Pod Save America - Introducing The Wilderness Chapter 1: The Divide

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

What will it take to save democracy in 2022 and beyond? The MAGA movement is one of the greatest threats to American democracy. But one of the greatest divides in American politics is between the minority of voters who follow politics closely and the vast majority who don’t. In order to win the midterms, Democrats will have to reach that majority.New episodes of The Wilderness drop every Monday.  Subscribe to The Wilderness wherever you get your podcasts.Apple: apple.co/thewildernessSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6JfsJlD5sBhVpEQEALNw4UStitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-wilderness If you want to learn more about how you can take action in the fight for our democracy, head over to https://votesaveamerica.com/midterm-madness/

Hey everyone, it's Jon Favreau, and I'm dropping in to let you know that I just launched a brand new season of The Wilderness. In past seasons, I looked at the state of the Democratic Party during the Trump years. And now with the midterms coming up, I thought it'd be a good idea to take a little temperature check on what people are thinking and feeling about politics right now. So, without further ado, here's episode one. And to hear more of the series, you can subscribe to The Wilderness Feed, where you can listen to Episode 2 right now. We'll also be dropping the series here each week, but subscribing to The Wilderness Feed is the only way to get early access. New episodes every Monday. I'll admit, there was a brief moment where I didn't think we'd need another season of The Wilderness.

After four long, tense days, we can now project the winner of the presidential race. Joe Biden. Joe Biden. Joe Biden. Joe Biden. Joe Biden. President-elect Joe Biden. Tonight, we're seeing all over this nation, all cities and all parts of the country,

an outpouring of joy, of hope, renewed faith in tomorrow. Bring a better day. Black voters in Georgia turned out in record numbers to vote for Reverend Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff, giving Democrats a majority in the Senate. Remember that feeling? I think it lasted about a day. They've got the gallows set upside this Capitol building. It's time to start fucking using them.

Start hunting them down one by one. Yeah! We'll start hunting them down one by one. Two years later, I think it's fair to say that things haven't settled down all that much. Former President Trump's baseless claims about his 2020 election defeat are trickling down to the next cycle of Senate races. That election was rotten to the core. We all know it, right?

You know that, right? Our Attorney General, you know, declared a winner before one vote was counted. was rotten to the core. We all know it, right? You know that, right? Our attorney general, you know, declared a winner before one vote was counted. And so the whole process has been corrupted. This is the year we're going to take back the House. We're going to take back the Senate. We're going to take back America.

And in 2024, we are going to take back that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white. MAG is a threat to our country, not the Democratic Party. That's Democratic political strategist Michael Podhorzer, a senior advisor to the AFL-CIO who Time magazine called the architect of a shadow campaign that saved the 2020 election. Basically, he was part of a team of strategists and legal experts who saw Trump's coup coming and helped make sure it didn't succeed. This is deadly serious.

You see Pinochet, you see Berlusconi, you see Mussolini, you see Hitler, right? There are times over the last several years, even in the days after Trump refused to concede, when I've wanted to just dismiss comparisons like Michael's as overly alarmist. Part of it may have been a stubborn faith in the American experiment that comes from my years of writing speeches with Barack Obama. Big hope guy, if you recall. It also may have just been wishful thinking on my part. Who really wants to wake up every morning, take a quick scroll through the news, and wonder if today is the day democracy falls apart? But it's become clear that American politics is now operating in two entirely different realities. In one reality, we have President Joe Biden, Democratic politicians, and a few Republicans.

Like most politicians since forever, they're flawed. They make mistakes. Sometimes they take bad votes. Sometimes they're just annoying. But it's hard to deny that at least lately, the Democrats have been on a roll. History was made today when Congress sent to President Biden's desk the first major new gun control legislation in nearly 30 years. With a major victory for President Biden and the Democrats, the Senate passage of a landmark $740 billion economic package. The package will make the single biggest investment in clean energy in the nation's history, set a $2,000 annual cap on drug costs for seniors, and lock in a minimum

corporate tax rate of 15%. My campaign for president, I made a commitment that would provide student debt relief, and I'm honoring that commitment today. Of course, we're also living through another reality, the MAGA reality. We're going to walk down to the Capitol because you'll never take back our country with weakness. An armed man tried to enter a field office in Cincinnati with a nail gun and a rifle.

We begin tonight in Buffalo, New York, after a gunman killed 10 people in a racially motivated shooting rampage. An alleged plot to overthrow Michigan state government and kidnap the governor. Just another con game by the Democrats calling something one thing. Tonight, outrage from Trump-aligned Republicans after federal agents searched the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. There was a failed murder plot to kill the vice president of the United States. Folks died. January 6th, insurrectionists running for Congress and who will be the ones who have

to certify the 2024 presidential election. Like, we are participating in this fiction as if everything is normal, as if conventional political wisdom applies here. That's Nse Ufa, one of the organizers who's most responsible for the record turnout that flipped Georgia and helped save democracy in 2020. She's acutely aware of what's now at stake in 2022 because she's been on the front lines in one of the country's fiercest battlegrounds. She's seen how far the other side's willing to go to tear down democracy. She's been on the receiving end of their threats. And she knows what's most alarming is that despite all of this, November's midterm election, and likely the 2024 presidential, will be extremely close.

This probably alarms you too. I wouldn't say I'm all that chill about it myself. It's terrifying. And overwhelming. And exhausting. I'm sure a lot of you are still burnt out from the last few elections, especially if you did more than just vote, if you donated to candidates and registered voters

and volunteered for phone banks and text banks. Maybe you thought that beating Donald Trump would be enough to beat Trumpism, that electing even the narrowest Democratic majority would be enough to save democracy. But it wasn't. And I get why that might leave you feeling a little frustrated or angry or even a little hopeless. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the same way from time to time. Good afternoon, Ms. Moss. Thank you for being here.

Back in June, when the Supreme Court was in the middle of ruining our summer, I was watching one of the January 6th hearings. I understand that you were employed by the Fulton County Registration and Elections Department for more than 10 years. Please tell us what made you so fond of the work that you did. It was the one where the committee heard testimony from Seamus, an election worker from Georgia who'd processed ballots in 2020 for the Fulton County Elections Board with her mother, Ruby Freeman. I've always been told by my grandmother how important it is to vote and how older people in my family did not have that. So what I loved most about my job were the older voters. They like to know that every election I'm here, I was excited always about sending out all the absentee ballots for the elderly, disabled people.

I even remember driving to a hospital to give someone her absentee application. That's what I love the most. Donald Trump and the MAGA media spread a conspiracy that the two women had planted 18,000 fake ballots for Joe Biden. It was quickly proven to be a complete lie. But for nearly two years, Shea and her mother were harassed and threatened to the point where Ruby had to leave her home of over 20 years. A lot of threats, wishing death upon me, telling me that, you know, I'll be in jail with my mother, and saying things like, be glad it's 2020 and not 1920. A lot of them were racist.

A lot of them were just hateful. It's affecting my life in a major way, in every way, all because of lies. I just felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking this job and being the one that always wants to help and always there, never missing out one election. I just felt like it was my fault for putting my family in this situation. Well, it wasn't your fault.

It was the angriest I had been since Donald Trump tried to steal the election. These two women were just trying to be good citizens. They didn't want to just vote in the election. They wanted to make sure the election was fair for everyone else, no matter which party they voted for. And maybe that work was important to Shea and Ruby

because their parents and grandparents didn't have the right to vote. And were part of a generation that marched and fought and refused to give up until they won that right. And now, all these years later, Trump and his gang of D-list hacks and criminals tried to scare these two women away from simply trying to make their democracy work. And did you end up leaving your position as well? Yes, I left. So yeah, I get why politics feels awful right now. I get why people might be ready to give up.

But that's exactly what they want us to do. They want us to quit. They want us to walk away. They are counting on our cynicism because that's how they win. That's how they beat us. That's how they take power for good. And you know what?

I don't think we should make it that easy for them. From now on, it's not just the Democratic Party we need to keep out of the wilderness, but democracy itself. And that's not just a job for Democratic politicians or strategists, but for all of us, as voters, activists, organizers, and citizens. If we want to defeat the MAGA threat, our coalition in 2022 and beyond has to be as broad and diverse as it was in 2020, and maybe even bigger. The left has never been able to stop a determined fascist push if it isn't aligned with the rest of the country. That might be the single most important observation about the moment we're in

right now. Here's why. In 2020, Joe Biden won 81 million votes, more votes than any presidential candidate ever in an election that saw the highest turnout in the 21st century. And yet, out of more than 155 million votes that were cast, Biden's total margin in the three closest swing states that actually got him to 270, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia, was just about 43,000 votes. 43,000 votes. The pro-democracy coalition that showed up to defeat Donald Trump in 2020 was the biggest and most diverse in American history. There were people who cast votes for AOC and Bernie Sanders. There were people who voted for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They were even people who once supported Donald Trump. There were people of

color and young people who turned out in record numbers. They were extremely online political junkies and people who barely watched the news, but decided to vote for the very first time in their lives. Here's the challenge, though. We had a coalition of every age, people from every background, from every corner of the country, and even in an election that shattered turnout records. from every corner of the country, and even in an election that shattered turnout records.

It was a coalition that still just barely stopped the determined fascist push that Michael Potters talked about. But we did stop it. We won. Even in the face of voter suppression, gerrymandered districts, the electoral college, a raging pandemic, and a deranged incumbent who used the full power of the presidency

to attempt a coup. We won. And according to Democratic messaging expert Anat Shankar-Osorio, we shouldn't underestimate the significance of that victory. We have dealt a critical blow to fascism at the ballot box. And that is the only time that fascism has been, again, not knocked out. We see what's happening. I am not naive.

I live it. Like, I'm very aware. But we put a check on fascism at the ballot box. The only other way that fascism has ever been checked before is through an army. Even Michael Podhorzer has some optimism. through an army. Even Michael Podhorzer has some optimism. I think the thing that Democrats just are making themselves miserable over is that they forget that there are 81 million people in America who less than two years ago said they don't want four more years of Trump. They don't want him back. And that's how you win, right? If America thinks that it's another MAGA versus whatever we're going to call the alternative,

then we win that election because we have that majority. Never going to say that, oh, don't worry, Democrats are going to win. But there is a road here. There is a road here, and we're going to find it. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome back to the wilderness. So the question for this season is this. How do we keep our fragile, unwieldy, pro-democracy coalition together in 2022, 2024, and beyond. Maybe even more important is the question, how do we grow this coalition so we're not just narrowly averting

disaster but making real progress? It won't be easy. Even in an ideal political environment, which, let's be honest, this is not, midterm elections are almost always challenging for the party that controls the White House. There are very powerful structural forces that sort of dictate American politics. Sean McElwee is the founder of Data for Progress, a progressive think tank that uses polling to figure out the most effective way

to message progressive policies. Sean's one of the biggest political nerds I know, and I mean that as a huge compliment. Every president, with the exception of Bush, W. Bush, has lost seats in the midterms after their first two years. And the reason for that is that once you've won an election, your voters sort of start to disengage a bit from politics. Remember 2018? A historic accomplishment for the Democrats will win the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

All this talk about a blue wave. A huge blue wave. We don't have to think too hard to imagine that that's what Republicans feel like right now. They are very frustrated. They want to make their voices heard. They're going to make sure that they turn out in this election. In the first big races after 2020, we saw hints of that Republican enthusiasm. Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin has emerged triumphant. All righty, Virginia, we won this thing!

He was able to win because he was able to tap into this magic that exists that end up driving out record turnout on their side. Governor Murphy, you see, holding that slim lead over Republican Jack Cattarelli. Even experts say this was closer than they expected. It's less than 20,000 votes. The number of Republican groups that were registering to vote was crazy high. So even if Democrats weren't facing an electorate that isn't feeling too hot about the economy, the direction of the country, or the Democratic president, they'd still be dealing with a relatively normal political dynamic where the party in power almost always turns in a less than stellar midterm performance. I'm not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like I did last night. But this, of course, is 2022. We left normal behind like six years ago. And there's now growing evidence that this midterm election could, and I emphasize the word could, be different.

The candidates that are running in 2022 are extremely Trumpy candidates. They feel Trumpy to people. They feel extreme to people. Political strategist Sarah Longwell is the publisher of The Bulwark, a media organization made up of mostly Republicans that was founded in opposition to the MAGA movement. Sarah also spends a lot of time conducting focus groups, so she has a better sense than most of how voters think. These are crazy people. These are extreme people. Like, let me introduce you to Carrie Lake. Governor Ron DeSantis. He's got BDE. Anybody know what that means? He's got the same kind of BDE that President Trump has.

She is an anti-vaxxing, my pillow guy endorsed. I'm not going to certify the election when I'm governor. And like, if you add Carrie Lake to Doug Mastriano. Yes, I was there to hear my president speak on January 6th. To Herschel Walker. I was good air, decided to float over to China. You look at the Republican Party and think, what is going on with this crowd? But it's not just the MAGA candidates that feel so extreme to people.

It's their agenda. It's what they're trying to do to the country. A group of lawmakers who are working to pass laws that would stop people from crossing state lines to get abortion. There's not a national ban on abortion right now. And I think that's a problem. If this Supreme Court can rewrite history with abortion, then there is a fear that gay marriage could be one of the several other cases

the court will overturn. The American Library Association has tracked more than 230 book challenges nationwide. Right, maybe we should privatize Social Security, right? Private retirement accounts, get the government out of it. Birth control gives people the false sense of security. But if there is no such thing as consequence-free sex, people are going to be more likely to practice chastity. None of these positions are even close to popular with the vast majority of voters.

And if you're skeptical of what the polls say, which why wouldn't you be, think about what actual voters have done in the months since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion in the Dobbs decision. In five special elections that have been held to fill congressional seats in Nebraska, Minnesota, New York, and even Alaska, the Democratic candidates haven't just performed as well as Joe Biden did in 2020. They've performed better by anywhere from a few points to double digits. Then there's Kansas.

In a deep red state where Republicans put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that could have outlawed abortion, the measure failed by an overwhelming margin thanks to record turnout

among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. I'm super proud to be from Kansas tonight and I feel like my state just showed up and boldly told me that they are going to take care of me and my female friends

and everyone that can get pregnant in the state of Kansas. We are protected tonight. I think there are two lessons here. One, MAGA Republicans have overreached. They've nominated extreme candidates with extreme views that put them out of step with even more conservative voters in conservative parts of the country. Two, it's up to all of us to make sure that the rest of the country knows that.

Especially since the voters who tend to show up in primaries and special elections tend to be people who already follow politics pretty closely. closely. And that crew probably isn't enough for Democrats to win a midterm election where a lot of voters show up who aren't as politically partisan, opinionated, or engaged. That's one reason why the pro-choice movement was on the ground in Kansas organizing for months around that ballot measure. Because they wanted to reach people who don't usually show up to vote in an August primary. The same is true for everyone who pushed and pushed and never gave up until President Biden forgave student debt and worked with Democrats in Congress to pass the most sweeping climate bill in history. Activists and organizers didn't just leave that fight in the hands of politicians. They took matters into their own hands. They tried to connect with people

who don't normally participate in politics. That's what needs to happen everywhere in every race from now until November. Right now, the only thing standing between America and the end of democracy as we know it is the Democratic Party. And yes, I realize that statement may not always inspire all that much confidence. But the truth is,

we don't have to treat the Democratic Party as some far-off institution that we have no control over. We don't have to just blindly accept all the decisions, positions, and advice that come from the party's leaders. We have agency here. We can support candidates we believe in. And if there aren't enough of those candidates, we can help recruit more. And if we can't recruit enough, we can run ourselves. There are this year about 2,000 or so races on the ballot across 26 states that touch local election administration.

And they are of critical importance when you think about the long-term health and safety of democracy. Amanda Lippman is the co-founder of Run for Something, an organization that supports young progressive candidates running in their first election. She's seen plenty of people who were so worried about the MAGA movement and so dispirited by the current crop of elected officials, they decided to run themselves, especially in local and state races that can have a huge impact on our elections. In fact, that's exactly the strategy that Republicans have been following for years. The Republicans did not get here overnight, even though it feels that way. They got here to a place where it's basically minority rule and we feel gaslit all the time. We're like, why isn't the thing that we want, the thing that is popular, why isn't that happening? It's because the Republican Party

and the ecosystem of mega donors and the far right and the extremists and the white nationalists and the evangelical movement has invested for decades. They've won school boards. They've won county commissions. They've won city councils. They've won state legislatures. And they created the structure that allows them to win even when their ideas and their politicians are not more popular. So when we think about what it will take to fight back, what it will take to win, we have to have the same kind of long-term vision.

Of course, not all of us are the type to run for office. That's okay. Each of us still has the ability to shape the Democratic Party's message, to be the Democratic Party's messengers. When we talk to friends and family about the election, when we call and text voters, when we knock on doors, when we post and tweet. So what do we say? How do we persuade enough people to join a coalition that's as big as it was in 2020 and hopefully even bigger? Because if Democrats hold the House and add two more Democratic senators who are willing to get rid of the filibuster, we can get some even bigger things done.

But again, I'll go back to Michael Podhorzer's warning. The left has never been able to stop a determined fascist push if it isn't aligned with the rest of the country. Being aligned with the rest of the country doesn't require everyone to hold all the same positions and beliefs. But it does require understanding other people's positions and beliefs. It requires meeting people where they are, especially the 81 million Americans who already came out to defeat Trump in 2020. What do they think about politics right now? What do they care about?

What are they angry about? What are their concerns, their fears, their hopes? How do we make sure they don't vote Republican in November? And how do we make sure they don't stay home? These are the questions we'll try to answer this season. But before we dive in, there's something important to know about these 81 million voters. The overwhelming majority are not like you and me in one very significant way. They just don't follow politics that closely. In fact, one of the biggest divides in American politics is whether or not you're interested in political media in the first place. You, being someone who follows politics at least somewhat closely, might recognize that voice

as Ezra Klein's, who now hosts a podcast and writes a column for the New York Times. I think this is a thing people really, really miss, that they're so often thinking about media bias and they forget that the people they need to reach are not either ideologues like them in politics or the ideologues unlike them, who they also relatively

well understand. Like a hardcore liberal kind of understands a hardcore conservative. What neither of them understand is somebody who thinks they are both unbelievably dull and would sooner get a root canal

than watch an hour of cable news. I can certainly attest to that based on the voters I talked to for this season. I just can't watch the news. I stay out of it. I don't know anyone in Congress. And I always just say that politics divides people. It gets way too confusing, way too quick.

On a scale of one to 10, how important would you say politics are in your life? I want to say zero, but I'm going to say two. How many of you plan on voting in the midterm elections this November? What is that? Again, these are all people who actually voted in 2020. They're part of the 81 million who came out to stop Trump. And they're by no means unique in their attitude toward politics. They're part of the 81 million who came out to stop Trump.

And they're by no means unique in their attitude toward politics. They're the majority. We would say the 20% of people are deeply involved and 80% are not. After the break, political scientist Yana Krupnikov introduces us to those 80%.

to those 80%. If you're surprised that 80% of America isn't paying that much attention to politics, you're not alone. When Yana Krupnikov studied this for her book, The Other Divide, she was surprised too. We look at how this divide affects how people feel about political candidates and political parties,

how people are willing to talk about politics, whether they post on social media, what they post on social media. But then we also think about the implications of this divide more broadly and the implications of this divide for whose voices we hear in politics. And we suggest that oftentimes when journalists cover politics, they are actually sometimes inadvertently getting the voices of those who are heavily, heavily involved in politics. I know what some of you might be thinking. Democracy is hanging by a thread. How could so many people not be paying more attention to politics? Don't they care about the country, the planet? Can't they see what's going on out there? The answer is yes, and no, and kind of. The first thing I want to say about the 80% is that I definitely don't

want to characterize them as politically inattentive. Within that 80% certainly are going to be people who are paying basically no attention, but there are going to be people there who actually know big political things that are happening. This is not the same as saying 80% of people are checked out. That is not at all the case. The difference is really how important is following politics to your daily life. That's that idea of deep involvement. There's another possibility at hand here, which is that to be deeply involved in the sense where you're literally checking in on politics regularly throughout the day, almost hourly, you have to have the flexibility of a job that allows you to do that. And so I think income is here really correlated with the time that you're spending on politics. Even though Yana herself is a political science nerd, she's at times found herself in this 80%.

Maybe you have too. What sort of drove this idea of attention home for me in kind of a really kind of personal way is that my daughter, who was really, really young at the time, I think she was just about two, got hospitalized for a virus that affected her breathing. And so she is in the hospital for a week. She has to have oxygen. She's super sad and super sick. And during this week, I have no idea what is happening outside of this kid's hospital room. I remember absolutely, absolutely nothing, because even the days after getting out of the hospital, I just remember watching this kid's hospital room. I remember absolutely, absolutely nothing because even the days after getting out of the hospital, I just remember watching this kid and like counting her breaths. And that was my dominant focus. And so after I emerged from this and she's absolutely fine now, you realize that a bunch of things happen that you don't know about. You just don't have the capacity to follow up on the news or follow on those things. And I think that is often something that as people who are really engaged in

politics, we do in a sense forget. So I think it's important to constantly acknowledge that in a person's day, they have a finite amount of attention. And a lot of this attention is going basically to just figuring out how to live their lives, often in really difficult circumstances. Democratic pollster Margie O'Meara has moderated over 2,000 focus groups in her life. She's heard it over and over. I think what people feel fatigued about that is important is, you know, they just they feel broadly fatigued that the political climate

doesn't feel like it's improving, that we obviously had tension under Trump, to put it briefly. And, you know, people feel that there's still these tensions in daily life and in a way where people feel concerned about where we're headed as a country next. So I think one thing to think about people who are deeply involved is that when politics seems to come out of everywhere and oftentimes what we learn about politics is utterly terrifying. A tendency for some people is going to be really to disengage. This is an important point. Even if you want to pay more attention to politics, the coverage can be pretty terrible. When former Vox editor-in-chief Lauren Williams was leading a newsroom through the Trump years, she realized that politics in America is treated like a sport

and not something that is about people's lives and that it is covered like a sport. It is tackled like a sport. And for many consumers, it's consumed like a sport. But as we see, lives hang in the balance. So when the vast majority of voters feel disconnected from politics and the way it's covered, they will inevitably feel disconnected from many of the debates that rage on Twitter or cable news, from much of the language used by pundits and activists, from the appeals that politicians and political organizations use to get their attention. When I see something happening on Twitter, I now take a pause and I say,

okay, but who knows about this? Is this a big thing currently on social media? Or is this a big thing for people who are not on social media? Or is this going to translate to people who are not necessarily deeply, deeply involved in politics? This disconnected majority isn't necessarily who you think they are either. I realize that media and political types have contributed to a certain stereotype of a typical swing voter. It's the working class white guy who the New York Times interviews in a Pennsylvania diner, or a suburban soccer mom who some pundit tells us has the power to sway an entire election. But the number of people who don't vote along party lines or don't vote in every election

is much larger and more diverse than you might think. There are Americans at the edges of the coalition that stopped Trump in 2020. And while they're different in so many ways, these voters tend to be united by one thing. They feel disconnected from a political system that doesn't seem responsive to their most urgent concerns. There's a real disconnect between what politically savvy media experts or politicians believe to be the way

that people experience life and the way that everyday people actually experience the world. Alex Wallach-Hanson organizes working-class voters of all races in Pennsylvania. That same group of people are exactly the ones who are left behind by our current political system, who are left behind by our economic system, and who are disconnected from organization and institutions and who we need to bring into the political process in order to win. Like Alex, Tram Nguyen organizes working-class voters in Virginia. She's seen this disconnect firsthand. It drives me crazy when campaigns purely focus on turnout.

People are not light switches that can be turned on and off. We actually have to persuade people and have real conversations with people about, you know, what they care about. Tram is right. If you really want to figure out what people care about and what they think about politics, you need to have real conversations. And you can't do that with just a poll, which is why campaigns, political organizations, and some media outlets conduct focus groups in addition to polling surveys.

It's opposite of a survey. Because in a survey, you're making decisions about what you leave in and what you cut to get to the survey length that respondents can handle. You're making decisions about question wording. You're making decisions about answer categories. So in a focus group, you're not making those same kinds of decisions. You are asking open-ended questions. Now, some of you might be thinking,

how can a group of eight or ten people sitting around a table tell you what the rest of the country thinks? Fair point. They can't. But focus groups aren't random. They're representative. There's social and political science that goes into organizing them. People are screened and recruited so that you're talking to a set of voters

with certain backgrounds and characteristics. In our case, we recruited voters for this season of the Wilderness who mostly cast their ballots for Joe Biden in 2020, but aren't entirely sure what they'll do in 2022. Voters who we know from polls and other data might decide to either vote Republican or not vote at all.

I conducted these focus groups in some of the most competitive midterm battlegrounds, places that have turned into what Michael Potters recalls civil war states. Because you're close enough to 50-50 that both sides think that they can win each election. And so everything becomes existential. You get Republicans doing all the anti-democratic things and all that. Places like Virginia. The race is being closely watched on a national level. Pennsylvania.

The battleground state of Pennsylvania in focus. Orange County. California. One of the key battlegrounds that could determine who controls. Nevada. Democrats are divided in Nevada at a time when the party desperately needs. In Georgia. Nevada. And Georgia. Where the stakes are high and it could be anyone's race.

Everywhere we go, I'll try to better understand what these disconnected voters are thinking. Why they feel disconnected in the first place. And how we can motivate them to show up again in 2022. Some of these voters don't feel like anyone in power has their best interests at heart. There are the career politicians. They just want to make sure they've got their job. When people choose to not vote, it is because they don't see somebody who wants to fight for them. Others we just aren't reaching. These swing voters think Democrats sound like aliens. Then there are voters who've just about given up.

And I think people are exhausted in terms of things in their daily life that government is not helping with. And people who feel like politicians have given up on them. I feel like I'm drowning. Some don't have the luxury of time. The average non-Pod Save America person is probably thinking about how their families are going to get by and politics is last, not first. And then there are people who don't even know where to begin. I filled out a ballot like a couple weeks ago. Was that for the November election?

I don't even know. After each group, I asked a panel of experts to listen to what these voters had to say and offer some advice about what campaigns and organizers could do to reach them. People like... John De La Volpe, Biden pollster in the 2020 campaign. Katie Porter, I'm a congresswoman from Orange County, California.

Shakir, I was Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign manager. Simone Sanders Townsend, and I am a host on MSNBC of my own show, Simone. These conversations with voters and strategists and organizers aren't meant to give you a sense of how well Democrats will do in the midterms. I'm also not trying to give you the message that will lead the party to victory. And that's because I don't think there is one perfect bumper sticker slogan that will do the trick for every candidate in every race. Voters are complicated. Humans are complicated. For those of us who follow politics closely,

it can seem black and white. Why wouldn't it, when we're mainly exposed to the voices of people who think just like we do, and people who think nothing like we do? That's not to say that everyone else is centrist, moderate, apolitical, or apathetic. Far from it. As you'll hear from these voters, many people who are disconnected from politics still have strong political views. And some of those views are conflicting, surprising, or just plain weird. Again, people are complicated. But the fundamental promise of American democracy is that a diverse, flawed, complicated country of more than 300 million people can somehow figure out a way to live together in relative peace and prosperity. That promise is now at greater risk than at any time since the Civil War.

And just like then, it's at risk from forces within. But what we know for a fact is that throughout our history and just two years ago, we were able to hold this democracy together in the face of those who tried to pull it apart. And we did that by talking to each other, listening to each other,

persuading each other to find the common threads that still connect us as Americans. And that's what we have to do again in 2022, in 2024, in all the days in between, and all the days after. It's a tough and frustrating slog, but the good news is the outcome is in our hands. We have agency here. We get to be the messengers. So I hope these conversations can help inform and inspire your own activism in the days and months to come. Let's dive in. Media. Season three is produced by Dust Light Productions. I'm your host, Jon Favreau. From

Crooked Media, our executive producers are Sarah Geismar, Katie Long, and me. Special thanks to Allison Falsetta and Andy Taft for production support, and to Mike Kulishek from Benenson Strategy Group, who helped us with our focus groups. From Dust Light, our executive producer is Misha Youssef. Arwen Nix is our executive editor. Stephanie Cohn is the senior producer. Thank you. If you want to learn more about how you can take action in the fight for our democracy, head over to votesaveamerica.com slash midterms.