Beyond Politics

Josh Schwerin is a communications veteran among Democrats, and it sure seems like they need one right now. A former press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he served as the National Spokesman for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and as the Senior Strategist and Director of Communications for Priorities USA, the biggest Democratic outside advocacy group and political action committee, where he played a big role in figuring out how to spend $153 million in advertising in the 2020 political cycle, and what to say with all that money. He’s also a veteran of the Terry McAulliffe political operation, which makes him the perfect person to talk about where we are now, and what Democrats need to do in the coming year.

The degree to which President Biden can sell his agenda to the American public maybe the single most important factor in driving the politics of the coming years.  Many analysts have compared President Joe Biden's legislative plans for America to the Great Society program of President Lyndon Johnson -- widely regarded as the most ambitious set of social investments in American history. With the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Joe Biden's signature social investment program, the Build Back Better agenda, waiting in the on-deck circle, it appears the President Biden is on track to make that comparison very real. But will the public end up supporting these achievements, and will they reward Democrats politically for them? After all, don't parties in power use their position, especially the position of the President, to sell their ideas to the public and then reap the rewards by touting their achievements? The answer is no. In fact, we may be thinking about how this works all wrong. Dr. George Edwards is Distinguished Professor and the Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies at Texas A & M University, and he has analyzed hundreds of public opinion polls.  He finds that actually, Presidents are usually unsuccessful at wielding the so-called bully pulpit.  They are frequently unable to move public opinion at all.

Matt appears on The Watchdog with Howard Monroe to run through what actually happened in the elections last week and whether it was really all that surprising. Also, what will it take to win in 2022, how much will passing BBB matter, and Weird Al Yankovic!

Adnaan Muslim is one of the most sought-after campaign consultants in America. A top counselor to Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Raphael Warnock and Boston mayor-elect Michelle Wu, Adnaan joins the show to explain what happened last Tuesday, how Dems can fight the CRT and education messaging from Republicans, what the path to a fighting chance in 2022 looks like, and what his favorite Elizabeth Warren stories are. 

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money, the #1 stock investing radio show in America, returns from a summer break spent dominating the airwaves on his own show to talk about the biggest moves and most puzzling questions in the business world.  What's driving the Meta shift?   Why on Earth is Microsoft back on top? And has anyone figured out the new Hollywood model? Plus, wing-chef robots????

Today, we’re going to take you on a journey down into some of the most insidious, infuriating, and un-American skulduggery that has gone on in this country. And then, we’re going to talk about how we’ve started to turn the tide, and how maybe, maybe we can finish the job. Our guide on this trip is David Daley. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and the author of two recent books, one that takes us on the journey down, the other that takes us on the journey back: Ratf**ked and Unrigged. This is the explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting, and how a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters’ revelations might provide a blueprint for what must be done to keep American democracy afloat.

I do a regular show with financial advisor Mike Morton about personal financial planning.  Today, he and I got into a bit more of a politics, policy, and tax discussion around the idea that we could tax the ultra-rich to pay for social investments. It's a conversation about practical politics, how hard t is to come up with a rational tax policy, and how the ultra rich avoid our best efforts to get them to pay their fair share. 

Far more than the high-profile antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan—and yes, even bigger than Donald Trump’s "Big Lie”—our guest today says that it is anonymous, often corrupt politicians in statehouses across the country who pose the greatest dangers to American democracy. Our old friend David Pepper is the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Born and raised in Cincinnati, he’s served in city and county offices, run statewide in Ohio, and has a law degree from Yale. But he’s also an accomplished author of works that are eerily prescient about American politics. He's written Laboratories of Autocracy, a chilling new account of just how bad things have gotten at the state level, and what we can do to fix it. 

The way we run political campaigns has changed drastically in the last two decades. Today, political campaigns spend three times more money and leverage far more sophisticated data and media tools, paired with an unnerving amount of information on voters. But those extraordinary powers have mostly been used not to have a more nuanced, persuasive public conversation, but to stoke outrage and election turnout. It is possible to argue that way we run campaigns has been a huge factor in how angry, divided, and dysfunctional our country has become. Today, guest Michael Cohen – author of Modern Political Campaigns – argues that a “Moneyball”-like search for smarter ways to win might actually drag American politics back away from the extremes and toward a more reasonable center.  He also explains how the role of political parties has changed, what is working and not working in campaigns today, and whether things like yard signs are ever helpful to winning.

Matt talks about his recent Newsweek op-ed with West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe of The Watchdog.  Will Trump run in 2024 (yes!), if he does are there any good outcomes (no!), and if the threat to America is so big, is there anything that can be done about it right now (yes!)