Factually! with Adam Conover - Our Politicians Are Too F*%#ing Old with Jake Grumbach

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Why are so many of our politicians so old? While age can bring wisdom and experience, it can also result in leaders who are out of touch with their constituents or simply no longer effective at their job. This problem has a name: the gerontocracy. This week, Adam sits down with UC Berkeley associate professor Jake Grumbach to discuss why American politicians seem to really start their careers when they reach retirement age, and explore the other issues with our democracy that stem from the same problem. Find Jake's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, you might have noticed that all of our politicians are really fucking old. It's not like it's really a secret. We just went through the depressing spectacle of watching Joe Biden power down like a toy with a dying battery before our eyes. You know, he's the oldest president to ever serve. But now that he's out, Kamala Harris is running

against Donald Trump, who would again be the oldest president to ever serve, were he to be elected. There's a word for a society that's ruled by old people, gerontocracy. And this is a long-time problem in American politics. California Senator Dianne Feinstein stayed in office well into her Weekend at Bernie phase. She died in office at age 90 after a long stretch of dementia while she served in one of the most powerful offices in the country. Not so long ago, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell seized up at a press

conference, freezing completely. But you know, at a spry 82, he will nonetheless finish out his term this year. And this has been happening for my entire lifetime and even before. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond stayed in office until he died in 2003 at the age of 98. The man was elected in 1954 when he was already 52 years old. The dude was old enough to have been a segregationist

Democrat until he switched to the Republican side to stay on the wrong side of civil rights in the 1960s. And again, he was a Senator when I was in my late teens. This problem is not just anecdotal, it is systemic, and it has been getting worse. The median age of a member of Congress is now near 60, and nearly a quarter of them are over 70. And it's not just Congress and the White House.

You better believe Supreme Court justices are clinging onto office longer as well, lest I mention Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I'm not ageist, okay? Age does bring wisdom, but it also brings decline, deterioration, and death. And youth in government is something that we obviously need more of. So, just how bad is America's gerontocracy problem?

And what is it about this country that allows us to be ruled by all these decrepit mummies when other countries don't have the same problem? Something went wrong in America, but what is it? Well, to discuss that today, we have the perfect guest, but before we get into it, I just wanna remind you that if you wanna support the show, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show,

ad free, and a bunch of other great perks as well. And if you wanna see me live, I am doing brand new material on the road right now. I'm on tour soon in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Denver, Colorado, Austin, Texas, Batavia, Illinois, San Francisco, Toronto, Chicago, Boston, and Providence, Rhode Island. Come out and see me, AdamConover.net

for all those tickets and tour dates. And now this week's guest is Jacob Grumbach. He's a political scientist at Berkeley and he has done some incredible work to explain America's gerontocracy problem and a number of other pressing issues in our political system that make America a lot less democratic than all of us would like.

So please welcome Jake Grumbach. Jake, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, big fan. Okay, so, oh, well, that's so nice of you to say. Yeah, man. Well, say that, say I'm a, I wanna enter politics. I'm 60 or 70 years old, right?

I've never opened TikTok. I don't know who Chappellrone is. I think the internet is a series of tubes, you know, I'm musty dusty. Why is it easier for me to get elected office than it is for my, you know, Gen X child or my Gen Z grandchild? Why do I have so much more electoral power than they do?

Yeah, man. So to get into politics typically, especially if you're running for federal office in the US, what you do is you make some big money at your law firm. You go to a top law school like Yale Law or Harvard Law. You do some private law practice, make big money. You have a great network of wealthy people in your social network among your friends and family, and they bankroll your first run for office, often in your 60s. And that's why sort of the average legislator in the U S is around 60 years old.

And the oldest, that's the oldest of any democracy in the world. And myself and my colleague, Adam Bonica really think that the reason that U S politicians are so old compared to those of other countries and politics is so much more responsive to old people is really the system of money and politics in the US. So it's what, once you're in your 60s,

you're just powerful enough that your friends have made a lot of money and they can bankroll you that it's a age equals power kind of dynamic? Yeah, that's most of it. So really money and politics, like how most of us interact with money and politics is like during a presidential election cycle, you

donate 20 bucks or something like that in a general election, like, you know, once Kamala Harris became the nominee office, people get hyped to donate 20 bucks and watch one of these, you know, attend one of these zooms with Kamala Harris and some supporters and donate 20 bucks. But that's not the meaningful money in politics. That's not what drives who runs for office, who wins office in the U S it's really that early seed money. So in the U S to run for office, you need this money to really file for

office and be a viable candidate and get through a primary election season. And then in this era, you know, most elections at the general election level are foregone conclusions. There's deep red places and deep blue places. So really who gets into office is determined in the primary. And really early on in the primary to be that dominant player is to have some early seed money. And in the US, you got to do that with self funding. So you become a wealthy person yourself and put a lot of money into your own campaign. And you have wealthy seed donors

that are your business partners, your friends and family that can really bankroll that initial run. That's different than sort of how running for office works in other countries and how you get picked to be somebody to run for a party nomination. Most of it. Yeah, but how does it work in other countries?

In many countries, so parties have a lot more power and they choose somebody who looks like they're going to be electorally successful rising from some sort of aligned social group in society. So like somebody who's a labor activist and rises the ranks of a labor union or something like that could be a big leader or some other community leader, like a religious, you know, somebody who's a big deal pastor in this town. And, you know, it's really popular as a community leader or a local business leader in many cases. And that's how the U.S. was for the most part. But the U.S., really importantly, not only do like need all this money and seed money to run in a primary, but also the US has a two-party

system which is really important, where it's really driven by these candidates' ability to fundraise rather than the party's ability to fundraise. And then in addition, the US just has a lot of wealth inequality across age, more than other countries. Other countries around the world with socially democratic institutions and welfare states, redistribution, spend a lot more of their budget nationally on children, on young families with children,

young families. The US, it's really dominated by older, wealthier homeowners, and that drives a lot of this inequality as well. So I wanna drill down on wealth inequality across generations. You're saying in the US, old people are more wealthy than middle-aged people are more wealthy than young people.

And some of that makes sense because you work for longer and you earn money and you invest it and whatnot. Of course, you have more later in life if you have had a successful career in any way, but that's a bigger disparity in the US than in other countries. That's right. It's bigger in the US, and that's in large part

because the US tried to do some of this, like having the child tax credit be sort of super boosted early in COVID, which is a redistributive policy to give essentially money to families with young kids. That's sunset. And programs like that are more prominent in other wealthy countries around the world. But in the US, the tax code and the welfare state overall,

the only form of universal healthcare in the US is for people over 65 in Medicare, right? Social Security, strong welfare state pension program for people over 65. That's, you know, most other countries have those. Those are great programs that have reduced like, you know, elder poverty in the US dramatically. Like those are triumphs of American civilization, but there's no corresponding program for children, young adults, and so forth. And then the bigger thing even than that is the tax code really emphasizes

homeownership in the US. So once you buy a home, you get the mortgage interest deduction. You can really grow your wealth and your home equity. And that's the big sort of cash cow and built the American middle class in a lot of ways. And exclusion from home ownership is like a big reason for racial inequality and wealth in the US through redlining and discrimination through mortgage servicers and realtors and so much. So the US is really driven by these older, tend to also be older, wealthier, whiter individuals have disposable wealth through their home ownership in a large part.

Right. And we've talked about on this show many times about the distorting effect that so many people having so much wealth in their homes has on the housing market and on wealth inequality across races. But I'm really struck by you saying that, wow, yeah, our only redistributive social programs that give money to certain people, give money to old people. You have free healthcare if you are over, if you are old,

and you just get money from the government if you're old. Not to mention that if you are that old, there's also a lot of those people who maybe had investment accounts that are finally paying off, like, oh, I'm finally drawing from my 401k, or now I'm downsizing into a smaller home, so now I got a big windfall from selling my big old house that I don't need it or

whatever. All these things are colliding to make older people wealthier, which gives them an advantage when they're running. So basically if I want to run for office when I'm 65 and I've had again, a white affluent, upper middle class career as a lawyer or whatever, I go to all my other old lawyer friends who have a lot of disposable income and I throw a big party and I say, hey, come support my campaign for House of Reps

or whatever it is, right? That's right. I'm probably the local car dealer. Exactly. I'm connected up and down throughout the town. So I understand that, how it's easier on the way in, but what is it about the fact that, you know, our actual politicians who are in office are so old

and they can't leave? I mean, you look at, you know, Biden obviously being the most prominent example where this guy has, you know, he used to be the youngest Senator in American history. Now he's the oldest president in American history. And, you know, he had to be pulled off with a cane like he was on a vaudeville stage too long

to get him out of there. And now, you know, also Trump, who did not have the long political career, is also running to be the oldest president in American history. But then, you know, this is a recurring pattern. If you look, Strahm Thurman, Dianne Feinstein. I mean, I read Robert Caro's books about LBJ.

He's got a whole chapter in this book he wrote in the 70s about the gerontocracy problem in the Senate and how you have these old dottering senators who make the institution worse, right? Like the institution doesn't function well because it's run by these old fucks who can barely hold their heads up in order to drink their soup in the Senate dining room.

So why is that? Just to, in fairness to the old fucks, I gotta say they have great taste in music. Like they created something, the boomers created incredible music as the Gen X. We don't need to be doing apologetics for boomers. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, no, I've heard it Doc I had it down my throat when I was in middle school

They and the Beatles number one, you know album with all the hits on it. Yeah I remember a I remember those like yeah the commercials with the scrolling song tiles for Beatles one. And when I'm old, I'll be like, now you young people have to listen to LCD sound system or whatever the fuck. Exactly. No, even now, my students, my Gen Z students, they I'm like trying to explain what Outcast is. And it's cool. But that doesn't mean that we should run the country, Jake. That's right. OK. Damn, you got me there. So, Adam, you made two really important points, is that older people, they run, in the US, politicians start running for office older, just like you said, after you get some money as a lawyer.

Mostly while I got to say, like, it's really almost all lawyers. That's something known since like Tocqueville, you know, described the US in the early 19th century is like, he was like, there's no American aristocracy, but damn, there's so many lawyers. And they like really one thing. So this is really a thing. Can we actually take a pause?

Cause I want to ask you about that. Cause you hear this complaint a lot that there's too many lawyers in politics. People have pointed this out about Tim Walls that he's a teacher and that would be unusual just because everybody else has been a lawyer. But if you're writing the laws, being a lawyer does kind of make sense

because you're a law, you know, the surgeon general is a doctor. So what is the problem with- You sound exactly like these lawyers. I would say, oh, we're better candidates. That's why we run more for office. And when we run, we win more for office. They say, it's because we got the skills

and the mass public wants those skills in office. There might be something to that. That's hard to test. But I would say in other countries, law works differently. The American Bar Association regulates lawyers. Lawyers regulate themselves. And judges always come from lawyers in the US,

which is not true of other countries. So it's like a self-regulating, very powerful constituency in the US. And it's very unique. Having I can't remember the exact numbers right now. But having the super majority of American federal politicians be lawyers is not typical and you do want some diversity and both class background lawyers tend to be, you know, rich or class and these are also tend to be

prosecutors and sort of corporate lawyers. It's not lawyers who are, it doesn't tend to be public defenders and other sort of public interest lawyers as much. So that's part of it, the class backgrounds and also driving that we can also tell when women and people of color started getting into Congress more, it was basically because law opened up to women. Like it tracks nearly perfectly. When the legal profession started saying we're not gonna discriminate against women as much,

then suddenly women start entering Congress too. So law really drives a lot of this. But a lot of this is because lawyers have money and give each other a lot of money when they run for office. So it's sort of like the legal community, the lawyer mafia, if you will, they're all supporting each other. There's barriers to becoming a lawyer.

There's barriers to running the office. If you haven't passed the bar, it's more difficult, et cetera. And so lawyers as a community kind of have a bit of like an industrial stranglehold on politics. Wow. There's this long debate too. So as like the Federalist Society

and sort of this conservative legal movement since the 70s and 80s has been super powerful in setting very conservative judges at all levels in American government. And the judicial, so that's part of the constitution gives a lot of power to the judicial branch through judicial review that was, you know, developed in the 19th century, but has some roots in the Constitution to where the Supreme Court in the US can really throw out Congressional laws they say are unconstitutional with no, you know There's some loose like legal theories going on But it's a lot of power politics and that's a big deal and that Supreme Court

increasingly is out of step with the preferences of the American public on things like abortion and other policies and are doing, they're really making politics these days in ways that are kind of out of step and it's a big sort of a reason for increasing minority rule in American politics and so the decline of responsiveness to majorities of Americans is in part the Supreme Court and federal judiciary. But then I also just got to say the conservative legal movement was very successful in making policy through law, like around policies like abortion

and restricting environmental and climate regulation and so forth. And one fascinating thing is like liberal normie judges, right? They have a tougher time, There's a lot more competition. There's more of them. So it's harder to get a plum job than it is if you're a conservative lawyer. And because Republicans really dominate so much of politics, they pick the very conservative

lawyers to be judges and things like that. So you're a conservative lawyer, it's easier to get a gig. There's absolutely, there's a lot of affirmative action through the political system for conservative lawyers and judges. But then beyond that, like liberals are sort of catching up where legal realism, it's called, like hardball, like basically like, okay, we can kind of make up anything to justify a ruling now where conservatives were out ahead of this and liberal justices and legal scholars kept going like, wow, like this really seems like they're not actually going with their, like they say they're like theoretical originalists and have this doctrine and jurisprudence,

but they're kind of just making things up somewhat. And then they're like, oh, we could make stuff up too, just to get our preferences into law. And there's a little movement of that. And I would say in like game theory terms, right? It's kind of worse for the whole system if one side is like, oh, they go low, we go high. That doesn't give incentives for anybody to play fair. So I actually think two teams kind of fighting it out

might be a little better than one team being like, oh, I'm so surprised. But if you look at like, you know, in criminal justice, progressive legal scholars and judges and prosecutors have a lot harder time than, there's no comparable movement of politicians who are trying to get their side installed. Instead, it's always like,

we have to make the argument on the merits and like really try to convince people. And there's no, there isn't as much gaming the system. I like the argument that if you have two groups gaming the system, right, that, you know, that might be better than only one. Oh, you see this all the time in gerrymandering. Makes a lot of my research is on gerrymandering is actually really important.

It seems kind of like voter suppression feels like more threatening, like you're really stopping the right to vote. But actually, gerrymandering has probably been more powerful in a damaging way over the past couple of decades. Partisan gerrymandering, where you say state legislative or U.S. House districts to favor one party. And I actually do think through analysis, it does look like a couple of these abortion bans in the states have been implemented by anti-abortion

conservative state legislative majorities that were elected by a minority of the electorate through a gerrymandered map. So that minority of anti-abortion voters can set the majority of a state legislature through gerrymandering with real consequences like abortion bans and other. And increasing like there's increasing tension between a state will vote for a ballot initiative and majorities, but then the legislature through a gerrymandered map, has totally more conservative preferences and might just like throw out that ballot initiative. So gerrymandering is a bigger deal than people think.

I mean, I've always thought gerrymandering is a really big deal. Not you, Adam. I would never I would never suggest that. Well, this is thank you very much, Jake. I really appreciate it. I'm I'm well on the record about gerrymandering politicians choosing their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians. Of course, there's always gonna be a little bit of that,

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Why we talked about why you have so many lawyers. Why do we have so many old fucking lawyers? Exactly, they run more when they're older, right? So that you start running for office in the US then at an older age. And when you get into office, you stay in office. And there's something like borderline cultural about that last point with the boomer generation particularly particularly where we see these examples like Dianne Feinstein,

Biden eventually did step down. But what happens is we've seen, this is like the first time in history, or at least in centuries, right? In the 20th century, like these updates to technology, public health, you know, sanitation, food quality, increased life expectancy in these wealthy countries, like a shock compared to a century or more ago. It's a huge deal. So that's the first generation where this really hit was the boomers. And not only that, they also got all those New Deal and great welfare state programs

to build the mostly white middle class in the US to own homes. So there's this shock where then the boomers had this very extended life expectancy and have all these homes and decided to not build more homes. And there's this housing crisis, especially in sort of places where people actually want to live housing suddenly more expensive. And the boomers are the ones that own those homes. And they stopped the massive construction of housing in the middle of the 20th century that they really like, you know, benefited from stopped.

So all of those together created, you know, uh, a unique situation of like, I think culturally where boomers are a new generation that's having a tough time with these new life expectancies, like trying to just be like, it's okay to retire. Um, and that really is a, that really is the thing at some point you gotta be like, why do you like, why as a person individual do not want to show with your family and like play we golf at the retirement community like he's dope. Like, yeah. Why is Mitch McConnell just want to keep showing up in the same

fucking Brooks brothers suit every single day. Do you really think somebody else can't replace you on faithfully like champion your causes? Like you really think you're uniquely skilled to be like a politician is so there's something about being a politician. That's the other thing. Like a lot of us didn't go into politics because our egos are just not quite that way. Like medicine and public health.

I mean, that has to be what it is because after a certain point, you don't need more money, you know, I think everybody read, I mean, some people are so driven by money, but I think a lot of people reach the point when they're like 65, they're like, all right. I mean, I bought everything I wanna buy. And I'd like to spend more time with my family, but if you have an ego about it, I am changing the world. I must, my career must be bigger, my career must be better.

I mean, that's what drove Biden, right? Like Biden wanted to be president since he was, became Senator in what is 20s. He wanted to be president and he was, you know, became senator in what is 20s. He wanted to be president and, you know, he finally had the chance. He like the dream never left him. And I sympathize with that to a certain extent. You know, I always admire people who die at work. You know, I think about like George Carlin is one of my idols as a comedian.

You know, he kept touring until he was dead. And there's something nice about that, but he's just a fucking comic. And he wasn't an asshole. He died a little younger than these people too. That's true, he did die. He died in what? Probably his late 60s, early 70s, I forget.

Yeah, and that's barely above average for a federal politician in the US. But why do, you know, why? So these politicians have to keep winning re-election to stay in office, right? And politicians have to keep winning re-election to stay in office, right? And they have to win the first election and both of those things make American politicians way older. And we, myself and Adam Bonica and some other collaborators, we really think money and politics really matters here. The US system of candidates

raising money, especially primary election money. And that's part of so other alternative explanations for why US politicians are so old. One is that the US has a pretty unique electoral system generally of single member districts for Congress, right? Not a proportional representation system. The US system is like single representatives represent single congressional districts or state legislative districts. So that does allow for that incumbency advantage of like you get to know your voters more. You get more media coverage. You earn more money that way with relationships to local and national businesses and all that. But it doesn't explain enough, we think, because the other Anglo countries like Australia, Canada, UK, tend to have that system as well. It's like an Anglo issue.

It's not as good of an electoral system as the continental type of proportional representation systems that give you multi-party systems. But you know, politicians in those other Anglo countries are nowhere near as old as in the US and the US actually has a younger population than most of these other aging European countries. Like US is a younger, and the mass public in surveys consistently says they want younger politicians and even the super majorities of Americans support age limits of like 70 maximum age limit for American politicians. And you know who supports that the most?

Boomers. Like it's super self-aware. And it's incredible. And yet that's not what happens in politics. So we think there's a disconnect and really the best explanation is the US campaign finance system. There's a real premium on raising money in the US. And as you age, like Dianne Feinstein, even to the late years, raised a lot of money and could redistribute it to the Democratic Party and other weaker candidates.

Nancy Pelosi is in a very safe sense. Nobody's going to beat Nancy Pelosi. No Republicans going to win that San Francisco seat. So she raises a lot of money, distributes it to her colleagues. And that's a really powerful thing to do for a party. So then you rise in the ranks in the party to be a party leader too. So that's how you also, uh, get older party leaders. And so that's why you have a situation where, I mean, I remember Feinstein, you know,

she's one of my senators here in California and like, you know, the LA times was like, you know, they're, they're, they're puppeting her around like weekend at Bernie's, you know, like it was, it was sad, right? Like articles, uh, friends relay that in conversation with Diane Feinstein, she forgets what the conversation is about stuff like that. And that was like six months before she died in office, you know, a year before she died in office and you could not get Chuck Schumer to say a word about it, right? And you would think that maybe he would, but it's because he has that reciprocal.

Like he, he is still needs the money of the machine. Right. And because politics, you know, like I don't believe that individual politicians like really are that much different than their replacements. And Feinstein was not the most consequential in terms of like what policies ended up getting passed, like they could wheel her in and she could like vote present or whatever. But she was in charge of the fucking judiciary committee for Trump's appointees. Exactly. So I was about to get to that. Yeah.

Even bigger consequences than that is like, I'm sorry, but like, you know, for my Ruth Konda forever internet people with bed and ginsburg that decision that decision was one of the most consequential elite65. That's like 30 years later than it would have been had RBG just retired and they replaced that seat. Like this is a really major decision. And the U.S. focus, I will say, another quirk of the U.S. constitutional system that creates two parties through the single member districts, it means so much of the battles over what the parties stand for is through primary elections and through what the parties are stand for, sort of intra-party things, right? And that's why you get a ton of obsession in the US that you don't in other places from party bases,

like primary voters, sort of normie liberals in the democratic base, the sort of like true believer, you know, when Kruper voters and older Republican base, you know, these people are really attuned to party management and like there's huge, why are ordinary primary voters debating like who should retire when this is, you know, this is not what like parties and voters should be doing

is all the second order strategizing like, no, and then we have to believe, you know, she was this pioneering woman in this heavily sexist field of law and all that. It's like, yeah, but this is not like we should be thinking about what parties do and what policies get implemented. And that's how, you know, political inputs should work in elections. And in the U S it's really distorted by this weird system of where so much goes to party management and everybody's got to be pundit brain Yeah, we often talk about the person and can they be convinced and all that sort of thing and

Along with the age and the gerontocracy comes with this extreme deference to those people That's what you see with Schumer being unable to say anything about Feinstein who clearly needed You know someone needed to say you got to step down. Like it's very simple, step down, you're almost dead, you know, and then the governor will appoint someone new, yada yada. And with Ginsburg, you know, I remember reading those reports of Obama having just the most polite dinner with her, right?

Where he says, hey, you know, he like hints and whatever. And she says, no, no, I made my decision. And you can go look at whatever the reporting was, but you know, the whole party has to defer to that because she's so eminent and she's been there a long time and et cetera. And that, you know, that comes along with the age and the power that these people amass,

which is part of what makes what the party did to Biden so remarkable. Exactly right. We're used to seeing this impenetrability of age and ego. I mean, until it happened, I was like, there's no way it's ever gonna happen until you started to see in this bizarre way, this unprecedented way,

the party move as an organism to force Biden out. So how do you account for that in your analysis, this like incredible counter example? Exactly, I was joking like, there's this longstanding political science theory or law of the democratic party is bad at managing a party. And that was violated by this decision to like act like a political party

that wants collective success for the party and its policy goals for the groups in society represents. That's how parties are supposed to function. Yeah. And they tend to function differently around the world because of different institutional designs and constitutions. But in the US, there's also, because of this, there's also, it also stems out of, this is is the good faith reading and I got to give credit to that actual sort of strongest counter argument to this is that in a lot of the US 20th century, the parties were not very polarized. So it did matter where a politician came from and their background rather than which party they were from.

The Democratic Party had Southern racist Dixie crats who were generally anti-labor, anti-civil rights, and the Northern Detroit, Chicago, New York, California type of progressive, like, New Deal through civil rights Democrats, like labor and economically left and civil rights Democrats. That was a big thing. And also, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important policies that made the US a real democracy after 1965, ending mass disenfranchisement in the South, a lot of the tests of how you understand our civil rights happening in voting rights is testing

whether voters of color can get their preferred candidates elected and also measuring empowerment effects when somebody does get elected to office from a marginalized group, women, black Americans and so forth, then there is some inspiration that does happen to that community. They see themselves as having the ability to have their voice heard, run for office. It may spark further voter turnout of women, people of color, low-income people, and so forth. Young people as well, who are very excluded from American politics, those empowerment effects matter, but we totally overstate them in that case. The idea that it was more consequential for women in society in the US to have particularly Ruth Bader

Ginsburg over a replacement, potentially women women justice, rather than have the policies of, for example, that women champion in the US reproductive rights, stronger education systems and things like that, climate and environment. That's like just, you know, we shouldn't overstate those empowerment effects, but they are there. How much of your personal data do you think is online?

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That's joindeleteeme.com slash Adam promo code Adam. I want to go back to something that you said. I feel like you've alluded to this a few times that the, uh, you know, winner take all single, single member districts result in a two party system. I've heard this argument before, but I want you to tell me why that is. That's right. So when I asked my mostly Gen Z students, like, why are there two parties in the U.S.? You know, they say it's, you know, it's a conspiracy.

Like they're trying to keep they're trying to keep the cool people out. They're trying to do these wars and, you know, it's a conspiracy. But it's really mostly just baked into the Constitution and kind of just about pure math and the US Constitution. If you have single member districts with one winner take all winner, second place is the same as last place in US elections. That means is totally meaningless. And this is why third party voting like can pressure sometimes the two parties in some historical moments. sometimes the two parties in some historical moments, like, you know, free soil party sort of challenge the week party, which

collapses into the Republican Party and incorporates them and all this type of stuff. There's some examples. But for the most part, it is not a viable sort of way to influence how politics works is to in general elections vote third party, because again, second place is the same as last. Yeah. And that means those votes are unfortunately wasted votes in a fundamental sense, whereas in proportional representation systems where you put your votes into a national bucket and you get the seats in the parliament or legislature based on the percent of votes

from the country that that party gets. Then if you vote for 2% of the country votes for some green or libertarian thing, they get 2% of the seats in the US. That is not how it works. And that is why you are just fundamentally gonna get two parties until institutions change around creating multi-member districts.

What would be great if we just had two libertarians in Congress, one green party person, and just Cornell West got to be there too. You know person, and just Cornel West got to be there too. You know what I mean? And they just got to be in Congress. And then the rest is Republicans and Democrats, but they could be there and go like, hey, we got some fucking votes.

And then maybe they'd grow the next year. And then we'd have, you know, and you can see that in Canada has a little bit more of this, right? Where you've got the coalition between, you've got the center left and then the far left party. And then one of them has more than the other, but they form a coalition

and now they're governing together. And so they're influencing each other because they are actually fucking in the room together. Right? Exactly. It's a big difference between just saying, I'm gonna vote for Jill Stein and maybe that will, down the road, make Kamala do something different or whatever.

Exactly. This is you actually getting to say in a general election, I will not vote for this party. I will vote for this other party that stands for something, even if it's a very small minority party. And think about how wacky this works. Let's say you are one of the, you know, young Gaza protesters out there who really cares about the, you know, democratic party's

position on Israel and Gaza. Huge conflict. As well you should. Yeah. Also big age polarization. This is very predicted. All the young people in the US are basically ceasefire, Gaza activists, old people, Joe Biden, were very not like even in the same party, right?

The Republican party, of course, is not going to be supportive of these, right? Like that's a foregone conclusion. So basically your only way to change national policy around Gaza is like through some party thing within the Democratic party. And you saw like, you know, that meme of like, the simple like buff dog, corgi dog, and the little weenie dog who has to explain everything. It was like that in a multi-party PR system, you could say, oh, I'm going to vote for this other ceasefire party now. And my vote is not wasted. They'll get a few seats in the parliament out of this. Instead, you have to do this like, okay, in Michigan vote uncommitted, but don't worry. Like this is not going to help Trump down the line in the general election.

We need to balance like attack Biden, but not too much. Like what a ridiculous system that voters have to go through this ridiculous Rube Goldberg party management to influence what the party stands for instead of just being able to vote for another general election. And it creates this horrible argument every single election year where I mean, in my life, dating back to like Ralph Nader's first campaign, where you have people saying genuinely, the two parties don't represent me. I want to vote for a third choice.

And that is a genuine, real political need that those people have to vote for someone who represents them. You cannot discount it. And then you have other people saying, well, as a matter of the structure of American democracy, unfortunately, your vote will be wasted. And depending on where you live, swing state, blah, blah, blah. That might result in the candidate

you prefer the least getting elected, which would be bad. And so therefore I don't want you to vote for that third party. And that is also an important point of view that you cannot discount. And then is also an important point of view that you cannot discount. And then those two people go around and around

and they fight on Twitter. Well, it wasn't Twitter during Nader's first campaign, but around and around, like, and they fight and fight and fight, and there is no solution to it. Like both of those people are right and wrong in equal measure. I actually wanna say they're both right

because they are expressing real political truths that there are no that there is no solution to in our democracy. And that is so fucking frustrating. It is so frustrating. Fundamental flaw with the structure of the Constitution. It's fundamentally flawed, especially in an era like now when all politics is nationalized and polarized. So it not is, it is not necessarily a problem if depending on which region and locality you come out of,

and you're running for Congress and you're a member of Congress or something, there's all this variation again in the middle of the 20th century or like before that in the new deal, Robert La Follette, you know, one of the key new deals, like these are Republican socialists, like in New York, there's all types of people, you know, of all types of parties. And they can really, they can really vary based on the region right now, because fundraising is so national media coverage is so national to run for office. You know, a lot of my work is on the nationalization of state and local politics in the U.S. We have not only the single member districts, really not great part of the constitution

creates two parties, but also so much authority at the state and local level, which nobody pays attention to because the battle is over sort of the national tug of war. So now the incentives, if you're trying to run for office locally or like for state legislature, you have to get some play.

You have to talk about these national culture war issues that have nothing to do with like the garbage pick up in potholes and right whatever in your area. It's a really bad structure for today's highly nationalized Internet and sort of national fundraising politics. It's just so fundamentally at odds with the way the Constitution was structured to be very decentralized. I want to just hit again though, why is it almost as a matter of math, the winner take

all system produces two parties rather than three, you know, we don't even have a third regional party. There's like the vestige of it in like Minnesota, right? Has the, I forget what it is. The Democratic farmer labor. Thank you. Thank you very much. The DFL where it in like Minnesota, right? Has the, I forget what it is. Democratic farmer labor. Thank you. Thank you very much. The DFL where it's like occasionally there's a little remnant of something like that. But you know, why is it that it always condenses down to two parties every time a third one springs up?

Right. So again, in New York, there's the working families party. And again, historically, the insurgent third parties during the pre-Civil War era threatened the Republican Party enough, or the Whig Party, to break up and reconstitute as an anti-slavery party. It's meaningful throughout history, but this is also not in a national media context with national fundraising as well. But the very basic thing, so it's Duvergé's law is the single member district relationship to two parties. It's called Duvergé's law after an old French theorist, Duvergé, forget probably like

Michel Duvergé. But he was the first to point this out and it's a pattern around the world. Single member district systems produce two parties. Multi-member district or PR systems produce multiple more parties. But what happens is, think about a single, there's a second place person and they're tending to be closer than maybe you really see a third or fourth party as the closest to you. That logic is so powerful of saying, to you, that logic is so powerful of saying like, how can we coordinate around all switching to this third party when there's going to be a huge amount like it's just very, very tough. Like you would take most people would take the second place party going above than a third party. That's not viable. It takes an incredible historical moment of coordination and some shock to the system, like, again, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the most progressive parts of the country to have just a few seats be in these third parties. And that's

not even to say in the modern context of how hard it is for those third parties to fundraise or get media coverage now. But the basic, basic point is you see it. Nader elections, all of these elections, that logic is very clear. Taking away a vote from that sort of lesser of two evil second party. Right. In order to give it to a third party does reduce the the sort of win probably that second party is that basic. And think about what a different incentive structure it is to say, my vote goes into a big pot where they count up all the votes and you get that percent of

seats in the legislature based on the overall percent of the votes. And you see how easily that does not waste any votes because they're second or third or fourth place matters in the US second place is last place. But I can see how if you are out of power, if the right wing party is in power and you're on the left wing, if you say, oh my God,

we gotta get the right wing guy out of there. Well, you end up, because it's winner take all, you end up having to collaborate with all the other people who agree with you that we gotta get the other party out rather than create your own. And that makes sense. I remember again, Nader's campaign did well. You know, his first campaign was sort of one

of the high watermarks for a third party in the past couple of decades. That was after, you know, a couple of terms of democratic rule. Then Bush gets in there and like, you know, the whole Nader moment like dissolves because like, oh my God, we gotta get Bush out. And that's also why when you talk about the Working Families Party, a wonderful group, but they really work as a sort of co-endorsement organizing system for the Democrats. Like the Working Families Party will endorse a Democrat

and they will run as a Working Families Democrat to signal they're a more progressive Democrat. They're still Democrats. You can also look at the DSA, which ends up, it's a quote party, but they don't really run candidates so much as they, there are DSA endorsed Democrats. We have some here in Los Angeles and in other municipal governments,

but they're not like an actual third party. It's sort of a different type of group. Both of those are different types of groups entirely. I don't know how you'd categorize them. And same with Bernie Sanders running as an independent most of his career in caucusing with the Democratic Party. All true, certain key figures can do this due to their personal popularity and things like that.

But overall, it's just incredibly hard. And the Bush Gore 2000 election, you know, like that's like, I don't know, cash money millionaires on the radio. It's the early 2000s. This actually showed a lot of people the different, you know, there's an argument that the two parties were too close together again, was a pronator argument. Like, these parties, again, they really were at the time. I remember there was a, was it Simpsons or Futurama? I think it was Simpsons joke,

where the two candidates are identical and they're like, I think we went too far. I think we went too far, not enough, or whatever. That is literally how the public saw Bush and Gore in 2000. And don't blame me, I voted for Kratos. That's what Lummer says. Thank you for delivering with the reference that I butchered.

No, that was a classic. That shit was a classic. But that's also about the coordinating logic. You hope that the mass public can coordinate. If there literally are two dictators, the two aliens were like, we both want to enslave humanity and people couldn't coordinate on a third party. That is actually a coordination problem that could happen. But the 2000 showed the Iraq war probably wouldn't have happened under Gore, and that's a million deaths. These differences did become more apparent, but many people don't think that parties are different enough. And so there's two logics here that you mentioned on the voter level philosophically of why people are right to do

whatever you want in the voting booth or not voting is like all. Nobody should morality police and be really annoying on the internet because it's the constant loop of this argument. But people can have sort of like rule-based commitments. Like I will not vote for a party that's doing supporting the occupation, you know, occupation and genocide in Gaza through weapons. Like that's something you can say as a moral foundation. So it's not a consequentialist philosophy of like, oh yeah, it might be marginally better. They're saying this is like a rule and somebody might have a rule on the other side.

I must vote against a fascist. That's always a rule, you know, and those rule philosophies are totally great too. Then there's consequentialist philosophies of like, harm reduction, you can change things, you know, the margin, you know, having the Iraq war, not having the Iraq war is like a big enough difference, you know, yeah, those are all correct, too. So it's just like, we shouldn't be having this debate. And in the US, this constitutional system,

which creates two parties makes this bullshit nonsense debate happen forever rather than actually debating first order or your policy views. And instead, it's this beauty contest thing where it's incredible the amount of discussion in the Democratic party base among MSNBC watching primary voters of who's electable is how people vote in primaries. They actually, one of the first answers people give is I think this person can win the general election, which is just what a wacky way to set what a party does. Like you should be able to authentically vote for your policy preferences and have the system produce, aggregate everybody's preferences through their one person one vote and create policy outcomes that respond to what people want.

Right. Cause then you're not voting for the person who represents you or represents your views. Right. You're actually voting for the person who you think represents other people's views or will be attractive to them in some superficial way. Uh, but completely separate from what you think they'll actually do. And this is such an old idea, man. So Keynes, you know, John Minard Keynes, the old economist of like the Great Depression, British guy on what, you know, Keynesian is like one of the history's most important social scientists and economists ever. He also had a paper called

the Keynesian. It's about the Kinsey and beauty contest where it's like a game theoretic model of exactly this. And it's the idea is like you, there's a beauty contest. And if you choose the person that ends up getting the most votes for the most beautiful, right? So it's again, the second order thing. If you choose who everybody as a whole thinks is most beautiful, you get this prize money. And what that ends up doing is it empowers

the stupidest people, the least strategic people. So basically like this is a classic thing. I'm not racist, but I just don't think we should have a black nominee because others are like, you get these types of logic that boiled down. So the race is end up becoming more powerful in politics through that. It empowers the racist to say that, well, I'm not racist, but I don't think America will vote for a black woman, which is an, it is an argument that you heard people say about Kamala Harris's candidacy this year. You heard people say that.

Ironically, you heard it from some of the old, the OGK hive. It was so wacky. And now they're super, I was just like, this is so, what a weird time to be on the internet. But that empowers racists to say that because it says their preferences matter more than my preferences. Exactly.

Yeah. And that is a real distortion in American democracy. I mean, is there, is there any chance of, we're talking about these ways in which the structure of the Constitution produces flaws in our democracy that make everybody unhappy. And by the way, we all have our own politics here.

We've been talking about this on the left of center. You see the exact same anxieties on the right of people going, well, this is a rhino or this person, we got sold out by Mitch McConnell or whatever the fuck, you know, um, like, uh, we hate John Boehner or whatever. These things happen on that side too. And so everybody has these problems, right? You know, um,

the parties have to be super big tents in the U S the democratic party. You see that very obviously very old people, very young people, huge divides on foreign policy and other policies and nominations. You know, you saw like if you want to know how somebody votes in a primary age is the best predictor. The young people were in part of the Bernie scene, older people, very not. And then in the Republican Party, the tent is very fascinating one where it combines like some of the classic low wage employers, extractive industry and the like sort of money base of the Republican Party, along with like a highly sort of like, ethno nationalist white wing populist, mostly motivated by anti immigration and sort of anti creeping cultural liberalism, wokeness type of thing that sits on easily in the Republican Party. And a key question in like as

there are authoritarian threats to a society is where like, large business and big capital goes, do they decide like, we care about tax cuts so much that we would, you know, be open to somebody really throwing bombs on the institutions or not is a key question. And that's an ongoing one in American politics right now is that alliance on the Republican side where now it's a new set of like more crypto based capitalists that have supported the sort of rising JD Vance.

It's a little bit of a difference than the Bush era sort of big business that was kind of into low wage immigration for agribusiness and meat packing and things. It has changed, but there's still this tension between the red meat base that wants the culture war and the economic elites in the party that want the tax cuts really bad. Yeah, and there's tension in the Democratic party

over, you know, one of the biggest policy changes we've talked about on this show many times is the rise again of antitrust enforcement in America. We had FTC, Charlene Kahn on the show who is leading that. Antitrust is something I care a lot about. It's a policy position I've made. My preference is about very clear. And you have major Democratic donors saying we hate everything that she's doing

because she's not allowing our businesses to merge and make a lot of money for us. And so we demand Kamala Harris fire Lena Kahn. If she becomes president, you literally had major donors saying that in the press. And so you have those same sort of tension between the policy goals of the party and what its base is asking for and what the public is demanding. It's exactly public and, you know, the the big business part of the party. And again, all of this is caused by flaws in the Constitution itself.

I would say, I mean, this is built the flaws in the Constitution, then both produce and react to these other big inequalities in American society. So the fact that there is so much wealth inequality in general allows people to have different influence and voice in politics. And like, you know, my own work, both track this in terms of race and gender, women and especially women of color, all people of color, but especially black and Latino women, essentially like non-existent and money in politics, Gen Z non-existent and money in politics, the Senate equal representation per state.

So Wyoming has just dozens of times more representation per person than California and New York. Those are all sorts of inequalities that really matter too. But then they go within this two party system where at least it would give people a more visible choice to say, okay, there's a business sort of establishment democratic party that sort of this more centrist version and the more labor anti-trust oriented one.

And then we can actually see one person, one vote through your voice in elections. We can determine what the country does and count up all those votes rather than have all this like obscure, Ooh, donors are making secret calls to come. Let hear us to say fire Lena con and ordinary people can't follow this shit. Like people, yeah, we're listening to this show now I'm a PhD. I can't follow this shit. Like, I don't know how to vote in the state legislative primary.

Unless I asked like, imagine an America where you could vote for Bernie every year because he was the leader of a separate party that governed in coalition with the Biden Democrats and, you know, pulled them one way or another, but you could just fucking vote for him and all the other left-wingers that you like or same thing on the right. And then they would get in there and you could say, yeah, I'm just a member of that party.

I'm not this constantly frustrated minority in my own party. Instead, I'm part of the majority of a smaller party that actually has a voice. And maybe we can get a mayor elected or something from our party and like have a real impact. And again, you see this in other countries if you follow their politics.

What is it, you know, historically that caused America to have this type of system when other countries, just talking about England, you know, other countries that are in our Canada, you know, they're in our cohort, you know, have have different systems that produce outcomes we might like better. And why has ours been so resistant to change? That's right. No, I think so. Some of these things are similar across the Anglo sphere

where single member districts tend to two major parties. Like in the UK, it is effectively two parties. And like we all remember the Lib Dems and like this era where the Lib Dems were like this middle group that got 10% of the vote. And then they had this coalition government where they were the prime minister. That was a pretty rare moment.

It's really a two party system, but the US has all these extra things. So the US, it's way harder to pass a law and not only has single member districts and an electoral college that create two parties. It has all these veto points, meaning it's really hard to pass anything in the US or to amend the constitution. What that means, authority in the US is so decentralized, you have to get through, to amend the constitution, you have to get through even more than this, but just a regular national policy, you need to get through the US House, the US Senate. Now there's the filibuster, you need a super majority of the Senate.

Then you have to get to the presidency. Then the Supreme Court can just throw it out anyways. It's really hard to pass stuff. Those are unique. And you'll get sued by the states, by the way. The states will take you to the Supreme Court. All the Republican state attorneys general will take you to the Supreme Court just because they're like, oh, you're being unconstitutional. Yeah. Exactly. And that means it's really hard to pass anything to change anything.

And what that does is it really decentralizes and distorts accountability. So a huge part of how democracy should work is not only what we've been talking about prospectively, we can choose a party that represents us. That's like, that's most of how we want democracy to work. And then we aggregate everybody's preferences that way. But also we want retrospective voting. It's called where you look back, are you better off now than you were before?

How are things doing in your local community? Then I'll re-elect the party that's in control now. If they're doing well, throw the bastards out. If they're failing, if like the economy is doing bad, if COVID's doing bad, the environment's doing bad, you know, crime is going up, whatever, right? But that has really declined. We're now retrospective voting barely, if at all happens in the U.S. Local economic conditions, you know, local crime rates have very little to do with how people vote anymore.

And that's in part because, in part because of media coverage, like you look at conservative media around crime, it like is not about local, like they're talking about. I was going to say local crime rates are, have been a big issue in this election all over the place. But so why do you say that they're not having it? Is it because it's only about the perception, not about the reality of crime rates? It's because everybody thinks crime is going up everywhere, often not in their own communities. So it's like the, you know, you turn on conservative media, it's really the same, you know, I used to be a professor at U Dub in Seattle.

I was born and raised in San Francisco. So on planes when I chat with the conservative seat, make their, how are you still alive? That's crazy. Right. Right. No, but there's, it's really hard to perceive crime without a robust local media. And local media has declined in the age of the Internet. First, Craigslist destroyed classified ad revenue.

Then the expansion of the Internet and the rise of cable news has national incentives around this. So while people do say crime is the like a top issue people vote on, it's not about like local variation in crime rates in your area, except for, you know, occasionally this does happen, but that doesn't cause people to cross the parties really anymore, nor local economic conditions. Um, so that's like variation in how the economy is doing. So that's really challenging. It's about the perception you get from national media rather than the actual, I mean,

you can see that in polls. People will say stuff like, I'm better off than I was a couple of years ago. And yet the economy is worse and there's more crime and all this because they're seeing it in the national media. Being portrayed about other places. Oh yeah, things are really bad. Even though they're actually doing okay on a personal level

and that affects their vote less than you would think it would. And that's just true of like politics in general. So all the big hot button issues recent like you think about like, I don't know, concern about conflict over critical race theory, then diversity, equity, inclusion, like these major culture war issues that people vote over are not about local influx of critical race theory this year, you know, in our local community, it's about that feeling that the country, the direction of the country is slipping away. And that's hugely influential. And so the US constitution puts so much authority at the state and local levels. And actually, some of my work is that putting election administration and these democratic institutions at the lower level, the state level makes the US pretty vulnerable,

like Trump can really pressure the Georgia secretary of state rather than a national sort of set of election regulators does leave the U S pretty. Well, there was just a story in the New York times today as we record this on Friday, September 20th, that the Georgia, what is it? State election commission, which has been like stacked with right wingers is like changing the election rules in Georgia, requiring a month before the election that like all the ballots be hand counted

and stuff like that, which is just looking like it's designed to, it's a swing state and it's designed to sort of throw the election into chaos. You've got these sort of like anonymous elected officials who have become stacked with, uh, you know, people of particular ideology can now affect the national election because it's been decentralized in that way.

Exactly. Cause the parties are national. So, you know, states regulate elections from local dogcatcher up to president, right? So this, what happens in Georgia does not just stay in Georgia. And this is not something, you know, same with the Jim Crow era. You can't just say, oh, you know, actually, you know, in the U.S. right now, some places are have better voting rights and, you know, more accessible voting in fairer districts than any time in history, but other states are really weakened and that threatens the entire system.

And it's really crucial. These are obscure state and local county, you know, based offices that have come under increased pressure. And it's like, again, the decline of state and local journalism on this really matters, the incentives that politicians have to win nationally. So, you know, credit to, for example, the Georgia's Republicans, Georgia Secretary of State for really holding off in 2020 sort of pressure to throw the election at the presidential level. But this creates, there's two sort of democratic threats going on in the U.S. One is actual coup, January 6th style, which shouldn't be like, I don't know.

Sometimes it's like cringe and people like our cringe around January 6th, but that's like, that's like that's a big deal shit man. Like that's that US came closer to a coup than all these other wealthy democracies that are under strain right now. Yeah. Then the second problem is minority rule, the decline of majoritarianism and popular rule and the rise of, you know, the importance of the US Senate in blocking things, the importance of the

Supreme Court, which is unelected and doing things that are not supported by majorities like the Dodd abortion ruling along with many others, and gerrymandered legislatures as well in the states and in Congress have really reduced responsiveness to majorities. So those are two as well in the states and in Congress have really reduced responsiveness to majority. So those are two parallel threats, one more long gradual minority rule, and one is more acute and national, but both of them have roots in our particular nationalized party system and national culture war being refracted to these super decentralized old-timey institutions. I was about to ask you a wrap-up question, but I want to ask you this first because it's a problem to have super decentralized, old-timey institutions. I was about to ask you a wrap-up question, but I wanna ask you this first,

because it's a problem to have minority rule, but you often hear in American politics the idea that certain institutions were designed to protect the rights of the minority, that the minority sometimes has to be protected from the majority. And I understand that argument a little bit if you're talking about a minority ethnic group, right?

In an area, you don't want that group to be abused by people voting to, I mean, look at the history of Jim Crow, right? I mean, Jim Crow happened in places that were majority black as well as majority white, but you get the point, right? You don't want people legislate, well, those people aren't us, so fuck them. You do want their rights to be protected.

So how do you, why is minority rule a bad thing? It's such a, well, first you're right. You do need minority protections within societies through civil rights and liberties, things outlined in the bill of rights, right? That no majority or act of, you know, whatever type of government, but one even based in majority support,

can't restrict freedom of religion, speech, assembly, then later civil rights, equality under the law, ending Jim Crow, the right to vote, the right to ban on slavery, those sorts of things should not be trampled by majorities. But get this, they never have and they never will. Majorities are the ones so in the US system, the most majoritarian national institution is the US House, right? It's by population, one person, one vote. The US House and even the shitty Senate, which is way more minority rule-ish, have never actively done democratic backsliding in the US. They've often done inaction as what often happens is the Supreme Court allows states

to do more shit. They give states more leeway to, for example, do Jim Crow after reconstruction through, for example, Plessy v Ferguson in, I believe, the 1890 or so. They allow states to do shit like disenfranchise all black people in their states. Then states decide to do that or not. So states, the lower level is historically the most undemocratic sort of trampler of rights and liberties for majorities and minorities. And then Congress either steps up or doesn't. It says we're going to pass a civil rights act and voting rights act to stop that.

States doing this, or we're going to like rest on our laurels and, you know, hope it works itself out, which it doesn't. And then even now, sometimes you hear this from the more never Trump conservative types that are really worried about a coup and January 6th, but they really don't like the idea of majoritarianism, of majorities ruling. They like the idea that minorities, including, for example, large property owners, minorities who own businesses, small, these are not racial or gender minorities or sexual minorities. These are like people who have different interests because they have more wealth or something like that,

or in a rural area. That's the kind of minority they care about. Yeah. Exactly. But they will say, listen, we want to stop a coup, but we don't want majoritarianism. And they try to do the sleight of hand where they say, we got to stop a coup, but we don't want majoritarianism. And they try to do the sleight of hand where they say, we got to protect minority rights, right guys? Like, but actually get this, that sort of authoritarian threat at the national level, the coups is like a small minority of Americans, the sort of January six supporters, the election stop the steal activists, the people who are supportive of Donald Trump saying, I won't respect an election loss

and the peaceful transfer of power, that's not majorities. Majorities are the normie, the coalition of the left through the normie MSNBC libs through to the never Trump conservative center right types. Like that is a majority coalition that is pro rule of law and protecting democratic and small are Republican institutions in the US. So that is like a red herring and a total it's Zidlatt and Levitsky. They wrote How Democracies Die and then have a new book

on minority rule. Great duo of political scientists, but they really hammer this point home. In the US, majorities support, majorities are the this point home in the U S majority's support. Majorities are the ones who also support the rights of minorities. Like it's really not a trade off in the U S we both could get more majoritarianism and more protection minorities through supporting majority and majority. The minorities that tend to rule are the minorities that don't support the rights of the major minorities that need protections. Like you're talking about the minorities from the minority of voters in Montana,

Wyoming, places like that, that have senators, uh, that, you know, right wing senators, or you're talking about the minorities in swing states who are deciding the presidential election, right? Tend to not support the majorities, which is all the people who live in the cities across America, not in those small States who want to protect the minorities of racial minorities and et cetera. I'm speaking in circles here, but like, that's exactly right though.

Adam, you said it well. Oh, thank you very much for saying so. So let me end here. When I talked to political scientists, people of your ilk, you know, you said it well. Oh, thank you very much for saying so. Absolutely. So let me end here. When I talk to political scientists, people of your ilk, you tend to be focused on what does it mean to have a democratic society? What are the democratic things that we want? You talked about voting into the future,

what you think a candidate will do, but you also want someone to vote based on what they've done in the past. And that's an important measure of democracy, right? All these different measures of democracy. And then you look at the American system, well, the American system is flawed in such and such a way that we don't get those results.

And therefore America is less democratic than we want it to be. So, you know, if we change it this way, it'd be more democratic. The problem is, how the fuck do we do that? Right? Because as you said, we have a system where it's incredibly difficult to get things done. So it's all very well and good to say,

hey, I wish you had proportional representation or instant runoff voting or whatever. All these things would be more democratic, but we can't get them done. So how do we get them done? How do we move our way towards a democracy that is more perfect than it currently is. Because this shit is frustrating.

It's very frustrating, man. And you're exactly right. That like institutions and rules don't change without the power to change them. And because of the rules, you don't have the power to change them. So the Senate, the Senate's really not going anywhere for a long time, because the small states really enjoy their outsized authority and no appeal to, hey, are we equal children of God whose voices are like should be like that doesn't work. Yeah. And you need what? And people invent theories of why small states need this

representation that are so hilarious. Like there is no real argument besides appeals to tradition and authority. And people make all types of wacky arguments. There's no real arguments. You like having outside power. That's just it. Yeah, and we can't take it away from you because to do so would require a constitutional amendment. And then we would need 2 thirds of you to vote for it,

which you won't do. So the end. We're stuck with Montana and Rhode Island having two senators where the many millions of people in California also have two, right? And they make things up like, oh, well, there's more renters in those places and they don't have much skin in the game. And like, there's really weird anti,

that's like a classic anti-democracy argument. Like for Jim Crow was like, these people don't have the knowledge or intellect to do self-rule. There's a lot of racism in these types of arguments. But anyways, the only way is to long-term build power. So I do talk about this type of these institutional reforms, even though they're kind of pie in the sky at this time,

because if we don't talk about them, we'll never build that capacity. But one sort of long-term movement towards building that capacity is through civil society and organizations. I will say like a tiny bright spot is the labor movement in the U.S. Yes. Which historically in my research and elsewhere, it's just been a really important force for democracy.

It bailed out the Birmingham marchers in Alabama during Jim Crow. It was a huge force in the U. the US civil rights movement, like the United Auto Workers under Walter Ruthers. He's there at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This was a small-d democratic set of organizations because they saw we're a mass membership organization of the working class. Workers were helped by better voting rights and by racial solidarity. The culture war divides workers, the labor movement often as articulated. So I do think the rise in like even sort of right-wing

populism in the labor movement is important to think. This is a social organization where it connects people to politics and policy and their fellow workers in a way that's not this atomized internet bullshit and is not a culture war which has no room for negotiation or compromise. It's about the material public policies that affect your life. It organizes people collectively to engage in collective action, not just like, again, I don't know, dunks and other individual shit you can do. And it brings ordinary people

into politics and it shows how the culture war in many ways divides ordinary people. So I do think the rise of whether there can be solidarity between the Gen X white guy in the trades with a non-binary purple hair Gen Z barista at the Starbucks Workers United movement. If know, that, if that can happen, I do believe there's like a sort of small D democracy renaissance in the US on the horizon. And it's similar to the power building that ended June 12th. Well, and you know,

maybe the fact that American democracy is not what we wish it would, it coincides with the fact that the labor movement despite recent signs of life is at an all time low, right? It was only up from here. That's part of what we're seeing happen with the labor movement. But, you know, compared to the 50s, right? It is not what it used to be. And that's why we need it to be revitalized.

And it strikes me how many guests on this show end with exactly that argument of the labor movement is the thing that, you know, we are all hoping will save us. So start a union in your workplace or become a member of the leadership group of your union if you're already a member one and, uh, you know, help organize America is a wonderful call to action to end with, uh, Jake,

where can people find your work? It's been incredible having you. I'm sure they'll want to read more. Yeah, thanks. I have a good conversation. Uh, my website is jakegrumbach.com. My name, I have a book laboratories Laboratories Against Democracy, about sort of the nationalization of American politics and threats to American democracy. I'm a quant. So you can look at my website,

at all these papers and read some nerdy ass graphs about gerontocracy and democracy in the US, money and politics, labor, and so forth. And come see me, I'll give talks around the country, here at UC Berkeley to go bears. and so forth and come see me. You know, I'll give talks around the country here at UC Berkeley to go bears. I think quant is such a cool way that you nerds have

rebranded yourselves. And I'm very impressed. Quant sounds so cool. Oh, good. That's good to hear. That's not what my students say. I teach, you know, I teach the stat sequence and you know, working on it

but it's not their favorite class. Well, if you want to pick up a copy of Jake's book, of course, you can head to factually pod dot com slash books, our special bookshop. Jake, thank you so much for being on the show, man. It was incredible having you. Thanks, Adam. Well, thank you once again to Jake Grumbach for coming on the show. Head to factually pod dot com slash books to pick up a copy of his book. If you're so inclined, if you'd like to support the show directly,

you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free for 15 bucks a month. I will put your name in the credits of this podcast and every single one of my video monologues. This week, I wanna thank Fatah Merkan, Michael Lurer, Cam, Darren Kay, Steven Volcano, Angeline Montoya,

Matthew Reimer, Ethan, Brock Pellad, Gabriel Guerra, and Kerry Hill. Thank you so much for your support of the show. I am so grateful to you. Once again, patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Head to adamconover.net for all of my tickets and tour dates. Boston, Providence, Rhode Island, San Francisco, Toronto, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Denver,

a bunch of other places as well. AdamKonover.net, please come see me on the road. I'd love to give you a big hug in the meet and greet line after the show. Of course, as always, I wanna thank my producers, Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening,

and we'll see you next time on Factually. That was a HeadGum Podcast. Hey, hey, I'm Lamorne Morris. And I'm Kyle Shevrin. And we're here interrupting your workout to tell you about the Lamorning After Podcast now on HeadGum. That's right. Every Wednesday a new episode drops and we... Wait, La Morning... What are you doing over there?

It's nothing, just... It's polishing my Emmy. Why? Because we're now the only official HeadGum podcast hosted by an Emmy winner. Is that true? Probably not. But Jake Johnson's on HeadGum. Does he have an Emmy? No. But he has been a guest on the La Morning After. Which might be an even bigger honor. I mean, and we have other amazing guests like Glenn Powell, Raven Simone, the cast of New Girl,

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