Offline with Jon Favreau - Are You Treating Politics Like a Hobby?

Episode Date: April 7, 2024

Are college educated Democrats going to cost Joe Biden the election? Eitan Hersh, a Political Science professor at Tufts, joins Offline to take a closer look at “political hobbyists,” aka people who think that getting involved in politics means following the news and forming political opinions. Eitan’s book, Politics is for Power, lays out a roadmap for folks who are tired of online takes and ready to get involved in politics at the community level—where engagement could make a real impact. He and Jon talk about what organizing looks like in every day life, and how the most important activism is the kind you probably won’t find on social media. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Political hobbyism, because there is no goal, it's really about expressive energy. It's just like, how do I emote? How do I make myself heard? It's all me-oriented. And so I think you can convince yourself that that's sort of what politics is. And oftentimes, when you see political hobbyists suddenly come into politics, like, let's now all of a sudden really want to make a stand about this or that issue. You see people who do not know how to behave, just sort of emote. And the people on the other

side, the lawmakers, the bureaucrats are like, what are you doing? This is not how this works, right? This is not how this works. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guest today is Eitan Hirsch, professor of political science at Tufts University. So back in 2017, about 100 years ago, we started Crooked with the hope that we could convince people to not just care about politics, but to actually do politics, to become volunteers and activists and organizers. And we've been really inspired by how many people took us up on that by getting involved in Vote Save America. But that central problem, that too many political news junkies aren't actually politically engaged, hasn't gone away. And if we can't fix it, we might be in big trouble. Eitan Hirsch has written an entire book about this problem. It's called Politics is for Power.

And let me just say, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Eitan argues that political hobbyists are ruining American politics. These hobbyists are people, people who tend to be white, college-educated professionals, who spend a lot of time following the news cycle and sharing their political opinions, but not much time at all actually getting involved in politics, especially in their own communities. Now, if you're thinking, wait, what do you mean I'm not politically active? Don't worry, this isn't an attack, or at least it's not intended to be. It's meant as both a wake-up call and a roadmap to help you figure out what real, meaningful engagement looks like. Eitan lays out ways that anyone can make a real political difference, with something as small as

sending an email to friends. And he argues that this is far more useful and inspiring than following the news cycle ever could be. It's a lesson I know I needed to hear again, and one heading into the general election that I think a lot of us could internalize. As a quick note, no news block this week. I found this conversation so valuable

that I wanted to dedicate the full show to it. But Max and I will be back next week. Here's my conversation with Eitan Hirsch. Eitan Hirsch, welcome to Offline. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have this conversation. And I should start by saying I cannot believe I hadn't read your book until this week. And that's because one of the main reasons we started Crooked Media and Pod Save America and especially Vote Save America is to help solve the problem that your book is about. So after Trump won, my co-founders and I were worried that too many of us had followed the spectacle of the 2016 election without actually doing the necessary work to get Democrats elected.

You call this political hobbyism and make a fairly compelling argument that it's essentially ruining politics. But before we get to why that is, can you talk about how you define political hobbyism and how it became the focus of your work as a political scientist? Sure. So I basically define political hobbyism as being cognitively engaged in politics, like spending your time and energy on it, where the goal is either like learning, just learning facts, basically, or feeling like having an emotional connection, as opposed to actually doing politics, which is engaging in strategic behavior to influence the government. And I think what

happened is that I increasingly experienced this divide between the politics I teach and the politics I saw around me. So like we teach politics, you know, I don't teach a class on elections. How do elections work? How do the rules affect outcomes? All that. And it's just like that. It's like people change the law. We see how the law affects behavior or policy outcomes, whatever. And then all around me, friends, family, students, everyone was spending, particularly in that lead up and after the 2016 election, just excessive amounts of time on politics, but no goal, no strategy, no connection to like how a bill becomes a law or how do different people get elected. And so I felt like there, it just made

sense to write a book about civic engagement, where we try to understand both the phenomenon that a lot of people are engaged in, hobbyism, and like what the alternative is, which is doing politics. So I can hear a lot of people who may be listening to this saying, you know, politics isn't a hobby or a game to me. You know, sure, sure, I'm posting up a storm while I'm listening to Pod Save America and watching Maddow, but I have deeply held political beliefs. I care very much about who gets elected. I stay informed.

I vote. I donate. Maybe I've been to events and some protests. Is that not real political engagement? Like some of it is and some of it isn't, right? I mean, is it strategic? Do you have a goal in mind? And is the thing that you are doing advancing the goal or not? You know, so like donating is kind of an interesting thing. Some donating is super strategic, even low dollar like donating. I am always impressed when I see groups of people

who don't have a lot of money and they want to pool together, you know, a hundred bucks each and think really thoughtfully about which candidate both conveys our values and for whom this money will be meaningful. Okay, that is a strategic activity. But sitting on your butt with your phone,

watching like a dumb video of a candidate who is not in a close election and then feeling like that makes me happy. Let me give that person $5. Now I feel like we probably can agree that that is not a strategic activity. Yeah, we go through this with, there's a lot of liberals who, if there's a villain, who's not a strategic activity. Yeah, we go through this with, there's

a lot of liberals who, if there's a villain who's like a very popular liberal villain, but they're in some district that is like, you know, an R plus 30 district and there's a Democratic challenger and the Democratic challenger is never going to win this race. But they put up this like really compelling bio video and everyone hates this Republican. So they're like, I'm going to donate to that Republican. You're like, no, don't donate to that Republican. Your money will go much further in a district with a much more boring Democrat and Republican that you might actually have a chance to be. Right. Exactly.

So how would you define real political and civic engagement? What are some really good examples? You talked about strategic donating. What are some others? Right. So I think people should definitely think about politics more in the category of volunteer civic activity where sometimes the thing that you are doing is political and sometimes it's not. Like, you know sometimes it's not. Like, you know, it's a sort of community building activity. Sometimes you're going to do charitable work.

Sometimes you're going to help neighbors. And sometimes there's going to be a vote or something to do or advocacy. You know, I think about politics the way that a normal person who can do it as basically building relationships with their neighbors, building political power through a community organization, and then deploying that power to achieve goals, right? So if your goals, you know, people have different goals, like not everyone has shared goals, obviously, and also people have different interest areas. So some people really care about housing. Some people really care about policing or the environment or whatever. And I think that the way a normal person can engage in politics is like, what's the most local version you can do of that? When you do it at the most local way, you are also part of a broader network, usually. Like, you know, if you're in a housing organization, a lot of young people who have read my book are like interested in housing, say.

So if you're interested in housing, like there's a very clear local version of that, but then your local housing group is probably in some network of housing groups in your state. And they're connected to ones nationally. And you are part of this huge thing, right? Even though your engagement in it is highly local. Same with policing, same with business development, all of these movements, I mean, on the right and the left, right? So like,

I think, like, we've seen some great political activity on the right and left in recent years, after I wrote the book that has this flavor. I mean, I think housing is the biggest example on the left. Some of the policing reforms after George Floyd have this flavor. On the right, we've seen like really like perfect examples of organizing around critical race theory and anti-trans education in schools where you have like parents who are on like WhatsApp groups with their school, other school parents. And then one of those parents is like, hey, there's an issue we want to bring to the school board. Let's all do this. And then they're doing that. And there's like

definitely a network of things happening. But for the individual person, the thing that they are doing is attending a school board meeting. So like, I think we see lots of politics like that. And then we also just see a huge amount of people spending, you know, just hours and hours and hours doing nothing strategic or goal oriented. Just posting, lots of posting. What does the data say about how much political hobbyism is going on in America versus real political engagement like the type that you just talked about? Yeah. So when I was looking at this, I asked people about how they spend their time. And there was a good number of people. I think it was like, I wrote the book a few years ago, so I'm trying to remember. But it's like, you know, a third of the country or something like that is spending an hour or

two hours a day on political consumption. And so I then looked at the group, which is not surprising, right? Like half the people don't vote in elections at all. A lot of people in America are totally checked out. Okay, fine. But this is the group that is not checked out. Okay, so let's just look at the people who care. They say they care. They know a lot of facts. They're learning stuff. What percent of them are doing any kind of volunteerism. And by the way, like, it's not just the volunteerism. Like, almost no one's even voting in these local elections where, like, I kind of think it's a reasonable normative view that the bare minimum of citizenship is just voting when you're asked to vote. That's it. Like, forget all the activism. Just the bare minimum, when you're asked to vote, vote. And we know like

turnout in local elections in America, like 15%. So like there's a heck of a lot of people who are not meeting that, even though they are, again, they are super knowledgeable and engaged and interested. And what does the data say about the kind of person demographically who's most likely to be a political hobbyist? Right. So you look at how about like, who has the most time on their hands? It's not me. I don't think it's you. Like, young parents, no free time, basically. People in their 20s and retirees have the most free time. So they have the most time to spare. And truly, if you actually go to, you know, a campaign operation, you'll see that that's kind of the people who populate most campaign work, young people and seniors. Um, but those are also the people who spend a lot of their time on making them, it's like in, it's in their, it's in the social norm to be knowledgeable about politics. So they're learning and learning. And, and, and then

if they have time, they, they sometimes spend it on this hobbyism. Yeah. I should just admit here to you, everyone who's listening knows that I'm a parent of young children, but all my free time is dedicated to political hobbyism because I've turned it into a job. Well, then it's not a hobby anymore. Yeah, that's a job. And I found it fascinating in the book that you found that white people 2008, there's been a consistently higher level of volunteer political engagement among African-Americans and among whites. And that's stayed since I last analyzed the data. So in terms of like real, and it was true when I was looking at the data among Latinos as well, it's actually a lower rate of political time spent and knowledge. So like,

if you asked people a bunch of factoid questions, like, you know, who, which, which party is the majority in Congress, like trivia questions like that, it tends to be like white people, white men particularly, like know the most answers, correct answers to those questions. But then if you look at volunteer time, it's like a totally different demographic. These are not the same thing. The people who are actually doing the real work of politics are not like just a subset of the people who know a lot of facts.

It's pulling a different demographic. And why is that? It's a good question. I mean, I think when I wrote this book, it was just about why basically, what hobbyism is and why it's kind of bad. And then I had this undergrad research assistant who read it, and she's like, this is a bummer. You got to figure out how to talk about the alternative.

And so if you read the book, it's actually mostly about the alternative. And I follow around these organizers who are doing a form of politics that I find compelling and that's influential. And I think if I'm going to psychoanalyze myself, I didn't really want to go that route and talk to those people because I don't really consider myself like the activist type. And I thought they would all be

kind of like super extreme politically. And it turns out that they were very different than I expected because they were much more like pastoral in nature. Like they were good listeners. They, uh, I come from a family of religious leaders. I'm my brother and brother-in-law and they're, you know, like they're really good listeners. They, uh, they, they, um, uh, they know how to build community. And so it's like that kind,

it's not the person who's like screaming their political stuff. That's the great organizer. It's the person who's like really kind of a good listener who is. And so it's like a totally different flavor of person. Also someone with patience to sit through a meeting, you know, and to sit through another meeting

and another meeting and to have like a really long game that they're playing. You know, someone who's willing to play a two-year, four-year, 10-year game as opposed to a two-month game. So I just, it feels like a different thing. Yeah. I've noticed this myself. First of all, Angela Aldiss is in your book. We talked to her for another podcast that I do called The Wilderness for a couple seasons ago. She's like so inspiring. But I've had the same experience where when you are online and you are on Twitter or Instagram or wherever social media drug of choice and you see people arguing about politics, whether it's people on the left or the right or across the political spectrum, those people versus the people who are actually doing the work of politics, the organizers, the activists, and again, from across the political spectrum, whether you're far left or center left, which is sort of the people that I have experience

with, the people who are doing the work are so much more pragmatic, empathetic, willing to compromise, willing to persuade than the people who do this mostly online. And it is something that I've, and it doesn't matter if you're like a DSA member who's going door to door, or you're just like a normie Democrat who's going door to door for Joe Biden. Like you are just so much more empathetic and pragmatic if you have been knocking on doors, talking to voters than if you're just like getting in Twitter fights all the time about politics or on cable news or whatever, whatever you may be doing. Yeah. There, you know, there's a guy I quote in the introduction who I just, I always, this quote sticks with me because he says that his friends don't engage in politics because they think their positions are self-evidently correct. And if they have to talk to someone about them who disagrees, it means that they have to admit

that the positions are not self-evidently correct. And I think that exactly describes what you're talking about. I think participation is moderating in the sense that it's really hard. There's lots of different reasons why people disagree with you. It's hard to figure out how to make public policy work, right? It's hard to, like, convince someone of anything. And so it's hard. And I think a lot of people would rather live in a fantasy world where it's actually really easy and all the answers are really easy. Yeah.

You did a survey that you cited in the book where you asked people why they don't participate or why they don't volunteer. And someone said, well, I believe in all the Democratic positions, but I think the Democrats are better at messaging, which is like, sounds like any kind of fucking donor that you'd run into at an event, at a fundraising event for Democrats. And it made me want to throw my phone, but that's just me. I mean, speaking of the internet, like I started this show because I think that the internet and social media

have made like doing the work of democracy much more difficult, especially over the last decade. How big of a role do you think technology plays in hobbyism? Well, I mean, I think that it changes everyone's leisure time. That's the thing that I think it does that's really problematic for politics, where obviously, like if I ask my students or myself, how much time do you spend on your phone a day? It's obviously an embarrassingly high number of hours or whatever. And a lot of that is spent doing essentially leisure time, except that it's in five-minute spurts throughout the day. So you're doing a lot of leisure, probably more than ever, but you're not saying, I'm now going to set aside this hour or two hours

to do it. And so that's true whether your hobby is like sports or politics or whatever. And that's fine if it's sports, but it's not fine if your goal is something that requires coalition building and strategy, and you might actually need to sit with people or talk to people face to face. Yeah, I think that's not not good um it's the but it's it's sort of that like the way that time is spent that's bad about technology obviously there's great things about technology in terms of how people can connect to one another it's just that i think it's the how we split up our leisure time that's not good yeah and i also wonder if um you know social media i know you mentioned the arab spring in your book right like social media is is very good for organizing people to sort of tear things down and it's a

little harder to it's actually much harder to organize solely online not in person to try to sort of like build something back up or like build sort of democratic systems and governments and, and, and, uh, and, and, and actually do the work of politics. Like I don't, I don't necessarily think the internet has been good for the kind of coalition building that democracy requires. Yeah. So, okay. Another reason that that's true is that, um, your audience for real politics should be pretty freaking narrow. Like the people on your block, the people in your neighborhood. And if you post something on social media about your neighborhood events, basically no one except like for a few

thousand people could possibly care about that. And so you're not going to get a lot of likes, or you're just not going to get that affirmation versus if you post something that's applicable to the whole country or all of your friends spread throughout. And I mean, in some ways, I think your audience probably have a lot to object to in this book. But one thing is that it's sort of a conservative message in the book, which is like, your way to be involved in politics is very local through grassroots organizations, maybe religious ones. And that's sort of the path, you know. And it's just not something that's going to get you a lot of likes. I mean, it's, yeah, it's like small C conservative.

It's also how the most successful progressive organizers actually build power on the left. And they're not as loud on Twitter, but they're the people actually doing the work and you follow some of them in the book. I want to unpack your argument that hobbyism isn't just insufficient, but actually detrimental to a healthy functioning democracy. Clearly, there's an opportunity cost. You know, you spend two hours reading the news and getting mad about politics online, which is time you could have spent talking to voters or organizing in your community. But you also argue that, that, that hobbyism itself makes politics worse and makes us worse at politics. Can you talk about some of the reason that it makes us worse at

politics? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think we're basically actually picking up on a theme we talked about a few minutes ago. You're just practicing the entirely wrong skill set, you know? And so the way I think about this is like politics is like this. If you are an employee and you want a raise from your boss, what are you going to do? You're saying you want a meeting. Okay, so you're going to try to understand what your boss cares about, what their incentives are, what is going to make them want to give you a raise. And so that's a strategic, goal-oriented conversation, okay? And it's high stakes. And in real politics, that's essentially what you're practicing. Oh, you're meeting with this county official, you're meeting with this county official. You're meeting with this community organization. You want

them to do something for you, which is like join you or help you elect this person or change policy. Okay. What are their incentives? How do you play this game? Oh, they might want you to do their thing in a month. Maybe you have to do that because you want them to do the thing for you. And like, it's a real thing. But, and political hobbyism, because there is no goal, it's really about expressive energy. It's just like, how do I emote? How do I make myself heard? It's all me oriented. And so you can get into this. I think you can convince yourself that that's sort of what politics is. And oftentimes when you see political hobbyists suddenly come into politics, like let's now all of it, we all of a sudden really want to make a stand about this or that issue. You see people who like do not know how to behave, just sort of emote.

And the people on the other side, you know, like the lawmakers, the, what are the bureaucrats are like, what are you doing? Like, this is not how this works, right? This is not how this works. And so I think you can build this very, very toxic understanding of politics. It's just not, it's going to be totally disempowering if you don't practice the right skills. You have a critique of the type of activism I think that's heavy on protests and petitions and angry posts. And I've been trying to articulate this for a while. And you had a great line in the book. You write, moral outrage is a shortcut to feeling engaged. Can you say more about that?

Yeah. Like if I care about something, some policy is making me mad. I can just like kind of harumph in company of other people online. And it makes me feel connected to a movement. But like, that's a shortcut. It's not actually doing the hard work. I mean, the hard work of politics, I think, and is very satisfying in a deep way. I think getting 100 people to vote the way you want to vote or texting a state lawmaker and saying, thanks for supporting that bill. That means a lot to me. Like this are deeply gratifying ways of being an adult in society. Just like, you know, you're a person who people listen to.

And I don't mean like, you know, people who are famous or politic, I mean, like regular people can have that kind of role that they're important people in their community. And that's deeply satisfying, but it just takes a long time to build. And so a shortcut to that is just being like, and that's what hobbyism is all about. Yeah. I mean, I've been trying to figure out for a long time now why so many people who care about politics seem to place such little importance on the admittedly hard work of persuading people with different political views, right? Which is actually how you build power and win elections. And I'm, I always wondered if some of it has to do with the fact that, and this was especially like a post Trump era thing, like

that, uh, that political coverage, social media expose us to mainly to people who, uh, either completely agree with us or completely disagree with us. So there's like strong ideological and partisan viewpoints. And so, for example, we think that like, you know, persuading Trump diehards is a waste of time, which it probably is. And, you know, we should just focus on turning out partisan Democrats. That's the argument that you hear a lot in Democratic politics and have for the last several years, especially among more online activists. But what do you think of that? What do you think's going on there? Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy to build that caricature. You know, there's a, there's this study, this set of studies that people increasingly say things like,

I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want my kid to marry a Republican if they're a Democrat, or I want my kid to marry a Democrat if they're a Democrat, or I want my kid to marry a Democrat, Republican. And that agreement with this kind of thing has skyrocketed over time. And, uh, I think what it's happening is that in the mind's eye, if you're a Democrat, the Republican you're, you imagine your kid marrying is like some caricature of a mega guy at a Trump rally or something. And if you're a Republican, it's like they're marrying, you know, someone in this squad or something. But like truly, like if one of my Democratic students at Tufts

were to marry a Republican, it'd probably be just like an econ major at Tufts. Like in other words, it would just be like someone who's very similar to them, except they're like a little Republican. And I think that social media has created that caricature as like really highlighting in our mind's eye for everything. So you think that no one's convincible,

but it's definitely not true in part because on every one of the issues that people care about, there is going to be some compromised middle ground position and figuring out how to get there is, is interesting, but there's, it's not, it's not like zero sum, either they win or we win on every issue. How much do you think it has to do with how difficult it is to, and you were saying this earlier, like convince someone to take an action they otherwise wouldn't have taken, right? Which is sort of like the essence of politics and organizing.

And I think like that requires lots of conversation. It requires some discomfort. It requires you to compromise. It requires you to like empathize with other people, listen to their positions, even if they disagree, versus what we have now, which is it's very easy to go on social media, find people who agree with you, and express either moral outrage or agreement or just yell at the other side. Like, that's just easy.

And it doesn't take as much time. And you can do it while multitasking, right? You can scroll through your phone, look at the news, tweet something, move on, feel like you've done something. When in fact, if you were going to like, you know, get a couple people to go vote, even if they weren't hardcore Trump supporters, if they're, you know, moderate, if they're, if they don't vote a lot, that takes some time. That takes a couple conversations. It takes some difficult work. Do you think it's sort of the ease of hobbyism that makes it a little more attractive?

So I think it's like ease given a certain lifestyle. Okay. So, um, I, I tell, I, I, I, I tell people this a lot. I tell my students, this is kind of surprising to them, I think. So until very recently, I lived in this neighborhood, uh, in an area of Boston where, um, pretty high dense neighborhood, a lot of apartment buildings, uh, and a very tight knit community that I was part of around a religious community. And before an election, like a local election, I would send a hundred friends an email saying,

here's who I'm voting for in the local elections. I think you should vote for them too. And out of those hundred, maybe 10, 15 said, they like took my list to the polling place and they actually voted. I didn't even say why I was voting for them. You know, I just like, here's who I'm voting for. And people were like, I went there with your list because you did it. Okay. Now that was extremely easy for me to get 15 people. And it was, but it was easy because I am someone who is in a

community known to my peers and where there's divisional labor. Like they went to me for that because I know something. And like, if my kid, you know, sprains the ankle, I go over to the nurse or doctor's house and be like, hey, help my kid. That's how a community works. And so it's not, it's actually not that it's hard. Another example, I organized for this 30 unit building that I lived in. We always had like a weekly pizza night in our courtyard. Like once a week, the young families had pizza together at five o'clock for a lot of kids. And then we started this, older people in the building started doing it.

We started a WhatsApp group that was like, who's getting the pizza this time? Some of the retirees would bring like desserts for the kids. And now we have like a community where everyone in this building knows each other, not because of politics and there's no strategy. It's just like, we eat pizza together once a week. That's it. But then come election time,

we're bringing people in a line to vote. And they're voting how we want them to vote, how like I want them to vote. Now, am I some devious, like, I didn't plan this out to be, to get a vote, right? I just want to be in my community. And so all of it was very easy. I'm trying to say is I can, it's easy to get those votes. It's easy for me. The way that two things are happening to a lot of people who are not me, right? One is that they just don't have those social connections, no religion, younger people, they're moving every

18 months on average until they're 30. They're not getting married. They're not having kids. They just are not trying to seek out those roles in society. They don't feel like they're adults yet really. And so they just don't have those connections. So that's like one lament. The other thing that's happened is this like technocratic thing that's happened on the left, which is fascinating,

which is that Democrats have convinced themselves that we have this like experimentally tested way to get people to vote, which is like, if we sent a million postcards, you should do it because that's gonna generate a thousand votes. And it's a terrible return, tested way to get people to vote, which is like, if we sent a million postcards, you should do it because that's going to generate a thousand votes. And it's a terrible return, but like, just do the postcards. It's scientifically proven or do the phone calls.

It's signed and it is scientifically proven. It's true. Those things work. They are just like the lamest version of my thing. Do you know what I mean? Like, I can send one email, takes me five minutes, I get 15 votes, you know? And by the way, like, yeah, okay, I'm here in Boston. It's politically different. But if you're in a church community, if you're like on a WhatsApp group for

your school families, anyone who is in a community can do that thing. And it's like, and, and it's, and it works like a charm. And, and the, the thing that the, the, the scientifically proven thing is doing is just like this pathetic bandaid. That's a shortcut because they don't have the social relationships. I know I, I have some, some family friends and on the last election cycle, um, they're like, oh, you know, we want to get involved, and we're getting involved. Aren't you proud of us? What are you doing? They're like, oh, we've been sitting here just addressing envelopes in our house for the last, you know, three hours. I was like, well, you know, have you talked to anyone in your social circle? Which, and you mean, you're talking about the evidence on this. I think there's a lot of

campaigns are coming around to this now that relational organizing is turns out to be the most effective way of organizing. Right. Which is like the people in your social circle, in your social network, your colleagues, your friends, your friends of friends, like convincing those people to go vote is actually a lot more. If you do the work to convince those people, that's a lot more effective than just talking to strangers. Right. But notice, a lot of people really like bristle at that because the idea of talking to the person that they know about this

is like, ugh, that feels way worse than talking to a stranger. Why do we think that is? Why do people think that's worse? Because you're in long-term relationships with people and you don't want to...

Talk about politics? You don't want to talk about politics. And obviously, it's a little bit easier when you're talking about local politics where there aren't these same divisions. And not just even state-level politics where the issues are just different. All of this stuff is actually a lot easier at that level

than trying to convince a Trump voter to vote for Biden or vice versa. Some of the people that you followed for the book were engaged in a practice called deep canvassing. Can you talk about what deep canvassing is? Yeah, sure. So this is essentially trying to fabricate the real relationships that I'm talking about. So like, suppose you don't have those, what can you do?

Well, you can practice this technique called deep canvassing with this guy in California, Dave Fleischer has really like championed, which is finding those people who are not going to be like, they know everything they need to know and they're never going to vote your way. But there's a lot of people who are not like that. And you basically focus on building empathy

in a 15, 20 minute, 30 minute kind of conversation with this person, understanding what their view is, trying to express what your view is and where you come from on the issue. You know, Dave, who has done a lot of work with the LGBT community, talks about how he can go to people who have voted no on gay marriage ballot initiatives. How does he get someone who's voted no to see his position? Well, first he asked them, like, where do you come from on this issue?

And then he explains where he comes from. And it's all like a very kind of vulnerable conversation where the person on the other side gets to see you as a real person and what's motivating you deeply about the issue. And by the way, you also get that from them. And so sometimes the conversation just end like, oh, we understand each other better.

That's helpful. And sometimes the person on the other end is like, you know what? I never have really given this issue much thought, but now that you've told me how you see it and why it's important to you and you seem like a nice person, like I'm with you. And it's a really inefficient way to talk about, to think about politics, like one 20-minute conversation at a time. But it works and works in a much more durable way than, you know, a postcard or a letter or something like that. And there's studies, right, that show that it's a lot more effective than other forms of organizing and canvassing, right? Yeah, that's right. Like this sort of empathetic storytelling and listening is really effective and has the potential to change people's minds long term as opposed to the campaign ad or the, you know, something like that.

Yes, there are studies on it. You talk in the book about an idea that you have that parties should be organized around like providing more sort of local services to the community. And that would sort of endear people to parties more than just running around talking about like national issues. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. So, so like, actually, I think I opened the whole book with this story about the Ku Klux Klan. That's great. I was going to, I was going to ask you next to tell that story. So this is perfect. Yeah.

So, I mean, it was a story from North Carolina where this chapter, I guess, of the Ku Klux Klan had an opioid clinic where they basically go to people and say, like, do you have an addiction? It's not your fault. We're here to help you. Come to our meeting, the White Knights of the KKK. And I tell that story so that readers be like, holy moly, like, I can't believe that's how they're doing it. And you intuit as a reader that that is an obviously more effective strategy if you're

recruiting people to the KKK than spewing your racial stuff. Like, if you're just like, oh, you have a problem, we can help you with that problem. I see, and you see parties and groups on, on, at the margins doing this kind of work. And I think that it's very, I think it's very, and it's what political parties used to do, right? Back in the old days of the party machines, they were providing vaccines, They were throwing free turkeys out at people. They were doing all that kind of stuff. And one thing that did is it endeared people to a community organization and to leaders, right?

Not that unlike my pizza in the courtyard, except that I'm not a political party, but it has the same function of bringing people together and helping them understand each other and trust each other so that when the time is coming to vote, you're voting because of those relationships. I mean, this is like what I saw that was really compelling about all these wonderful organizers who I track in the book.

If I tell you to vote because you should vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump and you don't like Joe Biden or Donald Trump and you don't like Joe Biden or Donald Trump, they'd be like, eh, no thanks. Even more so, if I tell you to vote for Joe Smith, who's running for county official, you're like, I really, like, that person means nothing to me. No, thank you. But if I say to you, like, hey, John, vote for my guy because, like, you know me and I'll be disappointed if you don't. Now we're having a very different conversation.

Now the conversation is you have to face me, your friend who has pizza with you and you know to be a nice, helpful person in the neighborhood. That's what's getting you to vote. And I think the good organizers, what they're doing is taking the pressure off celebrity candidates to drive people to the polls and putting the pressure on the social pressure to say, like, you're going to vote because you like me, not because you like who's running for office. Yeah. Or, I mean, to

scale that up on a national level, you know, one of the challenges, I think, with being a party of mostly college-educated professionals, the Democrats, is that, and you talk about this a little bit in the book, voters want you to focus on issues that will have a tangible effect on their lives, that they can feel, right? And a lot of that's economic concerns, post-Dobbs, it's concerns about like where to access abortion care, right? And so there's like, people want to say like, okay, I'm going to vote for someone if I know they're going to make a difference in my life in some way. And, you know, you vote for a Democrat, they go into office, you know, they pass a bunch of bills, you don't really notice any difference in your own life. But if you have sort of these party committees or organizers or organizations in your community that are making a difference to you, either through material benefits or you're building social bonds with them, you're more likely to have that connection with the party than you are if something feels like it's, you know, 5,000 miles away in Washington, D.C., and you give a vote and you don't really notice a difference. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the big

question is, of course, how we get people to do less hobbyism and more activism. And you make the argument that hobbyism isn't really a gateway to deeper political involvement. You know, in our experience here, I think you can be if you nudge people in that direction. But what are your thoughts in general about how to get people, how to get more hobbyists to become more activists? Here's what I'll say. When I wrote the book, I think I kind of made a mistake. And the mistake was I thought that people knew what to do in politics if they wanted to. That is, I thought like I was describing this hobbyism phenomenon and differentiating it from like real politics, but people basically knew how

to do real politics because they, I don't know, took some civics class. They know how a bill becomes a law. And I think one thing I've learned since is that actually a lot of people have had no idea this world even existed. That is the world of people who are doing real stuff. And what it would take to get a law passed, a state law, a city law? Like, what does it take to get a new person elected at the local level? How many votes do you have to move? I think actually like, because our focus in politics is so national, oftentimes we don't understand just like how these things,

the mechanics of how it works at the local level. And it's not just like ordinary people. I find, I'm now writing about business leaders and the civic role of companies. And one of the reasons I'm doing that is because business leaders too often, like their first intuition for getting involved in politics

is like tweeting a message. And so you see all these people like tweeting, here's what our startup thinks about the Ukraine war. Like, why? Great, yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. Or like, here's what we think about Dobbs or family policy.

And I talk to these business leaders, I'm like, have you ever gone to like a chamber of commerce committee meeting about family policy in your state? Like, do you know the lawmakers on the committee who do that? And then you get these sheepish looks like, oh shit, I didn't, that's, I didn't, I forgot that that's like, I vaguely knew that, but I didn't really know that that's what I'm supposed to do.

But meanwhile, you know, you go to the Chamber of Commerce committee meetings and it's filled with people who are there, like they know what they're doing and they know how to have, have some input. And so I think at all levels of amateur politics, there's actually just not a lot of understanding of how, how a bill becomes a law and, and how to, and, and, and how things actually change in politics from the, from the bottom up. I think if you know that story, it's very inspiring. Like I, like, I think the story of the people in this book who do politics right, who just like make some efforts to get different people elected or to change policy, they're really inspiring. But maybe because it's too hard or maybe because there's no villain,

I think that's it. You know, there's no villain. It's just like people trying really hard to do something. And it's not like it's in opposition to the end of democracy. It's just trying to like get communities to function well. And, uh, uh, it's not there. I also think you don't get the, um, immediate satisfaction and the dopamine hit that you get from doing politics online sometimes, right? Like I've been canvassing and, you know, you knock on 50 doors, right? Most people don't open the door. A couple of people open the door and say, oh yeah, I already voted for your candidate. Some people slam the door in your face. And then maybe you have a couple conversations and then, but you know, inevitably you have one or two conversations

that you're like, oh, I think I might've at least nudged this person in the direction of voting or voting for the candidate i want them to and i had a nice conversation and that sort of like makes you feel good for the rest of the day but it does take some time and effort to get to that point yeah exactly i think this is like the way to think about politics is to think about all parts of adulthood which is just like you're be a real person in your community who other people respect by like doing your best to do a good job and gain the respect of your peers. Like it's politics, it's a version of that. And no different than being a good, you know, parent in the school system or being a good like neighbor to your elderly neighbors, whatever it is. Like, I just think if we think about politics is like, try to be a good person and affect change the best your ability. It'll be people

might like it. Yeah. Eitan Hirsch, thank you so much for for joining offline. This was a great conversation and appreciate you taking the time. My pleasure. Anytime. Before we go, can Biden win over the Nikki Haley crowd? It's a question that could swing the election and one that Dan Pfeiffer and guest Alyssa Cass explore on the latest episode of Polar Coaster. Listen in to find out exactly how worried you should be about the impact of Haley voters and Biden defectors come November. To get access to this series and other subscriber exclusives, head to crooked.com slash friends. Offline is a Crooked Media

production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music.

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