Incorruptible Mass
Incorruptible Mass
Why State? You -- yes you! -- should prioritize state level electoral work.
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Today we talk about why state level politics is the most impactful way you can cause progressive change. Any policy that matters to you can be passed more easily at the state level than nationally -- and will benefit 7M people. It's much, much cheaper to win state-level seats, so your dollars and volunteering go much further. And passing legislation at the state level might be the best way to get it passed nationally -- we have plenty of examples of important legislation that would never have been passed if it hadn't been passed first a the state level.
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 2. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
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Hello, and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help you transform state politics. And we know that together, we can make Massachusetts policy reflect the needs of the vast majority of the residents of our beautiful state. So today, we are going to be talking about why you -- yes, you, the listener out there, with your headphones in your ears -- should be working on state politics, not just national, not just local, but state. And we are going to cover why you can be able to pass national-type policies for millions of people, how it costs a tiny fraction of what national costs, how many other national policies both here and other countries have passed first at the state level. And we'll even cover at the end, why you should work on state politics here in Massachusetts, and not just in any random state. But before we do, I would love to introduce my indomitable co hosts. I will start with Jonathan Cohn.
Jonathan Cohn:I'm Jonathan Cohn(he/him/his), joining from Boston and have been active in different campaigns here in Massachusetts for almost a decade, which is a wild thing to realize.
Anna Callahan:On and Jordan Berg powers.
Jordan Berg Powers:Jordan Berg Powers (he/him), and I have about 13 years experience in electoral politics in Massachusetts.
Anna Callahan:And I am Anna Callahan (she/her) coming at you from Medford. I've been doing state politics for a few years for sure. And before we go on, I have to say that this weekend, my mind was blown by something called the Puppy Bowl. I had never heard of this before. It was some sort of miracle happening on the television at an event I was at. And it was a truly beautiful thing. And I know, Jordan, it had meaning for you this year.
Jordan Berg Powers:Yes, I do. We love the Puppy Bowl in our household. It is standard to watch the Puppy Bowl before the Super Bowl in our household and treat it like it's the Super Bowl. So everyone gathers around to watch it together as a big family. Pizza's already out. We're ready to go Puppy Bowl all the way.
Anna Callahan:Well, and now on to more more political matters. We are going to go ahead and just for a couple of minutes talk about state politics and why it matters. I know I talk to a lot of people, people who, you know, spent hours and hours and hours every week, every month, every year, on national politics. And you know, we have great difficulty moving progressive policies forward in national politics, but I know many people who are really spending that time. I totally appreciate it. But and then, I even know a lot of people doing local politics. But state politics is this thing that I call the forgotten level of politics, that for some reason. Even people who move from that national politics focus into local politics, state politics, especially here in Massachusetts, it it's not just that people don't think it's necessary. There's some sort of disconnect between what actually happens at the state politics level, or what could happen at the state politics level. And people who are deeply involved in their national and local politics are surprised to hear about the change that they could make if they worked in state politics. So we're going to spend some time basically talking about that. And I want to start with our personal stories, and why each of the three of us ended up in state politics. And, Jonathan, I want to start with you. How did you end up you know, really feeling like state politics was a place where you wanted to spend some of your volunteer hours in your political brain?
Jonathan Cohn:Yeah, so I'd say I'll start with my first; state politics connects to how I entered national, entered actually doing stuff in national politics, interestingly, which was in 2012, in the summer after finishing grad school. I'd been following things before, but it wasn't particularly engaged in a volunteering capacity prior, but it was the summer after grad school, and I was back home in Philadelphia. It was around the time when the Republicans in Harrisburg had passed a very stringent voter ID law, because they wanted to restrict who, who would be able to vote to help rig elections in their favor. And that was something as well happening in a number of states. And that had made me think, well, if they're going to try to restrict who's able to vote, I should, since I have time now, spend my time helping to increase the total number of people who are going to vote, to turn out the voters that they clearly don't want showing up on Election Day. And that got me involved in campaigns in the first place. But my first main campaign was one kind of at the national level, but I realized that I enjoyed the work. But since the entry also came about seeing the damage that a state could do, had also been seeing damage from the state of Pennsylvania around the school funding debate in Philadelphia. When I came to Massachusetts, I immediately got involved in our mayoral race back in 2013. And then kind of in states stuff thereafter, because it was 2014 was a kind of was a big election year with a number of the statewide offices here open. And that year, I was an active volunteer for Don Berwick's campaign. I occasionally think about how much better our COVID response might have been if we had Don Berwick as our governor. Well, I thought it was useful of all the different things that I had been following, often at the national level---of wanting to hold candidates who are running at the state office to what they could be doing about things like single payer health care, things like having bold and ambitious climate plans, what their stances were kind of a number of different issues. And then that work ended up getting involved with Progressive Mass, which had endorsed Don and got me kind of more and more involved. And I think my entry into actively following the legislature was, was actually in late 2016, when Harmony Wu, who was one of the former board members and original founders of Progressive Mass, had roped in a few of us into creating an Issues Committee for the organization. And that was what kind of led me to realize about what kind of dysfunctional place the Massachusetts legislature was. But as well as how much was needed to happen, when you could see that the role that a blue state, especially with regard to how we should be in advance of what the national government is pushing at any given time, because we have the ability to do that. I remember having been particularly horrified several years prior, back during the one time when Democrats were pushing to raise the minimum wage, I think just to like $11 was the push at the time, back in like 2013. In Maryland, which then still had a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature, was passing something weaker than what national Democrats were pushing, when they had the ability to do anything that they wanted passed a bill filled with carveouts. That is what was kind of like an insane -- if we want to have anything good happen at the national level, we need to be making sure that the states where we can do more, are doing more.
Anna Callahan:Absolutely, yeah.
Jonathan Cohn:If we can do more, because we have, in theory, the numbers. It's necessary to shape the outcomes and other things, and on the federal level, as well as simply improving the lives of people here, which is a good thing in itself.
Anna Callahan:Absolutely. I love what you're talking about. First, you notice that like,"Hey, the other side is succeeding, because they're working at the state level. Maybe we should work at the state level." And then your focus also on democracy, which I know so many people, and so many of our listeners are really concerned about that that at the state level is really, that's where things happen.
Jordan Berg Powers:Yeah. Yeah.
Anna Callahan:And, you know, a lot of these topics we're gonna cover in future episodes as well. You know, you're talking about all sorts of, you know, conjoined issues, combined things that all intersect with state politics. But before we go on, I would love to switch over to Jordan. Jordan, we'd love to hear your story of how did you get involved in state politics.
Jordan Berg Powers:Yeah, so, you know, I was a young kid, and I started watching C-SPAN as you do when you're 12 and 13. And I wanted to get involved in politics. I had grown up sort of in the stories of my grandparents, mostly my grandfather telling stories about the Civil Rights Movement, and I wanted to do my part. And I started volunteering on political campaigns. Very funny, very funny. I started doing congressional campaigns, and somebody was like, "You should do this State Senate campaign." I was like, "I don't do state politics. I'm doing this, you know, like, congressional campaigns." I really got into the mold that I think a lot of people who do politics do, and I remember that very vividly. And so I started, you know, I went to DC like a lot of political people did for for my college degree and my job, and I worked in and around the Democratic Party and in and around Capitol Hill. I had internships, I had jobs, I worked for political polling firms, I worked for fundraising consultants, I sort of did the breadth of the political consultancy world. And, you know, I have lots of terrible stories, many of them really centered around some of the racism and sexism I saw up close and personal among the consultancy class. I will say one that's gotten a lot better as people of color and younger people, millennials, have come into these positions and don't, you know, sort of aren't recreating some of the problematic things I saw when I was younger. But you know, those are still out there, still dominating a lot of leftist politics. And one of the things I tell people is that when I went to DC, I was really young and naive, actually, sort of laugh at how much I thought, you know, all they have to do is pass a law and they can make people's lives better. I grew up around a lot of hopelessness, a lot of poverty, a lot of people, you know, a lot of people I grew up with, did not have the opportunities I had. I really hit the jackpot in terms of opportunities, and, and in terms of things that were given to me that are totally unearned, right? I just happened to come out of the right person, and therefore, those opportunities opened up. And that's not the way the world should work. It shouldn't work that I get lucky and my neighbors and my friends don't simply because they don't have the right parents or the right opportunity, or they did it or they don't know the right people. And so, you know, I really carried that with me. And I thought national politics would be the place where people could go and make big change. And there's all these people in suits, and they're very serious. And politics takes itself very seriously. And at some point, you come to realize that public, you know, the power, the people who are political, and I will say not the politicians themselves, often, we often put this on the elected officials. But my experience is that most of the elected officials I met on the national level, were serious about making change in people's lives. It's that they ran up against a culture that tells them, "Oh, not so fast, not so much." Everyone around them is telling them to stop to slow down. There's a great Eddie Murphy movie called"Distinguished Gentleman," which I think is the best movie I've ever seen about how politics works in DC. Everyone is telling you to not do, it to not work. And I started to realize that, of course, you can't make big change here. There's nobody pushing it from the ground up. There's nobody here having those conversations, and the people there aren't taken seriously. You know, you start to realize when you're in DC, a long time that the people in the suits are actually, you know, they might as well be in clown suits. They're not serious. They're serious about being serious. They're serious about the trappings of politics, they're serious about the ups and the downs, the who's winning, who's losing, you know, they're serious about those things. They're serious about protecting the sort of formal Washington, the suits, the ties, the tuxes, the access, those are the things that are said, but you know, they're not serious about helping you or me, making America work for everyone being, you know, having big bold visions enacted. They are not serious about policy. And so I realized that the serious people were the people in regular clothing, yelling at them to do something to care about the people who were looked down on as not serious because they're not dressed apart, right. They're not in the right clown suit. Those were the serious people because they were serious about being frustrated and wanting things to get better for them and their kids and their families and their communities. And so I started to really become disillusioned. I actually left the country for a while over it. And what I came to realize is that I studied more about how, you know, I did a lot of reading about the progressive movements and how the Progressive movement started. And I realized how young and naive and silly I was to believe that change happens from the top down -- no, change happens from the bottom up. Right? You know, you get women's suffrage, you get the end to enslavement. All of these are ground up year after year slogs and they take leadership in the states, states, were electing women before women were allowed to vote. Right. So we need to we need to have that same impulse. And that's when I started to realize that state politics was really the place that change is going to happen. And then I, like Jonathan, saw that Republicans have gotten this forever. Meanwhile, they're passing their terrible ideas at state level. You know, they're making it harder to unionize, harder to work; they're defunding schools. They're attacking education, right? In my own life, Pennsylvania went from a world-class education system to a terrible education system that's underfunded. That didn't happen because Republicans took over and they had an idea that public education shouldn't work, it shouldn't. They're not interested in it working, they're interested in it failing, and they're interested in telling kids of color where they belong. That's what they're interested in. And so, you know, they broke Pennsylvania's Education System, I experienced that, and I took later in life, to understand it, right to have a context for it. And so it's really it's really that work of, of the state level politics that started to pull us for me later in life, and led me to sort of apply for a job that I've had for a long time in working in state politics, right, it really is the place where we can and should be leading. And it's really clarified for me and that in the study of how movements happen, you know, that that's how we're gonna make change. We're gonna have to make change from the state level, and push the federal government to make that change.
Anna Callahan:Yeah, great. Thanks. It's, it's I mean, because you've really been there, not just, you know, participating from as a volunteer from your home in your home state, but like, been in DC, and seen it for reals.
Jordan Berg Powers:Yeah, we could do a whole podcast all the ways DC is terrible.
Anna Callahan:Well, my story. I'm sorry, Jonathan?
Jonathan Cohn:Like escaping the swamp. Escaping the swamp.
Anna Callahan:My story is one where I, you know, did get activated by national politics. I got activated in 2016 by the Bernie campaign. For everybody, it's something, right? For me, it was the Bernie campaign. But I almost immediately, as soon as that campaign was over, got incredibly interested in local-level politics. I learned about this group in California, out of the city of Richmond, the Richmond Progressive Alliance,
that did this amazing thing:they kind of took over the city council, and they passed rent control, they passed a $15 minimum wage, this is in like 2010 -- right, way back. And they passed, they passed a ton of amazing things, really worker-focused policies and renter-focused policies, and it just was fantastic. And so I spent five years going from state to state to state, city to city to city, training people to do this work. And I just had this deep conviction that doing the work at the local level is the place that, you know, has the most impact and takes the least money. You can literally win a campaign with almost no money at all, just by knocking on doors. And then you can change people's lives, even if it's only like, you know, 40,000 people, 70,000 people, you can really change their lives. And then after that I had been living in California, you might have noticed that I said that in their city, they pass rent control, and that in their city, they passed a $15 minimum wage. Now, coming back to Massachusetts, because I had lived here before, then it was in California for two years, came back here and started working at the local level. And it was quite a shock, I have to say, when I learned that you can't pass rent control at the city level here in Massachusetts, you cannot pass a minimum wage at the city level of Massachusetts, you cannot there are so many things that you are not allowed to pass. If you are an elected city councilor, you cannot pass those things in your city, because of our Constitution. You have to basically hand them you have to pass the thing. And then you hand that bill to the State House. And then the State House makes a decision as to whether you're allowed to pass that bill or not. And sadly, most the time, they say no. So in all of the time that is rent control, they have to say no. Right. So it was a shock to me that this local politics that I believed so much in was pretty impotent. You cannot change people's lives the way that you could in California and the way that you can in many states. So that's when I started really learning a lot about state politics here in Massachusetts, about the dysfunction at the State House--and you know, not just the State House, the State House and Senate. Like let's be real: you know, in most states, they're under public records laws. Almost every elected body in the country is under public records laws, but not the State House and State Senate in Massachusetts. They're too good for that. So supremely dysfunctional, and it prevents us from being able to pass the policies even locally, by by elected officials in your towns, from passing the policies that they're in Tower. The entire town wants policies that 80% of the people in their town what they cannot pass that policy. So I just came to this and then of course -- I learned about state politics and realized, "Oh, my God, all these policies that matter so much to me, Medicare for All, and you know, environmental green New Deal stuff, minimum wage laws, you know, immigrant -- like everything that I thought was important that I thought could only be passed at the national level. We could pass those in Massachusetts, for 7 million people." And it was this amazing kind of mind-blowing experience for me, that I realized I have essentially a little nation of 7 million people that I can affect, that I can have real impact on right here. And that little mini country. And we have vast agreement, over 50% agreement, on all of the policies that matter to me. So why these are not passed here in Massachusetts is the question, right? And this is a question for other future podcasts. In terms of why those policies are not yet passed, but that was my sort of realization moment. And I don't know if you guys have a comment or two before we go on.
Jordan Berg Powers:I think it's similar to all of us that we have this realization that there's things we can and should be doing. And obviously, that's the the first episode, right? It's the things we can and should be doing and have vision for, but aren't doing on the state. And in fact, the state isn't stopping other people from doing which is a certain galling thing. We think about Florida and the way in which it stops localities from raising the minimum wage or from passing ordinances to protect folks. Same thing in Texas. But we have that embedded in our system; they don't have to pass a special law, like they do in Florida to stop the minimum wage from being allowed to be, you know, increased for Orlando, right? We just embed that and then it quietly doesn't happen, you know, the state, the media never raises the question, "Why are all of these ordinances that are being passed locally not allowed to go forward? Why are they stifling the democratically elected change that people want, right?" It's always happening to other people and other places. And it's never inward-looking -- like, that's happening here.
Anna Callahan:And by the way, if you're listening to this, and you're relatively new to the podcast, we have covered a lot of this in season four. But believe me, we are going to cover all of this for you again. So if you're, if you're thinking yourself, Wait a minute, why? Well, what is this thing that Jordan is saying? Where it's built into the structure of our, you know, state politics? Believe me, we're going to cover it; you're gonna learn about it. But today, we really are just talking about all the reasons why you, you the listener, person listening to this right now should be getting involved in state politics. And I would love to dig in a little bit on a few of these individual reasons. So let's talk about the the idea if there's anything left to say about the idea that we can pass national policies, right here for 7 million people. Oh, Jonathan, you go ahead.
Jonathan Cohn:Yeah, but one thing I was just gonna emphasize with that, that I'd like to point out is how the one of the core contrasts between here in Massachusetts and nationally is the numbers game, that right now we have to deal with a Republican House of Representatives. And even last year, when your route to have a majority in the Senate had to run through somebody like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, you have to hold everybody in line. Looking simply at the letter next to a politician's names, we don't have that problem here in Massachusetts, and so that you can do a lot more.
Anna Callahan:And just to jump in on that. So in case people are new to the podcast, we have a 90% democratic state senate and 85%, Democratic State House, something like that.
Jonathan Cohn:Yeah, I think it's a little bit higher than that. Now, I think those are about right. It's a little bit higher than that in the Senate. And I think that sounds pretty close to right for the House. Either way, it is the second largest in the country after Hawaii. That removes some of those structural obstacles, as well as the realization of how much exists at the state level. In particular, with public education funding, a lot of that's local, but a lot of that is the state -- state aid provided to schools, especially to crack the inequalities on the local level. And higher, like a public higher education system, that is at the state level. When it comes to, let's say, the criminal legal system, sentencing laws are largely, are much more of a state level issue than federal one for now for a number of things. Wanting to take on the corruption of the state correctional facilities is a state thing. When it comes to a lot of the regulations you can set on, like on vehicles, around buildings, etc., or other kind of energy usage to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and kind of reduce energy usage itself, a lot of that happens is at the state level; it can happen at the state level before it does nationally. And if you stop and think, really on a number of things, the state actually is a major actor, and the state can act before and in advance of, before and bolder than the national government.
Anna Callahan:Absolutely, yeah. I love how you're running down these issues. It's like free public college, criminal justice reform, you know, like, bam, bam, bam, bam. And the one I always have to mention is Medicare for All because I was talking to a reporter who reports on state politics, and I mentioned Medicare for All at the state level, and they said,"Well, that would be a national policy," and as if it is impossible to pass it in a state. And I was like, "Wow, even people who are deeply involved in in politics, don't think you can pass Medicare for all for 7 million people in Massachusetts." And there are countries in Europe that have less than 7 million people that have passed that passes 50 years
Jordan Berg Powers:Yeah, I think it's because it's always a ago. reminder for folks that Massachusetts, if it were a country would be one of the largest GDPs. And it would be one of the top-performing countries, we would be in like the G-8, G-7. I don't know if it's there, but we're not far away. Right? Like we're not some small place; we have a lot of money in this state. And in countries that have far less money, they figure out how to tax people a little bit of money around so that everybody can get access to a doctor when they're sick. Yeah, it's just not that difficult to do. And it would certainly cost us individually and as a collective less than we're currently spending. Because so much money goes to an entity, health insurance companies, that do literally nothing except administration and profits -- siphon off money from the system for their own profits.
Anna Callahan:So great. So for sure. If you are interested in a policy like these, if this is why you're involved in national politics is to pass these policies, think about Massachusetts. I would love to hear you guys talk a little bit about cost. I'm going to just bounce it to you guys. Because I know you guys know the numbers and everything. What does it cost to run a congressional campaign? And what does it cost to run a state rep campaign? I know a little bit about it having run for state rep. Cost to run a Senatorial Campaign? And what does it cost to run a state senator campaign?
Jordan Berg Powers:Yeah, I mean, a Senate or Congressional campaign will cost you anywhere from a million to $3 million. A US Senate, a Senate campaign will cost you, you know, again, a million to $3 million, if not more -- $4, 5, 6, million. A state rep campaign, you could win it with $50,000, $60,000 really easily. And just by comparison to just to other states, a California state rep race is like a million dollars. Texas has no limit on how much money you can donate to people. So that's also like a million $2 million to run our state rep rights. Like we have good laws in place. They weaken them from time to time, but we still have good laws in place to make running for office relatively affordable in Massachusetts.
Jonathan Cohn:With the rise of small dollar fundraising that has come with, let's say, platforms like ActBlue, as well as the nationalization of a number of races, and the attention that both and like earn media and social media for races, there was a natural tendency from a number of people to funnel their money to the same exact candidate, which ends up warping the playing field on the national space. Where, I would just think, for instance, that when people were giving so much money to let's say, Jamie Harrison running against Lindsey Graham, or -- why am I blanking on the name of the woman running against Mitch McConnell, in Kentucky? -- that candidates who faced very, very, very steep odds, and it's still galling when people who are donating to the challenges to Marjorie Taylor Greene, who hails from a district that's like 80%, Republican. And there's value, you can run that campaign that's never going to win, in a way that builds infrastructure. But that's not really why people are donating because they're doing things because they care about the person that they're playing against. But your money is so much more valuable in other races, rather, because especially if everybody is donating to one race. When there are a number of smaller races where your money goes much further, that actually can have a very significant impact.
Anna Callahan:Oh, yeah. Yeah, your money is going to go way, way further in state politics than it's ever going to go in national politics. Way further, dozens, hundreds of times further, it's crazy. I would love to hear stories about national policies here or in other countries that started by passing at the state level?
Jordan Berg Powers:You should go first.
Jonathan Cohn:Oh, wasn't a number of labor laws -- like a lot of labor law in the US -- I think was it during the late nineteenth century and the Progressive Era? I think Wisconsin had done a lot of that early on, or a number of other states where there were things like unemployment insurance being done at the state level here. And before it became national, different labor protections, like child labor laws, like banning child labor, or minimum wage laws, things like that. A lot of that activity coming up around the turn of the century, early 1900s, when people saw, like, how unchecked kind of industrial capitalism was good thing in the US, like, we need to put some limits on that. And a lot of that action began at the state level, well, before it filtered up to the national level, when people were thinking about both what are the kind of restrictions on the companies themselves, and what are the protections that need to be granted to the workers and consumer safety laws that have passed that in order to make or like consumer safety laws. Like our consumer protection laws, and food safety laws, to make sure that people weren't giving you things filled with sawdust or poison. A lot of that did end up, a lot of that action ended up being kind of at the state level. And I can even think of like health care policy began at the state level before it was a national thing. And I remember even reading back years ago about what New York State was studying in the lat e1910s about what it would look like, about what health insurance policies that they should be passing at the state level, the since for something to reach the point of national policy, it typically has to come from somewhere, or even as like Jordan noted before, in terms of things to begin with the states like extending the franchise.
Jordan Berg Powers:Yep. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, everything. Anything that we can think of that's important, over time has come from the state level first, right? So yep, everything, from I mean, even just if you think about, like how we had free states and not free states, right. Those are state policies that get passed. And we think of them as just things that happen, but they aren't things that happened. There were campaigns, that activists and organizers organized their local people to pass laws to make it so that it was illegal, when it once it was legal to enslave people. Right, Massachusetts passed a law that activist made happen, that that happened at the state level to start creating this cascade of free states. You know, that was a change. So, you know, the reaction of, you know, re-enslavement, and some of those things, those are reactions to the activists who are active during this time to end that thing. Same with the right to vote, right, the franchise, we open it up, it goes state by state, allowing women allowing black people to vote, that's a state thing that happens first. You know, you're talking to your Wyoming, right, like these are places that are doing it. Because we teach history as things happened, and not that lots of people, credible people who are no different from you or I organized to make it happen, we forget that these things happen. And on top of all the things from labor laws, being state by state, as Jonathan said, absolutely right. All of those protections. These are all, you know, Progressive Era, right? Late 1800s, early 1900s reforms, these are all passed at the state before they get picked up nationally. And in fact, you know, Teddy Roosevelt, who's famously the Progressive president, he's picking up these things from his time on the state level, right? Like it's not just that he was a governor and then became president. It's that the policies that he was pushing in the states made it popular for him to run for president because he was doing it at the state level. And funny enough, if somebody hadn't died and he became president, they were actually worried about him being president because of all the stuff they had done at the state to curb the influence of business and to support like, sort of regular people, right? It was the state action, that was the problem. So you know, and then if we think about Medicare for All, you know, famously in, in Canada, right, it starts in a province, state province passes it. In, you know, in, in England, it starts with a program of a couple of hospitals, right, it starts locally for them and builds out to a national system. People felt comfortable with a national system, because they had already experienced it or seen some form of it being tested out. And local ways, right? People are averse to change, especially. Politicians are not leaders, they are representatives, elected representatives, they can only get so far out. So the work of us is to build momentum so that it becomes inevitable that these things happen. FDR is passing things to stave off populism in America passing and he's borrowing legislation and ideas that are that are popping up. And he's not, he's not creating these ideas himself, right. Some of these big reforms are things that are bouncing around in, you know, they're bouncing around America at the time, and they're bouncing around the states. Yep. And
Jonathan Cohn:I just wanted to kind of essentially emphasize that a lot of the times some of the best steps forward happened in the US, it's often a politician doing things that are good, to stave off something that might have actually been better. But by people pushing for the thing that was better, they were able to kind of create the pressure that moves things forward. And I think that there's often a tendency in politics to presume, "Well, let's ask for what we think that we can get." And that ends up kind of losing sight of the fact that you always want to that it's valuable to ask for more to shape that perspective of what you could end up with, because you don't ask for what you're willing to settle for. Because you're probably going to get way less than that.
Anna Callahan:Okay, our final question of the day is why when a lot of times I talk to people, I talk to people in Massachusetts, I've talked to people in other states. And they're like, "Well, sure, that's all important. But like, I'm not going to work in Massachusetts. I'm going to work in Texas, where these, you know, or Oklahoma were terrible things are happening." "I'm going to do something in -- you know -- Florida because they're passing these terrible laws." And I, I really, I want us to spend a whole episode on this, because I think this question is a deep one. But just a little, tiny segment for today, which is that, you know, we have the opportunity here in Massachusetts, because our population wants this stuff. So we don't have to fight an uphill battle of building progressive momentum when there's when you know, 60% of the people who live here are Republicans, but we could actually pass these things, right. There's so little in our way, that this is the place where we can pass these policies and lead the country be the one that is proving that it can work.
Jordan Berg Powers:Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Cohn:Go ahead. Yeah, one thing that I think is especially valuable is making changes where some of the barriers aren't there is about the issue of political, like the political efficacy of pupils that build pupils believe that they can actually make change by engaging with the political process. And I think it's about that. It's something that I think is quite weak in the US compared to other countries, because people see how terrible things are and how often they don't change and they get disillusioned. And so they don't think that they can meaningfully have an impact. But if they if they engage at all, if you do actually show that, that that creates a way of boosting people's belief in what's possible and other places, as well as taking at least chipping away, even if slightly at the belief that government can't do things.
Anna Callahan:Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan Cohn:Because the belief that like, well the government can actually do that or that's not going to work is one of the easiest first reasons to oppose something or to oppose even trying it. And if you can demonstrate that it does actually matter, it's something valuable to both of those other states even more, so then one can make make phone calls here and there, but you can still do it as long as you balance your time.
Anna Callahan:The way I like to talk about it is, Imagine you're watching a football game, not the Puppy Bowl football, okay. Imagine watching football game, and your team is the blue team and their team is there Red team. And, you know, the red team like pushes down the field pushes down the field pushes down the field, and the blue team doesn't do anything until the red team is on the blue team's 10-yard line till they're about to score. And suddenly the blue team is like, "Oh, we got to do something, you know." But like, if you're never getting to the point of maybe scoring, or of actually scoring of actually passing the policies we need, how often are your fans going to want to come back? How often are they going to get up and cheer? When we got to think about what actually creates democracy, it's people believing that their government can and does work for them. And if we're never willing to work in a state like ours, where we could totally pass these things, and where the people agree with us, if we're never willing to fight that fight, and we're never willing to score those goals, people are going to check out and go home. Why are all the anti-abortion people, which is a tiny fraction of the American population -- why are they super excited, and like gung ho voting every single time and, you know, working their butts off? Because they are winning? They're seeing their policies get passed, state after state. And now with the Supreme Court? We've got to engage people by winning.
Jordan Berg Powers:Yeah, yep. And I just want to say finally, too, because I get always frustrated with this thing that people say like, "Well, Massachusetts, isn't that blue?" And it's a complicated question. That's a complicated thing to say. What do people believe? People believe lots of conflicting things that aren't easily definable into ideological places and policies. But we are that blue. Like Massachusetts has a rural population that's to the left of many of its urban centers. There's not a lot of places in America where that's true. You don't go out to rural Kansas, and find lefties the way you do in the Berkshire's, right? It's just not happening. By and large, the white folks in Massachusetts, while they obviously we swim in a soup of racism, right, they are not buying a lot of the, you know, sort of conservative selling of white racial animus. They're just not buying it at the levels that people are buying it in South Carolina or Georgia, or other places where we're trying to swim upstream and eke out a victory here or there, right? There is opportunity. Now, that is complicated. It is not a simple, straightforward, people believe, lots of conflicting things, they will vote for Baker and oppose Trump and not doing anything about it. Right. Like there's not, it's not a simple one for one for people like the you know, the way the media or other people would try to portray it. But there is opportunity here. And the the biggest opportunity is that in the imaginations of Massachusetts residents, is it is a state that led the revolution, that led on on slavery, that led on civil rights that birthed, you know, birth some of the best -- and it's true -- birthed some of the
best things about America:religious freedom, racial, you know, a fight for racial equity, labor, like labor laws. These are in the imaginations; they're in the DNA of Massachusetts. And we are missing an opportunity to tap into that, and mobilize that belief systems towards real change that makes people's lives better. And that's the piece that I think of, yes, you can mobilize the same people towards repressive beliefs. People hold lots of conflicting ideas. But we can and should be mobilizing people on these big ideas for change.
Jonathan Cohn:And one, one quick thing before before we close out. Jordan, your point reminds me of how I think it's often interesting in Massachusetts, it's one of the rare states where you can actually invoke how the state sees itself when advocating for things, kind of in the way that people do can do that nationally, where you invoke this kind of American idealism in advancing policies. Coming from like Pennsylvania, or let's say, New Jersey, Jersey, nobody really invoked. When you only get that in Pennsylvania, if you're in a room with Quakers, and there's some Quaker maybe, that's probably stretched. And it's actually a useful thing of that kind of rhetorical reserve, like an ideological reserve to be able to pull from when talking about things.
Anna Callahan:If you can do it anywhere. If you can do it here, then we should be able to do it here. If you can get it anywhere, we should be able to do it here. I think I got that backwards. Great. Well, everybody, thanks so much for everybody for listening. Thanks so much for those people who donated after our last podcast. And please look at the links below to donate for this podcast. You'll notice we havebeautiful podcast microphones. And we have new graphics. We have an editor we're really making things happen and getting this out into people's ears and eyes and brains. So, share it with your friends, share it with your family, donate to the show, and thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Thank you!