Woking up to Backlash
New York Times Columnist Thomas Edsall on Reason & Responsibility in Polarized Politics
August 24, 2021
“The rise of the conservative movement on the right and the decline of liberalism on the left have been a preoccupation of mine for 40 years or more,” Thomas Edsall confides in our latest Season Two episode, “Woking up to Backlash.” Purple Principle listeners are now beneficiaries of that long-standing preoccupation, which includes 25 years as a National Correspondent for The Washington Post before joining the New York Times.
In “Woking Up to Backlash,” Edsall describes for us the high amperage polarities between the two parties – how the far left can be the right’s greatest ally, and vice-versa. He further notes that while the excesses of each party are not morally equivalent, they can often be politically equivalent. And he firmly states that the Republican Party under Trump’s influence has become delusional with regard to the previous election, among other issues, leaving the Democratic Party the more rational of the two.
Rationality, however, brings responsibility. And, according to Esdall, if “big D” Democrats wish to preserve “small d” democracy, they must accept the lion’s share of responsibility in ratcheting down the political temperature in our polarized climate. For example, Edsall advises, Democrats must be careful not to impose cultural values upon the deeply held religious views of the right and mindful of costs associated with changes they champion.
In “Woking Up to Backlash,” Purple Principle listeners also receive concise and informed introductions from Edsall to some of the top scholars working on the issue of polarization today. They include Lilliana Mason (Johns Hopkins) and Shanto Iyengar (Stanford) on affective polarization; Jonathan Haidt (NYU) on the social psychology of a two party system; Julie Wronski (U. of Mississippi) on the appeal of authoritarianism; and Ashley Jardina (Duke) on the emergence of a white political identity.
A messy business, this democratic form of government. And a dangerous business in light of our deep polarization. But in this Purple Principle episode, Thomas Edsall brings some clarity to the current mess and sage advice on reducing the political temperature and partisan polarities.
Tune in to learn more from Thomas Edsall, one of the most objective, thoughtful, and distinguished American journalists writing today. And meet new Purple Principle co-host Jillian Youngblood, Executive Director of the non-profit, non-partisan, Civic Genius. Jillian brings two decades of frontline political experience to the show along with wit, wisdom, and passion for a more perfect union.
Original Music by Ryan Adair Rooney
Show Notes
Our Guest
Tom Edsall: Columbia Journalism School
Thomas B. Edsall - The New York Times
Additional Resources
Emily Cochrane (8/10/21). “Senate Passes $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill.” The New York Times
Texas House Election Results 2020
Transcript
Thomas Edsall
I've been intrigued really for almost all my career of what happened to the Democratic party. When I was a child, the Democratic party was the dominant party. It still was the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Robert Pease (co-host)
That’s Thomas Edsall, the refreshingly objective, affably erudite op-ed columnist for the New York Times with five decades of experience reporting and analyzing U.S. politics.
Thomas Edsall
But the rise of the conservative movement on the right and the decline of liberalism on the left have been a preoccupation of mine for 40 years or more even, I hate to admit.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Half a century of hyper partisanship has transformed both parties. And it’s a privilege to have Thomas Edsall help explain that for us. This is The Purple Principle, a podcast about the perils of all that polarization. I’m Robert Pease. And another great privilege today: the introduction of our new co-host Jillian Youngblood, former Hill staffer who also worked in the Bloomberg administration and currently serves as Executive Director of Civic Genius, a non-profit promoting civic awareness and bipartisan problem solving. Jillian, great to have you back on the show, and this time for many episodes.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Have I been officially promoted from guest seat to the co-host chair?
Robert Pease (co-host)
You have uttered co-host speech. So that is now official, Jillian, and perfect timing for this interview because I know you’ve read your share of Thomas Edsall over the years.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Absolutely. He’s one of the really great columnists out there today and I’ve learned so much from him over the past decade.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Then let’s get right into it with Thomas Edsall, contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times, author of five books on U.S. politics, Columbia Journalism School Professor, and national reporter for the Washington Post for 25 years prior to joining the New York Times.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
He’s long on research, short on dogma and hugely insightful with regard to partisanship and polarization.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Which is indie music to the ears of Purple Principle listeners concerned about both parties, the dynamics between them, and our great big somewhat shaky democracy.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
It's so great to meet you. I'm a longtime reader, first-time caller. So I think if I could just start by asking, a lot of columnists are very clearly on the left, very clearly on the right, and to your credit, I have no idea. So I'm curious if you could just tell us a little bit about how you think of your audience, who you're writing for?
Thomas Edsall
Well, the New York Times audience is pretty liberal in that sense. So I am writing for an audience that is to the left and to some extent, but not entirely, I try to direct the column towards the problems that the left has.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
So, our show's about polarization. You've written extensively about structural politics and the polarities between the left and the right. I'm thinking of one column where you said that the far left is the Republican's greatest asset. Can you explain that dynamic a little bit?
Thomas Edsall
You can argue to a certain extent that the Republican party has been the reactor to Democratic initiatives. The Democratic party has become the party of rights, has been that way since the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement really starting in the mid sixties, and sometimes Democrats go too far and push the envelope to a point that is not acceptable to the general public. And that's when the Republican party can step in very effectively, politically.
I'm not talking about the morals, the who's right or wrong, but it gives the Republican party a very effective tool to portray the Democratic party and its candidates as people who go over the edge, who pushed things too far. In that sense, woke Democrats who would push the Democratic party quite far to the left are a real benefit to the Republican party, giving them just what they need.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Do you think that the flip side is also true? Is the far right a great asset to the left?
Thomas Edsall
I mean, clearly, Trump and the excesses he and his supporters have undertaken, particularly the denial of the truth of the past election are going to be, I think, central issues in the next few campaigns. We'll see whether or not that really tells what's intriguing really. Is that a party that is delusional? The Republican party at this point could actually – and is favored to win control of the House and it's a 50-50 shot in the Senate. So we have, in a sense, the liabilities of the left with woke Democrats as bad, as much more serious liabilities on the right where there's a real, both the denial of truth, an acceptance of a lie, and a growing willingness to accept authoritarian governance. So they're not equivalent, but politically they can often become equivalent.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
It seems that identity is both cause and consequence of this polarization to some extent, and one thing that you wrote about pretty recently, a few months ago that I really appreciated, was a piece about how Americans actually have a lot of common ground on policy. It's some data from Voice of the People from Dr. Steven Kull, who we've worked with before, who's been on the show for More in Common, wrote a really interesting report on this. I'm curious how do we get back to or create a space where Americans can talk more about policy and less about identity?
Thomas Edsall
That's very hard. One problem is that people mesh their identities in their partisanship. It's not just that you're a Democrat or Republican, but if you're a Democrat, you're also pro choice; if you're a Republican you're anti-abortion; if you're Orthodox religious, you tend very much to be a Republican. If you're an atheist, you tend to be a Democrat. These divides have shaped people's views so that their whole sense of who they are gets wrapped up in being a Democrat or Republican. And when that happens, it turns the opposition into an enemy.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
So we're one of the few two party systems in the world and that kind of intrinsically promotes some of this polarization. I think there's been some discussion, particularly from the never-Trump wing of the Republican party, saying that it's time for a third party. We need one, there's no other way around this. And also I think from some more centrist Democrats and independents, do you think that that is quixotic? Do you think that a third party is possible here?
Thomas Edsall
I think that there certainly is room for third parties and there are constituencies that could be brought to doubt there to form a third party in a two party system like we have. Though it's very hard to do that, the only people who've done it lately at all, with even minimal success, are people who are one very rich and they have personalities that are very assertive. And the other problem is that for a third party to form, a presidential candidate can run as a third party candidate and possibly like Ross Perot – he got 19% of the vote – but to be a real party, you gotta have candidates up and down the line, you gotta have Senate candidates and House candidates. That's much harder, it's a huge proposition to really do it as a party. We really structurally in every way built for a two party, Democrat versus Republican, system.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Hold on Jillian, allow me a moment of deep depression regarding his point that we’re pretty well stuck with our two party system.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Yeah. But why don’t you take a beat. But remember, there are at least factions within the parties.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Which might be healthy if they knew how to compromise.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Oooh. Don’t say the C word. Sometimes they make a lot of noise on Twitter and then quietly C-word.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Not sure if that’s encouraging or not. But hearing Edsall talk about those changes on the Democratic side over 40-50 years, we have to call up some audio from our Season 1 guest, Geoff Kabaservice. He’s the widely respected historian and commentator on the modern Republican party and author of the book Rule and Ruin on the demise of moderate Republicans.
Geoffrey Kabaservice
Well, moderate Republicanism took a nasty hit in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, the very conservative Arizona Senator, became the GOP presidential nominee. And that was significant not just because a conservative for the first time sees the nomination, but also because Barry Goldwater was one of the few Republican legislators in Congress to vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And that had long standing and permanent repercussions. But really this problem became worse with Newt Gingrich in the 1994 election. And moderates have really been marginalized in the party at this point.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Which is the odd thing, isn’t it? The Republican party moves right over time, opening up an opportunity for Democrats to possibly convert some moderate Republicans, maybe some right-leaning independents.
Robert Pease (co-host)
But so many Democrats, particularly in the House, move even further left. Makes no sense.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Until you think about the psychology of that situation. And affective polarization. Which is another great element in Edsall columns. Not just politics, but the psychology that makes seemingly mysterious policy positions so popular and effective.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Polarization is nothing if not complex. And I think we can safely say that today’s guest, Thomas Edsall, is a great interpreter of that complexity and a major conduit between mainstream journalism and really important scholarship.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
You cite a lot of academic research, and I'm wondering if you can think of a few of your favorite recent, relatively recent, really incisive studies from the past few years that you think Americans should familiarize themselves with.
Thomas Edsall
I think there's a woman who just moved from the University of Maryland to Johns Hopkins University, Lilliana Mason, who wrote about affective polarization. And I think she's really been a pioneer on that front.
[Archival Audio, Lilliana Mason]
Thomas Edsall
Although along with her, there's a Stanford scholar named Shanto Iyengar, who has been a pioneer in this field where instead of polarization by issues, they are finding polarization by personal animosity or support for your team and opposition to the other team, regardless of issues.
[Archival Audio, Shanto Iyengar]
Thomas Edsall
Their work has been breakthrough work. The same is true with Jonathan Haidt, who is now with the NYU School of Business, but he's a social psychologist.
[Archival Audio, Jonathan Haidt]
Thomas Edsall
He is tops in his field, but I'm really gonna neglect people by doing this. There's another woman, Julie Wronski at the University of Mississippi, who has been very insightful about political animosity.
[Archival Audio, Julie Wronski]
Thomas Edsall
And I really should also mention Ashley Jardina, J A R D I N A, at Duke who really established the reemergence of white identity as a factor.
[Archival Audio, Ashley Jardina]
Thomas Edsall
White identity, people didn't used to feel an identity, because they were the norm in the country. They just accepted who they were without thinking in recent years. Some whites have developed a sense of being white, as opposed to being that the norm, and that was crucial to the emergence of Donald Trump. This idea of affective polarization became very important as a way to explain why this intense animosity to Democrats that emerged in white working class communities Trump has provoked well. He basically tapped into areas in people's psychology and makeup that had not been recognized as significant in many of these fields. It may seem odd to give him credit, but he really sort of lifted up the rock on America. And so there were a lot of pretty strange bugs floating around, that people had not been looking at. And they are big bugs. You could see it on the January 6th assault on the Capitol, but also in this, there are millions of Republicans who believe the election was stolen, despite all the evidence, millions upon millions, tens of millions, really, and this is really an extraordinary phenomena, a whole party changed its point of view because Donald Trump arose and became the anti-immigrant anti-free trade; that the whole party shifted gears, the evangelical community in effect abandoned its requirements that its favored candidates live up to a higher moral standard.
As someone who's covered politics since the mid sixties, I hate to admit, it's just extraordinary to see. This is bigger than the Reagan revolution and may not be as big as the rights revolutions, civil rights, women's rights, but it is a really significant development in America.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Another academic you're probably familiar with is Keith Poole who started the DW Nominate data on congressional floor votes throughout American history. That's now the UCLA Voteview database. We have a quote from Dr. Poole, who we interviewed early on.
[Archival Audio, Keith Poole]
Robert Pease (co-host)
So that's a data scientist talking about pure hatred, which is a little worrisome. Did that hit you about the same time it hit Dr. Poole, in the late 1990s and the early 2000s?
Thomas Edsall
Well, I've depended on his work. He and a guy named Howard Rosenthal developed this thing, which is called DW nominate, which measures the degree of polarization, especially in Congress and tracks how much Republicans in Congress move to the right and Democrats move to the left. And when Trump came along, they moved even faster to the left. So that there's been a sort of a counter pattern in the Democratic party of white led by white liberals and fairly affluent white liberals moving sharply to the left, especially on cultural and racial issues. So the divide or who's to blame for the divide, it goes both ways. And it's not a one where it's solely Republicans moving to Republicans moving near the right. It's one of also Democrats in recent years moving to the left, but Keith's work with Rosenthal is foundational.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Well, this is a terrible statistic, but have we seen a tiny blip in the other direction recently? Are you surprised at all that the bipartisan infrastructure bill seems to be proceeding through the Senate?
Thomas Edsall
I'm very surprised to tell you the truth and I don't understand the Republicans party's strategy, especially McConnell's strategy, which has been basically destroy anything Democratic at all costs, no matter what sort of a universal policy; whenever a Democratic bill comes, try to chop it off at the head as fast as you can.
[Archival Audio, Mitch McConnell]
I don't fully claim to understand why he's allowing this because it is a big victory for Biden. I think as long as Biden can maintain some momentum in his agenda, which he built, this action on this bill helps him do. He retains his centrality in the American political debate, and it increases his probability of being able to survive with the fewest possible losses in 2022, and perhaps go into 2024.
Robert Pease (co-host)
That’s Thomas Edsall, veteran reporter on U.S. politics and longtime op-ed contributing writer for the New York Times.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Like a lot of political observers, he was taken aback by the recent bipartisan vote in the Senate approving the $1 trillion infrastructure package, which now moves onto the House for Olympic-level tug of war.
Robert Pease (co-host)
I hear bridges and ports groaning already. But another interesting point Edsall speaks to is how polarizing identity politics can be, something we’ve heard from so many guests.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
And which we encounter all the time at Civic Genius. People can find common ground on policy, but sprinkle in some divisive identity dust...
Robert Pease (co-host)
And all tribal hell breaks loose. So we asked Thomas Edsall about identity politics within that very broad Democratic party he studies and writes about, which stretches all the way from socialists to centrist pragmatists.
Thomas Edsall
What's interesting with the Democrats is that the moderating force among Democrats has turned out to be black Democrats for years. Centrist Democrats basically accused the party of moving too far to the left on racial issues, Black Democrats, South Carolina Democrats, particularly in Jim Clyburn most importantly, have been restraining the Democratic party on these woke issues, which are the ones that are much more problematic, and trying to keep the party on a more centrist, down the line, economic and healthcare, set of themes.
[Archival Audio collage]
Thomas Edsall
Black Democrats are a force for moderation, not for extremism. And that's a big change.
Robert Pease (co-host)
So going back to your very prescient book in 2006, Building Red America, you wrote one reason that Democratic party has so much difficulty in making a populist appeal is it’s structurally not a populist organization; it's dominated by well-educated, culturally liberal, relatively affluent white elite presiding over a rank and file that's 46% minority. That was 2005 or 2006. Do you think that is still the case today?
Thomas Edsall
It's even more so, I think, and I've written a fair amount about this, that the Democratic party, which was known as the party of the working men and women back in the Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy era now really has become the party of the upscale, the party of the successful, not the party of the beleaguered and struggling, but the people who don't suffer the most and that's created an alienation in the party between pushing voters of the working class away and not just white working class; Hispanic and Black voters who have some conservative leanings have been shifting away from the Democratic party. And the Hispanic vote is very important, as the last election showed with the defeats of Democrats in Florida and south Texas, and an erosion of black support really could threaten a lot of other districts and places.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And around the same time you wrote about the Republicans, the GOP has developed a capacity to eke out victory by slim margins in a majority of closely contested elections. It's likely to continue this pattern. So in light of the 2020 elections, where the blue wave was anticipated – you had a pandemic, you had a recession, you had an unpopular president – there was no blue wave. Could you say that yet again, the GOP kind of eked out an unexpected victory?
Thomas Edsall
Well, I think the 2020 success of the Republican party down the ticket was more due to Trump's unexpected appeal to a lot of voters who turned out in large numbers, much more than expected, and certainly much more than pollsters expected. In the long run, the Republican party, the whole infrastructure that the Republican party has received much more support from, especially its donor base than the Democratic party. And the Republican party and the business community, generally, there's been a real recognition that having Republican control of state governments, for example, and even city, government, city, or town governments, county governments, that can be very important in terms of reducing regulation, lower tax rates, diminishing the power of unions, all the things that Republicans want to get, and especially the business community for its bottom line wants to achieve. And Democrats have allowed this core infrastructure to decay and erode in a way that has hurt the party over time and has made it basically weak. And you saw what happened in 2010 and 2014, when wave elections helping Republicans occurred. Republicans had this infrastructure in place and they won legislative seats, all kinds of down ballot victories all across the country because they were positioned at the local level to win.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
So Rob, some say that these days, all politics is national, but in this case, whoever said all politics is local should probably say that again.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And again. But maybe there's something to the adage: the loudest liberals like to march around and chant while the majority of conservatives build donor and voter networks.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Well I don’t know if that’s entirely fair to Democrats, but certainly those chants can get out ahead of many swing voters and promote backlash. On that point, Let’s hear again from Geoff Kabaservice from that first season episode on Party Dynamics.
Geoffrey Kabaservice
You can also say that maybe the “Defund the Police'' slogan that so many Progressives embraced this past summer proved to be determinative with at least some of these constituents in the swing districts who really do fear a return of the kind of levels of crime that we saw in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. In fact, if you look at the polls of African-American opinion, African-Americans are much more resistant to the “Defund the Police'' slogan than are white liberals. So it could also be that this slogan backfired with some of the minority constituencies whom white Democratic liberals thought it would please.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
It’s a zero sum jungle out there. But, we’ve heard Thomas Edsall speak a lot about the nature of the problems within both parties and between them. And we’ve heard some confirmation of that. But what about solutions to those problems? What might turn the tide of polarization just a little bit?
Robert Pease (co-host)
Let’s hear Thomas Edsall address that question of yours, Jillian and my own on whether indie-minded Americans could be part of the solution.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
If we could go back to polarization again, my topic, there's so many contributing factors to polarization: we talk about gerrymandering, the division entrepreneurs, maybe I would call them on social media and YouTube and certainly cable news. People talk about closed primaries of a lot of states, where there are elections that you can win without the support of a majority of voters. I'm curious what you think is the first vital step we can take out of this toward a more kind of common ground sort of politics.
Thomas Edsall
Well, you know, I think even though the Republicans are sort of the aggressors in pushing the polarization issues because they work for them, the wedge issues of race, culture, and so forth have generally been ones that for Republicans are fair and profitable on election day. I think the burden is on Democrats, and to explain that, I think the Democrats remain a rational party, and the Republican party has become an irrational party. If you want to preserve democracy and democracy in a two party system has a very hard time surviving in a polarized context, the burden then falls on the rational party to do something to lessen it. And I think the Democratic party should take steps to reduce the sense of threat that it poses to many Republicans to try to turn the temperature down. That's why the woke stuff that you hear actually turns the temperature up and makes people more anxious, the critical race theory debate, regardless of what you think is right or wrong.
And I think one of the areas that is particularly worrisome to those who have shifted to the right are the protection of religious freedoms. And the idea that liberal causes are gonna require conservative religious people to adopt and perform everything in a hospital abortions, or do allow abortions, for example, or the baker who didn't want to bake a cake that had two men on top. I think that the Democrats should back away from those issues for the moment. They can be absolutely supportive of gay rights, of abortion rights, but I think they need to be careful when people have deeply held religious views on these subjects not to impose their values on them. The other big area is that a lot of Democrats, especially in the area of race, have put the cost of integration and the costs of correcting the past and judging past injustices primarily on the least equipped of the whites. They have white working class voters are the ones who faced the biggest burdens from affirmative action. And Democrats have to think about those much more consequentially if they want to make changes in society. Change always has costs, and they have to think about recognizing that there are costs and trying much more to figure out who is bearing the burden of those costs.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
So lay off the little sisters of...
Thomas Edsall
The poor. Yes, yes, exactly.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Well, we've talked a lot about Democrats and Republicans, but most of our listeners are probably independent or unaffiliated voters and they do make up close to 40% of the American electorate, but they haven't done so well at electing independent legislators. As you know, there's only a few dozen out of 7,000 elected officials in the United States. We'd like to play a clip from one of them. Laura Sibilia, she's an independent member of the Vermont assembly, and I believe she's in her fourth term.
Laura Sibilia
And I like to say that I really understand the notion of organizing people, organizing ideas, organizing for funding, for moving ideas forward. So I get the idea of parties and I get the value of parties, but that's not me. And I think that there's value to having folks like me outside of the parties to kind of be that I don't even know what we would call it, but the space in between. So we're seen as kind of affiliated brokers in the middle.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Do you think we need more of these unaffiliated brokers in the middle and in Washington? And do you think there's anyone currently trying to fill that role?
Thomas Edsall
Well, I think there could be many more and I don't care if they're her personally, if they're party members or if they're independents, but people who are fair-minded in their view and take a broader outlook. Both for their own constituency but also for the state or national government, depending on which they represent? I think both Democratic members and independent members of Congress, and Republicans and conservative leaning, independent members, who are free of orthodoxy and can make their decisions on a realistic basis would be a very healthy process. We now have great pressure, especially on the right, but in both parties too, if you are a member of the Democratic party or Republican party, to vote with your party. I think that's an unhealthy process. Charlie Crist was a very popular Republican governor of Florida, but then when Obama came down, Crist, I think, put his arm around Obama. And that became a fatal thing for him to do. And Marco Rubio beat him in part because Crist was friendly to Obama and it was verboten to do that. That's really a very dangerous point, but we're there.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Well, last question, we ask all our guests to show a bit of purple, which means choosing one member of each party you have particular respect for, whether living or dead, who might be able to help in our polarized environment today.
Thomas Edsall
Well, one guy that I liked a lot when I covered him was John Chafee of Rhode Island.
[Archival Audio, John Chaffee]
Thomas Edsall
I covered him both while at the Providence Journal and then later in Congress, and I thought he was an impressive man in many respects. Another who comes to mind as someone who just died is Carl Levin, who I didn't cover that much, but I knew him a little.
[Archival Audio, Carl Levin]
Thomas Edsall
And he was a Democrat, Chafee was a Republican. I think they both shared an independence of spirit and a respect for the national interest and their larger obligation beyond party.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Well, Jillian. We could sure use a few more, as in a few hundred more, elected officials with those larger obligations.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Larger than Twitter feeds and superpacs? That's a lot. But maybe we can take the slightest bit of solace from the bipartisan action that we’ve seen recently, first on COVID relief and infrastructure, at least in the Senate.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Though typically there’s even less bipartisanship in an election year, which is coming up frighteningly soon, in 2022. And there’s so much in play: the razor thin Democratic majorities in both houses and a lot of state legislatures and governor seats as well.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
We learned from Thomas Esdall today that backlash can swing these elections, especially when Democrats push on those identity buttons.
Robert Pease (co-host)
We also heard that he currently views the Democrats as the sole rational party, thus having vital responsibility for turning down the heat on our discord.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
If you’re not familiar with Thomas Edsall’s writing, we encourage all of you to look for his New York Times column most every Wednesday. They’re deeply honest, clearly written, and contain great summaries of some of the most important academic research out there on polarization.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Next week though, we're going to step away from mainstream journalism and academic research and into high school and middle school classrooms around the country, where the teaching of civics has eroded over the past few decades.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
This is a topic dear to us over at my day job with Civic Genius. There’s lots of efforts underway to better educate young Americans on Civics: not just the mechanisms of government but the importance of civic involvement of all kinds, like volunteering and mentoring, and of course, voting.
Robert Pease (co-host)
We’ll speak with four different experts on this subject. Colonel Michael Moffet, a Republican from New Hampshire who has filed legislation to promote civics education in my home state.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Dr. Laura Hammock, a superintendent from rural Indiana whose former school district won a national contest promoting civics education.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And the hosts of Civics 101, Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice. The team behind this popular NPR show and podcast have done as much as anyone to promote the importance of civics the past 5 years, with 230 episodes and counting.
Nick Capodice
Some teachers have told me why it was quickly adopted into schools quite quickly after the show has created 46 episodes – because there was an absolute dearth of nonpartisan civics material on the audio waves. So teachers could play this without fear that they would be viewed as supporting one side or the other about these very hot button topics and issues. And we still strive for that.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Please join us then and in the meantime, subscribe to our newsletter, The Purple Principle in Print, which dives deeply into important topics like civics education. It also helps us out a whole lot if you like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. You’ll find all these links in our show notes, and on our website, purpleprinciple.com.
This has been Robert Pease and the new yet already impressive co-host Jillian Youngblood for the Purple Principle team: Alison Byrne, Producer; Kevin A. Kline, Senior Audio Engineer; Emily Holloway, Director of Digital Ops; Dom Scarlett & Grant Sharrett Research Associates; and
Emma Trujillo, Audio Associate. Our resident composer is Ryan Adair Rooney. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production.
