How the American left became post-political, and how to change that

Episode Summary 

One year after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats are still trying to figure out what to do for the next time around and what to do in the 2026 midterm elections as control of Congress is once again at stake.

There were a lot of people offering advice to the Democrats in this regard, and certainly the most well-funded of those people are the ones who say that the party has become too liberal and has to modify its stances to become more popular and resonant with public opinion.

And at the same time, there are people on the further left side of the coalition arguing that the Democrats have become too conservative and that they have alienated people who want a more radical change in society to fix things that are broken, and not to step back at all on defending abortion access or trans rights.

Each side of this intra-left debate offers worthy points, but both groups tend to understate the immense effect that media have on people’s political opinions. That is the central topic of my new e-book, What Republicans Know, so please do help me out and purchase it if you haven’t yet.

Someone else’s work you should consider in this regard is our guest on today’s program: Dave Karpf is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, and he’s written several books on the role of media and public opinion.

Last week, he wrote an article in the New Republic about a new report from a group called WelcomePAC, which argued that Democrats need to become more moderate, but which also largely ignored how many people don’t know about candidates’ policy views.

The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.

Related Content

--Free excerpt from “What Republicans Know”

--How much do political party elites know about their own voters?

--Reactionaries built an infrastructure to attack democracy, their opponents must do the same to defend it

--Americans want big ideas, but Trump’s opponents aren’t providing them

--Democratic losses stem from their failure to communicate

--Trump’s insult comic shtick and the right’s new media shock troops

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

11:01 — Policies are far from the only thing that matters to voters

17:03 — Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantage through inaction

22:11 — Political parties need permanent infrastructure

34:55 — Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?

43:20 — The perils of thinking that polling alone is political science

53:11 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

Matthew Sheffield: And joining me now is Dave Karp. Hey Dave. Welcome back to Theory of Change.

Dave Karpf: Okay. Thanks. Having me again.

Matthew Sheffield: So, you had a great thread on the WelcomePAC report, which I have to say is when I read that, I instantly was like, oh man, these people like “Welcome Back, Kotter,” the seventies TV series.

Dave Karpf: It does.

Matthew Sheffield: So, but you know, in fairness to them, I, do want to say that there are some things, there’s a bunch of stuff in this report that’s high-quality and that does match established, well-confirmed political science. And this is, in my view, the highest-quality, more centrist-leaning document that we’ve seen since 2024.

Do you agree with that?

Dave Karpf: Yeah, I mean the, when I opened this, the first thing that I noticed, they, they have a list of people that they’re thinking and it includes a number of political scientists who I know and deeply respect. It also includes a [00:04:00] number of people who are immediate red flags for me, Nate Silver is on this thing, like Nate Silver was a great person to talk to five, 10 years ago. Lately he’s mostly seems to be playing poker.

So there were a couple of immediate red flags, but also there were a number of people who I was like, okay, if you are, like, if you’re talking to Aaron Strauss and Chris Warshaw. I’m interested in what you have to say. And I think they took seriously that they wanted to gather the data and see what it told them.

I have some things we can get into about what data they decided to look at and what they didn’t decide to gather. But I think they, at least took it seriously.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Absolutely. And, and there were a couple of other red flags for me with a, like they cited James Carville and their title page and a Republican pollster. How does that make you look better? I, don’t think that it does guys.

But nonetheless there are some points in here that are true and like one of the, things that I try to do with my writing and podcast [00:05:00] is to, show the various factions of the, left that, nobody is a hundred percent correct in, understanding elections.

Like each side actually has viewpoints that are true and each one has ideas that are false. And so one of the, there are a couple of things that are true in this report is that irregular voters are not ideologically committed compared to people who are regular voters. And, that’s, I, that’s, something that I think people on the progressive side might struggle with that concept or accepting That seems like.

Dave Karpf: Yeah. And I, the thing that I tell my students at the beginning of every semester is, the answer to any question worth asking is, well, it’s complicated. And as political scientist, that’s where I feel comfortable sort of exploring the complication as a pragmatic strategist, well, it’s complicated isn’t a good answer, right?

So the hard questions of things like, should the Democrats try to nominate more centrist or more progressive candidates, [00:06:00] what people would really like is there to be a clean, easy answer to that. And that includes progressives. Who would really like to think that, when you nominate a bold progressive, they’re likely to win.

And what the data shows is, well, it’s complicated. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a centrist. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a bold progressive. In either case, it would kind of be nice to have somebody just dripping with charisma and lacking in scandals. But those people are few and far between, and so it’s all complicated and that like that is, I think some of the use of a report like this is sort of reminding us that the simple story you’d like to tell yourself is also not quite true.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other things that they noted in here that is true is that political donors or activists tend to have more polarized opinions than the general public or even their own co partisans in their party. Now the Democrats have a much wider range of opinions compared to Republicans.

And so that makes things a little more difficult as well, in [00:07:00] particular for them. And, and so the, these are real challenges that the Democratic Party, there are unique challenges that the Democratic party has that do make things harder for them compared to Republicans and I, think that’s fair. We have to say that.

Dave Karpf: we do the, bit that I want to quibble on there, because when I read that passage from them, I was annoyed. Is.​

If we start from the premise that politics is complicated and the answer to everything is, well, it’s complicated. Part of what that sets up is like, I think it’s okay for your party elites to be more interested in some issue portfolios than the mass public. If the reason they’re more interested in them, I’m thinking particularly with climate change, isn’t because they’re, died in the wool I ideologues, but because they’re looking at it and having spent a lot of time wrestling with it, they say, well, no, this is really bad and we as policymakers really need to care.

Right. Historically, foreign policy is something that the masses [00:08:00] mostly don’t pay attention to. And so it’s really important to have people in government who do pay attention to it, even if they’re going to be out of step with the masses. Because the masses aren’t tuning in. So to the ex, like when you have elites that are out of step with the party base or the mass public that they want to get to vote for them, we’re not out out of step with them.

Because they have sort of different ide, ideological priors. That’s a thing that we want to remind ourselves of and sort of, sort of check our instincts. But when they’re out of step, because they’re more well informed, because they’re the people who are actually paid to develop expertise and wrestle with the complications.

Like I, I think it’s important to remember that like we run elections and, win elections in order to govern, and a lot of the stuff that goes into governing is in fact going to be unpopular just because governance is complicated and a lot of it sucks.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, another issue where that’s very relevant what you just said is, the, the issue of democracy, quote unquote. So, the average person, I don’t [00:09:00] expect them to care about political systems and, the, Overton window and, political theory like, oh, that’s, they have better things to do in their lives than obsess over those types of things that you and I are thinking about.

And, so, but yeah, like it, the doesn’t mean that they don’t matter and in fact, argue, I think we could say that climate change and democracy are probably the the most. Important issues from an objective standpoint because they determine whether you have a future of the polity.

Dave Karpf: Right.

And also if, the party, I’m particularly annoyed on climate both because I come out of the environmental movement, but also because Matt Yglesias keeps on beating this drum and I just think he’s wrong. Like Yglesias seems to have concluded that climate is a loser issue. Democrats should stop talking about it.

Just assume that some technology will save us. because it, it’s a loser, so don’t do it. And A, I disagree with him that’s a, the route that they should take. [00:10:00] But B, I would also say pragmatically, if you just let climate change keep getting worse in order to hopefully win some more elections in the near term, you’re also going to end up living in a hotter, less safe, less stable world in the future.

Where it is difficult as the governing party to keep on getting reelected. Like the inattentive public is just going to blame you when things go wrong. So you should take governance choices that in the medium and long term, hopefully make it less likely for things to go wrong. Otherwise, what’s the point of democracy to begin with?

And I like, I just think some of these elector editorialists or the, like, they’re calling the missiles populists now, like I, I think they seem to have forgotten that like, you don’t need to, you don’t need to campaign in, prose. You can campaign in poetry, but if you’re going to be trying to win elections, you then actually need to do the policy work that leads to a more stable and hopefully prosperous nation.

Otherwise when you do win, you’re going to be living, you’re going to be governing in such a manner that like they kick you [00:11:00] out next time.

Policies are far from the only thing that matters to voters

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And that I think was one of the critical flaws in this report is that they, have a absurd viewpoint about that the public knows about issues and cares about them. And, and, the reality is, I mean, Kamala Harris, she, she ran her campaign and her policy positions to be maximally popular,

Dave Karpf: Yeah.

Matthew Sheffield: Like the people who’ve, some of the people who were financing this report were also financing and directing the Kamala Harris campaign. And so like we tried their idea and we’ve tried their idea for the past several decades and, it actually hasn’t worked. And, like the thing with Joe Biden in 2020, the, problem with this, popularist approach to me is that it’s not actually popularist, it’s not popular.

And like, and Trump won [00:12:00] because people, oh, sorry. Biden beat Trump in 2020 because Trump was really horrible and, we had a, he was a disaster. Like it wasn’t that people thought Joe Biden was great, and his policies were awesome.

And that’s the problem with these guys is that they don’t like, they, it’s Bill Clinton won because of Ross Perot. Obama won not because of his strategies, but because he was a really good candidate who spoke really well. And so the, problem that Democrats have is that you’ve got this consultant class that sort of glommed onto these two candidates. Like, what, happened to Organizing for America?

Nothing. What happened to all of this local movement that they had built that had arose around him? Nothing.

Dave Karpf: Yeah, though I, one thing I would add in is. Obama also won because he was running against a Republican after two Republican terms when things were like, we both had foreign wars that had gotten unpopular and the economy imploded. Right? So like there is [00:13:00] historically, there’s what we call sort of like a like a thermostatic or a sort of a back and forth phenomenon where people tend to vote in presidential elections based on their opinion of the incumbent president or incumbent party.

And it tends to go back and forth. there’s, no world in which the Democrats win normal elections for the ne for the next like 40 years, like eventually Republican wins. And that it particularly happens once people decide, like in political science we call it, they, call it I think the time for change model.

I haven’t looked at this

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, I was just going to say that. Yeah.

Dave Karpf: Yeah. But like, part of why Obama wins, like it helps that he is historically charismatic, but it also helps that he is running against the Republicans after George w Bush’s, like, I think Republican party approval was at like 20 something percent at that point.

And John McCain like,

Matthew Sheffield: too. Yeah.

Dave Karpf: yeah. Like, and you had Hurricane Katrina and then also the great financial crisis. Like, like of course Bane didn’t win that election. I’m pretty sure Kamala Harris could have won under those circumstances too. Like there’s some candidate quality, [00:14:00] but a lot of it’s actually the broader circumstances, which again is why there like, sure go ahead and campaign in poetry, but you need to govern in a manner that makes it less likely that objective conditions suck.

Because when objective conditions suck, then inattentive voters will just cast your party out. Assuming we have normal elections, which I hope we have those in 2028, but yh I had another thought. It’s coming back to me. Yeah. Oh, here’s the other thought. There, there’s a turn of phrase that I coined for when I’m cri criticizing the, tech barons, but it’s useful here, I think which is the, reverse Scooby-Doo.

Now the reverse Scooby-Doo is when you sort of imagine yourself as the villain in Scooby-Doo and say like, we would’ve gotten away with it, if not for, insert thing. And we see this from the tech barons a lot where like, like crypto, like, Ava for a long time has like insisted that the entire economic system is about to collapse in six months and Bitcoin will rise.

If it doesn’t happen, then it is, [00:15:00] the government’s fault for interfering. And so it’s like his, it, creates sort of a pressure release valve where he can loudly predict this and people can listen to him. Then when it doesn’t happen, he is like, well, no, it was, I like included a reason why, like, I’m not wrong, even though it didn’t happen.

And, with these centrist consultants, like they talk a lot in this report about how Democrats need to talk about kitchen table issues. And if they just talk about it, then they will do better. And their evidence is asking the electorate, polling the electorate after the 2024 election and finding the electorate says, yeah, they don’t really talk about kitchen table issues.

They’re mostly talking about like, I don’t know, climate and trans people. And so they then say, oh, that must mean that they talk too much about climate and trans people. They just talk different than what happened. But if you do a content analysis, it turns out that Kamala Harris was constantly talking about kitchen table issues.

She was not constantly raising trans people, that she was not constantly talking about climate. My God. And so this idea that like, yeah, they tried our thing, but like if you just try it harder next time, like surely it [00:16:00] wasn’t like even though she took our advice when we failed, it’s somebody else’s fault that’s always in there.

To me, the lesson here is really the Democratic party does not get to control what people’s impression of the Democratic Party is. This, they, had more control of that 20 or 30 years ago when we still had the broadcast media ecosystem. And you would develop sound bites that would get played on CNN, right?

Like there was a, logic of this stuff in the James Carville age that political consultants, including Centrus political consultants, really had figured out. And they know that doesn’t quite work. They don’t really know what’s replaced it. But part of what’s replaced it is social media. The other part of what’s replaced it is like, my God, right-wing billionaires have bought up both all the mainstream media outlets and all the social media outlets.

Like the reason why everyone thinks that Democrats talk about trans people all the time is that Fox News and CNN and Politico constantly talk about what are Democrats saying about trans people? Oh, they’re [00:17:00] defending their position instead of throwing ‘em under the bus, or, oh, they threw them under the bus.

Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantage

Dave Karpf: Let’s talk about that like. It th 30 years ago, there were leftists who were like, oh, the, problem is corporate media is controlling everything. And I was actually back then one of those people being like, it’s a little more complicated than that. Like, give him a break, understand the rules of the game and play towards it.

And now I find myself saying like, oh no, like Larry Ellison’s son, David just bought CBS and put Perry Weiss in charge and now he’s trying to buy CNN. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and is now saying, no, I’m going to have a very strong hand in what it says and what it does. Like the owners are now making very clear that they have an ideology and the press is only going to print that ideology.

And they’re also buying the social media companies. They can rejigger the algorithms. If you follow every word of this report, the Democrats are not going to become known for the things that deciding to win or WelcomePAC wants them to be known for. because no one will hear that. because people aren’t tuning in to watch your stump speeches, they’re not reading the party [00:18:00] platforms, they’re getting incidental knowledge of, the party from what they’re sort of vaguely seeing in the background.

And all that is getting set by a bunch of sent billionaires who like Trump or at least want to serve Trump and are buying up all the outlets. Like you gotta compete with that.

Matthew Sheffield: You do. Yeah. And and that’s one of the central points in, my new ebook what Republicans know, like, so as from my own, experience in Republican politics they’re just, they have been so much better at politics because, and they have to be because, you, they’re, these reactionary positions are hated by most Americans.

Like most Americans want to protect social security, They want to have civil rights. They, they, want have Medicare. They want to have, they, want to have jobs programs, they want to have education, student loans, and, they want all these things and they want to protect the environment.

Yes. In fact, they do. And and so they’ve, had to, Republicans had to home or reactionary Republicans after they. After they took over, the party [00:19:00] really had to develop an infrastructure for themselves. And, that’s something that in the US left, that just hasn’t been done.

And, it’s because as I have the graph graphs in my, in the book that, like the Republican ecosystem is circular, every piece of it creates new inputs for the next step. So the activists are created by the media. The media created by the parties, funded by the parties, and then the parties are funded by the donors, and the donors come from the activists.

And so whereas, and in the democratic side of things, they’re blowing more than half their money on TV ads local TV ads, like, but number one, young adults are not watching local television at all. Like,

Dave Karpf: people aren’t watching tele like it is. Only my parents’ generation are watching live television for anything other than dancing with the Stars and live sporting events. Like, no, no one just turns on NBC anymore.[00:20:00]

Matthew Sheffield: No. No, they don’t. and then, the wor even worse of this strategy an even worse aspect of this strategy is that many of these local stations are owned by right-wing billionaires. So the Democratic party is literally funding right wing media.

That’s what they’re doing. And they’ve been doing it for decades now.

Like if you add up all the amounts over the, decades, like just, since Obama, they have given Sinclair Fox and Nexstar more than $1 billion.

Dave Karpf: Yeah, And again, I, what stands out to me is like to me, this is a failure of planning for the medium term instead of the short term. Because in the short term, I can understand you need to win an election. If the audience is, if the audience you’re trying to hit is on local television, you gotta go spend on local television.

Read them [00:21:00] like go win the election. because that’s going to determine the shape of the next two years. And you do need to do that. The problem is that’s kind of only what they do. Like the, way that I remember sort of coming to this realization since I’ve been in politics and organizing since the nineties like I remember in 1998 people talking after the congressional election about how well we really need to build party infrastructure at the state and local level.

And Republicans are doing that. They’re running people for school board. We need to do that too. And everyone agreed like, oh yeah, we should do that. Then 2006, 2008, we’re still having that same conversation as though it’s a new conversation. And even at times, people would launch initiatives and those initiatives would get some funding and they would get some interest.

And those initiatives would last like four years, six years, show some results. But

Matthew Sheffield: Dean, actually to his

Dave Karpf: yeah, I mean, Howard,

Matthew Sheffield: state strategy.

Dave Karpf: right, he, like, he did it. So it’s not that we’ve never even tried it, but when we try that, [00:22:00] it doesn’t last for very long because the, impulse to defund that and put all of the money just into the short term thing means that we never build up that media infrastructure.

Political parties need permanent infrastructure

Dave Karpf: We never developed that party infrastructure. Like it just ends up being sort of a hollow party organization and hollow media outlets where like you, every two years they’re like, oh, let’s go find some social media influencers to talk to, like. You need to spend a decade creating a pipeline so you can have your own Ben Shapiros and then eventually like try to have your own real equivalence of like CNN and the Washington Post.

Now that the Republicans have bought those too, that requires both a lot of money and a lot of commitment, but also a lot of time and planning up for the medium term or even the long term instead of just thinking, what are we going to do in the next two years?

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, it isn’t that there is not the money for this though. That’s the other thing. So, in, in the, between [00:23:00] the, hard campaign direct donations and dark money groups, Kamala Harris had more than $2 billion at her disposal. And the New York Times reported that, she was getting so much money and that they were basically desperate to spend it.

So they were just literally buying any random thing that they could, advertising that they could. So they, they blew a million dollars on the Las Vegas sphere advertising and, they did drone shows and, and instead of just giving that money to local parties and say, Hey, this is for you to use for the next four years, any way you see for.

Do it, and, and, that’s the kind of time commitment that they need, and the same thing like with, like you mentioned Ben Shapiro, like his Daily Wire website that was funded by Ted Cruz’s top donors, that they were directed to fund it because they had basically maxed out [00:24:00] as much as they wanted to give to him directly.

So then the, cruise people were like, Hey, go fund this new daily wire thing. And so they did, and they, and they stuck with it and it worked

for

him.

Dave Karpf: Part of the difficulty here is. There, there is the money for it if we’re counting what comes in elections. But I think particularly since a lot of that money is small donor money and small donors tend to show up only when there’s an emergency and you need the cavalry, like the lack of like a handful of centi-billionaires.

Like I, again, this is a, like a dream from 15 years ago, but one of my dreams 15 years ago was, wow. It would be incredible if some of the old climate activists who went and started clean energy companies, like if they got exceptionally rich, it would be amazing to go to them and say like, Hey, we need money for organizing and trainings.

because they would get it because they used to do that work. Like if we could just have more good billionaires who [00:25:00] understood organizing infrastructure and media infrastructure and valued it, then that medium term problem gets more easily solved. Whereas the challenge here is even though there, there’s enough money for it, if you could sort of hand of God a portion of it better, like part of the challenge is that there isn’t as much funding in between election cycles.

And that’s where it really hurts that, it’s like, like Michael Bloomberg will fund some stuff, but, and like George Soros will fund some stuff. Pierre Mjr will fund some stuff. But we’re, you’re talking about a handful of names who are usually single digit billion dollars. Bloomberg is double digits, I guess.

Like the sheer aggregation of money. Like towards people who were libertarians and so they invested in crypto 15 years ago and have ridden that wave has just made it so that there’s like the funding pie for people with large piles of money who will invest, can invest on a 10 year basis, I think has gotten more and more slanted in a way that just makes me [00:26:00] depressed.

Like it’s not that it’s impossible, but like the playing field keeps on getting more tilted while the need to do something about this. Like to, have donors act something in the long term gets more, becomes more of an emergency.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I, and that’s a very realistic and important point to make. But, and it does also indicate though the, need for a more populist rhetorical and policy stance on the part of the party. I mean, and, that, that does, there is a, big difference. Probably the biggest difference between the Republican ecosystem, the democratic ecosystem, is that the Republican donor CL class and activist class they’re not loyal to the party per se. They’re actually loyal to their ideology. And so the Republican party is their vehicle, whereas the people who donate to the Democratic party tend to be donating it to the Democratic party or as [00:27:00] a charity, sort of. I’m helping civil society, so that’s why I’m giving this money. They don’t have a specific, and, this is probably why, these more partisan type groups like Searchlight or like, WelcomePAC that they don’t have, like, they, they’re specifically trying to make almost a, post ideological politics.

But that’s not possible. And, I don’t think that they get that. Because, for the people who pay them, that’s what they want. They absolutely seem to want that. But we don’t live in that world and maybe we never did it.

Dave Karpf: Yeah. It’s also, I mean, if there’s two things I’ll grant, the snarky thing I’ll say is there’s always going to be money in telling large donors, Hey, like, here is a magic wand. If people just use these phrases or just elect these proper candidates, then we will all be saved. I’m going to share these [00:28:00] insights with you.

You are so smart, you’ll get it. Give me money and we’re going to get it done. And when it doesn’t work, again, it’s the like, it’s the reverse sc we do where they can say, ah, it would’ve worked if not for. Those goddamn activists who got, now they’re calling ‘em the groups. Oh, the group’s got in the way, but it’ll work next time.

because we’re going to get the groups out of here and then we’ll do it. Which is like, they kind of want a smaller and smaller democratic party until it’s small enough for them to control. And like guys, that’s not going to win in the mass, elections. I’m sorry. So like there’s that bit, which is like mean of me, but I think true the other bit, and here, like I’ll, criticize myself a bit.

Donors do want, I mean, particularly rich donors do want to hear a story that tells them, here’s how we’re going to win, right? Like, here is the realistic thing. If you give money to this thing, I really believe, and I can show you in a slide deck that it is going to produce results and it’s all fixable.

Like, I, am up in arms looking around at the current media system as it gets, [00:29:00] bought out from under us saying this is just going to make. An already hard job, even harder. And the pro, like the easy solution there is we need liberal sent billionaires to start buying up media out outlets too.

And the problem is that there aren’t any media liberal sent billionaires, right? Like, there, there are some billionaires, but there the other side has more money than we do. And so I’m left sort of calling attention to the problem. But if someone were to say to me like, okay, give me a five step plan and if we do it, we’re going to win.

I would’ve real trouble there because realistically like what I like realistically, everything’s bad and I, can mostly just say like, here are all the ways that everything’s really bad, that’s depressing. And people would rather hear the WelcomePAC. People say like, no, if we just elect moderate candidates in every district and never mention climate change or trans people or like anything else that, bums.

[00:30:00] Centris who aren’t paying attention out, then we’ll win on a landslide. Totally. And it’s like, guys, you’re run, like if moderates demanded that much, then Donald Trump wouldn’t be the president, like the man, bulldozed the East wing of the White House during a government shutdown. And people are like, yeah, but I don’t know.

Democrats seem a little too liberal to me. Like if Democrats seem a little too liberal to you when that’s happening, what that’s largely telling us is you’re not learning about politics by closely watching the President and the Democrats. You’re learning about it through a background information ecosystem, which is now wholly owned by conservatives.

Matthew Sheffield: That’s lying to you.

Dave Karpf: Yeah.

Matthew Sheffield: Well, I mean, so I would, I mean, I agree with that analysis except for the point about more money. So, again, if you look at the Brennan Center’s reporting and open secrets there’s actually more democratic money. Now whether, but, there is an asterisk. There is an asterisk in the Elon Musk, [00:31:00] buying Twitter for $44 billion doesn’t technically count as a campaign experience. So, expenditure. So like I grant that. So my point being though, like just in terms of hard campaign cash Democrats because of a more engaged and fired up base, actually they, the base wants to do big things.

They would like somebody to offer them opportunities to give to something big. Lots of things. I mean, like, we don’t even have a, TPUSA alternative. What the hell? And. No, but it’s not, also not youth focused either. Like, and I like, and I’ll say like, I like invisible and I like what they’re doing, but that can’t be our only thing.

And and that’s, that is another core difference I think between the US left and the right that, I can see uniquely having been inside both of them. Is that in the right, they believe in they don’t believe in [00:32:00] centralization except under the leader of the, presidential leader.

That’s it. In terms of operational centralization, they don’t do it.

There’s, D-P-U-S-A, but there’s also, four or five other right-wing youth oriented groups. And they are all out there doing things and they all have conferences and they’re all giving people jobs and they’re all helping people earn in livelihood.

And then the same thing is true on the media. Like they’re, people who have money they stick to. Their things and don’t expect instant profitability out of them the way that Air America or current TV was. It, they expect them to make a profit or, you look at a lot of the left oriented media like Huffington Post or Daily Beast or Salon or bunch of these websites, they’re owned by corporations.

And they’re not necessarily, those corporations are not necessarily interested in our values. And so, the [00:33:00] grassroots I think would love a more directional oriented media. But, nobody’s presenting that to them. I.

Dave Karpf: Well, and, and there is, I think there’s some really great stuff out there. It is all characteristically small, right? Like the challenge. And part of the challenge is when it gets big. If you have a media operation and it gets really big, then private equity might just decide to come and buy it from you for way too much money.

Right? And then we need like to have people who decide to say no to the big check and hope that they’re not public. So they’re public, then they can, get tossed out anyway. And these days, if you get really big, then the Trump administration might try to sue you out of existence in a court that, has a judge will just say yes to them, right?

Like they, there’s a thousand different ways that they can now try to weaponize the state against you when they get too big. All of which is very depressing of me, which is the reason why I’m a terrible person to bring to parties. But I would say is like that, doesn’t mean that nobody’s doing interesting things.

It means that right now there’s a thousand pretty small, really cool [00:34:00] flowers, brooming. The challenge of scale. What happens once you go from audiences of tens of thousands to audiences of tens of millions is that the challenges get, get a lot more difficult and a lot harder to see the way through of them.

Particularly when, I mean it’s, been less than a year since Trump won his election, certainly less than a year of him being in office. Like things are falling apart pretty quick and what we really want is good answers. Now. So like my, technological solution to all of this continues to be time travel.

I’m going to start a time travel company investments. because I think with the time machine, I’m going to go back to the 1980s, fix the tax code and from that boom, everything’s going to be better. But lacking on technological solution, everything’s like, it’s not that nobody’s doing good work, it’s that all the really good work is too small for what we need right now.

And it’s hard to see how it’s going to get bigger, at least in the timeline that we have.

Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well one of the, other unique [00:35:00] challenges I think of the left compared to the right is that the, everybody on the left wants agreement on everything. So, and that, I feel like to some degree that harm has harmed me sometimes in that I don’t especially particularly, line up exactly with any faction.

And so that I get, people off, people are, get angry at me because I’m like, well, Gaza wasn’t a really much of a factor in 2024. But then at the same time, I’m perfectly willing to say that WelcomePAC, they, should have polled about Gaza now because everybody else who’s polled on it has certainly found that a majority of Democrats, think that Israel has committed a genocide and, that they’re, that they should have their aid cutoff.

So like, that’s a report supposedly about the Democratic coalition probably should have polled on that one. Kind of, kind of bad that they didn’t. but, aside from that though, like, the, there’s just like in the Republican side, as long as you support Trump, they will let you [00:36:00] debate anything else inside of the coalition.

So, they, like, I mean they, as we’re seeing right now as we’re recording this on on Halloween that, the, Republican Party is having an active debate right now. Whether to have an open Nazi Nick Fuentes in their coalition and whether it’s okay to associate with a Nazi. Like that’s the level of extreme openness that they have.

Now, obviously we don’t want to have Nazis in our coalition o open Nazis, but at the same time, if somebody has a different viewpoint from you on taxation or on, any given issue, you probably shouldn’t try to throw them out on your ear, on their ear because they don’t a hundred percent agree with you.

And, Republicans seem to get that better, I think.

Dave Karpf: So I’m going to push back on that a little, which is.

The, that premise of so long as you 100% back Trump means that like, like nothing else matter. Like the reason why they can [00:37:00] debate should we let Nick Fuentes in, like into the party in good standing? And it seems like they’ve just come down on and Yes. Which like I’m aghast by, but also not entirely surprised.

But the reason why they can do that is because like they can disagree about everything. So long as they all agree that whatever Donald Trump says today is what they believe on whatever he’s decided matters. Like, besides that, they’re just sort of arguing like color and shade preferences for the drapes, right?

Matthew Sheffield: Well, they don’t have policies. I think that’s fair.

Dave Karpf: Right. So like, like Democrats can disagree with each other. Like I, I’m a basketball fan and I really don’t like the Boston Celtics, and I really like Boston Celtics fans to know that I do not like their team, that I find their team being morally reprehensible, like I like to make a big deal about it.

The Democratic Party Coalition obviously includes me and Celtics fans, despite me finding that objectionable because in every way that [00:38:00] matters. My disagreement about BAS basketball like is meaningless. that’s, just like ways to pass the time and the Republican Party Coalition. because we’ve seen it over the past decade, right?

Like one of the most important differences between Trump won and Trump two is Trump won, still had people who disagreed with Trump, right? He had like members of the joint chiefs of staff who said, no, we’re not going to have our, like military try to fire on protestors like domestic protestors, right?

He had, John McCain turning down his signature healthcare bill. So like he had a number of people in the party coalition who were not the Trump faction. And in the intervening years, like I remember during the, Biden years, one thing that I was yelling about and I was. In retrospect quite right to yell about it, to be mad about it was they drummed Liz Cheney out of the party, right?

Like she’s running for reelection. She couldn’t even use the win red fundraising system when she was running as an incumbent for reelection because they had decided you are a critic of Trump and that means you are not actually [00:39:00] a Republican despite being Liz Cheney. That purification, once they have reduced the party coalition to just like, like, aggressively positive Trumpists, they can disagree about everything else.

because everything else doesn’t matter. Democrats can disagree with each other on stuff that doesn’t matter. But what makes it hard is that since we still care about policy, there’s so many things that matter and that makes the disagreement like much harder. And also, let’s be honest, within the party coalition, many of us can be total assholes about it, which is also not great, but how it works.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.

Yeah. I mean that, that nihilism that Republicans have, definitely it, can be an advantage for them. But I think it also can be a

Dave Karpf: cult, a lot of things would be easier. Like the problem is we would be a cult, but it would be a lot easier. Like if all of us were just devoted to one dear leader, then many things would be simpler. The problem is we would be devoted to one dear leader, and that would be very bad, and also makes it hard to actually govern effectively.

But lots of simplicity. Sure.[00:40:00]

Matthew Sheffield: Well, that’s true. And but at the same time, yeah, like at the same time just airing these disagreements. I think that’s. That’s what doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened in the left side of the aisle outlet. A lot of people will have this idea, well, so and so has a different view about this, so therefore I won’t allow them to be on my podcast, or I won’t, quote them in my story.

and that’s not acceptable. And, it’s certainly not a way to resolve your differences and to, grow the party. Because again, like if, you’re trying to cast out people who disagree with you, then you’re going to end up with a very small party eventually. And so that’s where I would say that, we don’t have to say it doesn’t matter these disagreements, but we have to say, look, I am entitled to my belief and you’re entitled to your belief.

And, but we’re united in trying to stop authoritarian, Christ of fascism, and that’s the, like, that, that negative polarization, I think is, or negative partisanship is, [00:41:00] that’s a very strong component that the Republican Party has. And I think that has to be imported more and taught more within advocacy media on the left, because I think to, to a very large degree, whether it’s with WelcomePAC or when you read, Jacobin or these other ones, like in their viewpoint almost all their content that they’re directing is attacking the other side of, their party coalition member.

and like, that’s, not how you win. You don’t have to agree with them. and I would also say like with regard to campaign effectiveness strategy, when we’re, what we’re seeing is that being effective and working hard and being quick on your feet with social media and saying yes.

These are not ideological viewpoints because the where Momani is doing it very well in New York, but also, Gavin Newsom’s doing pretty well on social media as well. So like, and, people are liking what they’re seeing, from him in Pritzker. And so ideology isn’t the barrier here. I don’t [00:42:00] think it’s, competence and openness.

Dave Karpf: Yeah. I think there’s still an element. I, to me there’s a shift in like, competence has always mattered. The bit that matters more. I think like Pritzker, I, talked to some about Greg Sargent about this yesterday. Pritzker really, I think of all the governors understands the assignment and that’s both because he’s standing up for his, for values, but also because he’s standing up for them in moments that will actually extend beyond the attentive public.

Right? Like he, he made a demand of Christy Noam saying, can you have ice take the weekend off of gassing our children for Halloween so they can go to their Halloween parades? And then she was like, no, absolutely no, we’re, going to be out there and like. Then becomes a story. And I think sort of figuring out how to craft stories for this moment when all of media is fracturing and collapsing is I think the new challenge.

Whereas I like you’re right about competence. That’s also sort of like when I teach classes on this stuff, [00:43:00] we, the first half of the semester is the evergreen stuff that would’ve been true in the nineties and is still true today, or was true then is true now. And then the second half is all the stuff that has gotten weird and new now.

And so I think that there’s a bit, there’s a bit there of like the competence part has always been important and always been difficult. And then there’s some new difficulties that we don’t really have figured out.

The perils of thinking that polling alone is political science

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and, to that, or to that point, one of the other challenges I think that there, there’s a real divide between democratic political operatives and political scientists. I think because Democratic strategists like to say that they’re data driven, but when you look at the things that they write and like, and, I’m not, this WelcomePAC report is one of many examples I could cite, but, just putting a bunch of polls in a document, like that’s not data analysis.

I’m sorry to tell you [00:44:00] guys. That’s not how this works. And like. And so after this, I mean, a couple of the New York Times tried to try to say, well, moderate candidates do better and here’s why. and they just keep getting lacerated by actual data scientists. And it’s just like they think that they’re doing data, but it’s not data.

because if you’re not understanding the ultimate cause of something, then when you poll about the proximate cause, or you’re relying on self-identification, like within social science, self-identification, it’s like several steps down from what is a good indicator of somebody’s behavior or somebody’s opinion.

And I, I just, I don’t see these things being known in Democratic politics.

Dave Karpf: So I, have two things to say. One is, yes, I agree. Like there’s definitely an element to this report of like. They get enough correlations that if they like group together [00:45:00] enough correlations, they can be like, oh, causation. And it’s like, guys, that’s really,

Matthew Sheffield: No.

Dave Karpf: I think I’ll say in the defense is like the, political scientists who lacerated that New York Times report that’s Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach.

And like, I like, I’m a mid-tier political scientist, like my PhD is in political science. I’m a tenured professor. I’m pretty good at the stuff that I do. I think like Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica are so much better at this stuff than I am. So it is like. Like the, thing I want to say in defense of the political practitioners is, this is like saying, oh, you think that you can play basketball?

Well, there’s Victor Ana, and it’s like, well, you can’t play against him. Like, no, you can still play. It’s just some people are extremely good. Like tho those two guys are so fucking good at data and like serious data analysis that takes causation seriously in ways that I can read and understand. But like, I couldn’t pull that off either.

And like, I’m an actual, like, I’m an actual political scientist. I’m so impressed by those guys. So like, I [00:46:00] do want to note like the, like these guys are going up against world class political scientists, not just sort of like everyday like Dave Karpfs of the world. Like when I can wreck your data analysis, that’s really embarrassing for you when Adam Monica wrecks your data analysis, it’s like, ah, you, went up against a pro. That happens.

And like the, also the critique of political scientists is we can do tremendous data analysis focused on causality. Often are left with very little to practical to say about, well, here’s the thing that you actually need to do today.

Like, my career has mostly been about trying to bridge those two worlds and understand the serious data analysis well enough to be able to say, here’s the practical, pragmatic stuff to focus on. Or sometimes just saying there isn’t anything to focus on it. They’re, right, but you can’t do anything about it.

So like that gap is there and it’s real. But yeah. Also there’s a bit of play acting in this report where like there’s a lot of charts to really impress you of how much data they gathered. And it’s like, these are all correlations that you decided to look for. you’re missing all the hard stuff.[00:47:00]

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, there’s plenty of other correlations somebody could find too, on the opposite side. And and, but it does I mean, speaking of. Really good political scientists. So Lee, Drutman has weighed in on this report as well. And, one of the things that, that he had said was that, that when you look at the, variance between a house candidate and the presidential race in their district and a senate and, the race in their district, what you find is that 98% of all house races have the same margin outcome as the presidential race in their district.

And 91% or 92%, I forget which one of Senate races have the same outcome as the presidential race in their district. And so what this means basically is that the, larger political environment is so baked in that campaigns [00:48:00] mostly do not matter. Is what that means. And so if you actually really, and this, goes back to what we’ve been saying in this with regard to media effects in the environment, is that to really have a large agenda setting viewpoint to actually massively change America, you have to focus on the bigger picture.

Because telling candidates to say this or that, it just doesn’t work. And the numbers are there that it doesn’t work.

Dave Karpf: Yeah. I mean the, when I was in grad school, the big debate in this field was do campaigns matter? And the outcome of that was they do, but only in, like, only at the very tiniest margins. And we now live in an age where elections tend to be raised or thin. And so campaigners can say like, yeah, but the margins where the power are, so let’s pour all this money and energy into doing it.

And then Lee comes along and says, like, or you could change the entire electoral system and make it not so stupid. And he’s, right about that. And, I’m coming along and saying, maybe worry about the media system because that’s a dramatic [00:49:00] effect going in the wrong direction. And that’s right.

But you know, if you say to Lee like, great, how do, how are we going to do that this year? Then his answer is like, it’s, going to take longer than a year. And if you were to ask me like, Ooh, are we going to do it? I need a time machine, which is like, right. Kind of funny, but not at all helpful. But no, like in, in the, like if you want to fix democracy, you’re not going to do it with just the right candidates saying just the right stu speeches, like, we know that’s not the case.

So like, again, my takeaway is not like, oh, they’re wrong. You need to do leftist candidates up, up and down the board. My takeaway is like, my God, stop talking about stump speeches and party platforms and just the right candidate profiles. There’re all these bigger things that matter more. We need to actually pay attention to them.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Or to put it much more crudely, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or rather change the game because like, that’s, that I think is the diff, like it was very damaging that the and I’d have nothing against him. But Sasha Issenberg’s [00:50:00] book, The Victory Lab, it excessively valorize the opinions of people about these campaign operatives and made people think that they were more expert than what they were. Because while we can have actual data about politics, especially in the presidential realm, the n is so tiny that really there’s nothing you can say about it that with any real confidence.

And so that is, so there really are limits in terms of what data can give you and what you can know from it. And that’s the difference between the analogy that was Moneyball for baseball, that this politics as Moneyball.

Well, no it isn’t because in baseball, you have the rules and that’s it. And you have to play with the rules. There’s not going to be another base added. You know, they’re not going to let you have two pitchers. They’re not going to let you have two batters to hit the same pitch. That’s not happening. But guess what? In politics, [00:51:00] you can change the rules.

And that’s the difference between having I call it data and mirage essentially, that they’re, chasing data mirage. And, it’s, so, it’s, not to say that nothing is possible or nothing is real. It’s to say that changing the larger, changing the shape of the river matters more than chasing the current.

Dave Karpf: Yeah, I, so I do want to say I have always loved The Victory Lab. I still teach The Victory Lab. I think like I, I like Sasha’s book a lot.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I have nothing against him, but yeah.

Dave Karpf: And, but like the thing that I agree with you on is I now teach it as a moment in time to sort of explain there was, a like, I think he was accurate to the time at, that time many people, including myself, really believed that we are bringing science to campaigning.

It’s, it is the data scientists against the James Carville to like bring us back to being and to bring against the James Carvilles of the world [00:52:00] and having data science on your side, like running these experiments and AB tests and everything is going to matter. And it’s not that you shouldn’t do ab tests or experiments anymore, but there’s a humility that’s said in the past 10 years of oh, even if that’s helpful, that’s helpful within some strict limits. because the, the party that does that more is not winning. They’re not necessarily winning all the close elections and all of their findings end up being time bound. Right. Like the, thing that worked really well in 2012 doesn’t necessarily work well in 2016 because of the changing media environment or some other changes to the environment.

So like, I do love that book, Sasha. If you’re, if Sasha happens to be listening, like, man, still a real fan. And also like it’s a book that when I teach it, I have to sort of explain to students like, this is what it was like in 2012.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and again, it just, it all comes back to the, low number of ends. And so there are [00:53:00] things that we can induce and things that are true within an iteration, but whether they’re true across iterations, all bets are off and you shouldn’t make any.

Dave Karpf: Yeah.

Conclusion

Matthew Sheffield: yeah. And so, and that’s, you know that, I don’t know, excessive faith in data like that is something that you did. So you, had a, blue sky thread responding to the WelcomePAC report in which you also converted into a New Republic article. So, I mean, in terms of, are there specific points from the report that, we haven’t covered here yet that you think we should on this

Dave Karpf: No, I, think we’ve handled, we’ve hit the, big points, right? Like the main thing is. If you just read their executive summary, they are stating upfront that what they want is more moderate candidates who deprioritize climate trans people like, like social issues or social identities. And instead talk about sort of bread [00:54:00] and butter kitchen table.

They want the Democratic party to be anti elite, but not in a way and like, like, like anti corporations and rich people, but like not sound at all socialist. It sounds very sort of blue rose coded like popularist. Figure out what. Phrases sound good to people, and then say them a lot and just wait for everybody to then like you.

And that’s a model of politics that imagines that the public is paying attention to you like they are in their focus groups. And that model is just not the way the world actually works, right? Like people’s impression of the Democratic party does not come from your stump speeches or your platforms.

It comes from their incidental information that they’re getting through their social media streams and, like rant TV on in the background. So like at some point it just really bugged me, this report, it’s not, again, like I don’t want to engage in the fight over like, should we be sound, sound more leftist or more, right?

Like I, I think that’s the wrong argument to be having and it’s kind of the easy argument to have is fighting [00:55:00] over, what do we, what words come out of the party’s mouths? And instead, I really think people need to have the harder conversation about how do you build up infrastructure to actually compete in a world where the other side has an infrastructure advantage that keeps on getting bigger.

Matthew Sheffield: Well, because ultimately your message doesn’t matter if no one can hear it.

Dave Karpf: Yeah, no one can hear it. And if instead they’re hearing like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes characterizing your message, then it really doesn’t matter what words you decided to say. People are going to hear their version of your words.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. and in many cases doesn’t even require your words. Like, that’s, the other thing that I think that the popularist do not get, and when they downplay media, because, as we saw with the, in 2024 that, JD Vance forwarded a complete lie about Ohio, that people were eating cats and dogs that immigrants were eating cats and dogs. This was not happening. [00:56:00] And obviously the Democrats were not in favor of people eating cats and dogs. None of this had anything to do with either the Democrats or reality, and yet it was still something that Republicans were talking about constantly and, using to mobilize their party. So, so this, it is infrastructure matters.

In, this day and age, it matters so much more because there is no central media node anymore. The mainstream media is irrelevant to most Americans. Now, they might be sort of the grist for the mill that all of these, so like Joe Rogan, or any of these podcasters or even Fox, like, they constantly are like, oh, the New York Times, we did a report about X.

So like it, but it’s just, for their mill. Like they’re not telling you what the time said in their report. So fixating on what the time says in their headlines about this or that. It’s not really going to help very much, I don’t think. Like if you are really upset about the times, then you need [00:57:00] to be bankrolling more media.

That’s what you need to do. All right. Well, man, I actually, I’m surprised we actually hit this so tight. Dave let me see here. Surely. Okay, I’m going to obviously cut this part out here, so, oh. Okay. Actually let’s maybe end on, let’s, so just to circle back to something in the final segment here as we wrap up I want to go back to something that, that I raised in the beginning, which is that, that the activist and donor class of each party.

Has different priorities than the public does. And that this is another reason why you have to spread your message. Like, I think there’s a significant advantage that re Republicans have, and this is wasn’t mentioned in the WelcomePAC report, all which is religion. Republican religion [00:58:00] is their local organizing method.

and, that’s, the indivisible is absolutely great, but I want, like five or six things that are out there that are like them and that are targeting different groups. and, to people’s credit, I like people are having to do this with regard to like ice watch things.

And and some people are, raising that mutual aid organizations, but like. These things would work a lot better if, the political class of the Democratic Party would get behind them. And people would really love it. Like, we’re, it, we’re, talking about right now with the shutdown, federal snap food benefits are, Trump’s going to cut them off?

I mean, it would be so incredibly useful if there was money that had been set aside that, could have just been used to give to families to feed their, to feed themselves and to, and then give ‘em a, pamphlet or something.

Dave Karpf: Yeah, it what it brings to mind is an old organizing an [00:59:00] old saying which is that every problem is an organizing opportunity. And, that’s sort of like a, gallows optimism note to end on is if nothing else, 2025 and I expect 2026 are chockfull of organizing opportunities. Everything is getting worse, right?

Like turns out federal workers are now probably going to need to go to food banks because they’ve shut down the government for a month and he seems to show no interest in opening it back up. That’s an organizing opportunity. We would rather have fewer of them, but the least we can do is try to build organization that can then serve as counter power.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And absolutely. And like as Republicans attack civil society through that’s government run, there’s an opportunity to step in and make it more explicitly ideological civil society organizations.

And the same thing’s true on the internet, as these billionaires are actively trying to [01:00:00] enact “dead internet,” that’s an opportunity for small communities and for people to create the “cozy web” as my friend Venkatesh Rao calls it. And I think that’s right. This is an opportunity for cozy web politics.

But it still sucks. Like, I’m not going to say it doesn’t, but this is the—I think this is the only way forward.

Dave Karpf: Yeah, I think that’s right.

Matthew Sheffield: All right. Well, well, it’s a conversation that that we will, we’ll have to be thinking about that in the days, weeks, years, et cetera, to come. So, but

Dave Karpf: Should be continued. Yeah.

Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. All right. Well, good to have you back, Dave.

Dave Karpf: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Matthew Sheffield: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you like what we’re doing, we have. Free and paid subscriptions on Patreon and also on Substack.

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