Say What You're For, with Anat Shenker-Osorio

Episode Transcript
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Farrah Bostic (00:01):
Welcome back to Cross Tabs, a
show about people, data and
power.
I'm your
host, Farrah Bostick.
So last night, as I record this,
assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won thefirst round of ballots in the Democratic
primary for the New York City mayoral
race.
Andrew Cuomo, a previously disgracedthree term governor of the state
conceded.
We do not know whether this will bea three, four, or five way general

(00:24):
election, come the fall.
But we know that Mamdani won last night.
I mentioned this in
part because we refer to the race inthis conversation, which took place
about a week before the vote counting
began, and also because I thinkthe Momani candidacy and campaign
embodied a variety of things.
I talk about with my guest, the
host of the Words to Win bypodcast and founder of a SO
Communication, an Shankar as Sorio.

(00:46):
Anat is an incisive analyst of
why certain messages falter whereothers deliver, and she has led research
on issues ranging from freedom toclean energy, from immigrant rights,
to reforming criminal justice, aswell as joining together in union
and unions.
She brings an innovative approach toresearch that has led to progressive
victories around the world.
She's also the author of Don'tBuy It, the Trouble With Talking

(01:07):
Nonsense About the Economy.
I invited her on to talk abouthow she came to do her work,
how the Democratic Party got to
where it is right now, and how voterscan move the party to where it needs
to be if it's really going to earnits name as the Democratic Party.
Here's our conversation.
Okay.
So Anat, thank you for joiningme for this conversation.

(01:28):
The place I like to start all of theseis just getting a little sense of how
did you get to here, how, what wasyour sort of career path that brought
you to the work that you do now?

Anat Shenker-Osorio (01:38):
When I was in kindergarten, , the teacher gave
every single one of us a very specialnotebook, and my very special notebook
had on the cover the Muppet Showspecifically with animal on the drums
in the middle and like the rest ofthe Muppets, as some ragtag band.
And then the principal calledher over the loudspeaker to

(02:01):
come into the office and she, I.
Sort of scrambling, said, okay, I haveto go to the office while I'm gone.
Just like draw on the firstpage of your notebook.
And everybody got their own specialnotebook with their own special cover.
And she was out of the room forroughly four seconds before a bunch
of kids started sort of teasingand harassing the kind of boy that

(02:23):
they always teased and harassed.
And they took his notebook and theyripped off the cover and he was crying.
She came back into this chaoticscene and she was very upset.
And she said, I'm takingall of your notebooks back.
And she collected all of our notebooks.
And I got very
upset back.
And I said, but not allof us were doing it.

(02:43):
Not all of us were
harassing that kid.
Why are you taking all of our notebooks?
And she said, did you stand up for him?
Did you tell them to stop it?
Did you go out in thehallway and find a teacher?
Did you do anything?
I was like, no.
I just sat and drew in mynotebook as I was instructed.
And she said, if you're not part of thesolution, then you're part of the problem.

(03:08):
And that perhaps isn't exactly whatyou meant with your question, but that
is how I remember and understand myorigin story in progressive politics and
in a desire, You know, at the risk ofsounding like silly and saccharin and
grandiose to wanna try to make the worldsbetter or at least slightly less shit.

(03:32):
And the way that that manifestedfor me was through the vehicle of
linguistics and cognitive linguisticsand understanding why certain
messages resonate and others don't.
That was something I became interested in.
Very early on.
I grew up in a multilingual household.
My mom speaks seven languages.
She's an interpreter.
I grew up speaking multiple languagesand so became sort of fascinated

(03:54):
with language as a vehicle.
For, communication, understanding,learned in my undergraduate studies
about folks like George Lakoffand Eve Sweeter and Zan ish.
And so knew to some degree that wecould construct communication campaigns

(04:17):
for political issues, whether they beelectoral or you know, social justice
issues in a way that was less haphazard ina way that was more this message is more
likely to resonate with people becauseit is built on this metaphor that kind
of has entailments or in more plain speakimplications that are more advantageous
for what we need people to understand.

(04:38):
This one seems not so good andso on, and so when I then went
to work in communications.
I quickly saw, I think as most peoplequickly see, at least in political
communications, you may have a differentexperience from the marketing side.
I'm actually curious that a lot ofthe way that messages were decided
were sort of stick the finger inthe wind and be like, that sounds

(05:02):
good, or my absolute favorite answer.
You know, why'd you name yourcampaign that the URL wasn't taken?
I'm like, oh, well then it must bereally compelling if no one in the
history of the internet wanted it.
That must be like a reallysnappy thing to call it.
And so seeing sort of theway that comms was done on

(05:24):
campaigns, and I mean both like.
Ballot initiatives, electoral,but also like issue campaigns.
And then knowing that, you know, it couldbe done this other way, I eventually
through different twists and turns,went to graduate school at Berkeley.
Still live in the Bay area.
Never, never left aftercoming here for that.
Studied public policy, alsostudied with Lake off and on the

(05:47):
public policy side, became reallysteeped in empirical testing.
So.
Essentially, at least the way that itis structured here at, at Berkeley, it's
kind of like an econometrics degree.
It's just a lot of statistical methods.
It's a lot of experiments and likeunderstanding how to look at polling and

(06:07):
look at randomized control trials andunderstand them So fast forward ahead.
Worked at a place that no longer existscalled the Rockridge Institute, which
Lakoff founded, which was intended to takewhat had been, you know, arcane academic
theories around, conceptual metaphor andapply them to actual political discourse
to try to change how campaigns were made.

(06:29):
Went on eventually to, make my ownconsulting firm, and then after doing
it analytically for a while, so like,ooh, did a big study on metaphors
for the economy and found that.
There is a preponderanceof naturalistic metaphors.
So the economy is unhealthy,it's thriving, it's suffering.
We need to resuscitate the patientversus mechanistic metaphors, we need

(06:55):
to get the economy on the right track.
It's on the wrong track.
Obama famously said, we need to move itout of R into D, which is both reverse and
drive, but also Republican and democratic.
You know, a lot of the languageof economics is actually derived
from the language of physics.
You know, we have friction, we haveaccelerating job losses, and then doing
actual experiments that demonstratewhat the analytic conclusions implied,

(07:21):
which is that when you're likening theeconomy to naturalistic things, you are
actually sort of foregrounding the ideathat it's best left to its own devices.
Because of course, in cases of emergency,you know, you want dialysis or you want
a defibrillator, or you want, you know.
Whatever.
Like if you're having a heart attack ora stroke, you need immediate assistance.

(07:44):
But as far as breathing, digesting,the, the business of daily living,
like you're not trying to get me tocome there and like, push on your
lungs or like help you swallow.
That doesn't sound like a good time.
So in contrast, mechanisticmetaphors, the idea of the economy
being likened unconsciously to avehicle suggests a role for a driver

Mm mm-hmm.

and I do live in California, Waymo cars aside.
Most

On fire or not.
Yeah.

fire or not.
Most people think of vehiclesas requiring a driver,

Right.

whether they're a train or a car or a plane or whatever.
And so then wrote abook about don't buy it.
The trouble talkingnonsense about the economy.
That was like built out of.
This, but then also started doingexperiments where we would prime people
with different metaphors and thenask them their policy preferences.
And sure enough, people who had beenprimed with, a different metaphor,

(08:43):
let's say for inequality wouldwant a different level of taxation.

Mm.
Mm-hmm.

So then fast forward again, this is the long answer.
Sorry.
Did that for a long time.
Here's a giant research project that youasked me to do, like you spent money.
To get me to and get me and many,many colleagues, these things.
I didn't do them by myself to, doa gajillion focus groups, which

(09:10):
are expensive, and to do a giantsurvey or to do a randomized control
trial or to do all of the aboveand then produce what I thought
were super clear directives, right?
Say this, don't say that this is agood message, this is a bad message.
It's a good metaphor.
It's a bad metaphor,this word, not that word.
And like tried to make them askind of clear cut as possible.
And then sure enough, lo and behold, very,very few people changed their messaging.

(09:35):
And it took me a while.
I'm embarrassed to tell you that Ihad to realize that all of the biases
and heuristics that we all rely uponas human beings to come to judgements
on complex issues and deal with thecacophony of noise that surrounds us.
Those are just as present in progressivestrategists and activists as anyone else.

(09:58):
'cause that's how people, people.
And so just because you spent howevermuch money to have a new messaging
solution doesn't mean that when itcomes time to sit down and write your
press release or give your interviewor write your social media post or
whatever, you wouldn't default towhatever your habituated message was.
That's exactly what would happen.

(10:18):
So then I began to stay the coursein more lengthy engagements where I
wouldn't just do the research project.
Here's the deck, here'sthe messaging guide.
Good luck, but would actually designsort of full 360 campaigns with ads,
with slogans, but also with actualphysical events that were designed to

(10:46):
move out of a old frame into a new one.
And then the last chapter, I meanmore or less is that I did that
for a while, had successes, wonsome stuff with other people, lost
some stuff as happens inevitably.
And I realized that my number onemessaging directive that, asterisk,

(11:11):
like some terms and conditionsapply, but is say what you're for.
Say what you're for, saywhat you're for that.
Like if all you've got is two seconds,three seconds, then the most important
thing is that you need to tell peoplewhat you want them to do and stop telling
them what you don't want them to do.

Mm-hmm.

The analogy I usually use is when you take a kid to a
pool, a competent lifeguard, if they'rerunning, will yell, walk, because if
you yell, don't run at a kid, they'llstart running either to defy you
or because you yelled, run at them.
And so we're constantlytelling people, stop this.
Don't do this.
Don't have that.
We don't want this andthis don't have that.
Thereby feeding thediscourse of the opposition.

(11:51):
So say what you're for.
And then I realize that almost allof my presentations involve me being
like, look at this terrible message.
Why are you using this terrible message?
This is a very bad message.
This is why this is a very bad message.
I tested it and now here isevidence about its badness.

(12:11):
And so then I came to make a podcastcalled Words to Win By Where?
With some exceptions.
The episodes are eachabout a campaign we won.
So that I could walk my talkand be like, no, actually using
progressive principles, strategiesand messages actually does work.
Here's proof.
So that's my story.

I I'm curious about any kind of, you know, I
was reflecting on this earlier.
Over 20 years of doing this.
There are some approaches and tools thatI think are valuable for developing a
strategy that's like clear, decisive,everybody knows what to do, and then
there's stuff that's like, it's great.
It might be the gold standard.

(12:52):
It's,
If you have the time and the money and andthe team and the resources and everything
else, go ahead.
But it also might just sort ofyield a lot of that like academic
stuff that everyone just kind ofmemory holes or goes, you know, goes
one in one ear and out the other.
I'm curious if you've had any evolutionson, like, methods that you think are
still worth doing and methods thatyou think are like, if we've got the

(13:14):
time and the resources, let's do it.
If we don't, there are better tools.

Yeah, I mean, you know, as like messaging research lady,

Mm-hmm.

spend a lot of my time telling people not to do research,

Same.

and oftentimes in progressive landia doing
research is a substitution.
For not doing organizing,
because organizing is hard and it is laborintensive and it is resource intensive.
And so, maybe the solution is we'll justdo another project to try to figure out

(13:57):
the exact wording choices to sell peopleconvince people that like, actually
immigrants are awesome and you know, we'reall the better for having them here and,
and that we should pass X, Y, Z policy.
And in fact, a message is likea baton that has to be passed
from person to person to person.
And if it gets dropped anywherealong the way, by definition
it can't persuade them, which.

(14:19):
Seems like the most obvious thing inthe entire world, that a message that
nobody hears cannot persuade them.
And for some reason that concept,which I would argue is probably the
least controversial thing that I eversay, is something that I have been
pretty much incapable of getting.
Certainly the Democratic establishment.

(14:41):
And you know, I don't just work inthe US like the Labor Party in the
uk, you know, other center leftparties in other places to understand.
But like oftentimes, especially rightnow in the middle of the throes of
this fascist power grab, you wannalike stop and have deep thoughts
about the feelings of American men.
Like are you fucking kidding me?

(15:01):
So.
I just, you know, wedon't, got time for that.
And also we are sittingon a pretty giant body
Of research intoperceptions and persuasion.
The problem is that we haven't actuallycome up with strategy and we don't

(15:25):
have the rigor and the discipline ofimplementation because it's been a very
long time since there has been robustsustained organizing in this country.
And part of that is the intentionaland very deliberate destruction
of labor unions, which of courseis like a basis and an important

(15:46):
hub and home for organizing.
But it is also because there was ashift many years ago in progressive
organizations away from organizingtoward what is known as field.
Field is GOTV.
It's registering voters.
It's turning them out, you know, duringthe week or the day of or whatever.

(16:07):
And those are important things todo, but we can't vote our way to
democracy and the idea that we evercould have is slightly mind-boggling.
And so we became trapped in a thingwhere we had to keep telling people

(16:28):
to go vote, to go vote, to go vote.
But we aren't capable of providing themcandidates that feel meaningful to them.
And the act of voting and electing peopleactually all too often doesn't alter
the material conditions of their lives.
And then we have to go through andconvince them again when old school

(16:51):
organizing is, you know, old wait,awakening people to a political analysis.
All of their own power and thengetting them to view themselves as
agents so that they then act as yourchoir to go awaken other people.
I feel like I, I gotaway from your question.

(17:12):
I'm sorry.

No, actually you, you got to my kind of hidden question,
which is, you know, the firstquestion was how did you get to here?
My second hidden question was, howdid the Democratic party get to here?
I mean, Mike and I have talked aboutthis also, the kind of deliberate
dismantling of the influence And also thepower of labor unions as an organizing
force And as one allied with.
Progressive politics.

(17:33):
But that organizing piece, I think isthe thing that I'm also kind of, was
getting at with methods thatare useful versus not, because
it does feel like everyone is
like, I need $20 millionto study young men.
We need to do testing on which, youknow, podcast format is the most
persuasive to those young men.
We need to do infinite numbers ofrandomized controlled trials which Like is

(17:54):
a thing we almost never do in marketing.
Like we, we do them, but not really.
And it's because it's just sort oflike, that's expensive, it's time
consuming, and we already kind of knowthe direction we're heading in because
we've already done this other work.
And like, we need to get to adecision and we need to go make
stuff and put it out in the market.
, How much testing do we wanna do?
So the other thing we look foris like big sweeping differences.
Not little incremental conjointanalyses of different configurations

(18:18):
of the exact same message over and over

oh, the number of max diff analyses that I have to sit
through and the like idea, I'm sorryto cut you off, but like the idea
that the ads that you tested in anRCTA randomized control trial for your
audience, you've probably explainedwhat that is before, where you've forced

(18:40):
people to give you their attention andthey are required to read your a hundred
words or 70 words, or listen throughyour 32nd ad, or, you know, look at
your slogan or whatever you're testing.
And know that they're consciouslybeing studied, are aware that they're
like in an experimental condition.
And then you think that that has anysort of meaningful relationship to

(19:04):
the real world where the number onejob of the message is to make people
stop scrolling in the first place.

Right,

And if they're not willing to listen to your thing, because
you sound like the adults in the Peanutscartoon, you know, then this beautiful
thing that you know, tested So perfectlyin this like encapsulated a hundred word
or 30 second or whatever version with thevisuals that you picked out just right.

(19:31):
And like the song cues thatyou picked out just right.
And to be clear, I'm a personwho does RCTs, like, I think
that they have a purpose.
They can signal directionality,they can, if you're gonna take
big swings, which you should.
I often tell people if you do.
A survey or an RCT or whateverand you don't have anything.

(19:51):
Bomb abysmally.
Bomb abysmally.
That means that you wasted a lotof money testing ecru against
off-white, against eggshell.
And like some of these tests,they end up being the world's
most expensive copy editing.
They're experimenting withlike the most minuscule.

(20:13):
And for the most part, thosedifferences are so small that you
can't actually detect anything
. In an RCT and, Yeah.

Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean this is, you know, in the, inthe universe of doing multivariate or
AB testing for messaging for startups orsomething that, that I have worked with.
One of the biggest challenges hasbeen to get them to test things
that are actually different
from each other there's a, akind of famous story about Google
testing, I don't know, 57 shadesof blue or something like that.

(20:40):
And this became like , the kind of hottopic du jour amongst UX researchers
was, we're gonna do this incrediblemultivariate testing and get really
specific about stuff, to your point,really expensive copy editing,
really expensive art direction.
And it's, you know, there areso many problems with this.
Like most startups just don't have thesite traffic of Google to be able to see
significant to their business lift fromone shade of blue to another or whatever.

(21:05):
But this is.
There is a, there is a book thatis called testing to destruction.
And this is like the thing we'reall trying to hopefully avoid in
our work is not test to the pointthat we, there's just nothing left.
But to your, equally to your point,something has to fail otherwise
you're just sort of, I don't know.
I used to work for a companythat was always like,

(21:25):
we're here to maximize ideas.
It's not a bake off or a beauty contest.
And I was always like, actually,my clients would like to know
which of their babies is ugly.
And I should probably tell thembecause they're not all beautiful.
They never are.
But that, that also leads meto kind of this question about
what they choose to test.
Because I mean, during the electionthere were some of these, you know,

(21:48):
these MaxDiff tests that were being,shared by various groups that were
doing these kinds of message tests.
And I just kept looking at thosestatements going, there's all kinds
of stuff you didn't ask about.
And so what were your kind of ingoingbeliefs about what was relevant to voters,
And how sure are you about those things?

(22:08):
And how much of those are actuallyjust sort of dictated by your
donors or dictated by your ownbeliefs about what centrist policies
win elections or whatever, andI'm, I'm curious about how should
those tests be constructed?
If you're gonna do them howare they typically constructed?

I mean, it's hard to speak in the aggregate
like that because like, it depends.
It depends.
Is it a big old test which happensless frequently on like how to
talk about trans people and gettingaffirmative healthcare, which,
we've done lots and lots of work on.
Is it about trying to makea case for immigrant rights?
Is it about, Kamala Harris and how tobest sell Kamala Harris or someone in a

(22:49):
Senate race or someone in a house race?
So.
It depends a little bit.
But when I am doing these

Mm-hmm.

the first step that my team takes is that we conduct a
language analysis in order to understandthe range of ways a thing could
possibly be argued in the first place.
And we go looking across manydifferent sources, pop culture
what we call unmotivated speech.
So these are people posting on social, butthey haven't been like directed to do so.

(23:22):
So the difference between like, you know,use hashtag no kings and like say why
you're marching, that would be motivated.
Social speech versus just likesomeone posting about, you
know, I can't stand taxes.
I can't believe I have to pay taxes.
If you're doing a project onlike how to reframe taxes.
So, down to, I've done projects onperceptions of pregnancy in order

(23:42):
to better understand what effectiveabortion messaging would be, and like
spent lots of time looking at peopleand us because celebrity pregnancy, I
mean, they love to talk about pregnancy.
And so the formulation of publicconsciousness about an idea,
let's stick with pregnancy.
Like where does it come from?
I mean, partly it comes from whatto expect when you're expecting.

(24:04):
Partly it comes from like the coverphoto of Beyonce, pregnant with twins,
but you know, partly it comes fromkind of cultural stories, whatever.
So what is the range of ways peoplecould possibly reason about this thing,
and which ones seem most promisingand which ones seem most problematic?
And then from
there, construct differentframes that really differ.

(24:27):
And so like to, to give you a superconcrete, for instance, a hundred
years ago I did a big project with anorganization called America's Voice.
And it was led by astrategist named Ryan Clayton.
It was with Lake ResearchPartners to really try to get at
like, how could we reframe thisentire immigrant rights debate.
This was 2012, or may have even been2011, and we wrapped up in 2012.

(24:51):
And in that, during the languageanalysis, the initial phase, we also
did these elicitation interviews,
language analysis is, let's look atthe range of ways this is communicated
about both in opposition and inpopular culture and in advocacy.
Elicitation interviews areonly with true believers like
people who are pro your thing.

(25:13):
And we asked, and we did like a hundred.
Ryan was very thorough of these interviewsand we asked all these immigrant rights
advocates, how would you describe whoan immigrant is to a 4-year-old child?

Mm-hmm.

And almost universally they said a person who moves.
And in the language analysis priorto doing these interviews, one of my
subheadings was there's very littleimmigrating in the immigration debate.
And it was noting, you knowwhat's interesting about this

(25:46):
debate in the discourse isthat there's a lot about harms.
There's restrictions, there's the border,there's status, there's visas, there's
green cards, there's this, there's that.
You know, there's like putting food on thetable, there's families, there's whatever.
But there's very littlediscourse about moving.
. And again, people saylike, what is an immigrant?
It's a person who moves.
So then when we're constructing theframes to test, one of the frames

(26:09):
that I wrote was the same is truetoday has been throughout history.
People move to make lifebetter for themselves.
It's hard to move, to pack upeverything and go to a new place.
Takes courage.
But you do it to get your kidinto a better school, put food on
the table, or make a better life.
Immigrant Americans move herefor the promise of freedom and
opportunity in this country.
And we think that's great.

(26:30):
America's supposed to be the landof the free and the home of the
brave, and that's a good thing.
So let's make it that way.
We tested that.
We tested a traditional nation ofimmigrants message and we swung
into a message that I knew wouldnot work, but I wanted to see
who liked it and who hated it.

(26:50):
I called that message,immigrants are bad asses.
It more or less went.
You see a fence and youthink I'll jump over it.
Someone tells you no and you hear,convince me you don't follow the rules.
You make your own rules, and that'swhy people who came here without
documentation are more American than thepeople who wasted all that time in line.

(27:11):
I was like, let's write a message inwhich undocumented immigrants are better

Mm.

or can we, can we actually go all the way over there and
be like, no, let's just get into theJohn Wayne cowboy of it all and be like.

Yeah.

Fuck it.
I'm gonna make my own way.
And you know, that message,
obviously, I'm never gonna promotea message that says you hear no
and you think it means convince me.

Right?

So that wasn't ever gonna go out.
But I wanted to understand who in my verylarge sample this scratched an itch for.
And so the point of thisillustration is that people move
was extraordinarily successful.
And when I say successful, I mean thisis the other problem with the testing.

(28:06):
The dependent variables selected are.
All too often approval with the message.
I'm like, the message isn'trunning for homecoming queen.
The message's job isn't togarner greater approval.
The message's job is to move peoplefrom, not wanting the policy to
wanting the policy, but equally,if not more importantly, from

(28:29):
wanting to do something about it.
Because in reality, in this country, asyou know, public opinion is meaningless.
I know, 'cause I get paid to measure it.
The number of policies thathave supermajority support

Mm-hmm.

super, you know.
Like different kinds of gun restrictivemeasures, legalized abortion, raising the
minimum wage, having available healthcarelike you and I could go on and on.
We could list policies that havemajority, if not 80, 90% approval.
What political scientists have shownis that the correlation between public

(29:11):
approval for a policy and its likelihoodof passing is essentially zero.
. And so if we know that, then why arewe chasing after approval when the
only thing that actually predicates.
A policy being passed or a policypeople hate being blocked is action.

(29:34):
Why aren't we attempting to measure for,would this make you want to get up off the
couch and go put your body on the line?
As we saw during the ACA fight inthe first Trumpocene to be like,
hell no, over my literal deadbody, because that's the only thing

(29:55):
that actually alters conditions.

Mm-hmm.
I mean, this is, there are parallelsin our universe of years ago, we
basically abandoned the likabilityquestion we show you an ad and
ask you if you like it, who cares?
Does it change your mind about anything?
Or you gonna more likely to buy it?
Less likely to buy it?
Does it turn you on?
Turn you off?
Those things are.
Far more important.
So we have a host of othermeasures as opposed to as

(30:20):
opposed to just pure likability.
Similarly, I think, I hope most of ushave abandoned the the recall metric.
Like, do you rememberseeing an ad from Tide?
People are gonna say yes or no,but it who care again, who cares?
Like what do you remember about itis frankly more important than that.
You remember that you ever saw a messagefor it and a lot of times you just see

(30:43):
correlations of like how well knownthe brand already is, gives you kind
of artificially high recall scores.
The fun one is to ask, do yourecall seeing an ad from Brand
X in the last three months?
But we haven't run any ads inthe last three months, right?
And people, yeah, I have heard, I haveseen some ads because I've heard of you.
And so they just takethat as a proxy for it.
So instead what we turnedto was a recognition score.
So we show you some like two secondsfrom the ad that doesn't have the

(31:06):
product or the name in it, andask you if you've seen it before.
And then if you can identify the brand.
And if you say, oh yeah, I've seen that,and you correctly identify the brand,
then we know that that ad like lodgedin your brain somewhere, like you will
recognize it again when you see it.
And we know that like recognitionis a, is a proxy for familiarity.

(31:26):
And the more that, we, we havea whole kind of idea of like
mental and physical availability.
And mental availability is, Iknow you, when I see you, I know.
I, I recognize you.
And in the store I ran an experimentonce with my mom 'cause I was trying
to explain years ago, Tropic changedtheir packaging and went to this
like extremely streamlinedSend Serif font.

(31:49):
The straw was gone, The literalorange was gone, the bubbly type
face for Tropicana was gone.
And sales just were demolished by this.
And the reason was not, people saidthey hated the redesign, but the real
issue is when they went into the store,they couldn't find the Tropicana.

Right.

Because it didn't look like Tropicana anymore.
and so I played this game withmy mom where we were about to
walk down like a canned soup orcanned goods aisle at Target.
And I was like, okay, before we walkdown the aisle, before we walk down the
aisle, I want you to just tell me, ifI say Del Monte, what do you picture?
If I say Campbell's, what do you
picture?
If I say Hunts?

(32:27):
what do you picture?
Whatever.
And she was like, red,green, red and white.
And I
was like, right.
You don't have to read the label to
know
which can is which when you walk downthe aisle, you can, in your peripheral
vision, grab a Campbell soup can,the only reason you're reading it
is to tell the difference betweencream of mushroom and chicken noodle.
Like that's, that's theonly thing you're doing.
And there's a lot of thosekinds of metrics that

(32:48):
are just far more useful.
And every time I see, like there were,I can't remember who did it, there
was some conjoint analysis of variousmessages about Kamala Harris during
the campaign that were like allthe ones that are positive and
about her background, those performbetter than all of the ones that
also have anything negative to say
about Trump in it.
And this seemed to be wrappedup in the narrative of everybody

(33:08):
already knows how bad Trump isWe don't have, that's baked in.
We don't have to persuadeanymore about that.
But we have to, you know,make her knowable to people.
We have to introduce her.
to people 'cause theydon't know much about her.
And, and again, like the metric waswhich of these messages do you like the
best as opposed to like.
Do they actually move the needle inany particular way on your behavior?

to be fair.
The, the kind of gold standardmetric when it comes close to
election time is usually vote choice.
So usually what is being measuredin an RCT is people in all the
conditions, the control condition,and all of the treatment conditions
are asked, you know, if the electionwere held today, vote, vote him,

(33:52):
vote her vote, you know, whatever.
And it's a logical metric.
It's, that makes sense.
But here's the issues with it.
The first is that in many of these tests,it would asked as a two-way instead
of a, and by a four way, I mean thirdparty and stay at home in reality,

(34:17):
the choice is not Harris or Trump.
The reality is Harris Trump,when he was still there, RFK.
But most importantly there is always athird candidate in our two party system.
And the third candidate is the couch.

Right.

So that's one thing.
And, and some of them did dofour way and some of them didn't.
Whatever.
I'm not making a blanket statement.
But the other challengeis that mobilization,
are you gonna vote?
Are you not gonna vote?
Is extraordinarily hard to measurebecause it is the, I will pay
you tomorrow of public opinionresearch, by which I mean it is the

(34:54):
thing people lie about most often.
So lie isn't even fair.
They mean their answer.
Like they, they do mean that they'regoing to, because regardless of
voter participation rates, votingis a socially positive behavior.
Like you're supposed to vote, people knowyou're, that you're supposed to vote.

(35:15):
And so you know, are you going to vote?
the answer is yes.
Right?
And in general, anytime people aresurveyed about their intention to vote,
it's like 90% of people are gonna vote.
But like that's never happened.
So clearly some people are wrong.
that.
And you know, we don't knowwhich ones that's the issue.
So I mean, in some cases we know,like we know that habitual voters

(35:38):
are going to be habitual votersbecause they always are gonna vote.
But among the, the infrequentvoters or among the newly
eligible, like we don't know.
So basically because mobilization is verydifficult to measure in channel, that's
what all of these tests are in channel.
You have a captive audience.

(35:59):
What's essentially happened is that themainstream kind of democratic outfits that
have all the money and all the power andall the decision making they've chosen
just not to try to measure it because

Hmm.

it, it doesn't sort of translate infield.
Like 90% of people telling youthey're gonna vote is not 90% of
people telling you uh, actually vote.
So they just measure vote choice.
Instead of experimenting with differentways of trying to get an indicator
on mobilization, which could involve,for example, embedding within a

(36:35):
test, like a voter registration link.
Do people click on it ordo they not click on it?
Embedding within a test, a donation page.
If someone is willing to do that,that's a higher bar than voting.
So that's not a perfect measure.
You can't get a perfect measure.
But like that's something, so thereare things that we could be doing,

Mm-hmm.

but instead there is just this default setting that
mobilization can't be measured in channel.
And again, I'm saying it isvery difficult to measure.

Mm-hmm.

And so we're just gonna measure
vote, choice, IE, persuasion,

Right.

and we're going to measure persuasion among a general
population, not just among peoplewho we actually credibly believe.
Would vote for us.
We are not going to put extra emphasisas I would on messages that our base
is likely to actually wanna repeatto other people or wear the t-shirt

(37:36):
or wear the hat or wear the slogan.
Thereby acting as social proof toother people, which is something
that the right absolutely isobsessed with and rightly so.
What is the thing ourchoir's gonna wanna sing?
What will our choir say to other people?

You, you just gave me a funny, like, I, I just immediately
got a glimpse of a applying a kind ofshopper marketing method to this, which
would be you expose 'em to a whole bunchof messages, and then you show them a
merch store and ask them to fill a cart.
Like that would be reallyinteresting actually.
Like literally, would you getthe hat of any of these messages?
Would you buy the tote bag?
Would you put the bumpersticker on your car?

(38:14):
That's actually like, that wouldbe a fun, that would be a fun
one to try at the very least.

One of the questions we often ask people is, especially
now that we've like very much justmoved into testing, at least for me
on activation and what would activatepeople, what would make people wanna
get out and do nonviolent direct action?
Because I genuinely believe that theonly way out of authoritarian rule
is for a sustained mobilization.

(38:41):
We are not going to voteour way to democracy.
It's not going to happen.
We're not gonna sue ourway to democracy either.
And to be clear, votingand suing very important.
And we need to do those things.
And I admire the lawyers and all of, andI work with them and like God bless them.
Heroes work.
Not arguing shouldn't happen.
I'm saying necessary, not sufficient.
So one of the things we often askis we will write out different

(39:04):
slogans and we will ask people,which of these signs Would you
be willing to carry at a protest?
I.

Mm.

Which is kind of similar to your merch store

Well, that one actually feels higher stakes, right?
Like, now I have to imaginemyself going to a protest and
carrying a sign, right?
Not just like walking along with afriend of mine, hidden in the crowd,
kind of thing like that, that thatratchets up the stakes in a really
interesting way.
I mean, this is something thatI have seen people, you know,
on Blue Sky and elsewhere talking aboutis the desire to have kind of more.

(39:34):
More
experiments And less just measurement insome of , the research that's being done.
And then I think the other thing,to go back to something you said
earlier is the, just the questionof like breakthrough and attention.
Like, I have forcedexposure to these things.
you could also imagine some kind of
like this, I, I personally wouldn't wannatake this test, but like, so don't do it.

(39:57):
almost like a reading comprehensiontest where it's like, it's a scroll.
You're gonna read, you know, you'regonna scroll through a dozen posts
and then be asked about, do youremember anything being about,
This topic or this candidate orpolitics in general or whatever.
And just see like, did
anything actually get them to stop?
They're also just
like UX tools you could useto actually see where people

(40:18):
stop and click through to a
link or something like that.
There's a million ways to experiment withthese things and I'm, sounds like maybe
you're starting to play with more of those

Yeah.
and I

there's a real appetite for it.

even quite simply, and I'm not saying nobody
does this, 'cause they do you know,they'll do YouTube pre-roll ads
and then they'll do some sort of
survey administered like.
A week later or whatever or, I don'tknow how much this is happening, but
I hope it's happening more in an RCTwhere you do have a captive audience.

(40:48):
They'll make ads skippable

Mm-hmm.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.

I mean, it, it's not in every test that people
get some sort of cash benefit.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
It depends.
But like, if you skip the thing,you still get your whatever as
long as you answer the questions

Mm-hmm.

And so that is some sort of indicator about
whether or not something is boring.

Right.

And, you know, there's a lot of boring.
And not only is there a lot of boring, inaddition to the fact that that means that
people won't watch the thing or listento the thing or both, it also means that.
A lot of political advertisingwears on its sleeve.

(41:29):
The fact of itself is politicaladvertising, which I liken to your
romantic partner saying to you, weneed to talk before they're gonna tell
you whatever they're gonna tell you.
And I think anyone who has heard thewords we need to talk their body I mean
it probably happened, you and I are notspoiler alert in a romantic relationship.

(41:52):
Who knows anything's possible in thefuture, but, yeah, like your whole body
just tends, you're like, Ooh, I don't,I don't think I want this to happen.
I don't think this isgonna be a good time.
I'm not excited about,whatever's gonna happen next.
And so a lot of political advertisingis like, I'm going to talk to you about
a political issue when most people arelike, the last thing on earth I want

(42:16):
to hear about is a political issue.
and before you tell them what youwant to tell them about your candidate
or about your topic, or about yourbill, or about your ballot initiative,
or whatever you've signaled to them
. That you're going to make themlike listen to something, a
topic that they find anathema.

How does this kind of create, I mean this, this,
feels like it would then explainsome of the kind of distance from
real people that it seems like
a lot of kind ofestablishment politics has.
I mean, particularly, I'm gonna just sayparticularly for the Democrats because I
pay more attention to them deliberately,it seems like things have become
really professionalized, really added

(42:55):
distance to your point about more ofa focus on turnout than on organizing.
And I mean, in
2016, I went to Coatesville, Pennsylvaniato, to canvas for the Clinton campaign.
And I mean, we were there on aSunday, there was an Eagles game
on, nobody wanted to answer the door.
And those who did, several of thefolks we talked to said something along
the lines of, you guys just show up

(43:16):
when there's an election and thenwe never hear from you again.

Yep.

And that really was the thing that made me the
most kind of curious about,
was there ever a point in time where therewas more community organizing presence
on a continuous
basis?
I mean, obviously you've got likethe Tammany Hall kind of machine
democratic politics version of that.
But that kind of move to leave thepolitics to us, you just give us

(43:41):
cash a little bit of time duringelection years and your vote, and
that's all we really need from you.
You know, kind of like it, it reminds meof the sort of idea of if you don't have
a seat at the table, you're on the menu.
And that that's sort of what hasbeen left for voters as a role
in politics

(44:01):
is.
Vote.
And to your point,
I mean, we had this conversationduring the Iraq war that you're
not gonna vote your way to a
democracy.
Elections are not the thing that makes a
democracy, a democracy.
And I, you know, we have not applied thatlearning to ourselves either, but that
does seem like a thing that just createslike an unnecessary amount of distance
between people who are trying to getelected and, and to create the policy

(44:24):
structures that we want theoreticallyand the people who want them.
And, and maybe leads to this kind ofweird situation where we're getting a lot
of candidates we're not excited about.

Yeah.
I mean, Mike Podhorzer saysthat Congress is the complaint
department for capitalism.
That, and Democrats in particular.
And so there's this performance thathappens every two years, every four years.
Where you are meant to feel like youhave a say in your own future because
you get to select, team Red, team Blue.

(44:59):
And then in reality, the people whoare actually in charge are the people
who financed Team Red and Team Blue.
But there's a customer servicehotline, which is the congressional
switchboard, which you can like ifyou're diligently doing your five calls.
And to be clear, I'm not saying youshouldn't be doing these things.
Like things are complicated andI'm reducing it intentionally, but

(45:21):
really that congressional switchboardwhere you like put in your phone
call for whatever you're not callingthe people, making the decision.
You are calling the people thatthey have put there as the front
face and , you know your cus you're,you're a very valued customer.
Your call will be answered in theorder in which it was received.

(45:43):
And like, then you can feel like I dida thing and I said a thing and, and this
person that's like meant to representme in the system, heard the thing.
And obviously not all Democrats, thisis the one place where the hashtag
is accurate and it does apply.
And it is true that not all Democratsand, and it is also true that not all

(46:06):
Democrats are actually on the side ofworking people and the only people on
the side of working people are Democrats.
Those two things are both true.
That is what is sofundamentally frustrating

Mm-hmm.

and.
Because the other side, Imean they're fascists like it.
It's very simple.
Basically to some degree, people are awarethat elections are really a choice between
their billionaires and our billionaires.
And their billionaires are moreunhinged, more white nationalist,

(46:43):
more cutthroat, more evil.
And our billionaires are like polite.
They're like nicer,

Yeah.

Yeah.
But as far as having an actualparty that is for working people
and that understands that there aresides, a rising tide, it turns out
lifts only yachts, not all boats.

Right.

people get drowned in a rising tide.
'cause some people they don't have a boat.
You know why?
Because billionaires stole all the wood.
. When Democrats were absolutely awareof the fact that there were sides,
and I'm talking back in the day,I'm talking about A FDR, right?
He said, I welcome your hatred.

(47:34):
I welcome your ire.
Bring it on, right?
Speaking of the robber barons ofthe day, then it was very clear
and, and Democrats did not have aworking class problem because working
class people didn't just vote.
Democratic being democratic wascore part of their identity.
It was like the sportsteam they rooted for.
It was in their blood,it was in their family.

(47:56):
It was only when, and this is truenot just in the US but elsewhere.
Neoliberalism is the midwife andthe hand made into authoritarianism.
It always has been.

Mm-hmm.

Because once you start saying no, there aren't signs,

Mm-hmm.

a rising tide will lift all boats and we can
just grow our economy and thatwill make everybody better off.
And all we need to do is focus onthe GDP and let's mi ourselves into a
conversation in which our side says,you know how you grow the economy?
You make sweet love to the economy bypaying people slightly more and like

(48:38):
letting them maybe have a weekend.
And their side says, the way thatyou make sweet love to the economy
is by giving rich people more money.
But we've agreed tohave the same argument.

Yeah.
I mean this, this you know, theother day I think Pete Buttigieg
was on some podcast I was
listening to, and he said words thatI heard, but clearly the host did
not hear as
we're gonna need
UBI and with the coming AI revolution,we're going to eliminate all of
this work that's gonna be great.
There's all this leisure timeyou can spend with your family
and friends and pursuing hobbiesand living this bucolic lifestyle

(49:10):
that was long ago, promised to us.
And yet, like my core questionis, but as long as we have.
Neoliberalism capital andbillionaires who is going to
pay me not to work becausestuff still costs money.
And do we really believe, do Ireally believe in my heart of
hearts that that laboristfuture that I'm being

(49:32):
promised comes with a UBI and is
that UBI sufficient tohave a dignified life?
And like I, I, mean, where we'resitting right now, my basic
belief is hell no, they're never gonna payme not to work ever, but they're perfectly
happy to force me out of work because theynever wanted to pay me in the first place.
And then that will be the justification.
And you see it in the welfare debatewhere it's like, no, we gotta, you

(49:53):
gotta prove you're working, you'retrying to work in order to qualify for
benefits, even though the reason youcan't work is 'cause you can't work.

Yeah.
And, maybe I'm takingus on a meander, but COV

Mm.

was a perfect example of an extraordinary
opportunity that we squandered
. Because COVID actually, much likethis moment in an interesting way,
opened up a giant persuasion window.

Yes.

Anat Shenker-Osorio: So a persuasion window. (50:20):
undefined
I don't know if you've talked about this,but basically it's just this idea that
there are certain moments in time wherepeople are just more open and susceptible
to persuasion than other times,
. So what I mean by that is an ad thatwas about universal single payer
healthcare that was tested in, you
know, early February of 2020.

(50:42):
If that ad like demonstrated thatit moved people towards support
of that policy by, let's say threepoints tested at the end of March.
It was moving people by 10 points, 15points, because suddenly this event
occurred that people did not anticipate,that had them rethinking what is

(51:02):
healthcare, where does it come from,why do I need it, how does it occur?
And then further, we actually experiencedin this, our United States an instant of
socialized medicine in the form of massdistributed in very short order given
you know, how long it takes to studyand produce vaccines and put them out.

(51:25):
Vaccines that were given topeople for free masks that were
given tests that were given.
You know, here we were living thehorror of socialized medicine.
Like we were not talking about it.
We were not like taking videosof Canada and trying to prove to
people, no, really it would be okay.
No, really it would be okay.
No, really it would work.

(51:46):
We promise it would work becauseas much as I work on messaging,
there is nothing that you can sayto people that is as persuasive
as what they actually experience.
And so here were people experiencinggovernment doing a thing,

Mm-hmm.

but instead of using that opening where people were, where
public opinion was shifting about a desirefor universal single payer healthcare and.
Not all people, obviously people whowere forced to work because their jobs,
they, they don't have the luxury ofbeing able to be at home and they are

(52:24):
forced into kind of close proximity tothis extraordinarily contagious virus.
And they're usually the same peoplewho have no health insurance or really
crappy health insurance and not alot of room to breathe economically.
But other people are havingmore time because, you know,
they're no longer commuting,they're not going to the office.

(52:44):
Maybe they're working less becausethey have more flexibility.
Those people could have been activatedand mobilized into this desire.
But instead, what was themessage from the left?
The message from the leftwas essential workers.
Everyone is essential, the message was.

(53:06):
If you are delivering groceries orwhatever, a teacher, your essential,
you can never take a vacation.
You can never take time off.
You are essential.
And what essential means isthat you don't get to stop.
That's the like bonus that you getvenerated, or, you know, as I put it at

(53:30):
the time, you are looking at these folksin low wage work in let's say Walmart.
Like they're venerated at hero asheroes, but actually they're hostages.

Right.

Instead of arguing, actually the people who make this country
run are the people who clock in every day.
And those are the people thatwe need to be protecting.
And that means thateveryone needs a break.
Everyone needs a paid break.

(54:03):
And in other countries, as you know,they paid people not to work because that
is what was required for their health.
And now fast forward, we're in amoment where interestingly, people's
perceptions of the role of governmentare up for grabs in a way that they
have not been for 20, 30 years.
And the argument that we have beentrying to make government is good.

(54:26):
Government is good, government is good,government is good, we need government.
Government should be here to help youbuttressing up against a right wing
narrative project to tell people, youknow, the scariest words in the English
language are, I'm from the governmentand I'm here to help Reagan, you know,
drown in a bathtub, Grover Norquist.
And we've not been able to penetratewith that message because again.

(54:49):
Whatever you're saying, if it contradictswhat people feel to be true in their
lives, like it's not gonna happen.
And so now we have peoplesaying, I kid you not.
I didn't know that Yosemitewas the government.
I thought Yosemite was runby the Yosemite company.

Right.

I tried to call Social Security and did you know that
social security is the governmentand now they're not answering.
So now we're in a persuasion window
. Around what governmentcould and should be.
We actually could have an affirmativemessage that is about taking on
this regime of the bullies forthe billionaires by the bribes

(55:29):
. And demanding leaders who create agovernment of the people by the people.
For the people, asLincoln famously told us.
. Instead, we are sort of like carefullycalibrating like which thing it
is that we could possibly say.
An underlying reason, as youalready know and you've surely

(55:52):
discussed many times, is that theproblem is made out of the problem.
Like a lot of these Democrats hashtagnot all Democrats, but a lot of them
are beholden to the exact same forces.
There's a reason why for the firstsix weeks of the Harris campaign,

(56:12):
she was talking about price controls.
She was talking aboutcurbing childhood poverty.
She was talking aboutraising the minimum wage.
She was talking aboutconcrete economic policies.
And then once the billionaires reorganizedthemselves, after sort of spooling out
and being into different camps, the oneswho wanted Biden to go, didn't want Biden

(56:34):
to go, wanted an open primary wantedHarris, they suddenly were like, oh, okay.
Well it's Harris.
We better get ourselves backtogether and be the adults in the
room and tell them enough with thisweird and this freedom and this.
If you want people to come toyour party, throw a better party.
People are way too enthusiasticand excited, and voter registration
is going through the roof.
God forbid we gotta get in there andwe gotta get Liz Cheney on the stump,

(56:59):
and we've got to change our economicmessage to opportunity economy pablum.

Yep.

That all of these efforts that you referenced
earlier, to try to sell Harris'seconomic bonafides and to cast her as
she's on the side of working people,he's on the side of billionaires.
It's very difficult to deliver thatmessage if it doesn't actually come
in a package of here's what I'm gonnado to these, to these billionaires.

(57:32):
and, and even introducing anincreased capital gains tax and then
walking it back, like, how were yousupposed to, why would voters believe
you?

Mm-hmm.
Well, this is, this actually gets tothe, the thing I kinda wanted to, to
end on because I like to leave peoplewith a really uplifting conversation.
And that is this tendency to the way thatI think about it is, is punching left
and, you know, we have seen this now whereit's the enemy of my enemy is my enemy
I, I live outside of New York City now.

(58:02):
I've lived in, however, I lived inNew York City for 20 plus years.
And so I am watching the mayoralrace and we have this completely
bonkers mayoral race in New York City.
But it has led to just like the weirdestset of choices and you know, it, it seems
like it was a similar dynamic in theNew Jersey race as well of like, let's
just hue to something safe and centrist.

(58:23):
Let's, let's play it safe.
I'm not sure that I read a five way racewhere only a third of the people voted
for the candidate who won as like aresounding endorsement of that centrism.
But you know, that's the way electoralpolitics shakes out in, in New York.
Like we, we are having these conversationsof Mamdani is talking about things like.
Why are we subsidizing expensivemarkup grocery stores in New York

(58:47):
City with public assistance forpeople who need help buying groceries?
Why don't we create non-profit,city owned grocery stores that
they can use their benefits in?
And centrist people who love Liz Cheney,who run various podcast networks,
love to cast this as communism.
This is, we're gonna seize the grocerystores and make them state run.

(59:07):
And of course that isnot what is happening.
Citarella is, free to continueto be Citarella and Gourmet
Garage and all the others.
But like , the, thing that's niceabout Mamdani and I have no skin
in the game 'cause I can't vote inNew York City, but like at least he
is not cowed by those criticisms.
And instead just goes, you guys are crazy.
That's not what I'm talking aboutI'm talking about this thing
and, and continues to just pushwith this is what I want to do.

(59:30):
I don't know how it's gonna work out.
Again, it's.
Fucking bonkers.
But but that tendency to look at someoneto the left and go, oh, that's the danger.
Come back over here tolike 1992 Republican
politics and stay there because that'sthe safe place for Democrats to operate
is
extremely frustrating for someone who grewup in a marketing universe where I worked

(59:51):
on a lot of brands that were underdogs andour motto was always go big, or don't go
you don't have a lot of money to spend.
You don't have a lot of popular support.
You are not the market leader.
Then you only do the thingsthat are going to break through.
You only do the things thatare going to get attention.
You only do the things that imaginea different way of doing things.
Otherwise, what the hell are you doing?
You're wasting your money.

Anat Shenker-Osorio (01:00:10):
Yeah.

Farrah Bostic (01:00:10):
I guess maybe some of what you've already just described
is how we got to here, but isthere, is it the, is it simply the,
the the money that is making us
huge to this bizarre view from nowhere?
Centrist defensive preservationistof old systems that are frankly,
already broken, approach to winningelections on very little evidence

(01:00:32):
that they win a lot of elections.

Yeah, it's the money, it's basically financial interests.
It's, the Supreme Court decision, theRoberts Court decision that I call
corporations unleash, that we stupidlyjust parroted the name Citizens United,
not realizing, I guess, that being againstCitizens United sounds like a bizarre

(01:00:55):
thing to be against when you actuallythink about the meaning of those words.
And we just, credulously always, butthat's the name of the thing or not.
I'm like, no, it fucking isn't.
The name of the thing iswhatever's coming outta your
mouth, it's corporations unleashed.
Anyway, I digress.

Quick plug for MAGA murder Bill by the way,
Mar

thank you.
Thank you.

plug for
that.
Yes.

Maga order Bill, or if you need to
the massive murderous measure.
So sorry.
I will answer your question.
Yeah, it's the money, it's theincentives, but the thing about it that
is infuriating, besides that it destroysthe country and people's lives and

(01:01:38):
livelihoods, that's also infuriating.
It's that it is always dressed upin this very, very erudite numbers.
With decibel points.
I got a perfect scoreon my math SATs, a knot.

(01:01:58):
We've done all of the things and wehave, calculated the so-called wins
above replacement and moderation,moderate, candidates win overall.
And this is what we need to do
in order to, get aheadand purple districts.
And don't you want Democrats tohave a majority and on balance?
Don't you think that like it is betterwhen we elect more Democrats and your

(01:02:19):
ideas are like wild and out here.
So that happens.
And partly that is because, yeah,obviously there are districts
in which that's true and.
People refuse to measure mobilization.
And so everything is a calculusaround, vote switching and not
a calculus around how much did acompelling, exciting, enthusiastic

(01:02:44):
person bring into the electorate?
Like that doesn't even get countedbecause it's harder to measure
because it would require knowing acounterfactual that you can't know,
which is how many people would've comehad there just been two boring people.
And you can't measure that.
'cause that isn't what happened.
And so that just gets discounted entirely.
And that's the way thatthe math gets reported.

(01:03:08):
And the other piece of it,which is infuriating, is that.
these same people.
Who are obsessed with how leftistgroups are poisoning the discourse
by saying wild things likedefund the police or abolish ice.
And you know, this is so widespread thatit is tainting people's views of Democrats

(01:03:33):
and that, you know, that is what makespeople think that Democrats are too woke
because the groups have too much power.
So they have this theory thatmessaging does spread and it does
sort of create this overall patina.
But at the same time, when I say tothem, do you understand that when a Bill

(01:03:54):
Clinton says the era of big governmentis over and I'm going to end welfare as
we know it, he is creating a discourse.
He is adding to a discourse thatprivileges Republicans and he may.
Eek out a second term win.

(01:04:14):
And also preside, not coincidentally,over the largest midterm
shellacking, an incumbent party.
And to be sure incumbent parties generallytake a shellacking in the midterms.
Like that's true, but the largest midtermshellacking that had happened to date.
And all of these Democrats, the EliseSlotkin and the, you know, what's

(01:04:39):
his face in Long Island Suozzi.
And, Henry Cuellar, the big tent.

Mm-hmm.

The big tent.
That of course doesn't include immigrantsand the big tent that doesn't include
queer people and the big tent thatdoesn't include victims of state
violence, which is usually black people.
It's a big tent, but.
The thing about a big tentis that in order for it to
stand, it has to have a pole.
Otherwise it's a tarp andit just will suffocate you.

(01:05:09):
So the fact that all of this justkeeps moving, all of the discourse to
the right, thereby making it harderfor future Democrats to run and
win because you are adding to this.
The problem is the border.
The problem is trans kids.
The problem is this, and there's norecognition that that's the case,

(01:05:34):
and you are actually changing theweather against your own thing.

Right.

And done with this veneer of like gi not, we wish
we could stand up for immigrants.
We really do.
Gi not, we wish we couldchampion abortion access.
We really do gi not, we wish that we couldargue that police should not be out in
the world just indiscriminately killingpeople because they happen to be black.

(01:06:02):
But that would cost us the electionand then we wouldn't be able to govern
in a way that, by the way, doesn'thelp any of those people anyway.

Right.
Right, you know, one of the thingsI, I find when I look at some of,
like the, the big post-election,we crunched all the numbers.
And here's what happened,Dex is that they're great.
There's a lot of reallyinteresting detail in them.
But if I were like the CMO of theDemocratic party and I had to make
a decision about how I was gonnaspend my money and on what I don't

(01:06:32):
know, reading those decks, what I'msupposed to do there, what I can
tell is like the emerging democraticmajority demographic, our destiny
prediction turned out to be wrong, whichfrankly should come as no surprise.
It turned out to be wrongwhen the Republicans wrote
the same book in the 1960s.
And like, so, so the question tome is like, so what do we do next?
And I cannot, for the life of mereally figure out what the project

(01:06:55):
is that the democratic.
Establishment type of candidates are, Andand organizations are basically constantly
studying democratic voters whenrepublicans don't seem to constantly
study Republican voters in quite likethe number of polls of like what's
going on with the Republicans whodidn't vote Republican or whatever.

(01:07:16):
This year I don't see any of those polls.
And also where there is a kindof assumption that it is only
Democrats who are out of touch withreal Americans and have to figure
out what real America is like.
But
there's never any belief that thecrazy ass ideas that come from the
right are also equally, to your pointabout people not realizing until they

(01:07:39):
wake up one day and discover thatyou can't take your government hands
off my Medicare because it is the
government and that actually I need thegovernment in order to get my Medicare.
There have been.
CNN had some work.
I talked to Ariel Edwards Levy theother day about some work they had
shown, which is like people generally
thinking government should do more.
And also not thinking either partywas going to do with government what

(01:08:02):
they would like government to do.
There is just this bizarre handwringing, , asymmetry, which if you're
a fascist party, you just crush forward.
With pure power.
That's the only objective.
And so say, do whatever ittakes in order to get that.
The other side is like playing apersuasion game where they seem to just
be trying to persuade each other and

(01:08:23):
not any of those people who open thedoor and said, yeah, all right, I'll take
your flyer, but you guys only show upevery four years and then you don't do
anything for me.
And there is a disconnect as well betweenthe campaigning and the governing and you
know, the old thing of, you know, campaignand poetry and governing prose while
you're doing, you're doing both of them
in spreadsheets now isactually what you're
doing when I don't know, like,is there any sign of life?

(01:08:47):
Is there any possibility ofshaking some people loose and
getting off of this ridiculous
train
that they're on?
It's there a sign of lifehere or not, is my question.

Yeah.
Yeah.
And here is what it is.
, So, you know how we nash ourteeth and we have like utter
very clear-eyed consternation.
Anytime Democrats say like, oh, I'mgonna work with my Republican colleagues

(01:09:18):
and I'm gonna work across the aisle.
And like Susan Collins will finallylike, go from being concerned to
like actually doing something.
Joe Biden loved to like alwaystout how, how, how we laugh at
them or we yell at them becausethey're like, there's no reasonable
Republicans that are gonna show up.
Like, stop freaking trying.
Like, that's not a thing.
It's not gonna happen.

(01:09:39):
Why are you thinking it's gonna happen?
But then we ourselves are guilty.
Of exactly the same thing with Democrats,and we keep asking and asking and asking
like, well, what would change them?
What would make them behave differently?
What would make them this?
Why would we think they would,other than the ones who do
because hashtag Not all Democrats.

Yeah.

So one answer is that we actually have to go through
the arduous, painstaking primaryprocess of electing better Democrats.
Like that is one thing.
There have to be different people withdifferent incentives, but honestly,
where I'm at myself personally, Iam not, focused on trying to alter

(01:10:25):
how Democrats behave because here iswhat alters what Democrats behave.
We're watching it happen.
I live in California,Gavin Newsom, the same.
Gavin Newsom who rose to prominence.
Being Mr.
I'm gonna marry gay and lesbianpeople when it's not legal yet.

(01:10:47):
I'm gonna make myself thecool kid by doing city hall
marriages, counterculture, right?
When it wasn't allowed.
And suddenly people are like, Ooh.
And obviously a lot of people objected.
But that's the whole thingabout an effective message.
If, if you want to have people to cometo your cause, you have to be attractive.
Which means attract them to you andhave a polarity, like any magnet,

(01:11:11):
that's also going to repel people.
Because if you wanna touch anerve, you have to touch a nerve.
That's the basic, which is essentiallywhat you were saying about smaller
companies trying to break into markets.
So he does that.
Then fast forward to, after the election,he becomes like, dude, bro, podcaster,
v platforming, some of the most odioushuman beings, because he's like,
this is where the cool kids are now.

(01:11:33):
Right?
Like it used to be that thecool kids were the gay kids.
Now screw them.
I'm gonna like throw themunder every conceivable bus
or like podcast microphone.
I'm gonna go hang out with the right,because that's where the cool kids
are to now the last couple of days.
Where he seems to have located forhimself, perhaps not an entire backbone,
let's not get too hasty, but like maybea vertebra or maybe two, maybe three.

(01:11:57):
And he is now rightly mocking Trumpand saying, you know, come arrest me.
Like come for me and made an addressthat was actually quite good.
And if I'm saying it,

Yeah.

I don't relish saying it.
So like I really think it's true.
Did he do that because he suddenlylocated within himself some sort
of conscious, no, of course not.
He did that because of theleadership of the city of angels.
The angels that reside among us,the angels, the Es, who went to

(01:12:32):
the front lines and are gettingpounded by a military force that
Trump has unleashed against them.
To say no.
We are standing up to this fascist regime.
We will fight for our freedomsand we are gonna fight for the
freedoms of everyone in this place.

(01:12:53):
It doesn't matter to us whatthey look like, where they come
from, what their background.
That's what we're gonna do.
So now that's the cool kids' table.
So the way that Democrats aregonna come around is when the
movement, when ordinary, everydaypeople are out in the world.

(01:13:15):
They're not gonna go first.

Right.

Anat Shenker-Osorio: They're not gonna go first. (01:13:18):
undefined
They are not leaders.
Leaders go first, exceptfor the few that do.
Some of them do.
But the way to change Democratsis by changing ourselves.

. Farrah Bostic (01:13:30):
I think that's a really, , good bullet for us to end on.
So, , what is the best way forpeople to follow your work?

So I have a substack.
I don't use it that much, but I try,uh, it's called Words to Win by.
It is the same as my podcast.
Words to Win by where everyepisode is a campaign.
We won somewhere in the world.
We make all of our messagingguidance available.
Free open source.
If you go to my website,aso communications.com,

(01:14:01):
we have messaging guides in English.
We have lots of them in Spanish.
, We have ads.
You can go on there.
You know, how do I talk about immigrants?
How do I talk about raising wages?
How do I talk about, trans kids?
If we've done a project on it, we'vemade it open source, it's sitting there.
, I'm on blue sky.
I mostly try to, post in the messagingthat I think you should be using.

(01:14:25):
But occasionally it is do as I say, notas I do, because I just get so pissed
off that sometimes I just, I just go off.
I'm like, okay, this is not themessaging you should be using, but I'm
so fucking pissed about this thing.

Thank you so much for spending the time with me.
I know we went, over time and Iwould love to keep you for like
four, five more years, but instead,I think we'll wrap right here.
Thank you so much, Anat for joining me.

Thank you.
It was lovely, lovely chatting with you.

. Farrah Bostic (01:14:51):
Crosstabs is a production of the Difference Engine.
It is edited and hosted by me.
Farrah Bostick music is fromAudio Jungle by S Audio.
You can subscribe to our weeklynewsletter for free@crosstabspodcast.com.
You can also follow the showon Blue sky@crosstabspod.blue
sky.social,
and on LinkedIn where we share linksto new episodes and newsletters.

(01:15:13):
We also share these episodes viavideo, and you can like and subscribe
to each week's video episode onYouTube at Crosstabs podcast.
Please follow us onyour favorite platform.
Tell your friends about the show, anddon't forget to subscribe on whatever your
favorite podcast service happens to be.
If you wanna learn more about whatI do, you can find me on all the
socials at Fara Bostic, though Iam mostly on Blue Sky these days.

(01:15:34):
Or get in touch throughthe difference engine.co.
And that's it.
See you next time.

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