Do We Need Conflict in American Politics?

Hello and welcome to another episode of Politics in Question. The podcast where we talk about how our political institutions are failing and what we might do to fix them. I'm Lee Drupman, Senior Fellow at New America and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. And I'm James Walner, the Vice President for Policy at the Foundation for American Innovation. Alright James, so we're going to do something different today. You ready for it? We're taking it on the road. No, we're going to discuss a book. It's like a book club. Did you read the book? The semi-sauvering people, realist view of democracy in America by E.E. Shatsnider? Yes, it's one of your Elmerx, right? Elmer-erit. Elmer-erit. I forget which one to eat. This. Elmer is a name you don't see very often these days. True. True. Gertrude and Elmer, old names. Yeah, so it's one of your favorite books, right? Yeah, I mean I read it in grad school. We kind of had to do. We're at least the grad school that I went to. I think these days you probably don't read too much of this kind of stuff in political science. I read in grad school too, but it was not on any core syllabus. It was just sort of one of those classics that I read on my own. And I've read it and re-read it and re-read it. It's probably one of the most influential books and how I think about politics. Which is probably why I think about politics somewhat differently than most people. Yeah, I think it was read what, 1960 or so? 1960, yeah. And I think my general rule of thumb on books about how politics works is if it's pre-65, it's probably pretty good. So pre-mancerals. Everything since then is downhill except your present company's books. Accepted of course. Yeah, yeah, it's true. So why is this one of your favorite books, James? Well, I just, I like the, a lot. I mean, one, my thing is conflict, right? I love conflict. I mean, I don't love conflict. No one likes it. Wow. It helps us to understand the dynamic nature of our political system. And it helps us to understand, I think, how political change happens, what politics is, politics is an activity, for instance. But one of the biggest things I love about this book is, I mean, I just read real quick from the preface. He writes the concepts formulated here, constitute an attack on all political theories, all research techniques and concepts, and it's tending to show that American politics is a meaningless stalemate about which no one can do anything, right? And I think that's very much how we think about politics today, that it is this polarized stalemate that gridlock reigns supreme. And what Shant Shaiers telling us is that that's not the case. And that many respects the theories of politics, the theories that have come out of the academy that have kind of permeated our thinking and the conventional wisdom on politics both in the electorate and among kind of interested observers and among policymakers and in the media, I think, is attacked by a lot of the kind of common sense analysis that the church noter gives us. Yeah, I mean, I think he really treats politics as a dynamic living system, whereas I think a lot of political analysis as politics should be analyzed as a sort of equilibrium physics, right? There's just some balance and it's like a it's like a tug of war and an aggregation. And I mean, sort of put this book in context for a little bit, it's writing in 1960. And he's responding to this interest group pluralism theory that's kind of dominant in political science at the time, which is this idea that well, look, look how American politics works. There's all these interest groups and everybody has an organization that represents them in Washington. And if they're threatened, then they form an organization and politics is this great averaging out of all these interests. And as a result, is it American politics wonderful and Shant Shaiers raises his hand and he says, hold on guys, not sure it's so wonderful because there's a lot of folks that aren't mobilized into this system. Politics is the organization of bias biases that the so-called pluralist heaven sings with a distinctly upper class accent some interest those who have money tend to triumph over those who don't. And the way that you change that is by organizing by getting into the fight and by trying to expand the scope of conflict. And it's fundamentally the theory of politics is nothing is stable. Everything is changing. And this fundamentally challenges this very static one-dimensional view of politics that is dominant that everything is supposed to converge on some mythical median voter along this single dimension. And that's just not the case. Clearly, but oddly enough as we've tried to analyze politics in that way the worst it has gotten. Like the more we think of politics as about being this one dimensional left versus right median voter thing, the more politics has felt gridlocked, which is I think almost weirdly self fulfilling. I think it goes a little even deeper than that. I mean, I think a lot of the modern conventional or present-day conventional wisdom on politics sees politics as a production process where we are producing or building or assembling widgets that things get defined outside of politics. We then turn to the political process we turn to Congress or the administration wherever it may be to to assemble these policy widgets according to this blueprint. And that's not how politics works right then from that flows this idea that conflict is bad that equilibrium is desired right if you think about a factory you don't want people designing the blueprint on the floor that's not a good thing you want them assembling a product on the floor the factory floor. And you then need to control the means of production so you in politics those are votes those are officials of the administration and the way you do that is by winning elections and so everything gets shifted to the elections and what happens in between elections is seen as secondary is something is a consequence of an election. And once the election happens we then array all the people on some kind of you know, DW nominate line of you know left to right and we say well, I don't want our hands we can't do that anymore we can't do this because we don't have the people to do it and so all we have to do is when the next election and once we do that will be in the promise land there'll be no more mosquitoes. Right there'll be no humidity it won't rain ever again or it will rain enough to you know what are our gardens I guess but whatever it is all the bad stuff will be dispeled and that's not how it works and if you think about American politics when when our system was seemingly at its greatest in terms of productivity or in terms of doing big things it was in periods of intense conflict and Shoshan is writing in the 60s if we think about what's happening in American politics as we transition from the late 50s to the early 60s this country is on fire I mean it's literally on fire and you have a lot of bad things happen in violence is increasing as well and everybody seems to be upset and everybody seems to be taking to the streets if you will but amidst all of that we get some major major things happening and the parties are going to get scrambled and they're going to do a lot of stuff but I think this all relates to the fact that politics is an activity and that's something that comes through Shoshan are very very clearly it's an activity that goes on forever over and over again that there is no status quo that is locked in and I think today we see any we see the very things that Shoshan are tells us are the secret sauce the things that make our system go as the problem and we try to eradicate them from the system and then we wonder why we get paralyzed and we make mountains out of moll hills and how nothing can ever seem to work. Political conflict here is not like an intercollegiate debate it's not you you win and lose it it's you know the core point is that politics is really about the definition of alternatives right he sets up this idea that you win in politics by controlling the agenda it's the conflict over what the conflict is and I think there's particularly on the left and I'll be curious your assessment of whether it's going to be a good idea. I think that's your assessment of whether how do you think this applies to the right but you know there's this view that Democrats should just do a bunch of polling and see what issues resonate and or what issues are popular and then just talk about those issues over and over again so for example I see a lot of people recording June 2025 wire Democrats constantly talking about Medicaid cuts because Democrats are seemingly on the more popular side of Medicaid because there's proposed cuts to Medicaid in in the Republican tax and spending bill and I think well it's just not the same emotionally resident issue as a lot of other issues immigration is an issue that it really resonates with the right. It really resonates with a lot of people and there's fundamental argument that Shaston is making about the contagiousness of conflict right so this conflict is is contagious you don't once you start it you don't know where it's going to go but the more intense emotional resident conflicts are going to displace the less intense ones and that's what politics is about and I see a lot of folks on the Democrats I say oh you know immigration is not a good issue This is not a good issue for us, so we have to talk about Medicaid instead. Whereas, in the comments. integration is an emotional issue. Whether whatever side of the issue you're on, it really strikes at very core issues of morality and justice and identity. And if you're trying to avoid the issues that are emotionally resonant, you're gonna lose in politics. Whereas if you try to lead into that and think about how you might realign those issues, you might win. - Yeah, I think, well, we have these, but there's different ways to look at Medicaid and the lens or at immigration for that matter. I think both parties, because they're not cohesive and is polarized as people have often thought they were, right? There is no monolithic position in the Democratic Party in the electorate or in Congress, for instance, on Medicaid, just as there is none on among Republicans. We're seeing that now with a lot of the difficulty in the reconciliation bill debate to get Medicaid cuts through, right? And they've had to scale back because Republicans are deeply divided on Medicaid. And it's not just a moderate liberal thing. I mean, you have people like Josh Holley, who is opposed to Medicaid cuts. You have people like Donald Trump who have come out and said, let's not go after the social safety net in that way. So they look for kind of ways to reframe that debate that can unify their side. But I think the key thing is, and you see this in issues like gun control or the gun rights debate, whatever it may be. But today, because of this focus on elections, we have this sense that the only way to win on an issue and make progress is to replace the other side with people on our side. But of course, that assumes everybody agrees. And they don't agree. And the key thing from that is in conflict is for Shachnider a way to drive change and dynamite, it's the dynamic element of our system, right? And he says, nothing attracts a crowd so quickly as a fight. So if we take this concept of say the status quo, which is what, you know, Baumgart und Joan certainly write about, and they're very Shachniderian, Shachnider, and I can't even say whatever that, whatever it is. And there are works, Nidirian, Shachniderian, say that three times without smile, and it's gonna be hard, it makes me smile every time, I think about it. But, you know, the idea is that if you want to change something, and you come into a system or at a Congress or a debate, and that debate chances are, it's not gonna agree with you, right? Because the people in power, the status quo, likes what they have. I mean, that's the whole point. And maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit here, but it likes what it has. And so you have one option, one option, whether you're a AOC or a Chipproy or a Ted Cruz or a Jeff Merckley, you have one option. And that is to go outside of that conflict, right? Or if you're trying to change, like, say the farm bill, you have to go outside of that old iron triangle, and you have to go to different arenas, where more people can get involved, and you have to start a fight, right? The mortal Mike Tyson, what, I told us what, everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth. I mean, obviously, figuratively speaking here, but that's true, because it's about the relative strength of both sides. And what Shachnider tells us is, when you started fight a conflict, people find that interesting, and they then get attracted to it. I mean, that's how we were able in 2007, when I was working for Jeff Sessions, to defeat comprehensive immigration reform, which is like the, and from that point to the present, immigration's been a very tough issue for both parties. Because at the time, both parties wanted to do it. And, you know, Sessions and Jim DeMette, David Vitter and Tom Cobra, and all had a different sense of where the electorate was, and they bet that it wasn't on the side of comprehensive immigration reform. And so they went and pursued an outside game. They started a fight. They didn't start a fight with Democrats. That's kind of boring. Of course, Republicans and Democrats fight. They started a fight with their own side. And that broadened the debate. They got the media involved. And then more and more people got involved. And all of a sudden, it disrupted the balance of power to where four senators were able to overcome bipartisan support for a bill. Were able to overcome a Republican president, and George W. Bush. And were able to make this issue toxic for American politics for almost a generation. So controversy is catching. And this is, I mean, this is the fundamental, another fundamental point that Shats Schneider raises is that it's only through the conflict that the public gets to participate. Because this is the idea of the semi-sauvering people is that the public is only involved to the extent that there is a conflict. If there's no conflict, if issues are settled privately, then the public doesn't get to be involved. We're not even just privately. I think it's also, I mean, think about your standard committee hearing on, say, price supports for peanuts, for instance. I mean, who's going to be a controversial? Yeah, I'm going to be no conflict. I mean, first of all, peanuts are delightful. They're incredible. But should they be subsidized? Well, I'm not going to leave the policy to other people. I just-- We all fare for groundnuts. Yeah, I'd just say I've worked on a peanut title of one of the farm bills. I know a lot about peanuts. So we should do a whole episode on peanuts sometime. But no, I think who's in that hearing? You've got the growers or the producers. People who grow peanuts, you've got the Agriculture Committee. And you don't have a lot of people outside of that. You're a typical defense procurement hearing. It's going to be, the companies that build weapons. It's going to be the defense department. It's going to be the administration. Those hearings, congressional hearings are boring. They're just boring. And so even though it's a public thing, the people involved try to keep that conflict within any conflict in any discussion within the kind of key parts of that triangle, right? They're trying to keep it away from-- Privateization of conflict. Right. And so I think when we say private, I think it's also-- people have an opportunity to get involved, but they don't, because one, there's nothing to attract their attention, not even in the general public, but also your rank and follow numbers. And nobody is trying to expand the conflict. Nobody's trying to make it exciting or contagious, because everybody in that hearing has an interest in containing the conflict. But you know what would happen if people thought peanuts had monkeypox or spread COVID? All of a sudden, it would get really interesting. They don't, by the way, because peanuts are phenomenal. They may even be a cure for both of those diseases. I'm not a medical professional, although I am first aid certified. But peanuts are not causing those things. But I would just say that, look, if they did, all of a sudden, it would be impossible for those people who are involved in the peanut kind of industry, the peanut industrial contagion or whatever. And more people would be paying attention. The media would be covering it. And all of a sudden, you would get a much different dynamic and people who aren't affected on a daily basis by peanuts in the industry and participate in it would now be throwing their weight around. Right. And this gets to the punctuated equilibrium theory of Frank Baumgartner and Brian Jones, which is a clear extension of the Schatz-Nyderian, how do I do perspective? I think it's pretty good. I was up, which is a fundamental non-linearity of policy change, long periods of stasis, followed by sudden change when the dimensionality of politics shifts. And again, when we think of politics in this kind of linear additive way that works with a lot of standard multi-variant regression techniques, a lot of typical modeling in the discipline of political science that's very linear, it just doesn't map on to this fundamental dynamic system, which is really much more like evolutionary biology than economics or physics, unless you take a certain view of physics. But it just really makes politics into a living dynamic system where there's constant strategy. There's constant questions of how do you upset the other coalition and how do you bring attention and focus, which is limited, but how do you bring that to your issues? And the way you do it is by making them exciting. But here's my question for you, James. But real quick, exciting. We're also just creating tension and confronting people with things. And without me, that implies the focus on the other side that we don't necessarily see today. Today, we're just like what's bloodshed the other side until they can no longer participate in politics, or they're no longer here. And then we'll then we'll win. But if you look at, say, this isn't just in Congress. I mean, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement is lettered from the Birmingham Jail. What does he say? My job is to create tension in the mind. And he creates, and he stages events in such a way so that when the media covers them, that it creates attention in the mind of white southerners. Because he knows that if he wants to make progress, he has to deal with white southerners. He can't just push them out. He can't just ignore them. He can't just say they're wrong. He has to try to get and approach the issue from their perspective. And so what do you do that? You appeal to their humanity and you force them to confront things and rather not confront. Right. So through nonviolent protests that provokes the other side into violent action, you create attention. And it's fundamentally an attempt to substitute a different conflict. But the question, and you raised this at the beginning, this view of politics is not gridlock. But one thing that's different now from 1960, 1960, I mean, you have Democratic Party and the Republican Party. But the coalitions are so mixed up, so overlapping, that it's really hard to tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans. And so many issues that are now national political issues are not national political issues in 1960. All of these cultural issues, just before the Civil Rights Movement, before a row versus Wade, Immigration is very low during this period. In fact, I think somewhere in the book, Shaznar says, "Nobody could be against immigration in American politics." But there has just been this great broadening of the issue space so that so many issues have gotten socialized into political conflict. And both of our major parties have absorbed all of these conflicts. It seems to be much more multi-dimensional that there were a lot more flanking opportunities available in politics in 1960, even in 2010 there were a lot more flanking. But really over the last 15 years or so, it feels like our politics really is stuck because any attempt to reorganize political conflict or expand the scope of conflict really feels like it's been blocked off. I mean, when Shaznar sees conflict as the thing that drives change, right, when you change the issue, the line of cleavage I guess in his terms. And so my question is, have we exhausted that as a strategy within the existing two party systems? Well, yeah, well, I think there's two observations. One, I think that our system is much more, the parties, the two coalitions are much more divided than we typically give them credit for. You have, you know, even just saying conservatives, that's not even, I think, a good way to kind of frame the different kind of groups of people. Sure, there are tremendous divisions within the parties, but nobody seems to want to realign the parties. Well, but that's an issue with how we think about in du politics, which I think is common on both sides and not an issue with the notion that somehow our parties are monolithic. I mean, look, Shaznar says, if you're happy with things or you don't want things to change, then you don't want conflict, right? And so you try to ignore fights. You never punch down. You're going to be up. That's like kind of the common sense, right? Because you punch down, you're going to lose. Because I mean, you run the risk of losing, I should say. But controlling the scope of conflict is related to, as such, Shaznar tells us, it's related to the scale on which the debate occurs, the fight occurs. And so if you localize conflict by keeping it at lower levels of government, or if you take the kind of iron triangle example, if you keep conflict, say over the farm bill, bottled up in the ag committee, in between the different stakeholders in that process. So they're just dividing up the pie. And you're going to keep the status quo is going to continue. It may change here and there. But if you want to not restrict the scope of conflict, if you want more conflict, Shaznar says nationalize it. If you want, but hold on, if you want more conflict, you can also go from the committee to the house and Senate floor. More people are involved. It's a stage that's more easily seen. And I guess what the problem that I see today is that people aren't, they're not trying to take advantage of this because they don't think that's how you win anymore because conflict is bad. I mean, just take the Republican realignment that's happening before our eyes. There are many respects that some, you know, a lot of Democrats would agree with a lot of the emphasis in among some parts of the Republican party on certain kind of like working class issues on kind of preserving the safety net, making it more efficient, those types of things. I think Trump complicates that obviously because he's the, from a stylistic standpoint, makes it very hard for Democrats to kind of take advantage of this profound shift from a pro-business, kind of laissez-faire classical liberal emphasis of the Republican party to a kind of a more working class side of the Republican party. And but they don't, they're not trying to take advantage of that. They're trying to beat Republicans in an election. And in that scenario, yeah, the nationalization is problematic, I guess, but I don't think it's problematic in and of itself. It makes it easier to have big fights. Well, I mean, I think there are pros and cons to nationalization, but it is the reality that almost every issue in American politics has become nationalized. And precisely because the parties so clearly define themselves in opposition to each other, they find themselves taking positions in response to each other. But I do, I mean, I do agree there are some interesting things that are complicating those coalitions. And maybe we are in the midst of a realignment. Maybe there are opportunities for a further realignment. But it's such an eye that says that party, I mean, the parties have always, they always compete with each other. They've always done that. Even right. Right. Sixth of the, the deri is compete with each other. The difference today is though, because they see politics as a factory, a production process, the way you win control of the factory is to win elections. And the way you win elections is, right, but parties have always wanted to win elections. I think what's different now, I mean, it may be a shift in the mindset, but also there was a lot more free space, right? If you think of a Scrabble game, like, you know, what happens when you get to the end of the Scrabble game, right? I've never made it to the end of the Scrabble game. You just get fed up and frustrated. My vote calculator goes, I've become like a, you know, a second grader in remedial speech class when I'd start to play Scrabble. All right. Well, some of us James have made it to the end of a Scrabble game. It may be even some of our listeners. And what happens at the end of the Scrabble game is you just have nowhere on the, the board gets very crowded and it's really hard to find space on the board to make your plays. Whereas when the board is less crowded, there's a lot more opportunity, a lot more space. So one of the things that's happened in American politics since 1960 is just a lot more groups. The interest group explosion, starting in the 60s, the number of interest groups, the number of issues that have come onto the national scene, the number of agencies and rules and regulations that have been created and the shift from issues being local to issues being national has really been quite dramatic. So that everything just feels locked in and sure there are inconsistencies within the parties and tensions within the parties, but there is so little room for a displacement of conflict because the conflicts feel so locked in, at least within the existing two party system. Now, my view as you and listeners know is that the way to open up new conflicts is to break down this artificial binary that we are currently locked in by virtue of choosing an electoral system that makes it really hard for third parties to get into the game. Right. Well, but I just want to kind of emphasize this point though. I mean, yeah, parties have always wanted to win elections, but they also then interacted with one another and it was very fluid in between elections. And today though, the conflict within the party is seen as a, as a liability to winning elections. And there's much more focus on parties staying unified. Right. And so I think in that scenario, there's nothing, I don't think in transit to a crowded political space that somehow limits the dynamism of that space. If anything, it should exacerbate it and make it harder for any one status quo to prevail because you have a lot of people trying. What I find so interesting about our politics today is that all of the participants for the most part see conflict as a negative, see a dynamic process of constantly trying to appeal to the other side divide the members on the other side of the debate, framing issues in a way that is compelling to some subset of the other side. All of that's gone. Well, and I think that that I think that suggests that it's not the nationalization or a crowded space so much as it is how we all think about politics these days that we're no longer doing it. Right. We're no longer starting fights for the purposes of creating new issue cleavages. We're no longer. Right. I mean, we, but we still see this though. I would say like immigration is a great example. Like in the 2007, the Republican Party from 2007, three, remember Mitt Romney, I'm a, you know, what did you say about? I'm a, you know, some kind of conservative. It's severely conservative. That was his self deportation moment. And what you've seen in the Republican Party is even though they don't have really been excited about it. Like immigration has really defined, I think, and put a new line of cleavage in the electorate to where, yeah, the parties may not be acting in a different way, but the basis of the parties have changed significantly. And if you look at the Republican Party, but because of this new issue line that's moved, you've got people who are Democrats who are now, you know, you know, Reagan's old lunch bucket Democrats and FDR Democrats are now kind of firmly in the, the make America great again category. And that, I think speaks to the dynamism that Shotschner is talking about. What we don't see is the way in which we do politics in our institutions. The way we talk about it is very stylistic, the rhetoric. It doesn't line up with the actions. But I do think that we still, we still see this process playing out even when a nationalized electorate. And I would say that a nationalized electorate and a nationalized media space actually make it a lot easier for people like sessions to start a fight, to get attention and to deliver their message across the country in a way that it would be a lot harder to do so in a much more decentralized and fragmented space. Well, maybe, but I think the fundamental challenge in this is, you know, another key point from Shotschner is that the contagiousness of conflict is hard to control. Right. So once you really start a fight, you don't know where things are going. So if I look at a politician like like AOC, one of your favorites, like she is an entrepreneurial fight starter, right? Like she engages in conflict. But if the Democratic Party were to take her anti oligarchy position really seriously, that would challenge a lot of folks in the Democratic establishment, Democratic Party said, you know, we're going to get out of the business of taking money from rich people. We're going to eliminate all super PACs. We're going to go after a much more progressive tax rate. We're going to do aggressive antitrust. You'd get a whole lot of folks within the Democratic Party say, oh, we actually, we don't [BLANK_AUDIO] really want to start that conflict because we're not sure we'll come out on the winning side of that. So I think that is part of the challenge that when you have these coalitions that are, you know, many ways divided, but they are equally balanced and they view winning elections as the ultimate prize that they're going to somehow control things forever. Well, don't start a fight that would split the party apart or that would make anybody in our coalition with bad. So that's why you have this, this stalemate because in some ways it's because the parties are actually quite divided, but they are unified in their desire to have internal unity despite the internal conflict, which is a weird, I mean, did I make your head explode, James? Yeah, I mean, every daily. You know, look, I think that if you look at, say, like the liberal, democratic liberals who were pushing civil rights reform, I mean, that the party didn't want that, but there was a different view. Yeah, sure, right. I mean, LBJ said, you know, this is going to cost us the South for generation. He was right. There's a different view though at the time on what politics is in between elections. I mean, Mansfield is convinced like he did that civil rights debate in 64 is going to cost them the election. He favors it, but he's like, this is not good, but what does he do? He doesn't try to, you know, he may privately say, hey, let's not do it this way or whatever, but at the end of the day, his job, his role is like the party leadership is seen as facilitating that process, not trying to control it and dictate the outcomes. Right. First, today, if you take someone like an AOC, when she comes in, one of the rawest, most talented, natural talent, talented natural talent, I don't make sense, but people that we've seen in recent memory and politics comes in as a back venture, no political experience whatsoever, defeat. It's a very powerful democratic incumbent in the election, member of leadership comes in and she pushes the green new deal and she pushes it and she ultimately forces her party to move on it, whether it's good policy is a different question, forces her own party to move on it and then also forces the Republicans and Donald Trump to deal with it. I mean, that's winning, right. And even if you don't win and I imagine that there's a lot of coverage at the time about Pelosi and her kind of consternation with AOC and in finestein and Pelosi's Senate colleague from California, also, you know, people like that and they saw it as a liability because they saw it as impeding their ability to control the factory. And so the mindset today, and this is the same on the Republican side, and I like to think this conversation occurs, which is Pelosi, just like Republican leaders would say, I'm with you, AOC, I like the green new deal. I want it to happen. But if you want it to happen, this is the kicker, this is why we're gridlock. If you want it to happen, if you want to make progress on these things and actually enact the green new deal, then don't try to do it, right. That's what it boils down to because if you try, what's going to happen is that you're going to jeopardize some of our other Democrats who may not agree with you or maybe in red or districts, right. And they may have a harder time winning election. And then when they can't win election, guess what's going to happen? We lose control of the factory. And if we lose control of the factory, then we're never going to do it. So if you want to do something, don't try to do it. That's how perverse the logic is today. But it's the same way on the Republican side. And I think it speaks to a completely different mindset in a completely different way of thinking about politics that makes politics not work. Right. Right. Right. It's because it sees the conflict as a bad thing. Whereas at the time, I mean, the parties have always not liked their outliers. They never have liked them. They don't like people who want to drive radical change. But what happens is that they, at the time, they didn't see that. Is there a fun? I mean, they may argue that and try to get them. But if at the end of the day, they don't see that as like the, the way to like, that's not the point of politics, right. And it'd be nice if everybody would agree, but sometimes they don't. Now what's interesting about AOC is that she seems to have adopted that mindset. And if you look at AOC's career in the house since then, a lot of her antics, a lot of her constant driving as is, is, is receded. Now even, you know, admittedly, they're the minority. Now there's, it's limited. And she's transitioned more to an outside focus where in it's, this is the problem, right. You start a fight. But then you don't follow it up with efforts internal to the system inside the system to try to drive change. You have people like Merkle who say, I'm opposed to immigration policy administration. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to the border. And I'm going to change it. And I'm like, well, you know, you're a senator. You kind of are already where you need to change it. Now you can start a fight. You can stage spectacles and create controversies. You can get yourself arrested. You can do all sorts of things. But those things have to be followed up inside the Congress with similar kind of belligerent or kind of adverse type activity to try to drive that change by dividing the other side and overcoming the tensions on your side. But that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen on either, in either party because they're trying to contain the conflict. Right. So I mean, if you think of what we're getting at is if all of the conflict is essentially subverted to one dimension, which is the left versus right, Democrat first three public in us versus them, partisan conflict, then there is no opportunity to change anything. And the challenge is that when anybody within the party says, we want to do things differently in a way that will split the party. The party leadership says, no, you don't. No, you don't. Shut up. Get you're going to give the control of the factory to the other people. And if they then it's going to be the end of the world. That's like so. Get into line. And that is what makes our politics stuck. Now you can say it's nobody wants to take action or people's sense of action is limited or their view is distorted. But what you need is somebody who doesn't care which side controls the gaffles and who is willing to just say, screw it. We need a totally different axis of conflict here. And I'm going to force that. Right. I mean, if you care about an issue, say like civil rights, the fact that Democrats control the gaffles makes no difference because they're actually impeding. Sure. Of course, they're not doing it. Right. I mean, and that was and that was how the civil rights activists operate. They said, we don't care. The more important issue is that we get civil rights. And if this costs the Democrats, the election, like that doesn't matter because if Democrats control Congress, but don't do anything on civil rights. Right. But the more important issue, it's not the whole point of the system is to have these debates and to have these arguments and to try to drive change. And I think that, sure, you know, when they say the other side's going to win, right? If AOC's, you know, hearing from Pelosi, a place like, well, if you do this, you're going to give control to the other side. Or if you look at the Senate, I will have said this plenty of times. I don't think it makes a damn bit of difference if it is a 52 seat Republican majority or a 52 seat Democratic majority in the Senate. It doesn't matter. Senators have powers that they can do things if they want. Tell that to John Thune. Right. I mean, Thune, I mean, but look, Thune's going to be in the second most powerful Senator. If he's the minority leader, he's the first most powerful Senator now. But they don't this idea that somehow the Republic is going to fall into the ocean. If the other party wins, it isn't supported by its one common sense, says the truth to history. Look at like the status quo just kind of keeps persisting. Well, sure. I mean, but this is the thing that happens over and over again. I see us on the Republic inside. You have, you know, few folks who say, hey, if we keep spending like this, we're going to bankrupt the country. So we can't do this and our side is just as guilty as their side. And we're not going to support this bill. And then leadership comes in and says, shut up. We're better than Democrats on this issue. And if you don't get with our side, you're going to cost us the election. And then it's going to be even worse. It implies a, it betrays a risk, a preference for risk-free politics where everything is certain. And that just doesn't exist. The short start itself. Well, I mean, and so everybody needs to read Shotsnighter and stop with the issue polling and start with the creative conflict entrepreneurship. Yeah, I mean, look, if you want to drive change, if you're a nonprofit, if you're an advocate, if you're an activist, if you're a business who's disgruntled, if you want to change things, working inside the system to control the conflict so that you can just get the kind of formula just right. And then everybody agrees with you. That doesn't exist. That doesn't work. Right. And this is the debate that Democrats are having. A bunch of folks are saying, oh, the groups, quote unquote, cost us the election because they were, they were trying to bring new conflicts on to the agenda. No, how do you people who cost them the election, the people running in the election? How can somebody who's not in an election costs somebody an election? If they responded in a different way, if they're, you know, they can, they're, they're, they're not victims. Like people candidates aren't victims. They get to decide how they're like everybody feels like the problem with our system is everybody feels power. Like, how is some like group, some nonprofit going to cost like a, like a Senator, a house member, the election? What cost them the election is if that group raises issues on the agenda that, and they agree or disagree with them and their position on those issues, then is something that their voters don't like. That's what costs them the election. Not the group. Well, they, you know, I think they would say that is by being forced to take a position on that's the point of this. So say, say trans rights, Democrats are being forced into an unpopular position. Well, then don't agree with it. Or if you do agree with it, try to make it popular. But like the, the idea that somehow I'm now being forced to do stuff that the people want me to do or to talk about, I mean, that's just insane, right? I mean, right. I mean, and that's, it's a failure of leadership. If you you agree with an issue you say I'm going to make the best case for it. Yeah. And you try to appeal to people who aren't going to agree with you in a way that they then can see the issue through a lens that you like that ultimately allows them to come to you. You don't persuade people by ignoring them. And you don't persuade people by pushing them outside of the legitimate scope of conflict. The way you persuade people is to either try to frame issues in a way that they will find compelling or to set up the terrain and the rules in such a way that they are going along with you even if they are not compelled or persuaded on the merits. That's how you do politics, but that's not what we do today. No, no, that's not what we do. What we do now is party gets into power and the opposition says, "Oh, they'll overreach and then there's us and we'll change everything. We'll bring us into power." And then we get into power and then we don't want to either overreach or we stagnate either way, we're not going to do anything risky. Everybody's playing a risk averse game. They're just doing, "Well, we're just going to do the safe thing." And the safe thing is to just not try to upset the existing access of conflict. Yeah. And I think the reason why, and I think the Bram back to the Shachnader as we kind of wrap up here, is that they see conflict as a problem. The idea that there is a risk-free, error-free way that we can just go and get the perfect algorithm, we can talk to the consultants, we can figure it all out, we can visit winning issue. We're going to use words that work in Frank Lentz's terms. If that whole notion suggests that conflict, it betrays and desire to control the process, which you can't control politics, that's just the nature of politics. No one's in control. It's kind of the point of politics. And by trying to control it, it betrays this idea that somehow if we can only eradicate the conflict from the system, then we can do all the things we want to do. But the way you do things as Shachnader tells us is conflict. Right. The way you disrupt power monopolies, and you create new power arrangements and structures. The way you step into the arena, whether that be in the Congress or in the administration or in the media or in elect, whatever it may be, and then you just mix things up. And there's going to be some conflict in politics, because conflict, that's the point of politics. Conflict is, politics is not going to be about what we agree on, because those are not political issues. So it's where we negotiate the non-negotiable. That's the whole point. So from my perspective, one of the reasons why Trump has been as successful as he has been as a politician is because he is the most conflict-seeking person in all of politics. He is constantly starting fights. And he doesn't always win them, but if he loses, or if he thinks he's losing, he will start another fight. And part of the reason that he's able to do this is because everybody else is scared of starting a fight. And so, a little bit also losing a fight, when you start a fight, you're changing the issue, the dominant issue. Right. And you're putting people on different sides of it. So even if Trump loses a fight, he starts. Say he starts fighting immigration and loses. Guess what happens? Immigration is one of the defining issues now. And so now, now he has an opportunity to build and try to win in the future. People, and I've talked to Democrats and Republicans, particularly senators all the time, I tell them you can do this. And they go, well, but I'm going to lose. And I'm like, but that you don't win right away. That you never win right away. You have to start. And the first step towards winning it down the road is to change the issues and the way that they are kind of interpreted in a way that is favorable to you. And if you're not going to win, but if you are successful in starting that fight, that means that the side that did win, they're now on that side of the line. And then the other side of the line is on your side. And you now have an opportunity to then try to appeal to other people on the other side of the line and bring them over to your side. Because now you're fighting about immigration versus ignoring it. Right. But this, to me, is the thing that Democrats have not figured out is that the way you deal with this is by starting a different fight. Democrats keep saying, oh, we're just going to take the drama out of politics. We're just going to do everything in this very technocratic way. We're just going to poll issues and just talk about the issues where we're most popular as opposed to thinking about how do we organize conflict in a way. But maybe the point is that shouldn't be the Democrats thinking about it. It should be certain actors within the Democratic Party thinking about it. And particularly the outliers. I mean, they're not, they've internalized the right way of thinking too. And that's why I think politics is stagnated a bit on the right hand. So, you know, I mean, the only person who's doing this on the Democratic side really is Bernie Sanders. But he also doesn't translate it into action inside the Senate. I mean, one thing about Sanders, he's classic is that he has a great rhetoric. If you like that sort of thing or terrible, if you don't, but at the end of the day, it's just rhetoric. There's no efforts to kind of then drive that fight inside the Senate where he adds every tool in his disposal to do so. He just chooses not to use it because somehow we can get changed inside the Senate if we just talk outside it. That's not, that's never been true. Right. You have to do a combination of inside and outside it. What is the moral here is we close that everybody should read, shot Schneider, should I wait for the movie to come out? They should do a movie. It'll be good. But probably people just have to settle for the book for now. But it's very good. It does help you to understand, I think. It doesn't give you an answer. It helps you to understand the present moment by seeing how the conventional thinking is so out of alignment with what politics is. Right. And it also helps you to understand what would get us out of this. Right. It's empowering. When you understand it, then you can then go out and try whatever your policy views may be. You now know what you need to do to drive that change. And somebody is going to have to have the courage to split the party coalition somehow. Yeah, you have to lose. Then you win. That's the right. Right. Then win. Yeah. Fail fast. And when you win, you're just winning a fraction of what you want. It's like worse than baseball. You fight for like 40 years, and then you get like 10%. And you're like huge victory. As Bob Dylan said, there's no success like failure. Yeah. It's true. But the second line of that was, and failure is no success at all. But what did you say? And the times I were changing, you rattled the windows and shake the walls or shake the whatever it is. That's happening outside. And then that's why you see such a dramatic change inside of Congress with landmark pieces of legislation. And today, even on the outside, there's like a gun shooting and there's like a brief little flurry of activity. And then it goes away. Right. You need to have constant, constant pressure. Well, nobody has the appetite for conflict, except for, except for that crazy guy in the White House. It's hard. So yeah. All right. Well, I mean, I'm going to print up a sign that says, or maybe I'll get it. A t-shirt. It says, read, "Chatch Nighter." That's a good one. I mean, it built bumper stickers like, you know, something like that. Yeah. But people don't read bumper stickers anymore. They don't. I don't know. I was thinking about getting into it like, I didn't have a bunch of my car. I guess not. No, people don't read books anymore. People read bumper stickers. Maybe that's. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, I read the Doom Loop. Yeah. Read the Doom Loop. So hell of a ride. All right. Well, I guess this has been another episode of politics and question. That's it. Thanks for listening.