and my point is only you have to understand the context of what you're writing in. and i and i think the book you'll see is a is a measure of history. it's not a polemical. you know, i'm not i'm not they're condemning all these people for holding views that were extremely common. i mean, gay people didn't really have any friends in this period of time. they were a universally to be sick, to be criminal or to be mental cases, to be sinners. and that's just the sad reality of what the was. and obviously, thankfully, we've we've come a long way since then. so i want to thank all of you coming out and thank catherine and jamie jamie.

i'm evan smith. i'm the ceo, the texas tribune. and i want to welcome to the 2022 texas book festival. and this with honored gary dada, whose fourth book, the persuaders at the frontlines of the fight for hearts and democracy was published last month and is new york times best seller, give my a hand. yes, absolutely absolutely. this books, which were all well-reviewed are winners take all the american and india calling. he is a former foreign correspondent and columnist for the new york times. he's written for new yorker, the atlantic and and he's taught narrative journalism at new york university. he's a native of ohio and a graduate of the university of michigan. honored it's great to have you back, austin. thank you so much. thank you so much for having me. thank you all for being here. thank you. in a tense in a tent. okay. so you've written a book with the premise that i think could not be more important or more timely. we have stopped as a country and

as communities, we've stopped talking to people and listening to people, we disagree. i think of it as a self-exile into these cocoons of confirmation bias and pretty much giving up on attempting sway or per the book persuade the other side come over to our side. you refer to this as the write off as the culture of mutual dismissal. lay out for people what you're thinking here. yeah, well, it's great to be with you all. it's this is the only of camping i like is this kind of tent. and this is like glamping, isn't it? actually kind of, like, intelligent? glamping. this is perfect. thank you all for being here and supporting in a state where books are under threat and the persuaders grows out of a concern. i had that if you think about most of human history, we were

ruled by like one guy in the village or one guy in the region or one guy. and it was usually a guy, almost always a guy in the country. and the reason was it was felt like when group decisions came to the village or town or country, it was too hard for all of us to decide together this tent to make some big decision about the future. so we'll just have guy do it. and in the last few hundred years we decided to try something called democracy, which is a then radical idea that now totally normal to us, except that under threat again, that should actually choose the future by being in a 24 seven 365 rollicking, roiling conversation with each other about everything, arguing about everything, haggling over. if we have $100 left in the treasury, do we help your aging parents first or my kids go to school? what do we do about everything. it was one of the most unlikely ideas in the history of the world, one of the most incredible ideas in history. the world one of the most

successful ideas in the history of the world. and right now, in this moment, it very dangerously in this country and in many countries. and i one of the major reasons it is eroding is a belief has taken hold that that basic act of trying to talk to other people to engage in a choice about the future together democracy doesn't work. they will never change their mind. they will never change their ways. they will always think like x because they belong to group a. they will always do that because they did that five years ago. they think this way about the vaccine. they voted for trump this first time they who they are. and the problem with this view is twofold. one, it is empirically people change their minds all the time. if there's anybody gay in this tent, i bet did not imagine how years ago when it was a lot harder to be gay in this country the changes that would happen in that in all of our lifetimes in

this tent it has happened on many things in our lifetimes. and so people's minds do change. so the second problem with it is it's self-defeating. if you want a certain kind of world for your kids, if you want to defeat fascism in this country, which i strongly recommend and you cannot get the world you want if you don't believe it is possible to change minds. writing other people off is the road to civil war. and i'm writing this book. i wrote this book. i'm not writing anymore wrote it to to bring back. i hope the idea of persuasion and the the argument that you things by changing minds begins with a willingness to have a conversation with somebody. i mean, you may not be, but it's the actual willingness to talk to people. you disagree with, to talk to people who don't show up in the same place that you are. and it's more complicated. you'd agree today than it's ever been because there are more

places to find only people you agree with. yep, right. and i, you know, for anybody who might have been there in a different event night where i also spoke and i you will know i'm not a kumbaya person really more about it like this is a book about how we can heal our divides by talking to each other more gently. right. i, i wouldn't ban that book, but i also wouldn't write it. and this is a book about how those of us who want more democracy, more rights to save the planet, more equality, more justice for all how we when because the alternative to those things is terrible and it suggests is that we win because the price of losing on those things is very, very high. and we win by realistically looking at voters and understanding. there's actually when you look at people who are not with you

politically in a given moment, there's actually kind of two people in that group, although it may look like one. one is people who are not with because they are deeply steeped in a worldview is the opposite of you. you're going to change their mind and they have in all likelihood, they have a rit. if you are showing in a book tent, odds are you might also be some of those kinds of people who have a worldview, right? your on immigration is not a whim. it's not voting on vibes. you've read. you've read the newspaper for years, read books. you go to events this. so i would guess probably a high fraction of people in this tent cannot casually be talked out of political stances on a bunch of things. however most people, as you may notice, most americans are not currently in this tent, and most people do not read books. do spend hours and hours online researching issues. most people are busy and doing all kinds of stuff and a huge number of voters that the experts i talked to say, you know, between 40, 50, 60% of electorate that may

show up on one side or the other, but does not a deeply rooted worldview, in other words, depending on conditions depending on whether the economy is growing or shrinking, prices are low or high, whether a politician speaks really well or is kind of boring. they can be toggled into a very progressive understanding of the world or toggled into a conservative one. a couple of quick examples. when fox news is showing or other channels are showing migrants coming across the border, there's like a caravan narrative. those kind of voters in the middle can be toggled into a very wing closed understanding of the world right. but you will all remember, you, these people in your life, or you may be these people when family separation was happening under donald trump, do you remember how it went a different way. and suddenly people who are not particularly pro-immigration immigration were like, this is my line this is not who we are and for that moment, because of that circumstance, they were together in no more progressive

thing. barack obama was president twice because. he won over a significant fraction of the racist in this country. people didn't stop being racist to vote for him. they were racist in general. but they love that guy and that's how he won. he was just so compelling. right. that is what so persuasion comes from recognizing that that group, the middle can go different ways and then thinking about how do you appeal to them. and one of the core insights of the book we were talking about and not shankar ossorio. one of this is a book about people doing this work. one of the characters is a messaging guru named anat shankar osorio, and then that says, we misunderstand these people in the middle because we use a what's the we use for them? what's the most common word? centrist, what's one other one moderate, right. guy getting extra credit over there and both of these words like what is actually true about these people is they're undecided, they're persuadable. that's what's true. now, think about the two words moderate and centrist. these are making much stronger.

centrist is like they're in the middle. they're like halfway between two poles. there's actually no evidence for this. if you know these people in your life, they're everywhere in the spectrum. some are here and some are here and some are here. they're all over the place right. these are people who are less formed in worldview, so they may be really tough on the border, but they love universal health care. there's a lot of people like that are complicated, right? that's not in the middle. right. or moderate implies. like they just want like less of a thing. right not always the case. what? i'm not rosario taught me is persuadables are people who can go either way, as i said. and what you have to do, therefore, is not dilute what you're trying to do to appeal to the mushy middle, you have to insert circle people with so many people around them chattering nonstop about how great the values you want to win are so that they just think like harry met sally. i want to have what she's having, right? and that often means not not

diluting, not talking to the center but you wipe out a lot of people student debt and suddenly every 26 year old in earshot is talking how much stress and anxiety got lifted from them at thanksgiving this year? is this phenomenon on and on sides? in other words, i you mentioned the communications strategist will come back to something that i read in the in a book by that person in the second. these are largely strategists, activists and thought leaders. you talked to for this book. absolutely so is the assumption i'm to do both sides? no, no. but is the assumption to take from this that the only direction that persuading goes progressive is persuading people who are not progressive? are there conservatives who are in the same place, persuading people who are not conservative, potentially with the same. absolutely. but i just didn't write a book about it. i'm writing a book i'm writing a book i like to write my books

about kind of bounded things. right. this is actually not just a book about progressives. it's a book about a community of people actually grappling with a set of hard questions. i mean, i don't even get into this in depth, but a lot of people in the book actually know each other and they're kind of separated in different chapters, but it's actually a world i mean, virtually everybody i write about actually knows each other. i found some of their connections after i wrote the book, i didn't know they all knew each other. but it's a it's about a community of people who are trying to figure out a hard thing and who are moving through the world, trying to figure out the hard thing. and the hard thing they're trying to figure out is how do you stand bravely for something and reach out to people. right. because it is really easy. and this is not just politics. this life. right. it's really easy to reach to people or be palatable to people. if you stand for nothing. that's that's not hard. and it's really easy to. stand in your truth and, not budge and not reach. and we can see those people in public life also. i think the interesting question

is, can you do both? can stand bravely for something and reach out. can you talk about something like universal health care in this country? in a way that makes a bunch of republicans say, hold on, a lot of would quit their jobs and start a business if they had guaranteed health care and. that would be amazing for capitalism, which i love. so let's do universal care. are you willing to make that pitch? are you willing to make a christian case for the environment? you think god made all of this is going to be a matter that you're doing with it right. but often we make those kinds of appeals because are either standing in truth or reaching out. i'm trying to get right about people who are experts in doing both. you know, the idea of finding common gets mocked a lot these days. the idea that there is an opportunity to persuade people, i think about every issue that becomes a thing to talk about and sort out of the united states senate. and susan is always the example of this, you know susan collins

is persuadable or joe manchin is persuadable. all we need to do is to reach across the aisle and find common ground. and basically it never happens right people feel like charlie brown lucy has pulled away the football yet again what do you say people who mock the idea of common ground or these organizations no labels that start for the purpose of bringing people together but ultimately really don't do anything beyond just talk about their own aspiration. what do you do about that? one of the core arguments of the book is that we have sometimes failed to make a distinction between how we should treat very powerful and how we should treat our fellow citizens, a.k.a voters who disagree with us. right. susan collins. joe manchin need to be pressured, not persuaded, as i argue. right? powerful rupert murdoch does not need to be persuaded. he needs to be regulated, pressured and encircled.

but. but, but don't you. but. but don't you persuade or pressure. pardon me. collins and joe manchin by persuading them. it's i mean, it's all like i actually take a broad view of the word persuasion, general. but what i'm saying is the kind of thing i'm advocating this book has that when i'm suggesting making an to reach people right i'm talking about not powerful people because powerful people the reason susan collins and joe manchin are doing that is because they're being, you know, paid by donors and it's not about the arguments for them, whereas regular citizens are caught out between different ways of looking at world. right. i'll tell you about an experiment i write in the book called deep canvasing, which is a remark able social experiment. i'm sure all of you are looking for things to go do in this time. we need you deep canvasing is the thing you can go do you can go train online deep canvasing people's action institute few hours online. you can go do this door door depending on where you live. it's more or less effective and

deep means. you go door to door and you knock on doors. it's not giving someone a flier or having a one minute conversation about, you know, your polling place. it is 30 to 40 minute conversation options helping fellow citizens work through their deepest inner conflicts. about the hardest issues we have. and this experiment has showed peer reviewed, peer reviewed results in minds on immigration, on racism on trans rights, on gay rights and they do is a they listen, they tell you who they are and why they're coming. that issue, they don't lie. but then they listen. they they listen for a long time. you have some bile. great. pardon my bucket of you know for bile. you got more bile it. my bucket's got plenty of room additional bile and and. bile is finite. people eventually run out of saying toxic things about immigrants, get it out of their system and these canvassers listen. they resist the twitter temptation to call out to. they have their view.

many cases. they actually are the identity that is in discussion. so they're not weak on these issues. they listen and then they don't try to implant a view that they have into the head of that person. if you've been you know, that does not as a work work and but they try to up cognitive dissonance in that person which is to say you say trans you don't like trans be saying all this terrible things about your own trans relative. you also told me you're a champion of underdogs, that it's a really identity for you. this you support the mets, you you you always pick the team that is counted out. how do you square your feelings about trans people with your deep, deep identity as someone who champions underdogs? this may seem like a joke, but these are like real conflicts. people actually have. this is what actually moves people, right?

this is what moved a lot of republicans on gay rights when people realized not that violating your values, that they're violating some of their own values are more complicated. and we know we're complicated, but we often deny in an age of polarization that the other person is complicated and what the people i'm writing about are trying to do is remember that people are complicated, even on the other side. they're as beyonce says on her new album, they're contradicted and your resource. i want to talk two things that set up as potential to the success of what i think, as you describe it, is a noble pursuit, something that would be the antidote to the poison coursing through all of our veins right now. one of the obstacles is purity spiraling, which was really interested to read about and to think about in context of this book. you quote a feminist loretta ross, in this book saying, i think that 90 percenters spend too much time trying to turn people into 100 percenters, which is totally unnecessary. this is a problem on left is also a problem on the right here

in texas, where we really have republicans in charge of every state, republicans in charge of our legislature. you often hear people say, well that person is not enough of a conservative or enough a republican. we had a person announced yesterday to run for speaker of the texas house believing that the current, who's pretty conservative, is not conservative enough. they want 100% to the right of this guy who is currently in the office. we have purity smiler spiral is on the left and the right. in fact, you don't need to be at 100% to find common ground with somebody right? yeah, i agree with that. but i would say the right is also this culture is everywhere but the right is able to be pragmatic. right. so herschel walker has like one of those, you know, like cards you get when you buy like a cappuccino. if you get like ten of them stamped like herschel walker is like on track to get like the 10th abortion free and, and like at some level, they're like, fine with him because he's on their team. they like they have purity

politics, but they are also ruthlessly pragmatic, like the people who said trump, we don't like donald trump. trump's a democrat, one he is. but his tax cuts, but his judges will make peace with. donald trump is literally is that new york liberal like is cosplaying as like a you know what whatever he is now and is like too dumb to remember what he used to be. and they're all like, we're totally fine with this guy, you know? so they're i'm not saying i admire that level of pragmatism, which i don't. i think what happens on the left and it's not i mean, this gets dismissed as like circular firing squad. there's a lot of easy like i think that the left fights a lot because the left is not a cult i hate like it's good to not be a cult like you know what they're saying. you think like black people and white people do have different interests and like black led abortion groups and, white led abortion groups view the problem differently access to abortion versus the constitutional to abortion is a meaningful difference between white abortion groups like and so. so the lack of lack pragmatism

by democrats is a virtue and it it begins as a virtue how's it working out for democrats at election. let me let me finish if you are in a family which i assume many of you are is a family values state and families families healthy families fighting for family doesn't fight. i'm more worried about your family. the issue is your family needs to be able to also then take a shower, wear some nice clothes, go out to a restaurant, to someone else's house, and not do the there. yeah, that's what i suggest for democrats. don't think the answer is to not ever fight. i don't think it's to not have disagreements. you're a cult. loretta says that very clearly right. the issue. can you do both can you have really important arguments? beautiful arguments, right? i mean they the arguments around, you know in i write about three feminists activists in the beginning who write about these arguments within their feminist spaces about, you know, who did the mainstream feminist movement and recognize and

advocate for in the and seventies and who did they fail to, see and advocate for and like the fact that they had to be fighting for them to see much wider array of women or for example, to see immigration as a women's issue in a way that sixties and seventies feminist groups maybe did not censor enough. i'm glad they had those fights because it improved the women's movement. right. the issue is can you then also abide by what i call the orchestra principle, which is recognize that we're also on we're in an orchestra and it's your job. play the oboe. my to play the bassoon your job to play the cello and you're not doing something wrong by not playing instrument. it is someone's job in the coalition to throw tomato soup at a painting it's someone else's job to eke out be a 78 year old president eking the best deal he can on capitol hill. it is someone else's job to aoc moving the conversation, having the movement half in congress. it's someone job to be a

reformed republican who lends their view to climate and said it's someone else's job to be a corporate that says, actually, we're going to lobby on this issue. right. and if we spend our time saying have our arguments, but we spend our time saying, you are not me, therefore you shouldn't be in our coalition. we don't understand what coalition is. well, it's also before. let me also observe the context of the pragmatism of which can be admirable, if you want to see republicans elected, that what they did to liz cheney and adam kinzinger over the last two year. doesn't seem to me be very much in the spirit of what you're talking right now. they definitely have their there's the same stuff on the left. and if they start telling the truth. yeah, they they they. yeah. so, so the other obstacle, the other obstacle to being persuaded fear reminds me of that old pat moynihan line that you're entitled to your own opinions, you're not entitled to your own facts, which turns out to be a jump ball. these right reality is a

subjective construct. truth is not truth. and for all the success you may have in persuading some people aren't there are some people who believe that they're entitled to their own facts and are never to be persuaded. how many americans do you think believe in q and on shout out some numbers? what do you want to. 43 million americans? it's about one out of seven americans. adults believe in qanon, which as you know, is not it's not a casual it's not like a orientation. it is a very specific beliefs that is wild and outlandish. i was actually just in politics and prose in washington for my book launch there and comet the apparent, you know, world of this global pedophile ring was right next door. i saw no such activity there, but i will let you know if that changes. so as a practical, what do we do about that? i have a chapter in the book about this disinformation

problem. it is the hardest persuasion we have right now because as say, it's persuading people with their own of reality. i talked to two different experts who are a little bit out of the mainstream thinking about this in really new ways. one is a cognitive scientist who's how you fight climate disinformation. he's now got into covid disinformation others the other is a former cult member who became a cult deprogram here. those of you who are, you know, seasoned enough will remember in the seventies there were these, you know, moonies called. and then the people who did, you know, for hire, kidnap for parents, paying for people to help extract their adult children from cults. and she did these illegal kidnapings got arrested, vowed she'd get out of it. and then qanon happened. she's like, okay, i got to figure this out. but you can't kidnap your way out of 43 million people. obviously and i'm not advocating you could even if we could scale it up and she suggests, as does john cook, the cognitive scientist, they say the same thing. if they're coming from different angles, this is an endemic

problem that structure of the internet is such that we can tamp some of it down, maybe, you know, maybe elon mom talks to him and twitter gets a little or something. but broadly speaking what both of these experts said to me is we ought to treat disinformation as endemic and therefore the effort should go into protecting people from being infected by it, rather than an aspiration of keeping it out of the air. that was surprising to me. and so what they suggest it's a thing called inoculation theory, lest i be misunderstood on c-span, not an actual shot. and inoculation theory that comes of like the metaphor of a vaccination is to say there are essentially educational things you can do to teach people how to be resistant to. common tactics of deception. so if you think about when you were in school, you learn critical thinking. but it was kind of like, here's a piece of text, analyze what happened. and it main right that was that's good. that's important.

that is not when it comes that's not the critical thinking. your kids need today. they need something much more specific, which is there are in particular a six, seven, eight, the cook identifies common tactic of manipulation cherry false expectations as there's a kind of finite roster of moves. that disinformation depends on. and basically we need to train people this is like the new sex ed it's like a thing that just needs to be part of seventh grade or whatever. right. you just happen at home if your parents gave it to you. now it's man, it should needs to be mandatory where every kid is getting trained so that when that youtube video comes on, they're just like, oh, such a classic number three, right? and and i think it's a very interesting a public health approach to this. and, you know, we were having conversation on another subject before we came here about the disappearance of local news organizations providing actual, honest to goodness back checkable rely, able information

around the country and the absence of that, people basically have blank screens onto which they or other people project this stuff right. need to solve for this by providing people with good information as an alternative an anything as you and i love you know the new project you have on this where basically national is kind of not trusted anymore. right. national financial institutions national leaders national media. the closer you get to community, the trust numbers go up is why in vaccination at some point biden is telling you to get vaccinated over and over was not effective so they started doing local and like for the for the holdouts right and i think in media it's going to be the same thing like people, you know, we that's one of the reasons this local media revival they are a leader in is so important the dimension of mask and of twitter. let me call out something else that you talk about in the book specifically. this is a quote from the book social media the hunt for

apostates more than the conversion of non-belief others. i mean, people sometimes say that all problems in our country ladder back up to social media, maybe they're right. maybe social media has really been a force for bad and is exacerbated the problem that you're trying to solve here. yeah i mean i feel social media is like smoking too much weed after you've had a big night of drinking. like it's it's making a problem that you worse. i don't think it invented american polarization and division and this kind of culture of dunking but it has absolute only turbocharged it. i would also put on the list billionaire media divide and conquer hate for profit media like rupert murdoch that was happening before social media for a while. putting us in these corners. i say, you know, there's also some good things that have made our culture more inflammatory and it's important to call those out like, you know, part of call out culture is a whole bunch of

women and people of color getting to say what it's like to be them in that they were not able to really say what it's like to be them before. and and like, that's good. but it also does raise the temperature. so in the name of democratizing whatever conversation we're having, it has negative it's easy negative. at least when, you know, no women were talking about what it was actually like to be in a meeting in a big company. and once women start telling everybody it's like to be in meetings of big companies that the temperature is going to rise and it's going to get more inflammatory. but like good also you the metoo movement was inflammatory, but i'm very happy for it. so i think the question is how do you it for me anger and division and this may you may disagree with this anger and division are not huge problems as far as i'm concerned contempt and dismissal are very big problems. and those words all sound the same. anger and division are just like you and i think differently. and i'm kind of mad about it. and like i'm going to go vote, like, because i'm mad that you took something away from me that's healthy and we're talking about politics. is about the hardest things.

it's about the things we can't figure out ourselves. it's going to get real right, that we drain the lake not drain the lake, do we, you know, use resources for that thing or this thing. it's going to get people who live or die based on these decisions. i don't think it's supposed to not get angry. i don't think we're not supposed to be have difference of opinion, contempt and dismissal is not. i'm mad you took away my to abortion so i'm going to go vote. it's like oh of course those people would always be like that what's point right and if any of you have been to marriage counseling or our therapist and marriage counselors, you know, like marriage counselors always say anger's fine fights are good, not fighting more dangerous and contempt and dismissal fatal to a marriage is seattle lab looks at couples from a few minutes the thing that biggest thing that predicts divorce is contempt yeah we're going to go to questions here in a moment. we're going to have about or 12 minutes of questions for our for our guest. you mentioned voting. i want to ask you with obviously an awareness that we have an election here in texas and around the country on on tuesday you mentioned the communication

strategist and not schenker or ossorio in this book says many progressive and democratic message basically boil down to boy have i got a problem for you and as an alternative that says you've got to sell people on the beautiful tomorrow. the idea that people vote for something and not against you've got to give them something positive and aspirational and affirmative. as we come to election day from vantage point democrats, have they sold on a beautiful tomorrow? has the campaign been conducted in a way where people would be going to vote on tuesday for the democratic side on an affirmative basis? or is it all negative, negative, negative. you know, i'm so glad you asked that, because i think that shall cleanse the democratic party has right now is monumental. and i am not i don't mean to be

one of these people sits on the sidelines and suggests it's easy because i like right things from my desk in brooklyn and talk to people and, you know, just know what they should be doing. i'm trying to help in what ways i can through the book, through talking to them, i say this given the crises they are dealing with right, a breakdown of democracy, an ongoing pandemic, prices, crime all this stuff they have gotten into a rhythm of basically, and particularly in fundraising emails, which is the way they most often communicate us, sadly, of basically narrating to us how terrible everything is and how doomed they are and. if you remember, if you're if you remember when you were dating people, if people were just telling you, like all the problems they have and how they're probably never going to get you like, i don't think you would kiss them. and so i'm not suggesting that

it's entirely like dating, but i am suggesting somewhat like dating in the sense that you have to, you know, toni cade bambara, the writer, said the artist's job is to make the revolution irresistible. right. so that's why i think a little bit about my job being from the outside. like maybe can help them make it irresistible because they're like swat ing back crises, right? so biden's giving his democracy speech. they're telling you how much gas prices fallen. they're telling you every day it's bad, but but if you give $5, it'll $5 less bad, so on and so forth. and what i'm trying to suggest to them, and that is such a powerful avatar, this is even you are dealing with it. my heart goes out to about how hard it is you have to paint the beautiful tomorrow. have to tell people what the world looks like after you win. not show, narrate it if they have to see it, they have to see it. great, great writer bob caro wrote of lbj books about the local, local hero lbj and he was once asked what was the secret

to getting people the details in these books? have you read them? are a bit crazy details and he just said he would yell at subjects make me see it and they'd be like, well, he standing in the oval office make me see it, right? and then well and then finally people be like, he was wearing a gray suit. it was buttoned only in the middle button. he walked over, he put it and suddenly all these like physical memories are coming out. and the books are made by that that i'm begging the democrats make me see it. make me see what the world looks like when you went so last thing i want to say on that democracy we yes. talk about the threat to democracy. but i would love hear from joe biden why a threat to democracy? because actually something no democrat will tell you for, reasons that boggles my mind. there's threat to democracy right now because we're trying do an awesome thing in this country. we are trying to build a multi racial democracy in way that is actually pretty unprecedented in the history of world.

right? we are becoming one lifetimes of people on this tent, a majority minority country, a country that has people from every place on earth. we are a country of the bravest hearts from every other country, the most talented people from every other country who come here create things. and it's not just new york city. it is texas. i remember once i wrote a book, white supremacy, a case, a hate crime, in texas. in dallas, i was in plano scouting out that boyhood home of this white supremacist, and i felt a little bit unsafe in this neighborhood. i was parked outside his house physically describing the house, the environment and my notebook. and like i didn't know who lived there 20 years later, but it didn't seem like it. it changed that much. and i was scared. and then i was driving away and. i got super hungry from all this standing out there, and i was like, i need to get some food right now. and i just like nearest single restaurant right now. and i pulled into it and. it was a fully korean strip mall two miles south of where i was. there was no signs in english.

and it was like this fully korean work, right? and i just think like, that's america, right? that's like we have those white supremacy in plano and like a mile or two away. is this like korean world that is also america? and we have built amazing. i go to europe. they're not building. true. those are white countries with limited guest populate and that they are keeping tight. you can't become french, can't become german, you can't become indian. you can't become chinese. there's no naturalization in most of these countries. we naturalize hundreds of thousands of people a year, some of you in this tent may be naturalized. what are trying to do is worth it it's amazing. and there is a small hearted faction of who are opposing it because would rather burn the country down than share it and think about their record. these people opposed abolition. all these people opposed labor in the industrial revolution. they women voting some of still oppose women voting and they opposed the new deal. they opposed unions, they

opposed the safety net. those who on social security, they oppose social security. they opposed the end of jim crow. they opposed integration. they opposed the immigration act, 1965, opening this country up to people from nonwhite countries. what is their record? the long run, they haven't won any of the fights i mentioned, the long run, any they lost every single fight. so enough despair, enough despair, enough funk. i want joe biden to tell us where we're going, that we are going to beat these people, but we've got to deal with them right now. we got to with their flare up and we're going to prevail. let's go to questions. i believe, i believe there's a microphone in the aisle. if let's take a couple of questions for our guest before we wrap at a quarter till the hour, questions jump right in. don't be shy. yes, i have a question and also

a comment i had to get closer to the microphone, please. a little closer. so we can hear you. look closer this good. okay. yeah. first of all, i've admired you for years. you are on msnbc. so thank you for that. thank you. i also have a question, love, what you just said about. the promise of a beautiful tomorrow and that should be the message of democrat. but i also to say that the republicans paint a picture of fears one fear after the other. and that also seems to work particularly here in texas, how can we combat that? yeah. so that i have two answers to that. you hear the question. we can give hope that the other side runs on fear. how do we come back and and does so successfully in a lot of cases. and i think my answer is, you have to both match that for good and offer something different. i don't here is i think democrats too high minded. okay. i think democrats look down on

how people actually are. we are way more emotional in the way we form opinions than we'd like to have. people are not sitting at the kitchen table reading, you know, plato, to figure out their immigration policy. people feel things. they have anxieties, concerns, hopes and fears. and they backfill an opinion into it. right. once you get that, there's nothing wrong with playing to fear. you got to play for fear the right thing. right. so i'm afraid of rupert murdoch. and i would love for democrat to make people more afraid because. you should be afraid of rupert murdoch. right. i'm afraid this is a real fear. i am on obamacare. and like every time i to the doctor, i'm afraid, because what has happened to me multiple times is that i've checked that the doctor i'm seeing is on my thing. but then the doctor would be like, would you like a blood test just to make sure and stupidly say yes, forgetting what country i'm in. then a new person will come in and i don't like check their id or insurance network while they

walk in door. and then there's like a $2,000 bill because they not on my insurance thing because they work for a different company in the same right. less i think it's very good to be afraid of that. let's gin up at insurance executives who make our lives harder. fear can be generative if it's of the right things. and second i think you've got to offer real hope and and tell people that we are in this for something. you can't joe biden can't get the prices down tomorrow. right. but people lived world war two in this country and whined less than they did about prices. right now? right. but they were told a story, were told why they're doing this. we're not. like people get annoyed if they don't know why struggling. people are willing to sacrifice. people are willing to pull together. right. but you have to talk them through. and i don't think we are being talked the era in any of the many things that are huge shifts. so the questioner's premise assumes the other side doesn't think they're a picture of a beautiful tomorrow.

if a republican candidate were up here, would that candidate say we have a beautiful tomorrow? also, we can't paint on that. the problem is you don't like it or agree with. yeah. and they're beautiful tomorrow is, you know, beautiful for a small number of who are you know here in 1820 and fully free know sir. so several political science studies have found that the american political system, compared to political systems of other advanced democracies, is really uniquely nonresponsive to the policy preferences of its citizens. for example, there's an overwhelming majority, both republicans and democrats support things like holding purdue pharma to account for the opioid epidemic or legalizing marijuana. but general politicians just are not pushing for those things. right. so basically, the point of persuading citizens if the problem isn't the citizens. it's that our political system doesn't really listen. it's a great question. we always wonder.

we really live in a representative democracy when the citizens in a community want, but the people in charge say, no, we better. we're not doing the thing you want. that's an excellent question. and i think there are certainly a number of issues. public opinion is very strong and there's a kind elite veto. my book before this book was how that elite veto works, how they shut that thing down. so i'm very alive to that. however, i think on some of the most important things that need to happen in this country, i think sometimes my own on the left tell themselves a story that these things are way more popular than they. i mean, purdue pharma. yes. like. well tax. quite popular, right? medicare for all, it's not just powerful. like we have a real challenge there. a lot of americans health insurance, they don't want to let go of because that okay thing, you know, is better than the potentially better thing you can't touch yet. and i think sometimes lull ourselves to our peril into this notion that we have solved the

organizing challenge but for powerful interests when i think we have, as i say in the book, we're talking about alicia from black lives matter in her early organizing work. sometimes one has both a powerful interests problem and a lay public opinion problem, right? and when one has both of those, one can get into the story in one's that my problem is just that and you can get off the organ. and i think we have a of real organizing to still do offer as a last bit here advice to the questioner's point. so you know we live in a state that just had the school shooting in its history. we have polls that overwhelmingly that the people of the state stepped up background checks on guns. they want a ban on high capacity magazines. they want a ban on bump stocks. you go down the list. the polls are not the polls are not inconsistent about that. people can argue about that's a good thing or a bad thing. but we know where the public is because we see the polling consistent. but the leaders of the state don't seem to think that what the public wants that case is

good policy. if you're somebody who lives the state, you're part of those being saying these are the things we want. and people there are not listening. how do you to book persuade them to do the thing that the public wants? what's practical? one thing i would say there is, if you look if you pull the overall electorate in texas those things are popular. but in their own caucus they have a lot of power in the state within republican voters. i don't know that those issues have a majority. so they're responding not to the overall national majority of their responding to the to the to the base in their and their most fervent supporters. and that's still an organizing challenge. and right now, i think school shooting i mean, there's so many reasons to not have guns everywhere. but school shootings are the place where we need to push them more. but but persuasion is not just about going for lay public opinion. this is an organizing challenge of marginalizing the nra or like having companies or not like, you know, this thing about credit card companies not doing business with gun companies. there's a whole bunch of different things we do that all fall into that problem of

persuasion. but at the end of the day, hovering over all of this, we i'd be remiss not to mention money in politics like we can't we have get money out of politics you know and that would do more than anything to make these mechanisms of persuasion. but i don't i never want to like it's not just nra like a lot of people in this state have a deep conviction about the belief in the second gun. right. you can't skirt around that. the only alternative is to persuade people and organize and change consensus and in the case of the moment we're in right now, may very well reduce to voting. it does. are we done? we are done. sorry. we have a time constraint. please give our guest a big thank you all so much. thank you very much. being