Who decides what politicians should say?

Today we explore the nebulous world of political consultants. These are the people who run political campaigns. They use a mixture of science and gut-feeling to determine what a candidate should say and do, and in one particular instance, what they should NOT say and do. How do they do it? How effective are they? What actually moves the needle in a campaign? Talking to us today are two campaign experts; David Karpf from the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, and Rasheida Smith, political consultant at Dunton Consulting. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies, made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever Chicken Wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  It's getting chilly outside. But you know what that means?

• 0:35Speaker 01

  It's time to cozy up with Panera Bread. Let's get toasty, cheesy. Oh, hello, broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl. How about melty? Okay, Chipotle Chicken Avo Melt. It's dipping bread and soupy goodness season. Oh yeah, we are so back. It's Panera season. Order now.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  I don't know what I'm doing. Need a break. Forget it, I quit.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 1:03Hannah McCarthy?

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting. You stay classy, San Diego. Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 1:28Nick Capodice?

  You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice. I'm Hannah McCarthy. And today, we're talking about something that's a little weird.

• 1:36Speaker 06

  Democrats have kind of organically settled on a new attack line against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Basically, these guys are just plain weird.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Well, it's true. These guys are just weird. And, you know, they're running for He-Man Women Haters.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  It's not just a weird style that he brings. It's that this leads to weird policies.

• 2:00Nick Capodice?

  Do you know what I'm talking about here, McCarthy?

• 2:02Hannah McCarthy?

  I think I do. This was the quote unquote GOP is weird talking point slash strategy, I guess, that the Harris Walz campaign started to use in the 2024 election?

• 2:13Nick Capodice?

  It was. And while I will be talking about how that word was used in the campaign a little bit later, that is not what this episode is about. But when it started happening, I thought, wow, this is a bit odd. It's kind of a unique attack. And then like that, it's gone.

• 2:34Nick Capodice?

  And it got me thinking, Hannah. Who decided that? Did the so-called weird thing come out unprompted from Governor Tim Walz's mouth? Does that even happen in politics anymore? And who decided to stop saying it? And come to think of it, who decides anything in political campaigns? Who decides we're going to have two town halls, 92nd opens, but the moderators can't fact check, and the candidate should wear a blue tie and tell at least one story about hearing their parents talk about money at the kitchen table?

• 3:04Speaker 06

  At kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Somewhere in America, a mother sits at her kitchen table. At kitchen table, I learned a lot of basic lessons.

• 3:15Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, like, who was the first person to see that a candidate had to slow down, right, at the end of their sentence? To make everyone applaud?

• 3:28Hannah McCarthy?

  I gotta say, Nick, I am the biggest softie in the world for this trope in movies and television. You know, the person who knows the score and tells the candidate exactly what to do or say, like, West Wing. I think we'd lose, not in New Jersey.

• 3:42Speaker 06

  It's never been shown that racial profiling works, and I'm against it.

• 3:45Hannah McCarthy?

  That answer's pretty simple, isn't it? Wag the dog.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Now I'm gonna be taking you folks into the second term. Wait till you hear the speech tonight.

• 3:54Nick Capodice?

  Veep?

• 3:55Hannah McCarthy?

  Yep, but I mean, I guess in Veep, it's always an utter disaster.

• 3:59Speaker 06

  I will work on putting forward a new Streamline Families First bill before Congress in the near future.

• 4:07Nick Capodice?

  She sounds like an underwater Bob Dylan. It is always an utter disaster, Hannah, and as we often say, lauded as extremely accurate.

• 4:15Hannah McCarthy?

  That is true.

• 4:16Nick Capodice?

  So today, we are talking about the nebulous world of political campaign consultants. Who are they? What do they do when they run campaigns? And how do they know what will help a candidate actually get elected?

• 4:30Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, Nick, can we start with the who before the how? Who gets to run a campaign?

• 4:36Speaker 03

  The people who run campaigns are mostly the people who helped to win a previous campaign.

• 4:42Nick Capodice?

  This is David Karp. He's professor of strategic political communication at George Washington University.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Because of what we call superstitious learning, essentially, once a team wins an election, you assume that they know what they're talking about, and that leads to a whole career. And you mentioned James Carville.

• 4:57Hannah McCarthy?

  Did you mention James Carville?

• 4:59Nick Capodice?

  I didn't today in this episode so far, but I did when I spoke to David. James Carville is quite possibly the most famous political consultant. Am I allowed to do James Carville, Hannah?

• 5:10Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm gonna leave that up to you, man.

• 5:12Nick Capodice?

  The Democrats have got to come down from the possum tree. It's pretty much like that.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Those are the things that if I'm a Democrat, I much more care about that than some word in a dictionary. James Carville is the classic example of this, right? He helps Bill Clinton win in 1992. It is not entirely clear whether Carville's advice was material to that win or not. Like, it's possible that Clinton would have won without James Carville. But having been the guy who advised Clinton, he then is able to set up shop and spend decades opining on what it takes to win, because he won once, so he must know something. So it's kind of... You're a staffer on a campaign that wins. That means you get hailed as a genius. And that means you get to be a staffer on other things. And all the time you're bringing on people who will test out messages,

• 6:01Speaker 03

  test out new techniques to try to find anything that seems to make the line go up.

• 6:06Hannah McCarthy?

  Carville advised Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton won. And while we might not be able to say whether Carville's advice had any material effect there, I do know that campaign advisors do a lot, right?

• 6:20Nick Capodice?

  Right. In terms of Carville's material effect, we can't know because we don't live in multiple timelines. We're not Trifomadorians. That cat is going to have to be both alive and dead at the same time.

• 6:34Nick Capodice?

  But yes, as you said, Hannah, they do a ton. And I wanted to talk to somebody about all of the massive complexities involved in running a campaign.

• 6:43Speaker 06

  I always say that, you know, campaigns are like orchestras, right?

• 6:48Nick Capodice?

  This is Rashida Smith.

• 6:50Speaker 06

  My name is Rashida Smith, and I'm the owner of Dutton Consulting LLC, which is a data and field firm, and we are political consultants. As a consultant, you have your very specific section. You know, I say that field is like the percussions and media, you know, TV, maybe the horns or the brass and digital, the winds, the flutes, right? And mail could be like the strings. So all of this is about understanding your particular role, your expertise, and how you meld into the greater organization to bring your part forward.

• 7:27Nick Capodice?

  We are going to hear from Rashida a little bit later on strategies and processes she and her team use in campaigns. But before moving on, I wanted to share one tidbit from her. When you're trying to get someone elected, everything, no matter how long your campaign has been going on, everything revolves around the last 30 days.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  Thirty days out and everything's happening, right? You're probably in the middle of preparing for GOTV. But now in this day and age, vote by mail is live. So people are voting every day. In some places, you're getting ready for early vote. So people are voting one way. And now you're going to open up a second way for people to start voting before election day. You're also looking to close your arguments, your final persuasion arguments, and make sure that either you're doing a compare contrast, or you're bringing your positive message home, or you're making sure that you are reconfirming the votes that you already have and what that looks like.

• 8:28Speaker 06

  And so, right now, you're really focused on how do you end? You know, we have this saying, we say, "We open to close and we close to open." Campaigns are the only corporation that is built to close. And so thirty days out, you're thinking about how you close.

• 8:44Nick Capodice?

  ABC, Hannah, always be closing.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Always be closing. Always be closing.

• 8:53Nick Capodice?

  And yes, I am quoting Glengarry Glen Ross here. And that's relevant today because campaign consultants are salespeople, sort of. It's about branding and messaging. They are selling America a candidate. But the problem is, you don't really have a chance to try out something new, like Crystal Pepsi or the Arch Deluxe, because the stakes are so high. A critical thing to keep in mind here is messaging in electoral campaigns is like the worst place in the world to develop new communication techniques. And the reason for that is, the outcome you care most about is winning on election day. That happens once every two years or four years.

• 9:36Nick Capodice?

  If we're doing presidential, it's once every four years. And every four years, you have a different media environment, different candidates, different everything else.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  So once every four years, you get the actual outcome you care about. That makes testing kind of guesswork.

• 9:50Nick Capodice?

  So one of David's favorite examples of how political campaigns are different than ad campaigns is to compare them to selling gym memberships.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Selling gym memberships is an amazing place in the abstract to develop new communication techniques, because every week you can try out a new message or try out new targeting.

• 10:08Nick Capodice?

  Now, you have bought a gym membership or two in your time, right Hannah?

• 10:12Hannah McCarthy?

  I have.

• 10:13Nick Capodice?

  So what made you pick that gym in particular, out of all the ones in town?

• 10:18Hannah McCarthy?

  It was close to my apartment. They had a massive discount. It was really inexpensive for the first year, and it was big.

• 10:27Nick Capodice?

  All right, so the people who run that gym can say, all right, so we doubled our size, we added a bunch of ellipticals or whatever, let's see how that affected membership in January. Oh, look, we got this huge boost in late May. That must have been in response to our six months free trial that we promoted on the radio station. The gym people have a ton of data that they can measure and directly tie to stuff like their ad campaigns or their promotions. Not so in the world of political campaigns.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Electoral campaigns, the only things that they can measure, they can measure engagement online, they can measure signups to your list, they can measure fundraising, they can do some experiments where they'll A/B test exposure to a message and then see how people respond to that. But it's still mostly like focus groups. You are putting people in a room, exposing them to a communication and then seeing what they think. Or you're watching in the wild to see on social media how people are reacting to something. And all of that is really coarse, because what that's telling is how are people reacting to a message when they're exposed to it? It's not actually telling you about the behavior you care about, which is will they vote for a candidate who they weren't otherwise going to vote for on election day?

• 11:41Hannah McCarthy?

  Did David say whether or not there was anything similar out there, like something to hang our hat on, something that people sell that at least rhymes with the world of political campaigns?

• 11:52Nick Capodice?

  He did offer one example that's a little bit closer, a famed advertising rivalry.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Right? Because part of what's going on here in American presidential elections is we only have the two parties and people have a lifelong association with those two parties. And once every four years, they vote for a president. So it's kind of like a Coke versus Pepsi situation, where they have deep familiarity with the brand, but they only get to buy one soda every four years. Right? Like Pepsi can try out some really fascinating ads there, but convincing the Coke drinkers that this once every four years, I'm gonna go with the product that I don't haven't always gone with, is just incredibly hard.

• 12:40Nick Capodice?

  So we got Jims, we got Cola, and I got one more, Hannah. Can I do one more?

• 12:46Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, please.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Uh, Quidditch in Harry Potter. It's wicked fast and damn near impossible to see. He catches this, the game is over. And we win. Now, let me grant, I didn't read the books. I only watched the movies. I was gonna read the books with my kids once they were old enough. And now I'm less of a J.K. Rowling fan, so I don't know if I'm gonna go there. But my understanding of Quidditch from the movies is that there are all of these people playing this game. And then there's two dudes running around trying to catch the snitch. And actually, whoever catches the snitch wins. Right? Like, the entire rest of the normal game has no material impact on who wins. It's just those two dudes flying around trying to catch that outside other thing. Right?

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Like, the stakes of presidential elections are so high that we spend billions of dollars on communications trying to shape the outcome. And they are close enough that this stuff probably does matter at the margins. But also, the vast majority of what you're doing is not going to affect the outcome at all.

• 13:45Nick Capodice?

  Real quick, before I get Avada Kedavra the heck out of here, there are two times in the Harry Potter universe where the team that got the snitch didn't win the game. But that is not the point here.

• 13:56Hannah McCarthy?

  You know, I didn't realize until now that Avada Kedavra is, like, basically Abracadabra.

• 14:03Nick Capodice?

  It really is. Harry Potter, Jay Gatsby. Both victims of the green light.

• 14:09Hannah McCarthy?

  But Nick, is there anything, like, is there anything that we know moves the needle to get people to vote one way or another? Did David say whether anything actually affects campaigns?

• 14:20Speaker 03

  The depressing finding from most of political science research on this over the decades is that the impact of campaigns on election outcomes is so small that it's almost impossible to measure. Now, that doesn't mean that campaigns don't matter at all, because campaigns do. Like, what a campaign is usually doing is reminding and bringing home the voters who would have voted for you anyway. So like, if one side ran a campaign and the other side just didn't, we would probably expect that to have impacts. We've never had a case of it, so we can't really measure it. But the depressing thing is it's not like the candidate with the most money always wins, or the candidate with the best comms always wins. They're kind of responding to external factors that are beyond their control.

• 15:05Nick Capodice?

  So David used a barely offensive swear word here that I'm not going to put on the radio, but I'll summarize for everyone. Due to external factors, incumbents, the people who are running to keep the office they already hold, they have been getting their backsides kicked in the last few elections internationally.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  But it seems like a big part of what's going on is we know that elections tend to be just broadly retrospective, that people tend to vote based on how do we think of the state of the country and the world right now. And if it's going great, then you tend to vote in favor of the incumbent party. If it's not going so well, if you're not happy with it, you vote against the incumbent. That tends to be the broad trend in elections. And every stable democracy post-COVID, the electorate, when they had a chance, was like, yeah, life sucks right now, and we're going to blame the people in power. That's been happening everywhere. Like, a better comms strategy doesn't change that. Like, it's a bad, it turns out that the past few years have been bad years to be incumbents. You do everything you can with a comms strategy to try to minimize that or turn it around,

• 16:07Speaker 03

  but there's no magic words that are actually going to fix it.

• 16:14Nick Capodice?

  All right, so that is one side of the coin. After a quick break, we're going to get to the other side and all the things campaign consultants do to get those votes, as well as a quick dive into the world of weird in 2024.

• 16:28Hannah McCarthy?

  But before that break, if you want the literary version of what Nick and I do, we wrote a book breaking down every gear and winch in the governmental machine. It's fun, it's got cartoons. It's called A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works. Check it out.

• 16:44Nick Capodice?

  And there is no billboard of T.J. Eckleburg. There is nothing quite like having stuff in your closet that you love and you know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that feeling. And this holiday season, Quince is where I'm finding those pieces. Quince makes elevated, everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and it is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories that cut out the middleman, so you get luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. As this lovely fall is winding to a close and we slouch into winter, I wish

• 17:26Nick Capodice?

  more than anything, someone had gifted me a yak wool hoodie. I'm dead serious. It's good enough for the yak. I mean, it works really well for the yak, right? It would work for me. And it looks hot. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. And last thing, when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Civics 101. It's the best way to support the show. All right.

• 18:07Nick Capodice?

  Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.

• 18:52Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code CIVICS at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  It's getting chilly outside. But you know what that means?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  It's time to cozy up with Panera Bread. Let's get toasty, cheesy. Oh, hello, broccoli cheddar soup in a red bowl. How about melty? Okay, Chipotle Chicken Avo Melt. It's dipping bread and soupy goodness season. Oh yeah, we are so back. It's Panera season. Order now.

• 20:15Hannah McCarthy?

  We're back. We're talking about the nebulous world of political consulting. And Nick, you were about to say what kinds of things consultants do before the break.

• 20:26Nick Capodice?

  I was. So I am bringing back Rashida Smith. Rashida runs Dutton Consulting LLC. Her specific focus is on something called field operations consulting. That is basically ensuring that campaigns have enough direct contact with voters. But Rashida has worked in just about every level of campaign consulting. She started by telling us how consultants determine messaging.

• 20:50Hannah McCarthy?

  So this is deciding what a candidate should say, what they should focus on when they're going around talking to voters.

• 20:57Nick Capodice?

  Precisely.

• 21:00Speaker 06

  A lot of this is based on science, you know, and there's some parts of it that's just really sheer gut, right? And so, understanding the local landscape, and then you do polling. And so you're testing your messages and you're seeing what messages work with what constituencies, right? Or subsets of voters. And so, you may have some messages that say, you know, jobs are most important versus immigration. You may have someone that says, quality of life and parks are more important than taxes. Maybe taxes aren't the issue for a local space. It just really depends on what's happening locally.

• 21:39Speaker 06

  And when you find that subject that really moves the needle, when you find that talking point or that message point, that's when you drive it home.

• 21:49Hannah McCarthy?

  And how do they do that? How do they see if the needle is moved?

• 21:53Speaker 06

  We take polls. You know, we poll likely voters. And then we ask them questions, a battery of questions on issues. So we can have one subject, for instance, housing, and have seven different message batteries.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  And so we'll test the messaging different ways and see, would this make you more likely to vote for an individual who had this stance, less likely, or didn't matter? And so we weigh that. Not only do we weigh it across all the voters and say, everyone who participated in this poll said X, but then we look at what we call cross tabs, which is subsets of those voters. Now we're grouping them. We're grouping them by age. We're grouping them by gender. We're grouping them by geography. We're grouping them by socioeconomic status. And so that is how we understand that women who make up 54% of the electorate in a particular race feel this way about this housing issue or childcare.

• 22:53Speaker 06

  And so this is the issue that we should hone in on, because this is what moves the majority of the voters that we're going after.

• 22:59Nick Capodice?

  And once they've chosen a message and they have polled to ensure it's the right message, they go to town with it. And it's gotta be snappy.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  Years ago, you could have something that might have been two minutes and it would have kept someone's attention span. And then today, we're doing seven second videos, right? But at the same time, there has to be that overall message that we know that works. So how many different ways can you say, um, the rent is too high?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Once again, why? You said it, the rent is too damn high.

• 23:34Speaker 06

  How many different ways can you say, lock her up? How many different ways can you say, all of the campaign slogans, you know, gas guns and groceries, right? That have won campaigns now for a couple of years. How many ways can you say this? And how many ways can you depict this? So that, um, your message is being heard and you're being remembered or associated with a message that works. And it's really about repetition. How many times are you in front of that voter with that message? How many times do they get a chance to see you? You know, they say, you know, you need something like 25 times in front of a voter before something sinks in.

• 24:15Hannah McCarthy?

  Wow. I mean, repetition actually works. I should have guessed that.

• 24:18Nick Capodice?

  Yep, repetition actually works. You should have guessed that.

• 24:22Hannah McCarthy?

  I want to step back a second and ask if consultants have anything to do with the very first step of a campaign. Not just what a candidate says, but who they are, how they present themselves. You haven't seen She's All That, have you?

• 24:38Nick Capodice?

  I haven't, Hannah, but I will, I promise.

• 24:39Hannah McCarthy?

  No, you really, really do not have to. Nick, it's a terrible movie. Laney, no offense, but when was the last time you tweezed? What? It is one of the many movies where the protagonist takes off their glasses, lets their hair down, and suddenly, they went from being someone you barely noticed to the most attractive human being on the planet.

• 25:00Nick Capodice?

  That is an old chestnut. I gotta say, though, as fun as it is to imagine a consultant putting Walter Mondale in a leather jacket and giving him a snazzy haircut, Rashida says that is not how it actually works.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  Well, you have to know that a candidate has already been shaped by their life experiences and who they are and what they stand for. And so as much as political consultants are seen as the puppet masters, right? In many ways, the candidate has already done that, and what you are doing is amplifying who that candidate is and what they stand for. Now, there are pieces that you do help mold and shape a candidate based on experience and based on the science part of campaigning and what needs to happen. But if that stuff isn't innately in that candidate, it usually doesn't work.

• 25:50Hannah McCarthy?

  Can we go back to something that David said? The fact that we are a two-party system and it is really hard to get people to switch from Coke to Pepsi. But that's what consultants are hired to do, right? How do they know if they're succeeding before the day of the election? How do they test for it?

• 26:11Nick Capodice?

  So they have a bunch of metrics, one of which is called modeling.

• 26:14Speaker 06

  Where you assign a support score to either issues or the candidate. And so you'll have a score from 0 to 100. So the people who are, let's say, 80 to 100 are definitely with you, definitely leaning your way, and I don't care what party you're in. The people who are below 50 are probably not coming your way, probably not coming out, and so maybe you want them to think the election day is the day after.

• 26:45Speaker 06

  So that's that slither that's right in the middle. Those are the folks who your persuasions and those are the folks who you're really looking to touch and get in front of and see if you can get them on your side.

• 27:00Hannah McCarthy?

  Last thing, Nick, I would just love to know what, if anything, we know about the weird thing. There's the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession

• 27:14Nick Capodice?

  with crowd size.

• 27:18Nick Capodice?

  So I have to start with a massive caveat here, Hannah. We did not speak to anyone involved in the Harris-Walt campaign. So this is pure conjecture, albeit conjecture from people who work in this field or study this field. So as to why it stopped so suddenly, Rashida said that sort of abrupt cessation of a message comes from testing.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  That's it. It's testing, right? Especially when you have larger campaigns, you're testing more often, you're testing weekly. Like if you're playing on a national level, you're testing all the time, right? Or tracking polls.

• 27:54Nick Capodice?

  But David Karp, the professor at George Washington University, who we heard from earlier, he went a little further.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  So I have a hunch.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Again, I wasn't in the campaign. I don't know exactly who was talking, who was being listened to and what data they had. But the thing that was very clear about the "you're being weird" line that Kamala Harris had used before, then Tim Walz picked up, used extraordinarily well, and suddenly everyone on Blue Sky was cackling over it, is like it depends on which numbers you're going to look at because amongst the party base, that clearly resonates and is very powerful. I particularly liked it, not just because the party base liked it, but also because of the, I believe that the action is in the reaction. And you could see Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Ben Shapiro, like the entire conservative media and political apparatus was visibly uncomfortable with getting called weird.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  And in general, in politics, if you've got a line that is making the other side get flustered and make mistakes, keep on saying that line. So I really liked what I was seeing there.

• 29:00Hannah McCarthy?

  The action is the reaction?

• 29:03Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and I think that's an interesting way to think about it.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  It's a line from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which I still teach in my class. But yeah, it's a classic Alinsky-ism is the action is in the reaction. The thing that I wasn't seeing and didn't have insight into was there was this slice of the of the potential electorate who were probably suburban. I don't like, I don't know exactly where they are, but they are Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley in the primary, felt deeply uncomfortable with Donald Trump, and at least on paper seemed gettable. And my guess is that the weird line that works really well for the blue sky crowd and produces reactions from conservative elites, it's very possible that in focus groups, that target segment

• 29:47Speaker 03

  was like, no, don't know. And that then becomes sort of an internal fight amongst the advisors of should we be targeting our comms at animating our base and getting the other side to make mistakes? Or should we be targeting our comms at getting people who wouldn't always vote for us, but it's a tiny segment who might, to feel real comfortable voting for us?

• 30:10Hannah McCarthy?

  Nick, can you explain what comms is? Is it communications?

• 30:16Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, David said comms a lot of times. Comms is everything you do to communicate in a campaign. So it's your messages on social media, it's your ads, it's all of your candidate speeches, et cetera.

• 30:30Hannah McCarthy?

  All right. So which does David think is a better strategy? To get your base really excited and riled up and go negative on the other side? Or to be gentler, to try to convince people on the other side to come over to yours. Grass is greener.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  There isn't a right answer there. And one of the things that I always tell my students is that the curse of social sciences in general is that you can't run history twice. You have different advisors saying we should focus our messaging at different constituencies. All of them are kind of guessing because while there's data we can measure, the thing that we really care about is election outcomes, and that will only happen once in November. The fight here is less party versus party, left versus right, than it is a broader story of the world is very simple versus the world is very complicated. Like, the authoritarian message from Donald Trump is, and we call it authoritarian, we can also call it populism, but the basic message is, the reason the world isn't the

• 31:34Speaker 03

  way you want it to be is that the world is being run by crooks and idiots. Put me in charge, I will fire them and arrest them, and then everything will be better. And the message that the Democratic Party has, or the message of progressive technocracy, is the world is very complicated. Elect us, and we will have well-meaning people try their best to make things better at the margins, and when they make mistakes, they'll keep on trying to make things incrementally better. The worse the objective world gets, the less appealing that latter message is.

• 32:15Nick Capodice?

  I am Nick Capodice, and I am coming to you today to tell you that I made this episode with Hannah McCarthy and Marina Hanke. Now, I am proud of the work I do here at Civics 101 with Christina Phillips, our senior producer, and Rebecca Lavoy, our executive producer. But someone out there, somewhere out there is a family, sitting at a kitchen table, and they're wondering, who did the music for this episode? I am here to tell that family, those artists' names are on the way.

• 32:53Nick Capodice?

  It's more like, "Their names are on the way." Isn't that how it is? That family's gonna know that the music in this episode was by Scott Holmes, Jesse Gallagher, Epidemic Sound, Halizniko, Blue Dot Sessions, and Chris Zabriskie, who makes the best podcast music ever. And Civics 101 is a production of NHBR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 33:32Speaker 06

  Did you know that if your spouse goes missing and you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand-new season of Bear Brook, the critically acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In this season, Bear Brook investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? Don't miss it. Follow Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  It's getting chilly outside. But you know what that means? It's time to cozy up with Panera Bread. Let's get toasty, cheesy. Oh, hello, broccoli cheddar soup in a red bowl. How about melty? Okay, Chipotle chicken avo melt? It's dipping bread and soupy goodness season. Oh, yeah, we are so back. It's Panera season. Order now.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  I don't know what I'm doing.

• 34:34Speaker 03

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• 34:53Nick Capodice?

  We're not worthy!

• 34:54Speaker 03

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.