The Jackpod: The politics of us against them

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of Unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out... That's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upground payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. I'm Megna Chakrabardi, and this is the Jack Pod, where on-point news analyst Jack Beattie helps us connect history, literature, and politics in a way that brings his unique clarity to the world we live in now. Hello, they're Jack. Hello, Megna. Okay, before we start, Jack, I just have to say that we here in the world of the jackpot have been wandering. Wretched. and bereft for a month in a land with no jackpot, and you have finally returned sprung up like an oasis to slake our thirst. It is so good to have you back after your hiatus, okay? It is great to be back, believe me. Thank you. All right, so let's get down to business. We are at episode 126. What's your headline? The politics of us against them. Okay. Tell me more. High summer day drive, bright sun, blue sky, tufty, white clouds, arrow straight country road, moan meadows, flanking, fragrant. If only I hadn't switched on the radio. I hate those people. Howie Carr. An unreconstructed Trumpist talk show host fairly cursed. Narrowly, his target was Jen Saki. Joe Biden's former press secretary turned MS now star broadly tip into any show. Those people are Democrats. Much discussed ahead of the midterms are the divisions within the parties. Carr's verb lights up what unites them. Hatred of the other party. Effective polarization defines our political culture and, as we'll see, haunts the midterm. Lynn Vavreck, she's a UCLA political scientist, she points to the close elections of 2020, 2022, 2024, and she sees a, quote, calcified electorate polarizing. Not around yesterday's issues like taxes and the size of government. Such 20th century standbys, quote, no longer retain much influence over voters who instead.

a locking into their positions on the basis of identity and who can claim to be an American. And a veritable generation of political scientists has found contempt, derision, even partisan hatred as the passion of this new politics. Here's the sound of effective polarization from Stephen Miller last week. The Democrats have become a party of freaks, weirdos, losers, and crazies. But you can't laugh it off because it's deadly serious. When you give these people power, everything you know and love in this world falls apart. You have chaos, corruption, decay, violence, poverty. That was just last week? Okay. Yeah, last week on the Sean Hannity Show. And here, from a decade ago, we'll all recognize this is Hillary Clinton. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. Wow, Jack. Okay, before we go on, I have to say, I haven't heard that clip in a long time. And with the distance of that time, what's more... arresting, I should say, about that Hillary moment is the crowd's response, the laughter. And I think the laughter is what really keyed up Republicans in terms of reviving that sense of the elite looking down upon them. But now when you place that back to back with Stephen Miller, who said equally, disgusting things just last week about Democrats. To me, the one big difference is that Republicans absolutely hounded and went after Hillary Clinton for using that word deplorables. But Democrats hardly even seem to notice the hateful language that Stephen Miller practically uses on a daily basis these days. That's true. Or his principal, Donald Trump. Trump can't get through a paragraph without, you know, saying something horrifying about Democrats. I mean, and now communists, of course. They've elided into communists. Yeah, it is, it's strange. They don't make as much of it. And it's as if they understand that for Democratic voters, there's so much to choose from in getting to get them angry, they don't have to necessarily highlight one, even what the president says. Everybody, I think there's an assumption, everybody knows it, everybody feels that it's the medium we're in. I still think it's an opportunity missed by the Democrats because they could turn around to people, regular people, and say, hey, maybe you voted for Trump once, but you voted for Biden, or maybe you voted for Obama and then voted for Trump.

Stephen Miller is tarring you all with that same brush. He's calling you guys freaks. You know, I think there's a political opportunity missed there. But it's one thing for party elites, right, to try and foment polarization or actually feelings of hate, right? I think sadly we've come to the point in this country where that's to be expected. My question is, like, is that actually trickling down to people, to voters? Well, political scientists have measured this. There's something called the American National Election Study. Since 1948, this has been a comprehensive survey, self-report, of what people in one party think about the other party. And there's what they call a feeling thermometer and steadily. Since inexorably, since 1980, on that survey, feelings toward the opposite party have gotten colder and colder and colder approaching the polar temperatures almost, while feelings for people's own party have more or less remained steady. The measure is there. You really dislike the other party and you dislike it more and more. Whereas you're feeling toward your own party is more or less the same, maybe even a little less. So that's one way. Another way, they go in the lab. You know, they measure it with samples of voters in, quote, naturalistic settings. For example, and one study asked participants to select one of two candidates for college scholarships. One candidate was white, the other black. The results, there was little racial bias. But once parties were told, people were told what party the candidate belonged to, 80% of the Democrats pick Democratic candidates, and 80% of Republicans pick Republican candidates. Wow. Kind of a kind of a... clincher there. And then they point political scientists to the social, what they call social sorting. How political... affiliation and difference has come to define not just the political life but the social life of partisans. And, you know, they point to strains in marriage, dating issues, you know, all these kinds of things that combine social identity with political identity and make it a very potent... front, really, for facing the other party. And finally, of course, there are myriad anecdotes pointing this out, but one from The Guardian in 2016, a North Carolina tow truck driver.

left a disabled woman stranded on the highway. Why? Well, she had a Bernie sticker on her car, and the tow truck driver said she was obviously a socialist. I don't believe her on the highway. So you get lots and lots of that that seemed to show. deep, deep animosity between voters, you know, rank and file in each party. Jack, can I go back to, I think, the first example that you gave about the study where people needed to decide, like, who got a college scholarship? That one kind of just blew my mind because basically what you're saying is that when the people who were... asked this question, were not told the party of these, you know, fictional candidates, they kind of equally distributed the scholarships. Regardless of race, which is kind of great news, actually. But when told what the party the candidates were, like it became Democrats, gave it to Democrats 80% of time and similarly Republicans to Republicans. Okay. So on the one hand, I'm thinking, well, this, as I said, it's kind of great news because we're always told that racism is one of the great divisions of sources of division in this country. Perhaps that's not so much of the case. But if... Partyism, I guess, or party fealty is actually much more of a profound way that we divide ourselves. I mean, doesn't, who was it that wrote, was it in the Federalist Papers? Was it Hamilton? I don't remember, but someone back then really warned against the rise of the party system in this country. Oh, yeah, yeah. Madison was very eloquent. Madison. The vice of faction and how that could just simply, in itself, become a defining feature of the country. And on this question of race, you know, other studies have found that the strongest predictor of... animosity toward the other party for Republicans is racial resentment. If on scores, and there's ways of measuring this, show high racial resentment, it's reflect in stronger feeling against the other party. Conversely, Among Democrats, it's the most anti-racist Democrats who have the most contempt for the Republicans because they think, oh, you're racist. So race plays a dynamic role in there, sort of in the background. Okay. Now, the fact that you said that Madison warned against factions becoming a defining feature of the country's politics, I mean, that does basically seem to have come to pass.

So you mentioned earlier that this effective polarization is haunting or could haunt the midterms, how? Well, now here I go to a very important study out of the polarization laboratory at Dartmouth University. And they have massive surveys, 156,000 people in one survey and so on. And here's what they found. In some ways, they found, we're not as polarized as some of these. doomsaying political scientists think, for example, vanishingly small percentages of the parties favor political violence against the other party. I mean, it's 2%, 1%, yet members of each party overestimate the support for political violence in the other party by more than 40 points. It's as if most Dems and Republicans assume the other side hates them and wants to hurt them, but in fact they don't. I mean, they may resent them. They may hate them. They don't want to hurt them. And here's the paradox of this, and here's how this haunts the midterms. I'm quoting from the study. This is from the polarization lab. This pervasive fear has created a dangerous sick appetite for authoritarian solutions, shutting down media companies, using militia or ice at the polls, you know, taking other steps, stepping outside the rule of law in the name of preventing violence. The primary threat to American democracy, this study concludes, is not a widespread desire for violence, but rather. the public's willingness to trade fundamental freedoms for a sense of security from a fringe, a phantom phenomenon. Think of that. In other words, it isn't a real threat, but people see the other party by 50 points as more violent than they are, more liable to it, more threatening. And so to prevent that, they're willing to step outside the rule of law, because after all, this is an existential threat. And how do they come by that? Well, the Dartmouth people are clear. This is elite-led. This doesn't just rise up spontaneously out of the people. They're encouraged by the likes of Howie Carr and by, I'm sure, liberals too.

take the Hillary comment, to despise the other party and to project on it these dire wishes for their own demise. It's an extraordinary, extraordinarily dangerous situation. You know, I can imagine right now I'm hearing a lot of Jack Potter saying, well, And there's a reason, there's a concrete reason why they believe Republicans are more likely to. to commit acts of political violence, January 6th of 2021 being, you know, the most brightly flashing of those reasons. But just correct me if I'm wrong, Jack. What I'm hearing you say is that, yes, obviously January 6th happened. But in terms of overall numbers of Republicans in this country, that vanishing small number. believe in the need or necessity for political violence and similarly vanishingly small numbers of Democrats. Okay, which is interesting because right now in right-wing media, there is a... large and concerted push going on talking about liberal violence or left-wing violence. I've seen it a lot recently in conservative and right-wing media. So I hear you when you say this is all elite-driven, which kind of, I would say on the one hand, it is concerning because of the... the attention-grabbing power and the money power and the, let's say, well, obviously the political power that these elites have. It makes me also a hope maybe that if we're talking about a small number of people who are creating these phantoms, as you said, is there something that we can do about it? Well, political scientists have done, again, experiments to see if they can somehow mitigate this partisan hatred. And, you know, when you look at these, here was one, for example, there was a mega study in 2024 in science. And it talks about cross-party meetings and discussions. And one of the topics discussed was, you know, what makes you a perfect day? And Democrats and Republicans said, hey, we agree on pretty much a lot of what would make our perfect day. So, and their feeling toward the other party warmed, or at least till...

to those representatives that they were dealing with at the other party. But here's the study. It says the effects persisted for at least a week, a least a week after the initial experiment. I mean, I'm not taking much comfort from that. And then another study. It says most interventions, and the interventions with these, you know, let's be friendly, kumbaya. Most interventions reduced partisan animosity. but did not decrease support for political violence on non-democratic actions. Oh dear. That's chilling. And then you have another one that is another one from a journal. Conversations can significantly decrease polarization, particularly when the subject of politics is avoided. There's no comfort in that at all. I mean, I don't, I'm not. You know, I'm not knocking the work of these scholars. It's very important. But there's no comfort in those studies that people, you know, and how do you do it at scale anyway? Right. And even when you do it in the control setting, you get, well, it lasts a week, it lasts a month, not much. Well, how do you do it at scale? Like a radical transformation of news media. That's one of the things. Yes. But then again, I'm not sure even that would help because of the existence of our, you know, digital world. Like if people just, if news organizations, including our own, I'm not saying we're immune to this, just decided to stop playing anything divisive that the president of the United States currently said or some like left-wing podcasters, that would sort of cleanse, right? That would cleanse our information sphere a little bit. But. there's still, like that stuff will still be coursing around the body politics through digital media. So I guess what I'm, I hear you saying, Jack, is that political scientists have determined that when people are able to say, oh, hey, when we don't talk about politics, we have everything in common, except our politics, which is everything. Yeah, which is everything, which isn't what it used to be, which was, you know, a part of life. No, it's the social identity and political identity. It's kind of rolled into one in this formidable package. Okay, so. In my very cursory raking over of history, if we are indeed at a kind of, as you said, like critical point in the divisive nature of affective partisanship, will anything short of a catastrophe that's sort of bigger than us all, uniting us, will anything short of that sort of help us come together?

In short, no. And here's the example, an example, you know, writing in 1922 in his classic book, Public Opinion, Walter Lipman said, politics is just images in our heads. And when you think of it, that's absolutely right. It's not something concrete. You know, it's not, we can't go out and touch it to see it. It's images in our heads. And those images are subject to... distortion, misperception, poisoning. And in the 1920s, the images, it was an era of, again, strong, effective polarization. The parties weren't really divided on issues much. Democrats were as conservative as Republicans. But what was giving the passion to the era were these cultural issues, you know, anti-immigration, strong. behind the passage of the 1924 national quota bill, which essentially shut down the country for... immigrants for a long long to the 1960s many immigrants immigrants from undesirable places you know you had you had the image that the image in the head of the farmer of the rural farmer toward the city oh that's wicked there's sin there and there's drink there because of course the cultural issue of the day was Prohibition. And there was, you know, a strong anti-misogynate. Women were voting and look what's happened to our politics. So there was this strain. And each party was, issues weren't the issue. The issue was this animosity. City dwellers saw bumpkins and the bumpkins saw vice. Of course, they were a little bit fascinated by the vice too, but nevertheless saw vice and drink and Catholics in the city. You know, there was an ad from the 1928 campaign, a picture, photograph of the Lincoln Tunnel, the front of the Lincoln Tunnel. And this was the election between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith, the first Catholic. candidate for president. And this image, this photograph of the Lincoln Tunnel had written above it, Al Smith's secret tunnel to the Vatican. That's what politics was all about. This big... you know, animosity between the country and the city, between modernizing forces, think of the Scopes, monkey trial, and, you know, traditionalists, fundamentalists, and, you know, frolicking people in the cities, that was, those were the divisions. And what ended them almost with a...

at the snap of the fingers, the great depression. That was like, it's been described as the great knife of the depression. Well, not only cut through lives, it cut through old politics. And all of that just disappeared. And suddenly, need, issues, help me. That was back in politics. And really, effective polarization, it didn't disappear, but it was way in the background. And once the depression was over, you had the war. And once the war was over, you had the Cold War. And that kept people within, you know, contained the animosity that Americans felt for each other because there was this big, bigger threat. So history doesn't offer, it says, yes, the uses of catastrophe, but no one wants to go through that. And, you know, when I, it should sort of frame this just finally, you want to contrast the sort of old politics, the New Deal politics, and our identity politics. I think of an anecdote about LBJ. This is in the 1960 campaign. He was the vice presidential candidate to John F. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential candidate. And he stopped on a whistle stop tour in Culpeper, Virginia. And he looked out over the audience and he said, you can hear him now. He said, What has Dick Nixon ever done for Culpepper? In other words, politics is all about who gets what, when. That was what the issues. Dick Nixon's never done a damn thing for Culpepper. We're going to do it. That was sort of the image of a sort of rubric to frame issue politics. As for identity politics. The politics of effective polarization, I think the best characterization comes from William Butler Yates' 1923 poem Meditation in a Time of Civil War. And he writes, We had fed the heart on fantasies, the hearts grown brutal from the fair, more substance in our enmities than in our love. Wow. Okay, Jackpotters, so here's what I want to hear from you this week. Not just your thoughts on affective polarization and partisan hatred and whether you see it in America now, because I'd be surprised if any of you said, no, that doesn't exist in America. If you think that definitely let us know. But what I also want everyone to do this week is dig a little deeper and ask yourself, do I feel? these emotions of partisan hatred. Do you feel that in any way, shape, or form in your own heart, in your own views of voters of the quote-unquote other party, whomever or whatever that might be? And if you do, tell us about it. What does it make you think of yourself? What does it make you think of, of course, the country at large? So you know how to do it? Grab your phones.

Look for the on-point Vox Pop app wherever you get your apps. That's On Point Vox Pop. And let us know. And since it has been a while since we've had a fresh episode of the Jackpot, I'm going to hope slash anticipate that there's a lot of pent-up need to be part of the conversation. So I am looking forward to an avalanche of comments from you guys this week. All right. So Jack, we've got to take a quick break. But when we come back, we're going to talk about... June seems so far away now, but you and Dory did have a conversation back in June, and we'll hear from people's thoughts about that in just a moment. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for $12-1 plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only, greater than 50 gigabytes, may slow when network is busy. See terms. You want to talk about poetry? Yeah, we do, Henry Winkler. I'm journalist Faith Saly. I'm poet Maggie Smith, and we are the co-hosts of You Could Make This Beautiful. where we talk to actors. Oh my God. Poetry Emergency. Comedians. We met on poetry dates.com. And teachers about poetry in all its forms. It's just one of those poems where you're like, if I read this to someone on a day, we're going to get the check. You know what I mean? You could make this beautiful wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, Jack, we are back and... Way back in June, you and Dory had a conversation about Senator Chris Murphy's vision for the Democratic Party and the country as a whole. He has ideas in a new book called Crisis of the Common Good. And by the way, I later, later after the pod got a chance to do a one-on-one interview with Senator Murphy on point. So if you guys want to hear that conversation, you can find it in this here podcast feed. that you are already part of. Anyway, let's go back to the jackpot from June. And that's when Dory asked jackpotters what they thought of Senator Chris Murphy's view on the state of the economy and actually more broadly, his vision for the country. And we got a lot of responses. So here's Aaron Pollenard from Austin, Texas. And he says that he agrees with what Murphy has to say, but thinks that the senator also represents a style problem that many in the Democratic Party establishment share. He speaks to kind of the spiritual longing or the moral foundations of the average voter or the average citizen, which is why Democrats have been losing so badly. Their language they use often appeals to the moral foundations of just a narrow demographic, of white, liberal, highly educated people. But at the same time, Senator Murphy... I kind of feel like he's got an overly long-winded and romanticized kind of vision. And it can feel a little Pollyannish. So, yes, I agree with him. Yes, his message is great for those people who are on the fringes and aren't already sold to his ideas. But we need a kind of bullet point shortened version. Okay, Jack. thinking about what Murphy says. And for people who haven't read the book or somehow missed that jackpot from June, Senator Murphy was talking about how he feels basically we need more ways to pull communities together that we've lost sort of the social ties that we once had, that they're, you know, what he calls like the cults of corruption and capitalism, et cetera, et cetera. But what Aaron is saying there. juxtaposed against what you just talked about in the first half of today's pod in terms of the partisan hatred and affective polarization, I would tend to agree with Aaron that Chris Murphy is, he's doing what Democrats often do, which is like, we can all pull together. Kumbaya. Your thoughts. Well, that's such a good. That's so shrewd. Yeah. And it's, it's. You know, somebody said about, I forget what the connection. I think about some speech. Someone gave it's the higher guff. You know what I mean? Politics as a solution to loneliness. Is that really, you know, and spiritual emptiness. I'm glad that he recognizes these things and they're real. But do we really want politicians?

Messing around with that stuff, don't we really want them talking about, you know, the price of groceries and who's going to get me a better job? And what about my kids and college and so on? It feels like a kind of confusion of realms. We don't want our spirits doctored with by politicians. I think that's the case. Yeah. that Aaron is making. And I feel some of that, too, even as I nod my head. When Chris Murphy talks about the cult of everywhere, where, you know, big box stores instead of local businesses, we've lost the community ties and we suffer from lonely. All of that is true, but is it susceptible of political remedy? And does it forfeit what does seem to work in politics, namely saying? They are bad. We are good. Right. You know, Jack, can I just jump in here? Because I... Yeah. totally agree with you that I think Murphy is right that over the past 40, 50 years, we've lost the cultural and social things that made people feel more a part of a community. And so the sort of, and Murphy himself uses the word spiritual, right? There's been a spiritual degradation in America. And it's from that poisoned soil that this hyper. partisanship marked by hatred, I think, kind of grows like this, you know, unstoppable weed. But to your point, do we want politicians to tell us how to feel more spiritually fulfilled? I mean, I think that's exactly what Donald Trump told his supporters back in 2015, which is one of the reasons why he so powerfully swept across some of the most people in America who felt the most abandoned. No question about it. And, you know, some years ago, George Will wrote a book with a kind of frightening title, and the title was Statecraft as Soulcraft. Oh, wait a minute. That reminds me of the Stalin quote about, you know, intellectuals are, you know, what, doctors of the soul. Keep away from my soul. I'll take care of it. Give me. Give me spinach. Yeah. Help me put food on my table. Right. Help my kids be able to afford a house. Fix the potholes on my road. Right. Relieve the burden of lifelong medical debt. I mean, like these are concrete things that politicians can do. We don't need more preachers. All right. So here's Anne. She's in Troy, Michigan.

He's hope-giving and he's optimistic. And I think that that can be contagious and catch. But I think the only way he'll be effective is if there is a strong Bernie Sanders-type socialist loud voice behind him or around him, kind of yelling and making noise, to give context. to his more moderate ideas. Ah, a one-to punch there, suggested by Anne. We'll come back to that in a second, Jack. But here is also Suzanne Lieber. And she tells us she's been following Senator Murphy since he ran for Congress in her district in Connecticut. And she's always been a fan of his, but also a critic. I think he and a lot of the Democrats are really missing the point, especially when he talks about Bernie Sanders. Bernie lost because the Democratic machine was against him. His message was resounding across all socioeconomic classes, especially the young people. What's happening now is the so-called social Democrats are taking over and it's about time. We need to win this congressional election. We need to turn at least one house, but hopefully both houses so we can get our country back on track. Now, Jack, I got to slip in this fun fact because Suzanne also told us that she went to the same high school as Senator Bernie Sanders. It's James Madison High School in Brooklyn. I think you heard a little bit of Brooklyn in her voice there. And Madison High School also graduated three senators, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, TV personality Judge Judy, and at least five Nobel Prize winners. So way to go. Madison High in Brooklyn. Wow. How about that? Okay. So what do you, both, both Suzanne and Anne kind of talking there about what they feel is the necessity of the, the socialist wing of the Democratic Party and how it could actually play an additive role in, I suppose, putting more grit in Senator Murphy's message. Well, you know, I think I understand that. And Ann's point is that does add that's where the energy seems to be in the Democratic Party today. And you're quite right. And yet to go back to the interview you did with Chris Murphy. I think you quoted from Francesca Hong, who's the Democratic candidate. She's running in the Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin. And you quoted her in an interview where she said some pretty outlandish things. I mean, I don't know whether in that interview, but in others, she said, you know, Thanksgiving is a very regrettable day for Native Americans. We shouldn't celebrate that. She's just a pure estate. You know, let's get rid of prison. let's not have any more these policemen around.

Stuff that, you know, in normal times anyone would say, that is crazy. And my view and the view of, from way out here, what do I know about Wisconsin? My fear, because I want Wisconsin to be, you know, to vote Democratic, to save the Republic. But, you know, it seems to me that the guy named Tom Tiffany, who's the Republican who's going to run against her, he's got a tremendous. He's got a target there he can't miss. And he's an election denier. So, yeah, the socialist energy is there, and the young people are angry, and they're putting up these candidates. But are they going to win the general election? Is the gentleman in Michigan who was just, Mr. Saeed, is he going to win that general election in? in Michigan. And, you know, to get to Anne's point, yes, Bernie Sanders had a wide appeal, but I'm not clear that he had any, that he had a great appeal to blue collar workers. I don't believe that was the case. And by the way, in Maine, when Graham Platner, who's a sort of a margot of Bernie Sanders, when he was running against Susan Collins, Susan Collins among white working class voters, was ahead by 23 points. And in Michigan, you know, we saw African-American voters weren't. enthusiastic about Dr. Said. He seemed to do very well among well-educated voters. And so is it the case that these democratic socialists who profess love for the working class are getting the white working class vote or the black working class vote? And in any case, with Bernie, yes, the party turned against him and so on. But really, it was African-American voters to whom he didn't exist. And there was a reason, you know, I think just in recent times as a branch of the NAACP opened in Vermont. It's the whitest state in the union. So he just didn't. And African-Americans are the base of the Democratic Party. If you don't. If you don't turn them out, you don't win, and he didn't. Yeah. You know, you're making a really, really important point, Jack. And, yes, I did. repeatedly ask Senator Murphy about this because, you know, it's one thing to win a general election in New York City or a primary, a Democratic primary, but the general elections in purple places are really, really different. It's just a different story. Now, who knows what's going to happen in November? But, you know, but to your point in terms of the...

When polled, who professes the greatest affection or fealty for, you know, quote unquote socialist policies, it's so fascinating to me that it's college educated but under-employed Americans, right? So there is a kind of sense that, well, I... I feel like I know what the working classes want by virtue of their college education. They know for some reason. I'm rather than a book. Yeah. But they actually are living a life that isn't what they were told their American dream would be. Go to college. You get a good job. You live a good life. The reason why I point that out is because I think this is where... Party politics and the business machine of the parties is really a problem, right? Because some of these college educated Democrats are going to other places like Maine and they are picking what they think. Is the candidate that can speak most effectively to the working class. That's how we got Graham Platner, right? Yes. Gosh, yes. But because there is, as you're saying, a fundamental misunderstanding of quote-unquote working-class Americans, they pick duds sometimes. Let's just put it that way. Okay. By the way, I think I saw a recent poll that said, Troy Jackson now, who is running on the Democratic ticket for that Senate seat in Maine. He's polling very strongly against Susan Collins. So we will, he's a homegrown Mainer, right? Yeah, yeah. So we'll see how that goes. Okay. Anyway, let me get bet myself back on track. Jack, it's just been so long. I'm so full of like sidebars that I want to pursue with you. Okay, so let's go to Diane Wanik. She reached out from Brunning Nebraska, or Bruining Nebraska. Diane, I'm really sorry if I said that wrong. And Diane tells us that she appreciates Senator Murphy's vision, but the Democrats have a lot to make up for. It was the Democrats in the 90s who abandoned the unions, abandoned the farmers, abandoned the working class. It was Nancy Pelosi who celebrated her win as Speaker in 2006. with a big party given by a big pharma. It was also the Democrats that gave the banks lots and lots and lots of taxpayer dollars to bail them out of a situation that they created. So, you know, the Democrats have a long way to go to win the trust back of the people. And here's Maddie in New York City who says, ditto. I think that we need to kind of take this anti-corruption message even further. I would love to seize the Democratic Party make a push to clean their own house, if that makes sense. Like I think when Trump won in 2016 on the drain the swamp message.

I think that really resonated with a lot of people, both Democrats and Republicans alike, and the way that we have clung to this kind of old money establishment, while also claiming ourselves to then be the people who are propelling this country forward in a socially progressive. fashion, everyone can see that hypocrisy, right? People aren't stupid. Mr. Beattie, over to you. Okay, well, I go back to this point about the Democrats in the 90s. I think this is a very strong point. And it gets to this book that I mentioned in a recent podcast, you know, the rise and fall of the neoliberal order. And the neoliberal order was Bill Clinton and, you know, deregulation, make the... poor work for their money and get off welfare. First president to change the terms of the New Deal. He changed aid for families with dependent children. Threw that out and put in this, you know, whatever it's called, TANF, which effectively is a sort of work requirement for people getting welfare. And... And then the people that surrounded him. You know, Larry Summers was his secretary of state. And Larry Summers in that era is quoted as saying, we're all disciples of Milton Friedman now. And then Larry Summers shows up again in 2008. And I see him on Meet the Press on one of those, I think it was Meet the Press. And he's asked, what about the government taking back? pulling back from the bankers bonuses that they received even as they presided over this catastrophe with their bad judgment. What about pulling, you know, raking back those bonuses from them? And he looked and he said, don't you understand the sanctity of contracts? You can't find, I mean, if ever I've heard a politically tone-diff comment, but there it is. He's a disciple of Milton Friedman, at least he was professed to be, and then, you know, the sanctity of contracts prevents us from going back and raking back, taking back those bonuses. That's an example of that era of when the Democrats were trying to match the Republicans in you know, in market fundamentalism, globalization, free trade, you know, all the rest, China, NAFTA, you name it. And yeah, that was not, they've got a lot to live down. I think Biden started to. And you won't find much of that in the Democratic, you know, the plank today about, you know, the wonders of globalization. By the way, I just in defense of Senator Murphy here for a second, regarding campaign finance, he also only takes small donations. He doesn't take a...

pack money. I looked this up before I did my interview with him. So in that sense, he definitely does practice what he preaches. And I think, you know, maybe Maddie is saying, Maddie and Diane are saying he ought to encourage more of his fellow Democrats to do the same thing. Now, here's another person who actually sees a lot of... reason and evidence in what Senator Murphy was talking about regarding, as you said, the cult of everywhere, that the specialness of place has really been kind of erased in this country. And interestingly enough, it comes from an American who lives abroad. We have so many jackpotters, by the way, that listen from outside the United States. I love it. So Valerie lives in Bosnia. And she says that while traveling through Europe this summer, towns and cities that she went through in Europe, have done a better job of maintaining their identity and sense of community than American towns. Throughout Europe, public transportation and walkable communities show what can happen when a priority is put on people rather than just cars in the oil industry. It's not impossible to imagine the United States seeking to regenerate based on community and based on a pushback against a monopoly winner-take-all capitalism that has broken so many elements of American life. I hope Murphy's message catches on, not only for the benefit of people in the U.S., but to get the United States back on track for a world that is watching with alarm. Jack, what do you think? Oh, boy, yeah, the picture of the European town. I'm sure they must have their fringe, what, suburbs where there are big box stores, but nothing like here. And I guess that must be because of planning, you know, to preserve. the geist, the particular spirit of these areas. But yes, everything looks, but also, I have to say, you know, Europe lags in economic performance. Now, I'm not saying the two things are related. All the public provision and the, you know, the beautiful little towns. I'm not saying they're related, but it is the case that it is, you know, compared to the growth of the United States, Europe is lagging. And free marketeers over here would say, it's because we allow the big box stores. It's because our consumers pay the lowest prices. And they can have a better life, you know, getting the dollar and a half t-shirt as opposed to the one for, you know, $5.50 in Europe. Yeah. Well, Jack. I'm so glad to be able to say this again. Thank you as always. Thank you so much. I'm Megatakrabardi, and this is The Jackpot from On Point.

Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat, emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan, $15 dollars a month a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upbrum payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, $1,000 per month plan required $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms.