourfriends, i know they know which
presidential candidate they'regoing to support, like who they
like and who they don't.
We do know what they stand for.
Generally.
It's not an amazing system, butwe know who they stand for and
what direction they're going tomove the country, whereas even I
I'm a professor of politicalscience and I have a hard time
(15:29):
voting in state legislativeprimaries like they're the same
party And it's like in for statelegislature I have no idea.
Like I have to listen to otherorganizations and interest
groups tell me, like how to vote, whereas at the presidential
level, like you can be sure, iknow, like years out, i know,
like who I like, who I don'tlike, right That.
(15:51):
So I think it's just a reallytough thing to ask ordinary
people to get super involved inlocal levels.
But we have to do our best Andone way to do that is to join
organizations.
So, being an adamant so youkind of said it in your question
, taylor So being a lonely voter, disconnected from others,
(16:13):
right, you can vote at theballot box and you can try to
pay attention, but politicsreally happens and you have more
influence in politics as anordinary person.
If you're a billionairebillionaire you have other ways
of influencing politics, but forordinary people, especially
young people, getting involvedin organizations, whether it's
student groups, community groups, you know, on the environment
(16:35):
or guns.
You know there's a socialmovement around all sort of
racial justice movements Andthen, importantly, one I think
one of the brightest spots inAmerican politics in terms of
being able to organize with it,with a local community, across
racial lines and things likethat, is that mostly Gen Z kids
organizing labor unions atStarbucks and Amazon and so
(16:58):
forth.
So labor unions are.
For a long time in the 1900s,labor unions were the main
organization for ordinary people.
Labor unions what they do is atwork, they organize the workers
to bargain over their contractsand their wages and their
working conditions with the bossas a collective unit rather
(17:21):
than individually.
That made workers a lot morepowerful over their wages,
helped build the middle classand helped create a lot of
protections for women, people ofcolor, lgbt individuals at work
and made working less dangerous.
The eight-year-olds aren'tgoing into the coal mine and
(17:41):
getting black lung and thingslike that create the weekends
and all that.
But really importantly, some ofmy other research and I talk
about this in the book, but it'sin a series of other research
is that labor unions also reallyhelp organize to protect
democracy Because it bringspeople together across racial
lines, pulling in the samedirection because we all want a
(18:04):
better contract at our job.
It helps avoid culture warpolitics that we see and
resentment-based politics Where,sadly, you can learn because of
the nationalization of politicsand resentment-based politics.
You can tell more about howsomebody votes statistically by
(18:24):
asking them what they think ofLil Nas X at the Country Music
Awards.
Then you can about asking themabout the minimum wage or taxes
or healthcare and things thatactual policy actually affects.
That's not a great type ofpolitics where Beyonce's Super
Bowl halftime show is moredrives people voting more than
(18:46):
actual policy with money on theline.
So how do we get back to asystem where people care about
policy?
One way is to joinorganizations that can help you
organize around policy ratherthan just who you want to own.
Taylor Bledsoe (19:03):
Yeah, so this has been a very interesting
conversation, and I want to wrapup here with the last two
questions we ask all of ourguests, and the first one is
what books have had an impact onyou.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (19:14):
Yeah, no, that was such a good question.
I've been doing some thinkingabout that And it's a little
cliche, i guess, for young meninto politics, but I really
liked around start of highschool and the middle school I
really like I found Animal Farmby George Orwell.
I found it actually on thestreet And I was like I had no
(19:37):
idea what the book was about.
I was starting to be a littleinterested in politics.
It was the early 2000s at thetime And I was like this is
amazing And I was an allegor.
I didn't even understand it.
It was an allegory to howtotalitarianism happened in
Russia and the Soviet Union outof what was meant to be a small
(20:00):
de-democratic emancipatorymovement but became totalitarian
.
It was about that transition,but using the allegory of
animals on a farm, and I foundthat fascinating and read 1984,
also by George Orwell.
So those, yeah, i didn'tunderstand quite all of them but
they really helped get me evenmore into politics.
(20:23):
And Orwell, as an interestingpolitical figure himself like
has super interesting his ownpolitical essays from the 1930s
in the rise of totalitarianismand fascism in Europe at this
time from the vantage point ofyou know, and it has a lot of
(20:43):
relevance to politics around theworld.
Taylor Bledsoe (20:47):
Then our last question is what advice do you
have for teenagers?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (20:51):
Yeah.
So I think studying Americanpolitics and studying it
statistically is reallyinteresting.
Where young people do not havemuch of a voice in American
politics.
It's really unfortunate It'snot talked about enough.
We talk a lot about reallycrucial other economic
inequality and racial inequalityand politics gender inequality
(21:13):
But really crucially, the US isunfortunately what's called a
gerontocracy, a rule by the old,and this is really serious,
like compared to other countries, it's really extreme and it's
causing really bad outcomes.
So Gen Z, actually of all agegroups, does have the best sort
of politics, i would say like,has the strong conceptions of
(21:37):
freedom, of equality and justicethat are really fascinating to
see and leave me with some hopeAt the same time.
Just the incentives of currenttechnology and media are to use
that good politics through justlike I don't know dunking online
(21:58):
, trying to show off and beright about things And politics,
unfortunately, is messy andit's not about being right all
the time and it's not about it'scertainly not about dunking,
unfortunately.
It's about, like, actuallychanging policy And that's at
odds with dunking.
(22:19):
Sometimes you need to build acoalition and to do that you
have to have people like you.
Rather than dunk on you, likedunk on them.
So keep that same Gen Z fierypolitics, but understand that
politics is really long.
I'm looking back on my timelearning and working in politics
(22:41):
and so forth.
Politics is a lifelong thingand keep your eyes on the prize
rather than the moment to momentsort of feelings you might get
from dunking or saying the rightthing or something like that.
Taylor Bledsoe (22:59):
I guess slow motion dunk on people.
Just a very slow motion.
Show them that it's right afterwhatever it's an extended
amount of time.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (23:07):
Exactly.
Keep your eyes on the politics.
It's not about you as anindividual.
It's about how you and otherschange something that affects a
lot of people.
Taylor Bledsoe (23:19):
Well, thank you so much, Dr Grumbach, for coming
on A Moon for the Moon.
I really enjoyed ourconversation.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (23:24):
Me too, Taylor.
Thanks so much.
Well, thank you so much, Dr Grumbach, for coming
on aiming for the moon.
I'm so happy you could come on.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (00:05):
Thanks for having me, Taylor.
Taylor Bledsoe (00:06):
Yeah, so you are the author of Laboratories
Against Democracy, which is areally interesting book, and can
you kind of give the thesis ofit to start off?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (00:15):
Yeah, absolutely, um, so there's a lot
to talk about there.
So the first being that, uh,this is a book about American
politics right now and what'sgoing on and how the political
parties in the US the Democraticand Republican parties are
operating within the rules ofthe US Constitution.
(00:36):
So, uh, one thing zooming outreally far to say is that, so,
the US Constitution that createsthe rules, so we have, you know
, the national government, wehave the White House, we have
the US House and US Senate inCongress and we have the Supreme
Court, and that's the nationalgovernment.
But then we also, reallyimportantly, have state
(00:57):
governments in the US, like thegovernment of New York or
Vermont or Texas, right, andthat's actually pretty unique
around the world.
So most other democracies don'thave both a national government
and these really importantstate level governments.
So that really matters.
And in the US, uh, this is notsome sort of natural occurrence
(01:21):
that we have state governmentsin a national government.
That's the product of battlesbetween political groups over
long periods of time to set therules of how American politics
works.
And then, right now, what wehave is we have two parties.
If I could really summarize thebook in one sentence, it's that
we have two parties that arenational political parties the
(01:44):
Democratic and Republicanparties but the US rules of
politics are really focused onnot national rules or national
governmental issues, but ratherthe state level state
governments.
So right now we're seeing thiscollision between these national
parties and state levelgovernments And to some extent,
(02:07):
it's threatening Americandemocracy itself.
Taylor Bledsoe (02:11):
So to not.
We have a diverse listener base, So not to alienate any
particular group of the listenerbase, but so you have these two
national parties And theinteresting thing about it is,
as you said, the laws weredesigned for state level and it
almost seems like obviously,this constitution in the bill of
rights were all written a longtime ago, Um, and they didn't
have things like the internetthat make globalization and
(02:34):
interacting with people on anational level really really
easy.
Do you think?
like, how did we get to thisproblem where there's this
conflict here?
Is that because of technology?
Is it just culturally like what?
what are some of the effects?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (02:45):
That's a really nice point, taylor.
So technology is one of themajor reasons the parties became
national, right.
So the democratic andrepublican parties you know have
existed the democratic partyfor a very long time, since
maybe the 1830s, the republicanparty since the 18th, since
about 1860.
Um, and those parties, uh, youknow, there was also always some
(03:10):
national elements to them, butthey were decentralized, meaning
if you were a democrat in, youknow, the 1950s, it really
mattered where you were from.
A democrat in the U S South wasvery different from a democrat
in the U S North.
right, the parties weredecentralized, just like the
rules of American government inthe constitution, right.
(03:30):
So decentralization meaning alot of authority for the state
level.
So states can be very differentCalifornia can be different
from Texas, which can bedifferent from Wisconsin, which
is different from New York, andso forth.
Um, so that's a uh, uh big, uhchanged sense over the past
generation is that the partiesbecame national.
(03:51):
And one reason, exactly like yousaid, taylor, is technology.
So the rise of national newsthrough cable TV, so the rise of
channels like Fox news or CNN,the rise of the internet and
social media, where people getmost of their political
information and news, and theinternet.
Even before social media, therewas Craigslist, um, and
(04:15):
Craigslist destroyed theadvertising revenue of
classified ads for state andlocal newspapers.
So now what you have is a sortof media and technological
environment where it's reallyhard to know what's going on in
your local level area And it's alot easier and more attractive
to us.
Like it's kind of a littlebit's our fault too, because we
click so much more on nationalconflict.
(04:37):
I'm much more likely to clickon, you know, some national
controversy.
Uh, you know that my politicalteam is can really dunk on the
other team.
Nationally is a lot moreattractive than boring.
You know, here's what'shappening with the POP holes in
this neighborhood And that's abig change And all that means.
(05:00):
So technology is one part ofthat, but also partially due to
technology changes in wherepolitical fundraising comes from
.
It's much more national, andorganizations like environmental
groups or evangelical sort ofconservative religious groups or
(05:21):
LGBT rights groups and alltypes of political organization,
gun rights groups and guncontrol groups they all became
much more national as well overthe past generation.
All of this contributed tohaving two national teams.
But what's really weird againunlike other countries around
the world that are democraciesis.
The US has these reallyimportant lower level of
(05:44):
governments, the state level,and what's happening now is,
ironically, as the parties havenationalized, the states have
gotten more important for youractual policies you live under.
Taylor Bledsoe (05:56):
So what are the effects of these national
parties?
now?
So is it?
what are the good sides?
and are there any good sides?
and then what are the bad sides?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (06:05):
Yeah.
so I wouldn't say that nationalparties are necessarily good or
bad, but I would say thecombination of having national
parties and sub national,decentralized rules, that's a
real challenge.
So I think if you have bothdecentralized rules and
decentralized parties, you couldmaybe make it work.
(06:26):
If you have what most countrieshave in wealthy democracies in
Europe and East Asia and thingslike that, whether you're Japan
or the UK or the Netherlands orsomething like that, you have
parties that are national, butyou also have the politics and
the rules are all national too.
That's a really different typeof politics.
(06:47):
So when something goes wrong inthe country, everybody can say
oh, the party that controls thenational government, they mess
this up, let's kick them out andget the other party in or the
other parties in many countries,whereas in the US you have your
local mayor, who's veryimportant.
you have your state level statelegislature and your governor.
(07:09):
So you have, if you live inNevada, the Nevada state
legislatures, like the Congressof your state, plus you have a
governor, plus you have thepresident and Congress in
Washington DC And if somethinggoes wrong like in COVID, things
go badly in your area or thefactories leaving your town.
(07:30):
Who do you blame?
Is it your mayor?
Did they mess up?
Is it your governor?
Did they mess up?
The president, is it the partyin Congress?
It's really, really hard toknow.
In the US political system.
So that disconnect betweennational parties and subnational
rules means it's really hard toknow who to reward and who to
blame, and that makes politicsand democracy a lot harder to
(07:54):
work for regular people.
Taylor Bledsoe (07:57):
The argument that I always hear in favor of
the federalist system, as it'scalled, is basically so yeah,
you might not be able to blameeveryone, but then they might
not have as much stuff to beblamed for.
So if there was one person incharge of everything, then of
course it, the blame would be onhim.
But like, well, that guy is allthe problems, he is all the
power.
So is there like what?
(08:17):
how do you answer this thing?
because you have the balance ofresponsibility, but then you
also have, well, obviously, theresponsibilities.
You don't want one person incharge of everything.
So how do you like?
what's your response?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (08:27):
such a nice point.
So, going back all the way tothe founders, like James Madison
, who wrote a lot of what'scalled the federalist papers,
this is when they're trying tosell the US Constitution to the
states, to the colonies.
Right, so it's after theRevolutionary War, the US is
gaining independence and they'resaying, you know, the elites at
the times, or the wealthy men,are saying how do we, you know,
(08:51):
create a new constitution for acountry?
right, the colonies all gottogether to fight this war
against the British, but they'rejust some independent colonies.
It's not really a country.
And there's this debate aboutsort of should we make it, you
know, important national levelgovernment and politics have
(09:11):
more of a unified country, likewhat's called a unitary system,
again what most otherdemocracies have, or should it
be really state focused anddecentralized?
and they met, they did pridemostly decentralization, but
they had some importantauthority for the national
government to sort of unify thecountry in a tackle national
(09:31):
problems.
And it's true that.
So one big argument fordecentralization was oh, we
don't want thisone-size-fits-all solution to
the whole country.
It's a very diverse big country.
Even at the time when it waslike only property owning white
men could vote, it was stilllike.
There are a lot of differenttypes of property owning white
(09:51):
men of different sort ofdifferent sort of Christian
religious sex.
You know, some were really intoslavery, some were kind of
anti-slavery at the time.
Different beliefs about.
You know how much taxationshould happen, how farms and
agriculture should be organized,how trade should happen, which
wars to start, all types ofdifferences, right.
(10:12):
So they said it would be greatif we could customize policy
based on the different sort ofcultures across the country.
So that's a important argument.
But on the flip side, what wehaven't emphasized enough, i
think, is the flip side of thatargument, one we just talked
about it's harder to know who toblame, so nobody really has an
(10:34):
incentive to actually fix anyproblem because you can always
blame somebody else, right?
whereas if you centralizedaccountability, you're gonna get
blamed, so you better do a goodjob.
That's one.
And then there's a lot of otherproblems as we get into the
modern era with moderntechnology.
So there are national andglobal problems like climate
change, or national problemslike COVID hitting the US.
(10:58):
National problems like aneconomic crisis which happened
in 2008 when I was in college,and then again during COVID.
So millennials, eldermillennials like me, definitely
got unlucky with that, but ingeneral that's hard to tackle
from decentralized states, right?
(11:19):
so in the beginning of COVIDthere wasn't much coordination
and governors were trying tocoordinate with each other.
Same thing in tackling climatechange, where it's really hard,
where you know, everybody kindof has to take a little bit of
tough action to stop carbonemissions and methane emissions
to avoid climate change.
(11:39):
But if you have a decentralizedsystem, it makes solving
national problems reallydifficult.
You don't know who to blame.
It's hard to coordinate acrossstates.
So at its extreme, back in theday, like really early on,
states had different currencies,right.
They had different forms ofmoney.
So when you crossed from, likeyou know, maryland into Virginia
(12:00):
, you somehow need to, likechange your currency to
different coins.
Like that's pretty, you knowit's not that bad anymore, right
.
And then, lastly, just reallyimportantly, when the parties
nationalized, a lot of thosesort of ideas that you're gonna
customize don't really workbecause when a party controls
your state, it's the same typeof party, no matter where you
(12:23):
are in the country now.
So again, you used to have verydifferent.
You know, in the 1950s northernDemocrats were pro-civil rights
and pro-labor unions andsouthern Democrats were pro
segregation, pro Jim Crow rightvery different, but in the same
party, whereas now that's notthe case.
If your state gets controlledby the Democratic Party now,
(12:45):
it's gonna be very similar toother Democratic states, and if
it's controlled by theRepublican Party, it's gonna be
very similar to Republicanstates.
So that's what happened instates like Wisconsin and
Michigan in the 2010s is theyturned Republican and those
Republican state governmentsmade Wisconsin, which was kind
of like a moderate sort ofliberal state, into a much more
(13:08):
conservative state, like thelonger term Republican states in
the South, for example.
Taylor Bledsoe (13:14):
The thing.
One of the things that's veryinteresting about it is would
this be solved if we had morecommunity and more relationships
with the people that we wereinvolved in on a day to day?
So we always look at politicson a global, international and
national level and we're alllike what's, who's the president
, who's going to the Senate,who's going to Congress, but in
(13:34):
reality, not all of that affectswhere we are in relationship to
our little town or our city orsomething like that.
So one of the ways, if we could, we balance this out by having
an increased community awarenessand level and interaction on
just the mayor level or just thestates in it level, or
something like that.
Is that a way to combat thiskind of weird once you've been
(13:58):
solved for either politicalparty?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (13:59):
Yeah, that would be great, So great, if
possible, i would say.
Like you know so I mentionedbefore it's really hard to do
that, it's really boring And foryoung people especially who
don't own homes for a longstretch of the time or you move
to go to college or somethinglike that, there's a reason that
that.
So, ironically, we tend tothink in a sort of mythology,
(14:23):
the local level is the mostsmall d democratic, where people
, ordinary people, come togetherand solve problems.
But actually the lower levelsis where we know the least and
is the most dominated by olderand wealthier homeowners rather
than everyday people of alltypes.
So actually, like ironicallyand sadly, like I wish that were
(14:47):
possible, but given thetechnology you mentioned, it's
just a really hard ask to tellpeople take go to local meetings
with your time, even thoughyou're working or going to
school.
It's really tough And retireeshave like unlimited time to go
to the local meetings, right,it's really really hard to do
that And we know much morebecause of the way media covers
(15:09):
politics.
Like you, taylor, and yourfriends, i know they know which
presidential candidate they'regoing to support, like who they
like and who they don't.
We do know what they stand for.
Generally.
It's not an amazing system, butwe know who they stand for and
what direction they're going tomove the country, whereas even I
I'm a professor of politicalscience and I have a hard time
(15:29):
voting in state legislativeprimaries like they're the same
party And it's like in for statelegislature I have no idea.
Like I have to listen to otherorganizations and interest
groups tell me, like how to vote, whereas at the presidential
level, like you can be sure, iknow, like years out, i know,
like who I like, who I don'tlike, right That.
(15:51):
So I think it's just a reallytough thing to ask ordinary
people to get super involved inlocal levels.
But we have to do our best Andone way to do that is to join
organizations.
So, being an adamant so youkind of said it in your question
, taylor So being a lonely voter, disconnected from others,
(16:13):
right, you can vote at theballot box and you can try to
pay attention, but politicsreally happens and you have more
influence in politics as anordinary person.
If you're a billionairebillionaire you have other ways
of influencing politics, but forordinary people, especially
young people, getting involvedin organizations, whether it's
student groups, community groups, you know, on the environment
(16:35):
or guns.
You know there's a socialmovement around all sort of
racial justice movements Andthen, importantly, one I think
one of the brightest spots inAmerican politics in terms of
being able to organize with it,with a local community, across
racial lines and things likethat, is that mostly Gen Z kids
organizing labor unions atStarbucks and Amazon and so
(16:58):
forth.
So labor unions are.
For a long time in the 1900s,labor unions were the main
organization for ordinary people.
Labor unions what they do is atwork, they organize the workers
to bargain over their contractsand their wages and their
working conditions with the bossas a collective unit rather
(17:21):
than individually.
That made workers a lot morepowerful over their wages,
helped build the middle classand helped create a lot of
protections for women, people ofcolor, lgbt individuals at work
and made working less dangerous.
The eight-year-olds aren'tgoing into the coal mine and
(17:41):
getting black lung and thingslike that create the weekends
and all that.
But really importantly, some ofmy other research and I talk
about this in the book, but it'sin a series of other research
is that labor unions also reallyhelp organize to protect
democracy Because it bringspeople together across racial
lines, pulling in the samedirection because we all want a
(18:04):
better contract at our job.
It helps avoid culture warpolitics that we see and
resentment-based politics Where,sadly, you can learn because of
the nationalization of politicsand resentment-based politics.
You can tell more about howsomebody votes statistically by
(18:24):
asking them what they think ofLil Nas X at the Country Music
Awards.
Then you can about asking themabout the minimum wage or taxes
or healthcare and things thatactual policy actually affects.
That's not a great type ofpolitics where Beyonce's Super
Bowl halftime show is moredrives people voting more than
(18:46):
actual policy with money on theline.
So how do we get back to asystem where people care about
policy?
One way is to joinorganizations that can help you
organize around policy ratherthan just who you want to own.
Taylor Bledsoe (19:03):
Yeah, so this has been a very interesting
conversation, and I want to wrapup here with the last two
questions we ask all of ourguests, and the first one is
what books have had an impact onyou.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (19:14):
Yeah, no, that was such a good question.
I've been doing some thinkingabout that And it's a little
cliche, i guess, for young meninto politics, but I really
liked around start of highschool and the middle school I
really like I found Animal Farmby George Orwell.
I found it actually on thestreet And I was like I had no
(19:37):
idea what the book was about.
I was starting to be a littleinterested in politics.
It was the early 2000s at thetime And I was like this is
amazing And I was an allegor.
I didn't even understand it.
It was an allegory to howtotalitarianism happened in
Russia and the Soviet Union outof what was meant to be a small
(20:00):
de-democratic emancipatorymovement but became totalitarian
.
It was about that transition,but using the allegory of
animals on a farm, and I foundthat fascinating and read 1984,
also by George Orwell.
So those, yeah, i didn'tunderstand quite all of them but
they really helped get me evenmore into politics.
(20:23):
And Orwell, as an interestingpolitical figure himself like
has super interesting his ownpolitical essays from the 1930s
in the rise of totalitarianismand fascism in Europe at this
time from the vantage point ofyou know, and it has a lot of
(20:43):
relevance to politics around theworld.
Taylor Bledsoe (20:47):
Then our last question is what advice do you
have for teenagers?
Dr. Jake Grumbach (20:51):
Yeah.
So I think studying Americanpolitics and studying it
statistically is reallyinteresting.
Where young people do not havemuch of a voice in American
politics.
It's really unfortunate It'snot talked about enough.
We talk a lot about reallycrucial other economic
inequality and racial inequalityand politics gender inequality
(21:13):
But really crucially, the US isunfortunately what's called a
gerontocracy, a rule by the old,and this is really serious,
like compared to other countries, it's really extreme and it's
causing really bad outcomes.
So Gen Z, actually of all agegroups, does have the best sort
of politics, i would say like,has the strong conceptions of
(21:37):
freedom, of equality and justicethat are really fascinating to
see and leave me with some hopeAt the same time.
Just the incentives of currenttechnology and media are to use
that good politics through justlike I don't know dunking online
(21:58):
, trying to show off and beright about things And politics,
unfortunately, is messy andit's not about being right all
the time and it's not about it'scertainly not about dunking,
unfortunately.
It's about, like, actuallychanging policy And that's at
odds with dunking.
(22:19):
Sometimes you need to build acoalition and to do that you
have to have people like you.
Rather than dunk on you, likedunk on them.
So keep that same Gen Z fierypolitics, but understand that
politics is really long.
I'm looking back on my timelearning and working in politics
(22:41):
and so forth.
Politics is a lifelong thingand keep your eyes on the prize
rather than the moment to momentsort of feelings you might get
from dunking or saying the rightthing or something like that.
Taylor Bledsoe (22:59):
I guess slow motion dunk on people.
Just a very slow motion.
Show them that it's right afterwhatever it's an extended
amount of time.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (23:07):
Exactly.
Keep your eyes on the politics.
It's not about you as anindividual.
It's about how you and otherschange something that affects a
lot of people.
Taylor Bledsoe (23:19):
Well, thank you so much, Dr Grumbach, for coming
on A Moon for the Moon.
I really enjoyed ourconversation.
Dr. Jake Grumbach (23:24):
Me too, Taylor.
Thanks so much.
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