Run for Something: The Amanda Litman Interview
The corruption in our broken and abusive systems won't change until we change them ourselves. That's why we need you -- yes, you -- to serioiusly consider running for something. Don't know where to start? Meet Amanda Litman, author of the essential roadmap to running for office Run For Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself, a book that will hold your hand and help you through the entire process.
Show Notes for This Episode Are Available Here
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestselling books, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a filmmaker and journalist and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.
Sarah Kendzior:
And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
And we're thrilled to be joined by Amanda Litman. Amanda is the co-founder of Run For Something and the author of the must-read book, Run For Something; A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself. When we first launched the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, we made sure to include Run For Something as an important bullet point in that action guide.
Andrea Chalupa:
It is a must-read book to understand our government and how it functions and how the good people in this nation must get into the system in order to flush out the system and protect our democracy and our future.
Andrea Chalupa:
From Amanda's bio on the website, runforsomething.net, which lists her incredible experience helping run campaigns: Amanda was Hillary Clinton's email director, Charlie Crist’s digital director when he ran for governor in 2014, one of the first employees at Organizing for Action as deputy email director, email writer for Barack Obama's reelection.
Andrea Chalupa:
Amanda's book and Twitter feed—just search her name, Amanda Litman, on Twitter to find her. I do that from time to time when I need to be inspired—will energize you and give you a sense of hope again. I first met Amanda in 2017 and was blown away with her plainspoken optimism and how she essentially predicted to me the blue wave that fell in Virginia and other states that held elections that year.
Andrea Chalupa:
I learned from her what to look out for. That's how I spotted the blue wave in 2018 when most pundits on TV—White men—were claiming there was no blue wave initially. I knew where to look and reported on it for Gaslit Nation, our 2018 midterms instant coverage because of Amanda, and I want to thank you for that, Amanda.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you want to know what we're up against and what we must do to protect ourselves and protect our democracy, please follow Amanda Litman on Twitter and read her book, Run For Something. Welcome to the show, Amanda.
Amanda Litman:
That was such a beautiful intro. Thank you.
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, this is like a national holiday at Gaslit Nation having you on the show. So tell us, why should people run for office?
Amanda Litman:
Because otherwise terrible people will, which is sort of a snarky way of saying this, but I think it's really important to remember that government is made up of people and if we get better people into it, we get better outcomes. We have seen that over and over again. Personnel is policy.
Amanda Litman:
The leaders that we put into office determine what we get from the government and it really, really matters to have good people who give a shit about solving problems, who are willing to put their communities ahead of their egos, who want to do something, not just to be something, and who really reflect the concerns that their voters care about. And I mean that in every possible way, from having the same lived experiences to the same kinds of backgrounds, to the same kinds of occupations.
Amanda Litman:
For so long, our government has been made up of mostly old rich White men, and that is just starting to change in the last maybe five or six years in a really meaningful way. And we have so much more to do to make sure that our government really reflects the people we're trying to serve and, therefore, actually serves them.
Amanda Litman:
So if you're the kind of person who listens to the show, you are the kind of person we need running for office. And I want to assure you if you're thinking about it, there is a whole network of people, including Run For Something, who are here to help you.
Andrea Chalupa:
But how do you deal with imposter syndrome? I know when I was first starting out becoming a writer, there was this little vicious voice in my head saying, "Who the hell are you to become a writer?" I saw imposter syndrome in the people I was launching Mr. Jones with who were just starting out in their film careers, and we had a struggle through that. What if people don't feel good enough, smart enough, rich enough, or whatever, to run for office?
Amanda Litman:
Well, I think there's a couple of ways to approach this. First, running for office and becoming a politician is a lot like basically anything else. It's like being a writer or a musician or an artist or a teacher. The way that you become it is by doing it. Nobody's born a candidate for office. You become a candidate, you become a politician by putting your name on the ballot and running.
Amanda Litman:
So in that sense, everyone else is also an imposter, but there's also the reality that most of the people doing this are no better than you. And in fact, many of them are much, much worse. You know, stupider people than you have run for office and have won.
Amanda Litman:
And I think especially for women, especially for People of Color, especially for folks who don't fit the preconceived notion of what a politician is, when you don't see yourself haven't been reflected in office before, you think it's because you don't belong when the reality is it's because these structures have been built to keep people like you out.
Amanda Litman:
That's not to say that you don't belong so much as someone else decided you shouldn't be there. You do belong. This government is yours for the taking, it's yours for the leading and there's people to help you do that. But you shouldn't feel like you don't deserve to take up some space.
Amanda Litman:
Another thing I'll say about running for office and for people who have imposter syndrome about it is to remind you that you're doing a hard thing, and it's hard because it's hard. It's not hard because you're incompetent. It's not hard because you're stupid. It's not hard because you're a failure.
Amanda Litman:
It's hard because running for office is a really just inherently difficult thing to do. It should be, because when you win you're in charge of things that really are life or death. It's a big responsibility, whether it's a school board race, or a state senate race, or a United States Senate race. The things that happen, win or lose, change people's lives so there should be some hoops to jump through. But that's built in. It's baked in.
Amanda Litman:
It's not a reflection of your skills or your intellect. It's a reflection of the system you're trying to enter, which probably wasn't built for people like you to try and enter in the first place.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right. So you're basically against these barriers, but you have to push through them in order to make it easier for the people that come after you.
Amanda Litman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Andrea Chalupa:
So how are you at Run For Something, your organization, what is it that you guys do and how many people are you currently working with to run for something?
Amanda Litman:
Run For Something does a whole bunch of things. The first part of our program is recruiting people. So asking folks to run for office, and we do that through social media and ads and events and national Run For Office Day. I host a podcast called “Run For Something” which talks to candidates and elected officials who run for office to inspire more people like them to run.
Amanda Litman:
Since we launched in 2017, we've identified more than 76,000 young people all across the country who said, "I want to run, what's next?" The second big part of our program is figuring out what's next. We help people figure out how to actually get on the ballot, what kind of offices are available for them, we do trainings and webinars, we work with partners on the ground and online to get candidates the resources they need to succeed.
Amanda Litman:
And then we do endorsements, and endorsements are where we really hammer home and dig in with candidates on what is it that we can help them with, whether that's finding their staff training or getting them the voter file, recommending them to the press and to other folks for endorsements, raising money, all kinds of things.
Amanda Litman:
By the time this airs, we will have endorsed more than 1,700 candidates in our lifetime, nearly 250 in 2021 alone. Those endorsed candidates are mostly women, more than half. They’re more than half People of Color, they're about 25% LGBTQ. They're amazing. They're absolutely amazing. And the coolest thing about it is that over the last four years, we have helped elect more than 500 people to state and local office across 46 states.
Amanda Litman:
And those winners are also mostly women and mostly People of Color and about a fifth LGBTQ. So, they look like the American people, they have experiences like the American people, and they are leading in ways that have made people's lives infinitely and exponentially better.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow. So who can sign up to run for office through Run For Something?
Amanda Litman:
Literally anyone. Run For Something works primarily with young people, so for us, that's folks under the age of 40. We are especially looking for people who will run as progressives or Democrats. We have a set of values we want folks to align by, but there's a lot of different ways you can be a Democrat depending on where you are and what kind of office you're running for.
Amanda Litman:
And we're really looking for first-time candidates. So if you've never run before, if you have no experience in politics, if you've never really engaged in this political process, that's okay. We are here to help you. And that being said, if folks who don't meet those criteria come through our program, you certainly get access to a lot of the stuff we provide. We just might not endorse you or dig in as deeply in your campaign.
Andrea Chalupa:
But what about for mid-career folks, people over 40 that maybe have tried a couple of times and they'd just like to revamp and learn, do you know organizations they could check out?
Amanda Litman:
Totally. So for folks who are a little bit older or mid-career, we work with a whole bunch of groups depending on where you are and what kind of community you might fit in. So let's say you are Black and thinking about running for office, we might connect you to Collective PAC.
Amanda Litman:
If you're a pro-choice woman running for office, we might connect you to Emerge America or EMILY's List. If you are LGBTQ, we might connect you to Victory Fund. If you are Latino, we might connect you to the Latino Victory Project. If you are running in North Carolina for a state house or state senate race, we might connect you to our partners down at LEAD NC.
Amanda Litman:
Really, it depends where you are and what you're running for, but if we're not the right group for you, that doesn't mean we don't think you should run. It just means that we're not the right group for you. So we are here to make sure that any person thinking about running gets the resources they need to do it.
Andrea Chalupa:
Okay, great. So anyone listening to this, regardless of where they are, as long as they have a good heart, they're driven by empathy and science, they can check in with your organization, take advantage of the programs they can take advantage of, and then get directed from there of where they would probably most likely fit in in terms of finding their grassroots partner.
Amanda Litman:
That's exactly right. And the best place to go for that is runforwhat.net, where you can enter your address and we'll show you what offices are available to you in 2021. You'll then get put into the Run For Something pipeline. Later this summer we'll have all the data for 2022. But even still, it's really helpful, I think, to get a sense of what your options are this early in the process.
Andrea Chalupa:
Okay. Everyone listening, we're going to repeat that website again. Everyone needs to write it down just for the exercise, the muscle memory, of going through this process and find, just as an exercise, to develop your own consciousness towards the fact that our system is made up of people and we need to bring in more good people to save ourselves. So give us that website again where people can put in their zip code and find available offices to run for where they live.
Amanda Litman:
Runforwhat.net.
Andrea Chalupa:
Runforwhat.net.
Amanda Litman:
That's right.
Andrea Chalupa:
All right. Do it. Hit Pause and do that.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm going to crash this party for a second by bringing up the political conditions of my state, which is Missouri, a state that's often labeled a dark red state, even though it's fairly diverse. I'm simultaneously represented by both Cori Bush and Josh Hawley, so you can see anything is technically possible in Missouri.
Sarah Kendzior:
One of the biggest problems that we're facing is dark money, is endemic corruption. And I was wondering what kind of advice you have for candidates who are going up against that system, particularly after Citizens United and then just the unbelievable amount of dirty money that's being poured into the Republican party.
Amanda Litman:
It's so hard, and I don't want to bullshit anyone. It is so hard. The Republican Party has built basically a dark money war horse. They’ve built it over the course of decades and specifically to win, especially in places like Missouri, some of these state and local elections in order to then have folks like Josh Hawley rise up, rise to the top to build a foundation, and to help normalize some of the worst possible shit.
Amanda Litman:
That being said, I do think that what we have seen—especially on the state and local level, as opposed to a congressional or statewide—is that a candidate who is willing to really knock doors, talk to voters, meet them where they're at, put in the time, can combat some of it.
Amanda Litman:
It's hard and we have found that candidates who are able to put a face to a name, to a story, who are able not just to take a broad democratic message, but to filter it into a local lens, and also who have the relationships with their neighbors, such that, like, "Oh, I know Sarah. I see Sarah at the grocery store. I see Sarah at the gym.”
Amanda Litman:
“I see Sarah at the local pharmacy. Sarah is not a villain. Sarah might be a Democrat. I may not always agree with her, but she doesn't have a horn, she doesn't have a tail. She's someone I know." So I'm like, "She's not the scary Democrat I see on Fox news or on Sinclair media. She's my neighbor."
Amanda Litman:
That kind of personal relationship can go pretty far. Is it enough always? Maybe not immediately, but over time it does make a difference. And I think it's one of the things that we have found to be most meaningful, especially in places where Democrats haven't competed a bunch before, is that personal relationship with the candidate, who really understands their voters.
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Andrea Chalupa:
Plus just the action of running for office creates the platform. So if you're running in a so-called red state or a... What do we call them?
Sarah Kendzior:
Gerrymandered, dark-money, festering hell hole run by corrupt operatives who want to throw out your vote, that? Sorry.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. A voter suppression captive state.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes. Thank you. Good phrase.
Andrea Chalupa:
Just by running for office, you shine your light out in the world and you attract other lights and together your lights grow stronger. So, it's like launching a podcast or a blog. It's the same sort of action and you create community around it and important conversation and awareness building.
Amanda Litman:
Well, and what's the alternative? The alternative is to let them go uncontested? To let them run rampant? To not engage at all? To not fight for our values? This is the thing that makes me a little crazy when we get a lot of pushback often about this argument that we should contest every election, that we should fight for every community, that every Democratic voter should have someone to vote for when they show up at the polls.
Amanda Litman:
They should have a reason to show up in the first place. And I'm like, "Are you saying that we shouldn't try that? That just because we're ‘guaranteed’ a loss, we shouldn't participate at all?” Because what a cool way to ensure we never have a chance. It's going to be hard. Yeah. We're going to spend some money and we'll lose elections, but I entirely disagree with the premise that even if we think we know what's going to happen, that that money is a waste.
Amanda Litman:
Campaigns are galvanizing exercises and no district that starts 70/30 Republican is going to get to 50/50 or 51/49 Democrat without some 70/30, 65/35, 60/40. It's going to take time. We're going to have to lose a little along the way to winning. And that's something that, if we're able to think long-term, if we're able to think beyond a single 18-month or two-year cycle and really have a vision for what is possible, we can win, I think, everywhere, eventually, if we're willing to do the work and lose a little bit.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm so glad you're saying this. It has been so frustrating, especially in Missouri where we tend to just be thrown out and dismissed by the Democratic National Party, because people just have these assumptions that it's just inevitable and that you shouldn't bother to try.
Sarah Kendzior:
But what that does is it just absolutely demoralizes the people who've been working here—the activists, the canvassers—because they think, "Well, no one cares about what happens to us anyway. The Republicans obviously don't care, the Democrats don't care either."
Sarah Kendzior:
And so I'm so glad you said that because the most demoralizing thing at all is when people don't try. It is so much worse to not try at all than to try and lose, because at least you're creating something, at least you're showing that you care. So thank you for that.
Amanda Litman:
And we have to operate from a place of abundance. The amount of money in politics continues to go up. Is that a good thing? No, probably not. We should really do some campaign finance reform. But in the meantime, what it shows us is that there is, in fact, not a finite amount of resources available for political engagement. The only finite resource we have is time. So let's treat it that way.
Amanda Litman:
Treat every day as if our number one priority, our number one most urgent activity, is to engage voters and meet them where they are all the time, all the time. And if we operate that way, if we invest that way, if we work that way, eventually, eventually we will win. I have to believe that.
Amanda Litman:
Not just because it's proof that we have seen this over the last 40 years, this is what Republicans have done and the single thing we should take from the Republican playbook is their commitment to year-round organizing and investment, even in places where they're probably and most likely going to lose. But two, because the alternative is too sad. It’s too bleak. I don't want to live in a world where we don't even try to fight for the values we believe in. That sucks.
Andrea Chalupa:
No, absolutely. And it's such important seed planting, and I know you've seen this in your own work. failed movements tend to fertilize the ground for successful movements later on. And your own personal story is an example of that. You had a prominent role in the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. That was a devastating, shocking loss, not just for our democracy, but the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
And you quickly picked yourself back up and you launched Run For Something, and you wrote the book Run For Something, holding people's hand on how to run for office. Could you talk a little bit about that— picking yourself up and doing that important work in that crucial moment?
Amanda Litman:
Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about 2016. I always think about 2016, but I've been thinking about it lately in particular because it was really the worst moment of my life. It was the worst moment of my life. It includes when my grandma died. It was horrific, and not just because of the sense of what was coming with Trump's presidency, but in a very personal way, it was a professional failure.
Amanda Litman:
My whole job for two years was to win an election and I lost, and it felt like a reflection… The country's rejection of Hillary Clinton felt like a rejection of women who were willing to lead and to give a shit. It felt personal. And I was an unemployed, which also sucks. And my vision for what my career looked like as a Democratic operative was totally smashed to smithereens.
Amanda Litman:
And, at the same time, I was going through a shitty breakup. And, at the same time, I dislocated my knee at a New Year's party. And, at the same time, I didn't know what my next job was going to be, but I did have an inkling of an idea about an organization that could solve a problem that I saw. And I was so mad and so sad and the only way I knew how to deal with any of that was the same way I'd spent the last seven years of my career, which was to work.
Amanda Litman:
And so I got to work. And I've written about this before, but for a pretty substantial period of time, my anger, my rage, was my cup of coffee. It was the thing that got me out of bed every morning. The cool part was that once Run For Something got started, you know, in our early days, it was just me. My co-founder was working on a congressional campaign for the first couple of months. So I was by myself. We didn't have enough...
Amanda Litman:
I didn't take a salary. My book paid my rent for a little while. I had knee surgery from that dislocation, so I was all kinds out of it. I was alone in my apartment trying to figure out how to do this thing that I had a vision for, and slowly, over the first, maybe six or eight months, I went from being angry to being inspired because all of a sudden, thousands of people were reaching out to me.
Amanda Litman:
And it was in those early days, just like signing up on a form that pinged my inbox every five seconds to say they wanted to lead, they wanted to run. And then hundreds more emailing me saying they wanted to help. And I realized that actually there can be something really beautiful that comes out of this, and maybe hope is a better reason to get out of bed over rage.
Amanda Litman:
It's not to say I'm not still mad. I'm still mad all the time. But I have found that the thing that keeps me doing this work is not the anger. It's the inspiration from the folks who have gone from person to candidate, to elected official, to person who passes Medicaid expansion and makes it possible for 400,000 Virginians to get access to affordable care. That's what keeps me going, which I'm not sure is what you asked, but it's where I ended. [laughs]
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, I have tears in my eyes because I was so inspired and I really needed this conversation. And I'm sure a lot of folks listening needed this conversation, so thank you. So I just want to repeat again, Amanda's book is Civics 101. Everyone must read it. It's a book I'm going to be giving out as hostess gifts, baby shower gifts, the baby's getting the book. So yes, it's a must-read book. I really do mean that. And so let's talk about the political landscape. What are we up against in 2022?
Amanda Litman:
Uhh, help, I'm trying to climb garbage mountain. I think 2022 will be really hard. And I admit as an optimist by nature, I'm really struggling with what we are looking at. I think one of the problems we are facing right now is that because a decade ago, Democrats failed to meaningfully invest in state and local elections, we are going to have to really fight hard against a combination of voter suppression laws, more than 300 of which are making their way through state legislatures coordinated by a $25 million effort by the Heritage Foundation, as we recently found out.
Amanda Litman:
We are going up against a redistricting process that Republicans are controlling in many key states that's going to make it really hard for Democrats to win some of these House seats. I think the last numbers I saw is that even if the maps are close to a little bit just, Republicans will pick up the seats they need in order to win back a majority in the House.
Amanda Litman:
We are going up against a ballot that doesn't include Trump on it, which is an election we haven't had in the last couple of years' three election cycles. Well, 2018 did not have Trump on the ballot, but Trumpism was on the ballot. He was the water we were swimming in, if not the bait that we were jumping on. So I think it's going to be very, very, very difficult for Democrats to hold the House, or holding the Senate, or even a 50/50 Senate.
Amanda Litman:
It's going can be tough. And that doesn't even get into the redistricting that's happening on the state legislative levels, which in many states is controlled by Republican state legislatures that are going to rig the maps to begin with. That being said, I don't think anything is impossible and I don't think that’s hard enough to not be willing to try.
Amanda Litman:
And I think in order to win on these hard maps in these states where some votes are suppressed, assuming that the House or the Senate does not kill the filibuster and then pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, assuming that those things don't happen, we’ve got to start yesterday. We’ve got to start six months ago.
Amanda Litman:
I mean, honestly, we needed to start 15 years ago, but the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time to plant a tree is today. We need to start now. Flipping these seats or even holding these seats is going to take every single day, every single dollar we can keep. And it's going to start from investing in the grassroots on up because even now we have no idea what these Congressional maps are going to look like, so we need to make sure that we are ready for whatever comes our way.
Amanda Litman:
I am… Honestly, I'm dreading experiencing the 2022 midterms almost as much as I'm dreading the 2024 presidential election again. But I am also at least a little bit hopeful because I think we have so many amazing candidates, many of them who've come through the Run For Something pipeline who are ready to do the work if people are ready to be there for them and support them with all they've got.
Andrea Chalupa:
So what can people do after listening to this conversation? What can they immediately do, put on their to-do list and get done right away, urgently, to help make things better in 2022? Where should they be investing their dollars, their time? What are some practical steps they can take?
Amanda Litman:
Love this question. So I think the most important thing to think about with 2022 is that the work for 2022 starts in 2021. And what that means is that we need to be investing in organizations and institutions that exist year-round, that are not just campaigns.
Amanda Litman:
Because I think one of the things we saw in 2020 is that while folks throw a bunch of money, especially in some of these State Leg races in key states, most of that money came in and I've seen some stats that show that 50% of a state legislative candidate in Texas… A Texas State Leg candidate's budget came in in the final two weeks.
Amanda Litman:
That, one, doesn't allow them to plan. It doesn't allow them to build, voters are already voting. We need to ensure that the folks doing the work to lay the foundation for these campaigns, for these candidates, are as strong and as meaningful and as impactful as possible.
Amanda Litman:
What that means in practice is right now, pick, let's call it three organizations. I would recommend, obviously, Run For Something because I'm biased and I have staff to pay and work to do, but dealer's choice, pick an organization that focuses on state and local candidates. Pick an organization that does grassroots organizing around young people or Communities of Color.
Amanda Litman:
I say that because those are folks we know just take longer and often need more time and investment in order to cultivate and that most people aren't going to pay to reach towards the end, and pick an organization, ideally, a state party or the DLCC. I know people have complicated feelings about official Democratic institutions, but state parties and the DLCC do great work and they need support. And they work on a place that Democrats writ large don't.
Amanda Litman:
Set up recurring donations right now. $5 a month every month for these organizations will go such a long way in their budgets. I tell you as someone who's looked at the Run For Something budget every day for the last four and a half years, a $5 a month recurring donation goes such a long way and ensures that next year when you are rage-donating or hope-donating or see a viral video and get inspired, you can do that.
Amanda Litman:
You should absolutely give when you feel the emotional urge to do so, but you've got your bases covered because those candidates that you are giving to, whether rage or fear or hope, are working off a foundation that you helped lay a year ago. You are building political infrastructure.
Amanda Litman:
And as we've seen, when we talk about infrastructure and roads and schools and care, all of those things, you want to have it strong before the crisis hits. So build strong political infrastructure, and when the crisis of the campaign hits, we'll be ready.
Andrea Chalupa:
Great. So everyone needs to buy their democracy insurance policy today by setting up reoccurring donations at the $5 level or higher for Run For Something, Fair Fight Action (Stacey Abrams’ group), Wisconsin State Dem, Ben Wikler is over there. He's doing great work. And we like the folks a lot at Future Now and Every District. There's a lot of great groups doing essential work. And Amanda's mentioned some as well in this conversation.
Sarah Kendzior:
I have a question about something. I mean, we heard over and over again throughout 2019 and 2020 that if the Democrats could take the House, the Senate, and the presidency, we would finally have a lot of progressive policies that Democrats and Independents who tend to vote Democrat have wanted for a while. We would finally have voting rights.
Sarah Kendzior:
And I think a lot of people were very excited about this, especially when the Democrats managed to win Georgia against all odds. But then for the last four months we've been stuck in this gridlock with the Senate refusing to pass a lot of really necessary laws, in particular, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Sarah Kendzior:
And a lot of folks I know are feeling frustrated, like, you know, "I worked my ass off. I canvassed, I called, I donated, I did all this stuff and here we are again with the Democrats having control of everything and it doesn't seem like much is getting done." What would you tell folks who feel that way about what they should do in 2022, and why?
Amanda Litman:
I totally share their frustration. And I think you've got to reorient your attention on the state and local level. This is the thing that I have found, is that when you pay attention to national politics and you invest all your emotional energy into national politics, you are going to burn out real quick because it doesn't move fast. And part of that is by design.
Amanda Litman:
And part of that is because Joe Manchin gonna Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema gonna Sinema. And, I have found so much good stuff coming out of some of these cities and states that can really re-inspire my commitment to this work. For example, we have seen Nebraska just end hair discrimination against predominantly Black women and Black men who it's used against, because a state Senator that Run For Something helped elect, Terrell McKinney, got it done.
Amanda Litman:
Berkeley City Council just ended single family zoning and is in the process of removing police out of the act of traffic enforcement. Part of that is being led by Run For Something alum Rigel Robinson and Terry Taplin. Virginia, really great example here. Virginia took over the state house and state senate in 2019. We won the governorship back in 2017.
Amanda Litman:
Run For Something candidates have played a critical part in that and they've done things like abolish the death penalty, expand access to the polls, passed the first state-level voting rights act to ensure that voters in Virginia will always have access to the polls.
Amanda Litman:
Virginia became, I believe, the 12th or 13th state to end the gay panic defense, followed subsequently by Vermont which was led by Taylor small, the first trans legislator in that state, to also end the gay panic defense, making things a little bit easier for folks who are experiencing hate crimes.
Amanda Litman:
We have seen this over and over again as cities and states have taken huge steps forward and made progress possible, even while DC takes their sweet time. So if you're focusing your energy locally, you can really get things done fast, and you get wins more regularly, and it becomes more sustainable.
Amanda Litman:
I think one of the things I've seen a lot from a lot of these grassroots groups that have been stood up, whether was Indivisible circles or women's groups, or activists who were new after 2016, they have found that by turning their attention to local efforts, they can keep up the momentum in a way that feels like it can last.
Andrea Chalupa:
Could you explain gerrymandering and how it has largely driven this radicalization of these extremes in our country?
Amanda Litman:
Yeah. So every 10 years after the census, governments use that census data to redraw the maps for Congressional boundaries and state legislative maps. And about two thirds of the country, at least for Congressional maps, those districts are drawn by state legislatures. So the party that controls state legislatures gets to determine who voters are deciding, essentially.
Amanda Litman:
And they have found very detailed software that allows them to basically pick and choose, or allows politicians to pick and choose their voters, as opposed to the other way around. What that has become in practice is maps where the outcome is predetermined, at least in the beginning.
Amanda Litman:
We know that over the course of a decade populations and communities can change a lot, which is one of the reasons why districts who were able to win in 2018 almost certainly we would have lost eight years prior in 2010 or 2012, because they were drawn in such a way and the suburbs, especially, have changed quite a bit.
Amanda Litman:
But what we know it’s happening in part because Republicans love to say the quiet part out loud, they have straight up said they're going to use race and partisanship in order to draw maps that favor their candidates and ensure that their candidates win. What that means is that the true competition for the election is in the primary. And unfortunately where the Republican party is right now is in a place where the more extreme candidates tend to make it out of these primaries.
Amanda Litman:
It is a messy, complicated system. And I have seen some political science researcher that argues that gerrymandering doesn't lead to more polarization. I think it's chicken and the egg, more polarization leads to further rigged maps, and then further rigged maps helps that polarization rise up to the top and succeed.
Amanda Litman:
But I do think that there is something really fucked up where if you look at the way these maps are drawn, they have no reflection of the way that naturally lived communities are. Neighborhoods can get split into two. I remember when I grew up in my gerrymandered Congressional district in Virginia, our side of the street was one Congressional district, the other side of the street was another.
Amanda Litman:
We were represented by two different members of Congress and, at some points, two different parties. That was weird. So I think it is a way in which Republicans, especially, have used it to hold sustainable power without ever winning a majority of voters.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow. Just look up Dan Crenshaw’s district, Texas, and you'll see what a wicked strangled little puzzle piece of a gerrymandered district looks like. So, I want to talk about messaging. The Democratic Party, of course, is up against a far-right propaganda machine. You have Fox News, Newsmax, One America, the Koch Brothers pumping in all this dark money to flood messaging.
Andrea Chalupa:
Social media is hacking minds like never before. And they keep beating on these messages of any programs that the Democrats want to do as Marxism and Soviet breadlines. And they keep bleeding on and on about this. What do you think about the Democrats’ messaging in general, what they can do better, and especially, how can they break through this wall of far-right propaganda to reach the voters they need?
Amanda Litman:
I struggle with this question a lot, candidly, because I think we get into our own heads when we talk about the Democratic Party message and we lose sight of the Democratic Party messenger. Because the reality is that, to take a very obvious example here, if AOC says something, it is received one way. If Joe Biden says the exact same thing, even using the exact same words, it will be received very differently.
Amanda Litman:
And to take the idea that the Democratic Party needs a single message or a single case to be made and apply that to every single person who is arguing on behalf of the Democratic Party is to miss the reality of how people interpret communications. So I think that there is a lot of work to be done on further defining what the Democratic Party is doing for people.
Amanda Litman:
We need to do the work and then take credit for the work, and then take credit for work again and again and again, because most of the people who need to hear that we have accomplished something for them are not the people on Twitter. They're not the people who listen to this podcast. They're not the people who are paying attention.
Amanda Litman:
I do think one of the greatest divides in the American political system is not necessarily partisanship, but people who pay attention to politics and everybody else who lives their lives, remembering that most folks aren't plugged in, most folks can't name the Vice President or a member of the Supreme Court, or have any sense of who our Congressional leaders are.
Amanda Litman:
So we need to make sure that the messengers who are reaching them, who understand their values, who can communicate it through a lens that makes sense to their community, are empowered to do so and have every resource they need. Which sort of gets back to one of our original conversations about Missouri, and how do you win in a state like that? And how do you engage with voters who are probably not on your side?
Amanda Litman:
Give them a messenger who can communicate in a way they understand and empower that messenger to reach them in every possible way. Do not overprescribe. Run for the place you're in and give that messenger something meaningful to talk about. It makes a difference when they can talk about getting checks into your bank account from the stimulus or what have you.
Amanda Litman:
It makes a difference when we can talk about shots in arms. The more tangible things we can deliver for people and the more people we then have who can take credit for it over and over and over again, the better. I don't think that there's any single national ad campaign or rebrand that the Democratic Party needs to do so much as we need to empower more people to talk about it and to give them real shit to talk about.
Amanda Litman:
It's harder that... It would be easier if there was like, "Oh, we could just create some new commercials," but it's not that easy, unfortunately. At least my vision for fixing it involves a lot more people having a lot more conversations and it taking a lot longer, but ultimately, I think, yielding results.
Andrea Chalupa:
Okay. So people should stay on message and that message should be representative as well as the messenger of that local area.
Amanda Litman:
You know, part of this is, a tough thing about having a big tent party is that all of our voters are not White men. The Republican party basically is to reach one community.
Andrea Chalupa:
And they scare that community. They're like, "Black Marxists are going to come in and traffic your children."
Amanda Litman:
Absolutely right. They use grievances and victimization to say, "Look, we have an enemy and it's everyone who's trying to keep us down, trying to keep you down." Democrats have to make a positive argument. We have to speak to many different concerns and many different types of folks.
Amanda Litman:
And that means we need to have many different types of ways of having those conversations. That being said, there are some basic things that we can talk about, of pro-democracy at this point, anti-corruption, which we know is a really positive selling point.
Amanda Litman:
There are some basic popular policies, but we should allow people to have those conversations in a way that makes sense for their voters and try not to be too prescriptive here, which I know goes against the idea of single bumper sticker-type of communications, but that's not how people experience politics and that's not how most people engage with the political process.
Andrea Chalupa:
How much danger do you think our democracy is in?
Amanda Litman:
Oh, I think it's real. We're staring at the edge. It's bad. I mean, I think you two are the experts here, you know better than anyone. We're in a really tough moment. I've been thinking a lot about the insurrection of January 6th and noting that more than 500 Republican state and local elected officials and party leaders either participated in or enabled or empowered it.
Amanda Litman:
And that's just the folks that we could find proof of on the internet and easily tie back to the Republican party. That includes Republican state legislators, that includes state party chairs and county party chairs. These are people who do not believe in democracy. And we are now seeing this make its way through the voter suppression laws and the redistricting process.
Amanda Litman:
They do not believe that we should have fair and free democratic elections. That is a problem. I don't think it means democracy is done for. I think, ultimately—and maybe this is just the optimist in me—that our values and our principles will win out.
Amanda Litman:
I do think that if Democrats do not meaningfully invest in state and local elections in 2021 and 2022, there's a pretty good chance that if a Democrat wins the presidential election in 2024, state legislatures will try and overturn it and they will have the leverage they need to succeed and the House will likely not certify it.... which, that's it. Bye-bye democracy.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. That's one of the things that I'm worried about too, and not just for 2024. I'm worried that that will happen in 2022, and that's one of the reasons I find it so appalling that very little has been done either by Congress or by investigatory bodies to hold accountable the organizers of that insurrection.
Sarah Kendzior:
They talk about the Big Lie but they refuse to really go after the very powerful instigators. They're going instead after low-hanging fruit and it sets a precedent. It basically says, "Oh, we're just going to let this go." And the obvious consequence of that is that it'll happen again.
Sarah Kendzior:
And as I said, as you know, I live in Missouri where they routinely overrule the will of the voters. We voted to expand Medicaid and they're not expanding Medicaid. We voted to get dirty money out of politics and they're keeping it. We voted to raise the minimum wage and they lowered it. It's a complete disregard for the public will.
Sarah Kendzior:
What can people do right now, in anticipation of 2022, of them potentially throwing out the results even of the state and local elections, what can we do now to fortify our democracy so that we're even stronger going into the presidential election in 2024, which as you noted, may result in a refusal to verify the winner as the president?
Amanda Litman:
Well, there are people much smarter than me who are thinking about this through the courts and through how you hold people accountable through the justice system, which I think is absolutely one avenue we need to be engaging in.
Amanda Litman:
But as for normal people like you and me, we need to start getting our state legislators, our local election authorities, our county clerks on the record confirming that 2020 was a fair election, that Joe Biden was rightfully elected president, and that they are committed to respecting the right of voters and the voice of voters in 2022 and 2024. Will they go back on their word? Maybe, but at the very least you can pin them down, and if you can't pin them down, that's something voters need to know.
Amanda Litman:
Certainly it doesn't solve every problem, but at the very least getting people aligned that this is someone who does not believe in a democratic election—a small D democratic election—and then making sure that folks understand that. I do you think the insurrection has scared a lot of people and we should not let them forget it. I, too, I don't understand why...
Amanda Litman:
I mean, I do understand, but it makes me so fucking angry that we are not holding these folks accountable, that Josh Hawley got to support insurrectionists and Marjorie Taylor Greene gets to breathe the same air as AOC or Ayanna Pressley. It's infuriating. I wish I had a better answer for you.
Amanda Litman:
This is something I'm really struggling with, honestly, of how to see the path forward here. And I hope that many of your much smarter and wiser guests have been able to find an answer for you because it's hard. It sucks.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. I mean, it is. I think some of it is simply getting to the bottom of why there hasn't been more aggressive action against an attack, which Biden, at least, has acknowledged was the greatest internal attack on our country since the Civil War. It should be a really big deal. People are memory holing a coup. That's an incredibly strange thing.
Sarah Kendzior:
I mean, in all of my studies of authoritarian or aspiring authoritarian regimes, I've never seen this in my life. I've never seen people just kind of put it behind them. And I think folks haven't, to be honest with you. I think a lot of our elected officials want to put it behind them, and that includes both Democrats and Republicans, but the public remembers. We're obviously all overwhelmed with fighting the plague.
Sarah Kendzior:
But nonetheless, I think generally speaking it was so remarkable and it was aired on television that folks remember. And so getting to the bottom of the holdup there and then just getting the facts out in the open, I think that would make a tremendous difference, because the longer this goes on, the more the Republicans have the opportunity to rewrite that narrative, lie about what happened and use it in their election campaigns for 2022.
Sarah Kendzior:
So I hope everybody listening to the show thinks about that. That was much more of a comment than a question, so I'm going to turn it over to Andrea for more questions for you.
Andrea Chalupa:
Everyone read Amanda's book right now just to get some hope in the world. In any authoritarian crisis—and we all see very clearly that we're staring down the barrel of authoritarianism—look at what the Russian opposition is doing. They are literally risking their lives and the lives of their families to run for office.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's the arena where they are challenging the legitimacy of the criminal in the Kremlin, the thief who is stealing from them, from their children's future. They're running for office. So we here in the United States, clearly things are not at the level of Putin's Russia, and so we need to use this luxury of great relative freedoms that we have to run for office in overwhelming numbers.
Andrea Chalupa:
We need to overwhelm them back by running for office. We need to get the best possible people engaged in the system, because like you said, even if we fail, we lose elections along the way, we're fertilizing the ground and eventually we're going to win. But what they're trying to do is demoralize us, gaslight us, steamroll us.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so we push back by getting the best people among us—empathy-driven, science-driven—to run for office. That is what we do. So Amanda, I am overwhelmed with excitement on this show because you are the anecdote. You are the anecdote to what we need right now. And we're telling you that as people who have spent most of our careers studying authoritarianism and how it works.
Andrea Chalupa:
So we thank you so much for all that you do and we urge everyone to please read Amanda's book, Run For Something. Buy up copies and give them as presents, always all the time. Join me in doing that. And check out the website she said before to find a place where you live to run for office. Let's close out now by giving folks that website once again.
Amanda Litman:
If you are thinking about running for office, go to runforwhat.net. If you want to learn more about what Run For Something does for candidates, if you want to donate, you want to volunteer, you want to help out, our home online is runforsomething.net. You can also listen to the Run For Something podcast, which is wherever you get your shows.
Andrea Chalupa:
Thank you so much. You're always welcome back at Gaslit Nation.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes. Thank you, Amanda.
Amanda Litman:
This was really fun. I mean, mostly optimistic, a little bit of a downer, but I'll take it.
Andrea Chalupa:
[laughs]
Sarah Kendzior:
No, we appreciate it. It's very good for our audience to get pragmatic advice like this, because we do talk about so many dark topics. And for all of you people who are like, "But I don't know what to do.", this episode and Amanda's book tell you some things that you can do and you can do them right now and you should do them right now. So, thank you.
Amanda Litman:
I am glad to do it. And the only thing I would add is that the only thing that you could do wrong is nothing. There is no wrong way to participate in the political process. There's no race too small. There's no action to unimportant. The only wrong way to do this is to not engage at all.
Sarah Kendzior:
Exactly. Exactly.
Amanda Litman:
Whatever You're doing. It is more than most people, so it matters. And thank you for doing it.
Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the Producer level and higher on Patreon. If you recently joined at this level and do not hear your name, look out for it starting mid-August, when we're back with our regular episodes, following our summer series. And we'll be sure to give you extra time in the credits for waiting. Thank you so much.
Sarah Kendzior:
We want to encourage you to donate to your local food bank, which is experiencing a spike in demand. We also encourage you to donate to Oil Change International, an advocacy groups supported with the generous donation from the Greta Thunberg Foundation that exposes the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitates the ongoing transition to clean energy.
Andrea Chalupa:
We also encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Syria, donate@rescue.org. And if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to the Orangutan Project at theorangutanproject.org.
Andrea Chalupa:
And if you want to see, confirm the fact that orangutan is pronounced correctly, go to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners. And check out our Patreon, it keeps us going. And you can also subscribe to us on YouTube.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our production managers are Nicholas Torres and Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.
Andrea Chalupa:
Original music in Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Vissenberg, Nik Farr, Demien Arriaga and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm, Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the Producer level on Patreon and higher...