The Daily Signal - Boomer, Meet Millennial: Examining the News Through A Multi-Generational Lens

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

It's no secret that different generations view current events with different perspectives. Sometimes these differences lead to strife, but pollster John Zogby and his son, Jeremy, have chosen to take advantage of their generational perspective gap.  With their podcast, “The Zogby Report,” they discuss the news through the lens of a baby boomer and a millennial. In today's episode of The Daily Signal Podcast, the Zogbys share why they decided to start the show and some of today's most pressing topics, including America’s growing fascination with socialism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, March 16th. I'm Robert Blewe. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, we share Rob's conversation with John and Jeremy Zogby, a father and son who recently started a podcast called The Zogby Report, breaking down current events through the lens of two different generations. We also share your letters to the editor and a good news story about Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, General Jack Keene.

Before we get to today's show, we want to take a moment to tell you about about another excellent podcast here at the Heritage Foundation called Scotus 101. Hosted by Heritage Legal Fellow Elizabeth Slattery, Scotus 101 breaks down the current cases at the Supreme Court in a way we can all understand. Elizabeth brings you up to speed on what the justices are up to and even plays Supreme Court trivia on occasion. Start streaming Scotus 101 today on any of your favorite podcast platforms. Now stay tuned for today's show. Coming up next. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by John Zogby and Jeremy Zogby.

John is the founder and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies, and Jeremy is a partner there as well. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Great to be with you or fellow upstate New Yorker. That's right, and I do want to get to that in just a few moments. You are both the co-hosts of a new podcast, the Zogby Report. I have enjoyed listening to it, and I want to delve in a little bit later to understand why you started. it and share with our listeners. But first, you know, I think it's really important for us, given the work that you do, to start our conversation today, to talk about the dramatically

changing world in which we live. We have a president who took an unorthodox path to the White House and has really upended the way business is done. The economy is strong, maybe despite some of these fluctuations in the stock market, and yet half of America says we're headed down the wrong track. Given your vast experience and polling, what do you make of this moment we're in? Well, it's tech-driven. And, you know, what we have is not only constantly changing technologies that are changing the way we think, react, behave, but they're more and more being introduced by four and among younger people, people particularly under 35, 40 years of age, and the younger you get, the more tech savvy. And they think differently. They behave differently, and they have to do so in

real time. And at the same time, carry those of us. I'm obviously not part of that age cohort, but have to carry most of us into that same world. It's disruptive. The most dangerous words in our language. We're going to continue to do things the way we've always done them. And so we're in the midst of this huge global change. And, you know, we're sort of all in it together. And I would only end and pass the torch to Jeremy by saying that renders a lot of our institutions that are locked into some of the old ways of doing things, as if not obsolete, than in dire need of disruption. Jerry, you want to pick that up?

Yeah, I mean, you know, you look at 2020, and by the way, the overview of the technological aspect of it all is spot on. But here we are in 2020, and, you know, I'm looking, we're closely tracking this. And America, in so many regards, maybe the world, too, not just America, but, you know, we'll stick to the United States. is at a crossroads. We're at a crossroads in the sense of, do we go more of the route of nationalist? You see this playing out, look at Brexit, or do we remain in a system that's more of

international order or cooperation with international order? So we're at that crossroads. We're at another crossroads in terms of age, where we're still ruled by baby boomers, but probably not for much longer. So who's going to pick up the torch? Is it going to be millennials? Is it going to be Gen X? When is that going to happen?

What are the changes that are going to come from that? And then we could go on with other ways that were at a crossroads. And another one, I would say, the most obvious is do we maintain as a to what level a capitalist economy? or do we go down the road of a democratic socialist? And so it is unbelievably fascinating. Well, Jeremy, I'm glad you brought that up because in listening to the podcast and seeing some of the things that you've written, I know that socialism has come up.

And certainly in polls we've seen, particularly, I think, among young people, more of a desire to move in that direction. What do you make of American support for socialism? Well, I mean, you know, and my dad can attest to this, more so because he's, he's, you know, been a historian for much longer than I have. But, I mean, you know, starting in the late 1800s when German immigrants were coming over, that's when kind of the seeds started to get planted in this country. And then after the turn of the century, we had a bona fide socialist party. Eugene Debs actually got a million votes while he was in prison. And then,

you know, socialism kind of wove, uh, weaved itself into the progressive movement. And so we've always had that, shouldn't say always, we've long had that backdrop. And I think, you know, with millennials who more and more were traveling abroad and probably a popular destination among them was going to Western Europe, they started to say, hey, look at Denmark, you know, look at Sweden, look at the aspects that they have, look at large swads of Western Europe that have it. You know, maybe we should have it too. And so I think to them, it's, it's, it's, it's, To many of them, I should say. It's a logical extension. When I think of socialism, it's countries like Venezuela, Cuba, the Soviet Union, which of course is the Union of Sylvia's Socialist Republics. Those are the things that come to mind. You mentioned some of those Scandinavian countries. It's interesting. The Heritage Foundation publishes annually an index of economic freedom. And some of those countries actually enjoy more economic freedom than the United States. So, you know, quite, quite different perspective from a Cuba versus a Denmark. let's say. But, John, you know, just to get you in here, does supporters of socialism or democratic

socialism make a different connection with it? And what are they viewing when we hear the term socialism? So, you know, we're tracking basically people who are under 30 and just remember that people under 30, for that matter, people under 40, I have no recollection of the wall coming down or the fall of the Soviet Union. Those are in the realm of ancient. history, really, to them. And so very less likely than to associate socialism with something that was historic. On a positive side, I think what they're doing is they're saying, you know, capitalism, you know, we get, we get entrepreneurship, we get opportunity, but these are now young people who have had lived, at least, much of their adult lives,

after the Great Recession. When student debt was compiling, when we began to talk in earnest about a gig economy, meaning something less than permanent, each job they moved into, of not meeting expectations for high goals, and then income inequality. Very important.

That steady growth of income inequality, if it's just a perception of income inequality, that's what drives young people to say, hey, look, what we have isn't working. Let's try something different. And then I think you add to that that hard to use the word charisma and Bernie Sanders say in the same sentence. But Bernie has a very direct message, a message that is unchanged and very authentic in many ways, whether you like them or not, what you see is what you get. And I think that's kind of like a perfect storm for why socialism is back in the debate here. Well, and as you both noted, I mean, we find ourselves in a situation where we are deeply polarized, I mean, to the point that

some families have stopped talking about politics or maybe in other cases stop talking altogether. Is this a temporary phase that you see us going through, or is this maybe how we're going to live the rest of our lives? Well, let me take a crack at that. Then I want to hear what Jeremy has to say. I do believe it's temporary. This is a rough period that we're going through. It's a period of creative destruction for reasons that we talked about earlier, but the replacement takes a little time.

And we live in a world that doesn't understand taking a little time. We live in a world where if there is a crisis at 9 o'clock in the morning on CNN, if it's not resolved by lunchtime, it's a global crisis and unresolvable. And so, yeah, I think the lag between the disruption or, or even falling apart of traditional institutions and finding replacement is probably a very short-term thing, except that we're also very impatient. I guess I would add to that dynamic that, so, I mean, it's been so contentuous, right? Especially since 2016 and certain forms of media have exacerbated the problem by pushing, you know, an ideological agenda.

And so I think that you can only go so far before the people just tune out because, you know, we have that ability just to take that remote control and hit the power button and tune into something else. And so what I see happening is look at the medium of podcast. It's exploding. I mean, your everyday person is doing a podcast is doing a YouTube channel. And they're huge. And there's just so much. The thing that's amazing about podcasts. is there's so much depth and space to explore with it. And, you know, as opposed to a radio program and television where you have only a limited amount of time. And, you know, there's, at this point, there's still regulations. Or there is. In the podcast world, there's kind of, it's a wild west aspect. And so what I'm getting at is that if this boils over and continues to have all of this tension,

and all of this loud barking, I just see more and more people in droves going to another medium where they can explore, you know, new ideas, and they're actually doing it right now. Well, I've listened to your weekly podcast, which debuted in January, and I have enjoyed it for that reason.

I think you both do an excellent job of analyzing the current political trends and provide more substance than you get from other sources, as you indicated, Jeremy. So tell us more about the podcast, why you started the Zagby report and why our audience should listen. Well, you know, I'll go first and then, Dad, you know, obviously your take on it too.

We had talked about it. When we formed Zagby strategies, and by the way, my brother, Ben, our middle brother, is a partner from the get-go. We were getting calls from people and some pretty, you know, interesting people. They were saying, you guys got to do a podcast. And we just didn't know how to do it. And then it wasn't a New Year's resolution, but it kind of turned out to be one because we started seriously talking about it after the new year.

And it really just came down to, all right, let's stop talking about doing it and let's finally do it. So Ryan Miller, our producer and your former schoolmate, we reached out to him because we knew he had all the capabilities. He said, come on down. and we did, we did one test run, and we all looked at each other and we said, we've got to get that out. And so the backdrop to it, though, was obviously, I'm, you know, I'm the millennial, my dad's the boomer, two different generations, two different worldviews, but we don't, we're tired of all the animosity. We're tired of the ideological animosity.

And now there's an ageism thing, you know, OK boomer. And so we wanted to show people, look, we don't agree on. things. We have different views, but at the end of the day, we work together and we respect each other. And this is how you do it. This is how you talk about controversial things, contentious things, but at the end of the day, there's still love and respect. And we hope that that radiates, and that that's why people should listen to it. I totally agree. And I would only add to that, here's an opportunity for us to do what we do best and to showcase it.

We do analysis, but ours is based on data. A lot of data that we generate ourselves or watch other data. And to make that data digestible, at the same time, as Jeremy points out, you can make it digestible without yelling about it, which is, I think, very important. Way, way, way too much noise that's out there. And we'd like the reviews that we're getting from people because what it is basically is a discourse between father and son that honestly is totally unscripted and unrehearsed. We have normally been in different cities. And when we're home, we're in different places.

And just before the podcast begins, I may say to Jeremy, what are we talking about today? and we just start talking about it. And that's it. And I like the spontaneity of it as well. Well, you both have a deep knowledge of polling and have been quite successful at it. John, in your case, for 35 years. What is your advice to Americans?

What are you trying to convey to them through the podcast as they read and hear about polling? What do they need to know? Well, they need to know that polling is really deep, that it's so much more than who's ahead today or a prediction who's going to win in November. In fact, those are the least intriguing aspects of polling. Polling reveals to us not only fleeting opinions and attitudes, I think more importantly, one of the values that Americans have,

what do they associate with candidates? what do they associate with policies, what pushes their buttons, what makes them vote the way they do or behave the way they do? And I think that that is so much more revealing and something that is unique for us to provide than say the usual talking heads on television who will just say, oh, I don't think the American people will ever put up with it without understanding that you ought to just ask the American people and let them find out, and let them tell you whether they'll put up with it, rather than, you know, sitting at the Mayflower having breakfast with a few of your colleagues and gesticulating on what the American people think without actually pulling real people. Well, I couldn't miss an opportunity to ask you about our mutual connection, which is Utica, New York. I was born there and raised there. You decided to run your business from this special place in upstate New York. Tell our listeners why and what it is that you most love about Utica.

Okay, I'm going to do the OK Boomer part first, and then Jeremy can pick up from there. Well, first of all, the ethnic tradition is wonderful. You know, that means, you know, mainly Europe, North, Southeast, and West of Europe, but also a strong tradition from the Middle East as well. And we all have restaurants and institutions. But then of late, say in the last 30 years or so, a strong welcoming tradition and some good institutions have brought in about 20 to 22,000 refugees and their children who are mainly born here. And so this beautiful city now is colored by the presence of Bosnians and Ukrainians,

Libyans, Iraqis, Bhutanese, Karen from Burma, refugees, refugees, refugees really from everywhere, all of whom now are employed, are in the public school district that speaks 46 languages, and have their own then unique stores and restaurants. They've saved a city, basically, and provided a wonderful opportunity for the native-born to see a rebirth in a city that had undergone. some difficult times. Yeah, I would add to that, and I can't claim the original coining of this phrase. This comes from my dad, but when I used to ask my dad, you know, hey, you know, our cousins are in D.C. Why didn't we move to New York City? Why didn't we move there? Why didn't I grow up

in D.C.? And, you know, I learned later on that, well, not only did my dad love his community and wanted to stay there and be close to family. But my dad used it to his advantage in terms of his perspective. He said, this is real America. You know, D.C. is a wonderful place. And San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York are classic cities. But you get a real perspective of what real America is like when you live in a small town or a small city. and here's a small city of 60,000 people with almost every nation, right, living here.

And that's what I love about it. And I would add one other thing that the old neighborhood, you know, I grew up at the tail end of kind of the old world. And, you know, a lot of places have just, you know, transitioned fully into going into the 21st century. Come to Utica, and you still have the remnants of the old neighborhood, of, of, of, you know, families occupying two family households with grandparents upstairs, you know, kids downstairs, and then aunts and uncles next door. And I love that. And politically, it truly is one of those rare battleground districts. I mean, President Trump won in 2016, a Democratic member of Congress took the congressional seat in 2018. There are many

places like that left in America today. So a big shout out to Utica, New York, and my hometown in the School of New York Mills, where Ryan Miller, as you mentioned earlier, is from. It's truly great to visit every year. Having lived half my life there and half my life in D.C., I truly do miss it. I enjoy coming back for the boilermaker every summer and running it with my father. And really appreciate you making sure that you represent Utica so well. Well, thanks for this opportunity. And your listeners ought to know that New York Mills is famous for every fourth house has a famous.

golf pro that comes from there, that there are actual PGA winners over the years who have been from New York Mills. So that little tiny community of what, a couple of thousand people, there's some mean golfers there. Well, it is truly special. John and Jeremy, I want to thank you for taking the time to speak to the Daily Signal. I wish you the best with the Zogby Report. Encourage our listeners to check it out on Apple Podcasts or wherever you may.

listen to your podcast. Thanks so much. Hey, thank you. Good to talk to you, Rob. Thank you. Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history. That's right. And if we want to keep our republic, this needs a change. I'm Jared Stepman. And I'm Fred Lucas. We host The Right Side of History, a podcast dedicated to restoring informed patriotism and busting the negative narratives about America's past. Hollywood, the media, and academia have failed a generation.

We're here to set the record straight on the ideas and people. people who've made this country great. Subscribe to the right side of history on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher today. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show and on the Daily Signals Morning Bell email newsletter. Virginia, who do you have? In response to Walter E. Williams article entitled, Rights versus Wishes, Drew Page writes,

very well expressed, Mr. Williams, I am in complete agreement. My rights are not someone else's obligations. except for non-interference. Someone else's right to pursue happiness should impose no obligation on me or anyone else to provide them with whatever it is that makes them happy. And in response to that same article, Rod writes,

that was a well-written article. I think we all need to repeat these rights as often as possible to our friends on the left and right. As such, a right imposes no obligation upon another other than the duty of non-interference. Otherwise, these so-called rights impose burdens on others in the form of involuntary servitude. Great job, Walter. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. So send an email to Letters at dailysignal.com or leave a voicemail message at 202-608-6205.

Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thanks so much, Rob. Well, you know, recently I was thinking a little bit just about why we do this

segment on the podcast. And it truly is so important to pause and to look at what is happening in our world that's good. You know, right now with the coronavirus, it's really easy to get stressed out, overwhelmed, and disheartened. So I'm excited that we can take this little bit of time on Monday morning and remember that there are positive things going on in our world. So let's talk about one of those joyful news stories. Last week, President Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to General Jack Keene.

General Keene served in Vietnam and played a critical role. and leading our military efforts in the years following 9-11. Born in 1943, Keane grew up in a military family. He volunteered to serve in Vietnam and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He received the award of Silver Star for his courage in Vietnam. But his service to our nation was far from over at the end of Vietnam. He continued to serve in the U.S. military,

becoming a brigadier general in 1991 and commander of the Joint Readiness Training Center. At the White House ceremony last Tuesday, President Trump praised General Keene for his dedication to his nation and his family. Listen to what the president had to say via Fox News. Jack was named a vice chief of staff of the Army in 1999, was in his office on September 11th, 2001, when terrorists struck the Pentagon. He ran through smoke and debris and evacuated the injured, saving lives,

He visited the wounded in hospitals and attended scores of funerals for the fallen patriots slain in the attack. Jack soon helped oversee the additional military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the first senior military official to visit troops in the field. In 2003, he was offered the position of Army Chief of Staff, but in a profound act of devotion, he turned down the position and left the Army after nearly 38 years to care for his wife, Terry, who had developed Parkinson's disease. In 2006, Jack helped engineer the surge

that stabilized a deteriorating situation in Iraq and allowed Iraqis to finally take charge of their own future. In the years since, Jack has continued to offer his sage counsel to military and policy leaders and to visit our troops on the country. frontiers and Jack, I have to say, has given me a lot of good advice too. It is men like General Jack Keane who we truly owe so much to for their service and their dedication to our freedom. If there is a piece of news that you would like to share with us

that's positive that you hope to be shared on this show, please send us an email at letters at dailysignal.com and we would love to share that. That's great, Virginia. Thanks for that story. It was really an honor to host General Jack Keene here at the Heritage Foundation not too long ago. So we're grateful that President Trump was recognizing him for his achievements. Absolutely. Certainly award given to someone very, very worthy of it. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. The Daily Signal podcast comes to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

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