SIO405: Are we Really More Polarized Than Ever?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:15 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 405. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and oh, got a lot of things to tell you. First off, it's. For those who listen to Where There's Woke, and I hope that's all of you, please check out Where There's Woke. If you haven't yet, go over there. There is a lot to catch up on. Really, really good stuff that I put my heart and soul into. And it's a bit of a weird show, weird format, because what happens is I work all month on it. And then we try to get everything out in a flurry in the end of the month. It's just how we have to do it for now because it's deep, deep research. It's multi-part stuff and it's unpredictable. But we are just about to put out a bunch of stuff, a lot, but I really think it's good. So I hope you will go check out where there's woke.

0:01:03 Thomas: Also, our monthly hangout is probably today as you're hearing this, November 30th. So that's for the top two levels of patrons on either patreon.com/seriouspod or patreon.com/wherethereswoke. So please, uh, maybe up your pledge. If you want to join, we're going to both answer any questions. We'll chat. It's zoom, by the way, it's not a, it's not a video that you just watch. It says you're there. You get to chat with us. It's fun. We enjoy hearing from you and play some games, play some code names, and I can continue the rivalry with my wife on code names. Then she is currently winning, but that's not, it's a small sample size. We haven't had enough. It's probability. So, you know, give me time to come back. Anyway, today's show is a delight. Joe Magestro, old friend of mine, but also political expert, somebody who works in politics in a, by the way, in a key state.

0:01:54 Thomas: And we have a chat about that state, bytheway, and what's going on. That was kind of a, you know, surprise bit, but important because there's some really interesting stuff going on in the state of Wisconsin. And then we go on to talk about polarization. And he gives us a bit of a deep dive on what polarization is, what it isn't, and how to think about it. It's not necessarily straightforward. And so it's a really fascinating look at political polarization. I want to thank Joe for coming on. This was a really fun one, really fascinating interview. So here we go. If you'd like to avoid this auto ad that's about to play, go to patreon.com/seriouspod. Otherwise, here's some auto ads. And then here's my interview with Joe Magestro. Joe, how are you doing today? Welcome to the show.

0:02:39 Joe: I'm fantastic. How you doing, Thomas?

0:02:40 Thomas: Doing great. It's been far too long since we've spoken. Can't believe it. Not so sure how much of the ancient history you want to go into, but yeah,

0:02:48 Joe: We can do as much as you want, but that's, I feel like we need a couple of drinks to do that, you know, so.

0:02:52 Thomas: Yeah, sure. So instead, we should stick to your area of expertise. I'm really excited to talk about what you want to talk about here. Before we do, what can you tell people about your qualifications and your expertise in this area?

0:03:05 Joe: Yeah, so long story short, for people in the community, I was actually a part of the secular activist community for a while now, and I moved a little bit away for that to work in politics. And I've been kind of doing that ever since. I will say, like, right before the pandemic, so I started volunteering in different political campaigns, I've actually managed and advised, um, several different Democratic, um, candidates in Wisconsin and Milwaukee County area, and now actually I work in state government, um, and and I worked in several roles in different legislative branches. So it's been absolutely fun, so yeah, but I'm just a political nerd, I'm officially a political nerd now.

0:03:40 Thomas: Wow.

0:03:40 Joe: So I'm very excited about that

0:03:40 Thomas: Love it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, I sort of did the same thing, but just not as like, cool. I just started talking about more politics.

0:03:41 Joe: Yeah oh Dude, it ain't cool. It's, it's so not cool when what

0:03:49 Thomas: Yeah. Well, you say Wisconsin. I area to be doing that lately, I feel like.

0:03:57 Joe: And it's kind of even funnier because now, like, the, like, war on Christmas stuff is all starting we're

0:04:02 Thomas: Oh, yeah, we're gearing up for that.

0:04:03 Joe: Oh, I know, we're giving all these controversies coming out of Wisconsin, so, um, already people are upset about, like, city administrators calling snowmen snow people, the whole, like, the woke is destroying Christmas in Wisconsin thing. Oh, it's already happening, so we're already becoming a battleground for the war on Christmas too, so you know it we we live in a society, you

0:04:03 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, God, that is so silly. Snowmen have penises. That's how you know that they're men. You woke whatever so-and-so. Yeah yeah. Snow people are the ultimate non-binary, really, thing. Why would they have gender? But no, I mean, like, Wisconsin, I mean, there's so much interesting stuff, and I think kind of shitty stuff has happened politically there, right? I mean, you got, uh, gerrymandering you got, the there was that Supreme Court, uh, election, right? Am I, do I have my states right, okay, good, didn't want to embarrass myself

0:04:36 Joe: Would think so absolutely I mean, yep. You you are absolutely correct, we just recently had a, um, very pivotal state Supreme Court race back.

0:04:58 Thomas: Protesewitz, is that, that one, Protesiewitz or no

0:05:00 Joe: You are so good in your memory because people who even read it can't even pronounce her name. So I give you so much credit.

0:05:01 Thomas: Oh sweet I think I remembered because of that, I was like, oh, it was the one that people had a hard time, I'm pronouncing, and then I managed to remember, so wow, you are doing what I imagine is pretty important work, just because that's, talk about a battleground, that's a, that's a battleground, it seems like yeah

0:05:18 Joe: Oh, it's been fun. I mean, the most recent thing was the Republicans were trying to impeach Justice Protasewicz before she even had a chance to even hear a case, and then threw us a huge curveball where they said, you know what, we're going to give Democrats what they want all along, a true nonpartisan redistricting map, although they were totally lying the entire time and try to play the whole fair game thing when it wasn't even close to it, so it's been fun, it's, it's a fun, crazy couple months

0:05:24 Thomas: Oh wow, yeah there's a lot we could talk about, so they didn't do that impeachment thing, I feel like I stopped hearing about that, and I don't remember what the conclusion was well

0:05:48 Joe: It really fizzled out, we, um, actually had an ethics, a judicial ethics report came out basically that just said, yeah, she didn't do anything wrong, like, you can have issue with a Supreme Court candidate saying that, like, they have opinions on issues, but, like, there, like, was nothing they did.

0:06:03 Thomas: Yeah, since we're gonna talk about, we might as well try to give the, the basics, and you can definitely help me fill in, but she won that very important election, you know, because it's a place where I think not everywhere do they elect the justices of the state courts, right? I mean, a lot of states, it's appointments. But this and that's important because in your state, you have an election and usually judges are like, it's not cool to like opine on, you know, a bunch of issues because you don't want to like, even though it's fucking bullshit these days and it doesn't matter because everything's politics and it's all political and you're, you're fooling yourself if you think it's not.

But like the appearance of like, well, you don't want to have prejudged anything, but in a state where you run for the position, things are kind of different, you know, like, so they tried to make like her having to, you know, if you're, if you're gonna run, literally you have to give people a reason to vote for you. It wouldn't make any sense if you couldn't express any views. At least this was my impression of the situation. Let me know if I got anything wrong.

0:06:06 Joe: Sure, sure. Yes. That's correct.

0:06:36 Joe: Yep.

0:07:01 Joe: Absolutely correct. And that's what drives me so nuts with this entire issue and their Republican argument. Because basically what they were trying to do is say there were two main issues that Republicans had issue with Justice Protasewicz. Number one, exactly what you said, which was she supposedly predetermined her judgment on particular issues, including the abortion ban that's still happening in Wisconsin, although it got recently overturned in a appeals case. So now it's kind of in a weird, wonky space right now, but good enough for at least Planned Parenthood to open their doors again and allow women to come back in, which Is great. Absolutely, absolutely. And that, and the gerrymandering case, which she said the maps were rigged and they're unfair, that's all she said, and that was them saying that.

0:07:31 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, nice. That's huge.

0:07:47 Joe: I Know, and the other one they had was that she took, um, donations from the Democratic Party. Wisconsin, fun fact, if you guys don't know about, or for your listeners who don't know, the Wisconsin Democratic Party is actually one of the most well-organized state parties in the entire country, right. And it's very, very interesting in this day and age where you have most of, and, um, I'm not even saying like it's like necessarily even a bad thing, although I would say it is a bad things, but we have most of our political foundation or fundraising being done through political action committees, or Packs. State parties don't do anything anymore, so

0:07:45 Thomas: Objectively scientifically true. Like mathematically true.

0:08:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to be.

0:08:19 Thomas: Really

0:08:19 Joe: The fact that our state party has been able to do so much, um, fundraising on their own is phenomenal, but anyway, so, her campaign, campaign took money from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which in a non-partisan race, they're like, that's partisan, you're making a partisan, you make it a person, which drives me absolutely nuts, because in that same election, both their Republican candidate, Daniel Kelly, took money from the Republican Party of Wisconsin and made the exact same claims on abortion and guns. So, so what are we even talking about anymore?

0:08:24 Thomas: Cool. Yeah yeah.

0:08:50 Thomas: It's it's a joke and and that's the thing like I'm not even gonna pretend like yeah oh we caught him hypocrisy. It doesn't matter anymore. I guess what I wanted to the reason I want to go down this road is I stopped hearing about the story much. I had put this down like for dead because I have gotten into the mode where whatever they can do, they will do is how I feel about Republicans.

0:08:56 Joe: No.

0:09:09 Thomas: Whatever they can do, They will do which. So it surprises me to hear they didn't do this. And I'm wondering, what do you think was the limiting factor there?

0:09:08 Joe: Oh, absolutely. Well, my entire time when the saga was going on, I kept trying to think about what was the political strategy to do this. Because Robin Voss, who is the speaker of our assembly, is basically, if you guys don't know, he's like our Mitch McConnell, even though he's for the assembly, not the Senate. Very smart guy, knows politics extremely well, and everyone hates him. Even Republicans hate him. But he plays the game well.

0:09:30 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah. Right.

0:09:38 Joe: I could not understand where he was coming from with doing this because you have the idea that we came off this whole Stop the Steal movement, that everyone hated, even Republican voters hated the idea of Stop the Steal, which we'll actually go into with the whole polarization topic in a little bit, but it was overturning an election because someone, someone made made like an opinion on abortion, which was overwhelmingly popular in the state. So they're trying to like overturn somebody based on an issue that they losing by a tremendous amount. And I could not figure out, I

0:09:55 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't that's gerrymandered so bad. I thought it doesn'T matter. Like it. That'S what I that'S why I just think it's like pure naked power, right?

0:10:20 Joe: Mean, it is at the end of the day, but you still have like statewide races to worry about. So Like, the big thing with Justice Proce, which, which is why they were so worried about her being on the the court to begin with, is she was the one liberal seat that finally switched the court to a liberal court, Can't believe it. And now we actually already have court cases, both for our gerrymandered districts and our abortion ban, going through up to state, the Supreme Court as of right now, which is kind of fun, right? For them, there was just this weird, I, irrationality, right?

0:10:23 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Yeah, swing vote, right.

0:10:43 Thomas: Excellent. So it truly hit a level of unpopular that they're like, even us can't do this. Is that what you think it was? Yeah.

0:10:54 Joe: Yeah. And I mean, we can even like kind of use this as a segue of Like polarization and bubbles, because I think there, there just had to be this idea among Republicans that they thought that they were like among the normal view of voters here. And I'm like, you're not even close to what typical voters in Wisconsin want. You are in such a little echo chamber of what you believe that you truly think what your cause is actually what Wisconsin people actually want to vote for. And it's not even close. But this is what political polarization does.

And reason why Lydia invited me on here to begin with was to talk about political polarization and what it does for American voters, not just Wisconsin voters. Because politics is my main job. Political science is my fancy hobby, lobby, I guess you can say. I have a graduate degree in political psychology where I basically study and learn about voter behavior and how we become who we are partisan-wise, where do our beliefs come from, why do we vote the way we do, all that cool stuff. So I'm sure you probably heard, Thomas, about political polarization, and I'm certain you've heard a lot about

0:10:57 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:11:59 Joe: Political polarization.

0:11:59 Thomas: Well, we've actually, yeah, we'd done some amount just from the psychology angle. I didn't even know there was such a thing as political psychology as a field. I love it.

0:12:08 Joe: It's fun.

0:12:08 Thomas: Be interesting. Yeah.

0:12:09 Joe: It is basically a subfield of political science, but it's a new emerging field in the area. I mean, even my own program that I went to was a brand new program. I was one of the first cohorts that went through it. So it's a very new emerging way to look at things. So let me ask you this about polarization. Do do you believethat American voters are polarized?

0:12:19 Thomas: Oh, nice.

0:12:29 Thomas: I would think so. Sure.

0:12:31 Joe: Cool. What do you think polarization actually is though.

0:12:35 Thomas: Polarization. Yeah, let's see. I feel like you could define it in a few, like in the basic sense, I guess you'd say since elections long have been pretty 50-50 like forever, we've always been polarized in that simple sense. Like there are two options and we seem to, you know, narrowly be half both. But in a different sense, I would say it's about like people are more intense perhaps in their views. I know there's a lot of talk about sorting that that might be part of it, but also people don't split tickets anymore. I mean, people vote down the ballot one party more than they used to, I think. And I guess also there's level, I don't know if this is technically included in, you know, the academic definition of polarization or not, but just the intensity of belief and the of being shut off into our own information ecosystems more strikes me as kind of a more polarized environment.

0:13:31 Joe: You basically had a ton of different aspects of polarization and I love it. And you said something that was crucial to this whole thing, the academic definition of polarization. Here's the twist you probably didn't know. There really isn't one. We actually have no idea what we're studying half the time. And actually a big part of political psychology is to try to figure out what the heck we should even be studying so as in research, we try to figure out the best way to define a term in the best measurable way possible or but the problem is we don't really know what that's actually supposed to mean. So I'm gonna start walking through what we kind of consider consider polarization and what the debate about polarization actually is in academia.

0:14:12 Thomas: Right?

0:14:13 Joe: So we have a couple of different types of polarization. The first one is probably the most obvious one, which is issue polarization. That basically means on ideological grounds, how far off or apart are we on particular issues and how clustered are we in those issues? So like, say, for example, I love the fact we're in an audio medium. So I'm going to paint you a a picture of my words here.

0:14:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:38 Joe: Imagine a line or a scale from one to seven, with one through three be on the left, and five through seven on the right, and four directly in the middle. And imagine everyone clustering between one and seven.

0:14:52 Thomas: You're right.

0:14:53 Joe: You would probably say those are polarized positions. A lot of academics would say as well. The problem is, where do you actually draw the line on what polarization is? Do we consider it at two and six, three and five, what if they're right next to four but they're really close together and they're into different groups, and that's where a lot of these issues and debates for decades have come from, is that we actually don't know how to actually measure issue polarization for many voters. And you even talked about voting patterns for a while there with that, you actually put it correctly, where we are limited to most of our vote choices where we have to pick one or another, which actually gives off the impression of polarization when it actually doesn't.

0:14:53 Thomas: Yeah. Absolutely. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. When you have a binary issue, like by definition, you're going to end up in one of two polls. I mean, I guess you could arguably say that, well, if it's a binary issue and we vote 100 to 0%, then no, but like anything else is going to look kind of polarized.

0:15:44 Joe: And right, and I'm glad because you kind of mentioned literally everything I'm about to go through, so I'm just going to kind of keep going through this thing for you I know I know, you, I'm gonna give you the degree right now, it's perfect, um, but you also said that, yeah, Americans have kind of been polarized for most of our country. There's so many headlines out there today that says we have never been more polarized than right now, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. And when my professors always say we had a civil war, we That's Right. We had times in our U.S. Congress where there'd be physical violence. Now, we got close, apparently, with that one. Was it Mark Wayne

0:15:59 Thomas: Oh, let's hang it up. That's good. Hey, it's been great.

0:16:14 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Pretty polarizing that one. Yeah.

0:16:30 Joe: Mullen? But we had actual evidence of physical violence happening in our congressional chambers. That's not really happening as much anymore. And when you think about our American history, we always try to think about what bipartisanship is supposed to mean. That's like the golden standard of what governance should be. But in reality, that's not what American history was. American history is super polarized and very messy.

0:16:54 Joe: And the golden era of bipartisanship was typically the 1940s to 1970s, which is only three decades of our very long history. So you kind of then capped it off with the idea of sorting, which I'm sure many people on this program probably have heard the ideaof the party switch, whole right? Goldwater and Nixon thing where a bunch of conservative Democrats, absolutely. Well, that's also considered the big sort in a lot of political science areas. And basically all that means is kind of like what you said. You have conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans constantly sorting themselves out due to various issues. Although let's be real here, it's most of it's race-based issues. And we have more consistent viewpoints than what we used to have. Now, a lot political scientists actually consider consider most of our polarization and problem today, just an issue of sorting.

0:16:53 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah, sure. Southern strategy stuff.

0:17:43 Thomas: Hmm.

0:17:43 Joe: It's not actual polarization and no one would disagree with the vet.

0:17:45 Thomas: Well, what's the difference there?

0:17:48 Joe: Well, I'll get to that. Everyone would agree that we are more sorted today and we are a more consistent in our way of thinking. And actually I'm one of the people in the camp that actually say sorting is probably actually a good thing because now You have most voters have an easier time to figure out who they should actually vote for.

0:18:02 Thomas: Yeah. It would be interesting, like, if you had hypothetically, if we weren't sorted, what if you had the, well, we've got the pro-abortion, pro-gun, pro-death penalty candidate, or the anti-abotion, anti-death-penalty, anti-gun, can, you know, you'd like, oh shit, I don't know which one of those to a pick. Like, those are all kind of, it is, yeah, in a way it's kind of better to be like, no, I've got my clear choice here. Or is it? I don't know.

0:18:35 Joe: Well, Well, okay, let's put this way, has it ever frustrated you when someone just says, oh, the parties are just both the same, right?

0:18:41 Thomas: Yes. Cause it's extremely stupid.

0:18:43 Joe: And the reason why it's stupid is because our parties have never been farther apart ideologically. And you know exactly what you're going to get with the Democratic Party, and we can talk about all the infighting with the Democratic body, but you know what you're gonna get, usually, with, um, issue wise, compared to the Republican Party.

0:18:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:59 Thomas: Well, and perhaps, yeah. Yeah, comparatively too. And I was going to say, maybe people are worried they don't know what they're going to get with the Democratic party. You sure as hell know what you're going to get with the Republican party. You know, that much is absolutely true. Maybe we will fight a little too much amongst ourselves or not be able to decide how progressive we want to be on something. But we know that the alternative is just all the worst shit and they don't compromise. And it's, you know what I mean? So in a way that clarifies the question, even if on the left, we're not as like super clear on some of our positions.

0:19:09 Joe: Absolutely. Yes. Correct. But the big thing about sorting compared to just issue polarization is you can sort each other out and not actually change your positions at all. So, like, for example, let's the look at Joe Manchin, right? We know Joe Manch is a super supermoderate conservative Democrat, if he changed his view or he changed this party to become a Republican, would we really be that surprised? And even then, would we assume that he would have changed his position on a bunch of things? Probably not.

0:19:41 Thomas: Sure. Yep. Yeah.

0:19:56 Joe: But he's just kind of like the last living fossil of a conservative Democrat today that's still actually in Congress.

0:20:02 Thomas: Not for long, but yeah. Yeah. Which sucks. I actually wish he would stay, but yeah. Anyway.

0:20:10 Joe: And but if your listeners actually want to hear a good take on what polarization is, Ezra Klein did a great book, Why We're Polarized. He is not a political Scientist. He's a journalist. But he went far and beyond what I expected that someone like him was going to do. And he put it into very simple to digest language of what polarization isn't, what the political science behind polarization is, is. So I highly recommend that. And he talked about the idea of using marijuana support on, like, a hypothetical, like a hundred person state. Let's say maybe like people were like kind of supportive of marijuana and 50 people against are kind marijuana legalization. That would probably be considered polarized because no one's leaving their camps. But then when you look at it, then let's say something happens and the 50 people or 50% of people who actually are against marijuana were just never actually involved in politics to begin with. And finally realize what they're voting for and realize they're actually kind of more liberal marijuana and they moved over, but they never actually changed their stance on the issue to begin with.

0:20:18 Thomas: Oh yeah. I read it. I love it.

0:21:14 Joe: So So you have switching of parties, you have transitioning of stances, and you have more ideological consistency without actually anyone moving farther apart from each other. And there is no actual polarization happening. However, that's only one camp of the political science field. There's an entire other political science feel that says, absolutely not. We are absolutely polarized, and we have to talk about all the groups who hate each other, especially with religion and Christian nationalism, who actually wants to hold on to religious traditionalism. That absolutely stokes the fire to hate people for who they are, no matter what happens.

0:21:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:55 Thomas: I'm not totally sure I followed the hypothetical now that I think about it. But if you Use that same one for the point you're making there, I feel like someone could argue, well, let's say you've got 50 of each 50. Yes. Marijuana 50, no marijuana. There still could be a big difference between is are the nose, Are they like, yeah, I don't really like if I had to pick, I guess I'd pick. No, I Don't Really Think It's That Good versus no, marijuana will kill our children. You know, it's 50 people who believe it's truly the end of the world versus people 50 who are, you know, Dogg or something like that. That feels like important an difference that you can't tell necessarily based on just the votes where that is.

0:22:08 Joe: Yep.

0:22:28 Joe: Precisely, right? Correct. Correct. Now, you want my honest hot take about the whole thing, I actually have been kind of, and I, I hate that I still want to use this phrase, and if you can give me a better word for it, feel free to. But I've been kind of red-pilled polarization on, now, where I was firmly believing, like, we are super polarized in these things. Everyone hates each other. I can't believe what's happening. Not really as much anymore. More, you have most voters today just aren't. I mean, when you talk about people like you and I, we're crazy, we're, we're the weirdos, right, we talk about politics all day long most of our friends and family don't, most, you know, most of my listeners talk to probably don't care at all about what's going on. Half the people don't even know who Joe Manchin is, for goodness sakes.

0:23:18 Joe: And when you have that, really hard to say we actually are this super polar polarized group when we have people who have very messy opinions, exactly like you just said, where but we have very binary choices that give us the illusion of what polarization is. Now, don't get me wrong. There actually is a lot of evidence that people like you and I, Thomas, are becoming polarized.

0:23:07 Thomas: Yeah yeah yep yeah yeah yes Yeah, I was gonna say

0:23:39 Joe: The political elites, the weirdos, the highly engaged individuals, we are becoming polarized. We are actually becoming farther apart, far from everyone else. And actually, that's a whole other thing too that we won't have to get into, but basically there's a whole thing where a lot of our gridlock today is because our state representatives and our U.S. representatives are actually becoming just farther apart, where they'll never agree on anything anymore.

0:24:01 Joe: Which will lead to eternal gridlock for the rest of our lives. So, but anyway, that's not what we're talking about. That's only one aspect of polarization, which, which is the issue base. The other one, which I'm sure many people probably would think of when they think of polarization, is the feeling of it. And you kind of alluded to that when you were discussing what you thought polarization was. And that's what we call affective polarization. And affect literally just means feeling an emotion. How do you feel about somebody else? You And, know, this will be an easy one for question you, Thomas, but how do you feel about Republicans? Sure.

0:24:01 Thomas: Yeah Yeah, not not great, usually. I mean, Republicans may be one thing, Trumpers another, you know, but yes. I mean, we, we more identify, we quickly, that has become more synonymous in my mind. So, so, yeah, I definitely am not a big fan.

0:24:38 Joe: Right. And there's actually good evidence that affective polarization is increasing in America today. And interested with that is, when you look at emotion and, like, group psychology, usually we have, like, our own teams you want to root for. Thomas, I'm out of my depth here, Thomas, you have the Sharks and you love the Sharks And you hate what's the rival of the sharks, okay.

0:25:03 Thomas: Yep. Sure. Oh, I'm not good at this because I don't really do. I'm not as big into that. But I do. I'm not a fan of, let's say, Boston. Not a big fans of any Boston team. Yeah.

0:25:12 Joe: Cool was the first thing that came by mind too, so I'm good, we I'm

0:25:19 Thomas: But historically, the rivalry, I think, is either the Kings or the Canucks, maybe. But I don't. Yeah. I don'T go along with my team on that much. I don't really have the hatred for those teams. Oh, now it's Vegas. Sorry. I can't believe I forgot.

0:25:25 Joe: So I'm so bad, give oh

0:25:32 Thomas: Actually, it's the newest rivalry, except the Sharks suck so bad now it doesn't matter. But like for the first five years of the Vegas Golden Knights existence, we were big playoff rivals. So yeah. Okay. We'll go with Vegas.

0:25:33 Joe: Okay There we go. So you would probably think people who are more into your camp would would then be more pro-Shark and Less Las Vegas. Except that's not what's happening in American politics. When you actually look at the data from all the way from like 1980 up until today, you see a very steady stream of how pro our preferred party is. So Democrats are kind of like very consistent. Yeah, I kind of liked the Democratic Party. It's whatever.

0:25:49 Thomas: Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm hmm.

0:26:09 Joe: But then when you look at their opposing parties, it just sinks, tanks. So you have lots of people who actually don't give a rip about their own party. Republicans don't care about their home party, I'm talking about your typical voters, right?

0:26:13 Thomas: Hmm. Gotcha.

0:26:20 Joe: Republicans don't care about the wrong party, Democrats don't hear about their empire They, they literally hate everybody and all negative partisanship at the end of the day. And it's interesting because it actually flows into our everyday life as well. There's actually some really fun research about how an increase, I think, from, like, two percent of people from, like, back, I was, I think back in, like, the 1960s or 70s, would say, like, I'm uncomfortable with my child marrying somebody from the different party and now it's up to, like, 40 or 50 percent, um, which is crazy to think about, you

0:26:20 Thomas: Yeah. It's negative partisanship. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:26:45 Thomas: Oh, right. Right. Yeah yeah. Yeah for sure. Mm

0:26:52 Joe: Know, um, also, on top of that, there's just feelings of, like, lack of trust. You have Republicans and conservatives who now believe that Democrats and liberals hate America and hate everything this country stands for, and lots of just general stereotyping because of how we've sorted ourselves out into our new camps. So, in a way, we can kind of be both polarized and not polarized at the exact same time.

0:26:52 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Well, I think the reason for that, honestly, more than anything, is that fear is the biggest motivator. So all all that we've done and I think The Right does this way more than left, but The Left does it, too. But I also think the left has better reason. But at any rate, all we've done is campaigned on and tried to motivate people based on the fear of what the other side is going to do, especially on the right. I mean, on the left, I don't, I don't feel that way. I feel that I feel double like I a I vote Democratic because of what what Trumpers and what the right would do. And also because of these policy things I want. But they didn't even put up a party platform in 2020. Like it doesn't they don't have any things proactively they want to do as much. And it's more about campaigning on the fear of what we are as and it's not even what we do politically.

0:27:17 Joe: Right.

0:28:03 Thomas: It's like all these identity things. And so I think that's kind of driven that, like, the way we've, we've realized that humans kind of suck, and, or, it's some combination of, like, what works on, I don't know, social media or some shit, but, like, the bigger motivator is fear rather than, like, some hopeful message about what your side can do.

0:28:21 Joe: We're never going to have the, the famous Ronald Reagan, and sorry for anyone who hates Ronald Reagan. Gonna never, right.

0:28:26 Thomas: Morning in America Or what?

0:28:28 Joe: It's a good, Good Morning America ad where it's everyone just comes together and we all just love Ronald Reagan to death. And we live happily in the 80s where we just ignore all the problems that actually happened. We'll never have that again.

0:28:30 Thomas: Yeah yeah It's quietly ruining fucking everything, but yeah.

0:28:42 Joe: No kidding, right? But we'll never actually have that type of unification probably for a very long time, if ever again, because of how we are now all sorted out. Biden actually tried to do it, job with that during the 2020 election, where he ran on, like, a unification message. He tried to bring the country together and it, it worked for that moment and there's actually even some discussion between political scientists, like, would that work anymore. That wasn't exactly in, like, like, that post-pandemic, like, chaos, and like, right, the whole, well, I mean, even though had you all the chaos with Donald Trump, you had the mass protest, you had division everywhere, like. And that, to be honest, I don't think that would ever work again. So, right.

0:28:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah January 6th Oh, I guess that wouldn't that wouldn't count, but yeah, hard to say hard. I think we're going to find out, I guess. I think that like, uh, I could see it either way. I could, I think that once the focus gets back on and like people see Donald Trump campaigning again, I think that'll bring a lot back. I think polls are bad for Biden, but you know, I just think that now is going to be the time when things are worse, you know? But then once you see the alternative,

0:29:43 Joe: Yeah, sorry, let me clarify. I meant the unification message will probably not work as well again.

0:29:48 Thomas: I see. So he's going to still need to campaign on more about, yeah, no, you're probably right about that. Yeah.

0:29:50 Joe: Negative. Partisanship and realizing what Trump is

0:29:54 Thomas: Yeah, I Gotcha. Gotcha.

0:29:54 Joe: And that's my whole thing. Especially when you have it, and again, we can talk about this, but this isn't really what the topic is, especially when you have like the perceptions of economic decline among a lot of voters and lots of economic anxiety of voters, where that's where Joe Biden tanks in a lot his polls right now. You gotta find something to kind of compare yourself to, and the idea of having a unifying message when people, people are just terrified of what the economy is supposed to be like, isn't going to do you a lot of good. So, but again, like here's like the one bit of silver lining with all that is, don't go crazy with the polls, listeners, as someone who is been like deep into the research for years about this. Now, polls, anxiety. Polls do nothing, but give you anxiety. So, as of right now, Joe Biden is doing pretty well, even though it shows that he's not doing as well.

0:29:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:30:42 Joe: And that's my hot take for this episode, at least.

0:30:45 Thomas: I'm just going to trust you. I'm not going to question it. I'm going to go with it.

0:30:47 Joe: Well, right. And actually, I can segue back right into our topic because there was actually a really good book out called The Bitter End. It was by a couple of political scientists that basically do big, all-encompassing recaps of presidential elections. They've done one for, I think, 2008, 12, 16, and now they just did one for 2020.

0:31:06 Thomas: That's interesting.

0:31:07 Joe: And it was all about the idea of polarization in the 2020 election. And what they found was kind of similar to what a lot of political science also has found, which is like most people have very messy views. They're complicated. They're complex. They don't really know what's going on half the time anyway. But what of calcification in their belief systems where I really don't like Donald Trump, but I'm going to vote for him anyway because I just I can't stand the other side. And there's just not enough to push people to go to their side where even if you have these messy belief systems, there's just always this little wall that's stopping people from going and jumping to the other side.

And it's the same thing with Joe Biden as well where you have a lot of people who are just, I'm not a big fan of Joe Biden and I'm talking like your typical voter, not like someone like us who was going to say we're vote blue, never who. But I'm not a fan of Joe Biden. I don't like what he does. I just can't vote for Republicans. They just disgust me. I can't do it. I can't. And when you have that, plus a highly sorted electorate, like we just talked about,

0:31:28 Thomas: Yeah. I

0:32:16 Joe: We always live on that knife's edge where we're going to have lots of very close races, even when you think we should never Be in such a close race anymore. And that's where a lot of the polarization can come into play, where it's the issues are not actually polarized people, it's just the feelings and especially the negative feelings of the other side that keep people in the camps that they are in.

0:32:23 Thomas: Think Evidence of that is how many novel issues very quickly turned polarized when before they came up. We didn't fucking like, who, who would have known, like masking, before all the pandemic and everything. If you were to ask somebody in 2016 or something, or 2015 or whatever, like, hey, uh, the issue of wearing a mask to protect from a virus is going to come up, how much is anyone going to care about that? You'd be like, uh, not at all. But once, then once it goes through that lens of trying to demonize the other side, then all of a sudden it's like a fucking 100% he polarized, or or Uh, Russia, Ukraine.

Who would have thought that like the right would be the pro-Russia side in that? And, you know, like, no, I don't think anyone could have predicted that 10 years ago at all. Maybe, you Know, maybe, some real Nostradamus size, but yeah, I think that's good evidence that for statement that like it's more about the hating each other than it is actual issues, because here's these issues that didn't exist a second ago. And we already find a way to be like, yeah, no, right away. I feel 100 percent this way and fuck the other side.

0:33:13 Joe: Yeah. Not That I'm Aware of Well, And you actually hit it on the head very well too before when you said that Republicans have a hard time where conservatives have a hard time finding any foundation for their belief system. And I think that's what you're trying to go for, where liberals have something they're looking forward to, where Republicans are trying to conserve. That's kind of the whole point, right? They're trying to preserve what they already have, which basically means they just want to react and stop what the people who are looking Forward doing. And because of that, there is an actual asymmetry in affective polarization among the left and the right. I mean, it's not as like pronounced as some media was trying to make it be, but there is an actual asymmetrical, like leaning towards, conservative voters, when they're looking at emotional drivers, like how do you feel about Democrats, how do you feel about where the country is going and things like that. They are far more tribal because they because they Have a lack of foundation for their belief system. And that's well documented, which is very interesting, too.

0:34:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, can both sides it a little bit. But I think largely the the conservatism itself is going to lend itself more to that fear-based motivation. And the Psychological stuff that's like, yeah, they have greater disgust reaction, they have, you know, all that stuff that Is going to lend itself more to that exact thing, where it is more about fearing the other side or fearing change than it is about issues. So it is hard for them to be like, it drives me nuts to no end. I love this idea that like on the economy Trump somehow is viewed as like better than Biden.

0:34:54 Joe: Correct. Yep.

0:35:15 Joe: Biden.

0:35:15 Thomas: It Is like, with what evidence, what do you think he is going do that, that does anything for that? Like he doesn't have a plan. He just gets to say like, nah, those leftists, you know, cause they have, there's an association of like, wow, left means socialism means inflation or something, you Know?

0:35:15 Joe: Yeah. Nope.

0:35:32 Joe: Yep. You're hitting it right on the head. And literally, it's just the branding of Republican Party we have today, which is fiscal responsibility for Republicans, that's It and that sounds dumb because it is, because people Are dumb.

0:35:39 Thomas: Yeah. It's just branding. Yeah. It's not based on reality. It was just an association they have from Reagan in the eighties. That wasn't even really true then.

0:35:44 Joe: Yeah. Right. Exactly. And that's other thing I think we should also think about too, is that these concepts of like, or branding or marketing, they have been decades in the making. Right, this is the fact that Republicans brand themselves as the law and order party, as the fiscal responsible party, has predated us, right?

0:36:03 Thomas: Oh, definitely.

0:36:13 Joe: And the Idea of getting over that is way more challenging than just saying, well, that's not actually what they're doing right now because it's so emotionally ingrained into our culture in America today. And it's the same thing on the side other too, where you have the, they're the working class party, they're the diverse party, you can probably talk about like, you know, tax and spend liberals And all that fun stuff too, but it's, it's just branding at the end of the day. And when you have it for decades, it just keeps people in the camps that they're in, especially when they're not paying attention to these issues in the long run.

0:36:14 Thomas: Yeah, especially when the average age of voters is so high. They have that long memory of these associations more than maybe we do.

0:36:47 Joe: Right. Exactly. Well, And then on top of that too, it gets even worse, and I'm sure your audience is very well aware of this too, or is probably somewhat familiar with how bad our current media environment is for polarization. So media and your typically TV or, you know, whatever outlets today Have become so fragmented that we no longer get to share any type of shared reality anymore. And that has been also well documented by a bunch of political science research. And what's interesting about it is that alone has pushed affective polarization to our current brink where we are right now, because there is no such thing as really talking to each other anymore. I mean, you could even argue, Thomas, that what we're doing right now is a part of that problem.

You and I are two people who probably share a lot of the the same values and a lot of the same principles. We're not gonna go on necessary like Fox News to talk about this stuff, or you're probably not gonna have, I, Glenn Beck on here to talk to you about like how good conservatism is, because you don't need to, you don't want to, why would you want to entertain that, which is perfectly respectable, by the way, but the issue is because we're so fragmented now,

0:37:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:38:02 Joe: We just can't have that different kind of dialogue that we used to have compared to, we'll say, back in the 70s to the 90s, where you were forced to interact with this type of information.

0:38:13 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, you know, I think a big part of that, just in thinking it through right when you said it, I wonder if it has a lot to do with like, when I think about, okay, why wouldn't I have Glenn Beck on, beside the fact that obviously I can't get Glenn Beck on, but somebody like that. And my first thought is, well, cause I don't give, he doesn't care, anyone like that would just be somebody who has this view for a living. And so why would they ever change it? And I know that might not be true when you're talking about average voter citizen and their opportunity to have conversations.

But when you talk about the media environment being fragmented, I kind of think that is is a part of it where we're just like, why would the only reason to do that is for kind of a spectacle. No one's going to change their mind. It a lot of the pundits, a Lot of the people you would hear from aren't people you have any feeling like they would ever change their view on anything. So what's the point? You know, I wonder if that's a part of It, but that was just my first thought reacting

0:38:39 Joe: Right. Yeah. No, that is. And that goes into kind of what we talked about before, which is the people who are interested in politics are getting more polarized, characterized, and we are before far apart, we'll like, we'll never change Glenn Beck's mind, we'll never change, I don't know why he came my head, I tried, I was trying to find somebody

0:39:09 Thomas: To that. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, not very very relevant these days, that's a there isn't

0:39:23 Joe: No I was trying to fight like a more respectable, like Republican, I was having a really hard time to think of one, and that was just the first one that came to my mind. So, but I think something that probably should be said to hear in this conversation is, so elites and highly engaged people like us are more polarized, and we are weird, and we know we're weird for liking politics more than anyone else. There is actually a really cool book out right now that I highly, highly, highly encourage everyone who's interested in polarization to read, called The Other Divide. And I actually got to meet one of the authors in a conference in Chicago. They're incredibly smart, it's a bunch of political scientists that basically tried to argue a new type of theory of polarization, which basically is, there's a different type of divide that most Americans are not aware of. We have the liberal conservative divide. We have the urban rural divide. We have the education divide. We have the gender divide, all of that.

0:39:26 Thomas: One yeah yeah yeah

0:40:16 Joe: But what a lot of us don't talk about is the involvement divide. And the way they structure their arguments, and I think very persuasively so, is imagine three types of people. You have person A, who is like your atypical type of American voter, doesn't really pay attention to politics at all, doesn't care about politics, votes irregularly, just like somebody, I think, can of like a bunch of my old friends who like have no clue about what's going on in the world and just want to watch football all day long. And that's person A. Person B follows politics sometimes, keeps up with the news, votes at least for every presidential election, maybe in the midterms as well, doesn't really feel like it's that big of an importance for them. But they always follow, and they're somewhat engaged in politics.

0:41:04 Joe: And I would say person C are people like you and I, Thomas. We are deeply rooted in political discussion. We pay attention to the issues in the news all the time, whether that's for our jobs, for our interests, whatever it may be. And we have a, probably some kind of emotional, deep emotional connection to the political issues of today. At least I'm not going to speak for you. I do, which is why I work in politics. Politics, a lot of people probably say, okay, cool, so you have person A who's like way off in la la land, and you have persons B and C who are probably actually engaged in politics, with the actual cases of what they found is the weirdos, the person Cs are so far off into like left field than anyone else in the entire country, that we should not even really take what they have to say as seriously compared to the rest of the American voters, because we are so off the deep end Today and

0:42:01 Thomas: Do they give a sense of the proportion of people that that is

0:42:03 Joe: Yeah So we're looking at anywhere from like about 20 to 25 percent of Americans would fall into this category, and they either follow politics routinely on Facebook, Twitter, or X, or whatever the heck it's called now, social media, or listen, listen to MSNBC or Fox News, those are probably about 20 to 25 percent of the country. Everyone else does not care. And the fact that the people between the first two groups and the positions of the third group are so despairingly different, it's hard to actually say, especially when you have a polling and all that other fun stuff that we're just talking about before, it, it's hard to take that really seriously at face value when you have less and less people who just don't care about politics anymore.

0:42:09 Thomas: Yeah um

0:42:51 Joe: They don't want to even talk about politics. They don't want to talk to people who want to talk about politics, and they hate both parties anyway, they don't like any parties, they just hate the one side even a little bit more than another one, so it doesn't even matter at the end of the day, the weirdos are the ones who actually are trying to drive everything, but they're the most disengaged from the American electorate than anyone else. So I would even say, like, people like you and I, I, I don't want to sound too condescending or arrogant, I would say we're probably both very educated on these matters, we care a lot about these issues, and we're not in line with like typical voters of Wisconsin, Johnson.

0:42:58 Thomas: Yeah oh

0:43:31 Joe: We're not.

0:43:32 Thomas: This is something that I, I commented on a lot, I think, in in 2020, or the, or midterms, recently, where it's like, I get this frustration because I feel like about arrogance. I feel like almost no one sees this. I feel like I get frustrated when we're going into a midterm, an election of some kind, and you have who I hear from most, which is the left to far left. And they think this one thing matters a ton. They're like, you don't understand, you need to get this person to say Medicare for all is what will do it, and that's why no one will, and then I'm like, yeah, I agree with Medicare for all, but I actually don't think that many people support that.

And specifically, when you're trying to win, uh, talk about a presidential election when you need to win the electoral fucking college, it makes the rhetoric of what's talked about, the, the actual things that, you know, you and I follow day to day, of like, what are the important, you know, political arguments being made, what are conversations, what are the events that matter, and it takes that, it separates that so far from what causally will actually drive an election, because what actually drives the election

0:43:55 Joe: Sure.

0:44:42 Thomas: Win or loss for, say, Joe Biden, are those, those fucking swing voters in a swing state via the electoral college, and I don't have any fucking idea what they want, like they're they're so bizarre that, that, like, it's hard to know why, like, a lot of them voted for Biden because of that, like, normalcy, you know, message you talked about, where it's like, yeah, we just need somebody who seems like not insane, you know, and so like, it was actually contrary, possibly, to the goal of getting elected, to be too radically left at all.

Like, he needed to appear less left, possibly, to win the election, even though everybody I'm hearing from all day is like, he's going to lose if he's not, you know, so far left on these things. It's just a weird, I get so frustrated because I feel like so many of the conversations around election time are so fucking meaningless and disconnected from, you know, the reality.

And it's not like I'm not a fan of that, like, because it makes it even harder to talk about issues, because there are issues I care about, and there are policy see positions I hold because I want to make the world better.

0:44:55 Joe: Yeah,

0:45:49 Thomas: But then the question of what will actually make us win elections, because you cannot fucking do anything if you lose, you actually don't get to do anything at all. If you lose, those are different things. And like, I care about one, and the general, like, voter, then the public cares about a different set of that. And it's so frustrating to me

0:46:09 Joe: Absolutely. And I'll give you a couple of examples of exactly that. So in their book, The Other Divide, they measured the ideological differences and importance of issues between people who are highly involved and people who aren't. So like the, you know, the third group versus the first two groups, right? For liberals, the highly involved, one of the most important issues was climate change.

0:46:31 Joe: Super important. We are at a dire position. We need to have it. For the other two, hardly registered as an important issue. They didn't care about it at right. And that does suck, but that's an important thing. Also, abortions on the right. Basically, lots of conservatives, or lots of highly engaged conservatives, thought the number of abortions was a huge issue, where most Republican voters actually didn't think it was a big of an issue. It was not something they were going to

0:46:22 Thomas: Right yeah fair yeah oh that sucks yeah huh interesting yeah

0:46:56 Joe: Stick their finger in.

0:46:57 Thomas: And that, that makes sense, we're seeing that now because Once they won essentially and got Roe overturned, it's such a losing issue, and I think it's because of that.

0:47:00 Joe: Literally. Well, and there's another example from the midterms, too, where we had a very tight Senate race with Mandela Barnes and Senator Ron Johnson. Oh, boy. I love my, I love my center, man. But basically, the issue that I have with a lot of my Democrat friends is why isn't Mandela Barnes attacking Ron Johnson for being a part of the plot to overturn the 2020 election? And they're all saying we need to have more messaging on that, he tried to overturn the freaking election.

0:47:36 Thomas: Yeah. No.

0:47:37 Joe: I'm like, yes, I know, and it drives me nuts, but no one cares.

0:47:41 Thomas: One cares, yeah, it's the worst. Worst voters don't care about it. So fucking weird.

0:47:41 Joe: No. One cares. They Why are they worried about him taking away like Social Security and health care? Like, because that's what old people care about and they vote right.

0:47:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's the worst.

0:47:54 Joe: I mean, even, um, for our gubernatorial race, we, Governor Evers ran a lot of ads against his opponents for basically, I can't remember what it was, so something along the lines of there were women who came out for either being like sexually assaulted or they were like some kind of like sexual harassment in his company, and he has a huge, huge, huge construction company, so like it wasn't him it was just in his company, and My, I'm, I'm right here with you with your own issues where I'm like, why are they running ads about this?

No one's going to think that they're going to connect it to him because it doesn't matter. Why aren't they writing ads about the fact that he's literally going to take away people's health care? He's going to try to defund our schools. No, we're going to run ads on this. And I had a conversation with one of my friend's wives, who is a typical person who pays no attention at all to politics, a liberal minded person, but doesn't vote ever. And she was highly persuaded by that ad. And I'm like, how did that break through to you? It's like, I don't know. It just gave me a really icky feeling.

0:48:18 Thomas: Okay. Oh, gotcha.

0:48:55 Thomas: Yeah absolutely.

0:48:56 Joe: So it's really important, especially for all the listeners. If you're listening to this, you live in a bubble and you have to realize that you live not just in a liberal bubble, but you live In an engagement and involvement bubble that a lot of people are not in.

0:49:12 Thomas: Yeah I think that's a good place to leave it for now. I feel like we could talk for hours about this, but it's super interesting. So hopefully we can, uh, you know, reconvene and find a, another topic to continue this conversation. But Joe Magestro, thanks. So much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. And it's good to talk to you again. I'm so glad to hear, uh. About the work you've been doing these past several years since we last spoke, because I do think it is ultimately kind of more important than the, uh... I don't know. Then the stuff we were doing before, maybe not as important.

0:49:40 Joe: I, I completely agree, I mean, especially when you see the remnants of the old group that shall not be named, I guess you could say, it's exactly what you just want to cringe at nowadays, today it's just a bunch of people who try to argue about philosophical topics that just don't mean anything when we have so many more issues that should be talking about.

And when it comes to things about politics, and like even stuff like political polarization, authorization can help so much with just understanding who the other people that you're trying to convince are and realize that they are, again, I'm not talking about every Republican, but there are a lot of people out there who are just, just typical people who just want to watch football all day long. They don't care about politics.

And you can talk to them about politics in a very nice way and probably get them to your side at least a little bit, inch by inch method, and don't hate them all so much. I promise it'll help our cause. So, but yes, I would happily love to come on again and talk about some other stuff. So thank you for letting me nerd

0:50:37 Joe: Out.

0:50:31 Thomas: Oh, hey, is there anything you want to plug while we're here? I always give people the chance.

0:50:39 Joe: Oh, sure. Yeah, I don't have too much to plug. I guess you can follow me on Twitter if you even care about that anymore. It is at PolySciJoe and it's P-O-L-I-P-S-Y Joe. I know it's super, super fun and easy to remember, right? I teach a bunch of music students who are like, why is your name Polypsy Joe? Like, shut up.

0:50:55 Thomas: Oh, wow. That's all right.

0:51:06 Thomas: You should just own that. Just pretend that's what it is.

0:51:07 Joe: I don't want to. And then I also do a podcast that is a political podcast, again, helping out with the polarization problem and the fragmentation problem. But if you want to listen to progressive politics and get some cool deep dives into really cool topics, check our podcast. Think progressively. It's on all podcast platforms. So you can check it out there you're awesome thomas thank you so much have a great rest of the day

0:51:24 Thomas: Love it. Excellent. Thanks so much coming for on today. Really enjoyed it.