>> Dan Turello: Welcome.
I'm Dan Turello with
the Kluge Center
at the Library of Congress.
I'm here today with my Kluge
colleague, Janna Deitz,
and we are talking to Theda
Skocpol and Caroline Tervo.
They are the editors
of a recently published book
titled Upending American
Politics, Polarizing
Parties, Ideological Elites,
and Citizen Activists
from the Tea Party
to the Anti-Trump Resistance.
Theda Skocpol, the Victor S.
Thomas Professor of Government
and Sociology at
Harvard University.
She is also on the
Scholars Council
at the Library of Congress.
And Caroline Tervo is a research
coordinator also from Harvard
in the Department of
Government, where she focuses
on citizen grassroots
organizing,
state and local party building.
This event is a part of a
Kluge Center ongoing series,
Conversations About the
Future of Democracy.
Caroline, Theda, thanks
for being with us today.
We appreciate it.
Let's start with your
intentions for the volume.
In the introduction, you talk
about how political scientists,
social scientists in general
aren't always the most adept
at describing what's
actually going in the country.
That seems to be particularly
true at a local level.
What did you do differently
with this volume,
and what did you
set out to achieve?
>> Theda Skocpol: I
should say first of all
that Upending American Politics
is not the usual edited volume
with this, that, or
the other thing in it.
It's a very tightly
integrated set of windows
into contemporary changes in
American politics, some of them
at the national level, but quite
a few of them in key states
like Pennsylvania
and Florida, Texas,
North Carolina, Wisconsin.
And what makes us a little
bit different from all of us
who contributed to this
volume a little bit different
from other social scientists
is, yes, we take advantage
of national opinions
surveys or attitude surveys
that give us an idea of the
movement of broad categories
of citizens or voters
on particular issues.
We also take advantage
of the usual kinds
of congressional studies
which show how different
representatives are voting
on particular things.
But we believe that it makes
a lot more sense to look
at the actual organizations
and networks of citizens
and of professional advocates,
who play a role in politics
on the right and left,
especially if you want
to understand what's been
happening with the burst
of levels of participation
that have happened
in this last decade or so,
first when Barack Obama and the
Democrats moved into Washington,
DC, and then eight years later
when pretty much the exact
opposite, Donald Trump
and conservative Republicans
took charge in Washington, DC.
In both of those cases,
you saw the activation
of advocacy groups and
plunderers fighting
to reverse the election results,
which also saw thousands
of voluntary citizens groups,
local tea parties back in 2009
and after and local
resistance groups
in the most recent period
forming to get people involved
in a sustained way in politics.
So, [inaudible].
>> Caroline Tervo: Only on too
that I think the book has
a really interesting range
of perspectives because
of who the authors are,
so there are both a lot of young
scholars, obviously like me,
who are some of the
recent college graduates
who did really interesting and
rich ethnographic research,
oftentimes in the
places that they grew up
and where they're from.
And they ask very similar and
often complementary questions
to more senior scholars, and
all of us sort of had a history
of working with each Theda at
various stages in their career,
and so that sort of
entered discipline,
not necessarily
interdisciplinary
but interspace work of
different projects really speaks
to the complementary nature
of all the chapters
sort of back to back.
>> Dan Turello: So, one of
the things I noticed in going
through the chapters, going
through the case studies,
you know, there's a lot of
key characters, local leader,
local politicians,
citizen activists.
What doesn't show up as
much, it shows up but not
as prominently is social media.
You know, you listen to the
news and the pundits now,
social media seems to
be all-encompassing.
It's everywhere, and yet it
doesn't play quite as big
of a role in this research.
Can you tell us a
little bit about that?
Is it less important
than we might think?
Is it important in
different ways?
How does that play out?
>> Theda Skocpol: Well, I'm sure
we can both comment on this.
It's definitely less important
than many national
commentators think.
There's quite a lot of research
that shows, for example,
during the Democratic
primaries in the last year,
the Twitterers, the people who
were commenting on Twitter,
the activists, the pundits, the
national observers were pretty,
considerably further to the
left in their evaluations.
For example, they never
thought Joe Biden was a serious
prospect, but when you
got to the full range
of actual democratic
voters and citizens evolved
across the country, we know
it was a different matter.
So, that's part of it, but I
would say that the internet,
social media and internet
enabled communication does play
a role, because, for
example, the tea parties
that organized back in 2009
and after, they used Meetup,
which was at that time
a very popular website
for finding other
people in your local area
who could get a message
and come to meetings,
they met once a month
or so, but also comment
and read postings
of various kinds.
And a fair amount of
research that we did
on the Tea Party took
advantage of the fact
that those sites were available
to be examined and coded
by researchers as well as
by potential participants.
And the local resistance groups
almost all are on Facebook.
They use face-to-face meetings,
but they also do outreach
through Facebook, sometimes
tweeting, but you know,
they're older people,
so Facebook is actually a bigger
deal with the older generation
than it is with the youngsters.
>> Caroline Tervo: I would
add, too, that it's funny
that you would observe
that social media is not
necessarily an explicit factor
that we talk a lot
about in the book,
but it is as a research
tool absolutely integral.
So, all of our researchers
spent a lot of time
on various social
media modalities,
exactly as Theda
described, trying to figure
out who these citizens are
and what they're doing,
especially through changing uses
of mediums, like the difference
between the Meetup and
the Tea Party group
and what's the modern-day
equivalent of that relative
to Facebook and Twitter.
And I think a lot of what we
observed is that there's a lot
to be learned on social media
and studying citizen activism
through social media,
but I think some
of our richest observations came
from then complementing what we
could observe on social media
with interviews of people who
actually knew what was going on,
questionnaires of
groups that spoke
to both their online engagement
and their offline engagement,
and I think something that is
discussed a lot right now is how
much are activists
only in an online space
and how much are they
doing the work and getting
to know their communities.
And I think what our
research found is in lots
of different places,
lots of different types
of both city areas
and rural areas is
that it's some combination
of both,
and some groups are
more online than others.
And if you're only doing one
type of research, you're going
to miss sort of the
broader ecosystem
and interplay of networks.
>> Janna Deitz: Related to
some of the conventional wisdom
with regard to the practice of
politics, part of the upending,
I think, actually connects to
another theme in additional
so social media, and that's
the role that money plays
in politics and election
outcomes.
So, we know that money is a
relied-upon measure of strength
and enthusiasm among voters for
a party's Presidential ticket.
Just to use 2016 as an
example, nationally,
Clinton outspent
Trump two to one.
What does your research say
about the relative importance
of campaign war chests
vis-a-vis your findings on local
and state-level organizing.
Is the conventional wisdom on
money and politics misleading?
>> Theda Skocpol: You
know, I think it is.
There is a lot of desire
among observers, pundits
and academics alike, to
look for a single measure
of political strength.
And of late, I think
people of kind
of a leftist leaning
have thought, well,
it's all about what
money can buy.
There's no question that
money matters in politics.
A candidate or a movement
has to have enough
to get its message out,
but having the most,
we've known for a long
time in political science,
that having the most is no
automatic predictor of victory
in Presidential campaigns or
in Senatorial [inaudible] House
or state legislative campaigns.
And I think we also have
found in our research
that how money is
raised and spent
and whether it strengthens
organizations and connections
that can build power,
electoral power
or just citizen advocacy power
in the U.S. federal system,
that's what really matter.
You know, it's not one
big national [inaudible]
where the biggest checkbook
determines everything.
You have to win Presidential
elections,
and you certainly register
power in legislatures district
by district, state by state.
So, understanding who has a
presence, who has a voice,
who has the ability to reach
out and draw others in,
in these key jurisdictions,
it's just as important
and much harder to do in
research terms than trying
to tally up legally registered
campaign finance contributions.
For example, Hillary Clinton,
part of the research that went
into this book comes from
my visits to eight counties
that went for Trump in 2016.
Now, they were medium city areas
in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
North Carolina, and Ohio
and smaller town areas.
The Hillary Clinton
campaign had supporters
in all of those places.
They became often the women
who organized resistance groups
after Trump won, but her
campaign barely appeared
in those places.
And so, she may have had more
money, but she didn't get
around to places where she
needed to get not a majority
of the vote necessarily but a
good share of it, and she ended
up getting far lower shares
of the vote in these moderate
or conservative-leaning areas
than Barack Obama had done.
And that's why she lost the
election to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump may be a New York
real estate TV personality.
He got a lot of free TV coverage
he didn't have to pay for,
but he also made
alliances with gun groups
and Christian rights groups
that actually have a presence
and neighbor-to-neighbor ties
in these vast non-metropolitan
areas, and he racked
up very high vote
margins in those areas.
>> Dan Turello: So, [inaudible]
to the local organizing level,
and I, you know, I wonder
looking specifically
on the right, on the Republican
side, back in 2016 and ongoing,
there have been just some very
interesting [inaudible] taking
shape [inaudible] has
been written down a lot,
and then the, you know, the
more free market elite forces
represented by the
Koch network of groups.
How are these, these tend to
be somewhere unusual partners.
How have they coordinated
on the ground?
What do those relationships
look like?
What does it look like
at the local level?
>> Caroline Tervo: Yeah.
That's a great question,
and I actually think
it dovetails nicely
to the question before
about money.
So, tying these back
together, I think something
that I think is really
interesting is the type
of analysis that results
when you ask those two
questions together.
So, how were organizations
organized,
and how were they working
different types of organizations
and organizational networks.
So, I'll just give you one
example exactly related
to your question, which is,
we have two chapters studying
the effects of Americans
for Prosperity, which is
of course a Koch
network affiliated better
at an advocacy organization
that early on in the mid-2000s,
started by a related
effort of the Kochs
with a few states among them
North Carolina and Wisconsin,
and the book sort of traces
the growth of both Americans
for Prosperity in Wisconsin
and Americans for Prosperity
in North Carolina, and
it hits on relationships
that that organization had
to different key players.
I'm from North Carolina,
and here,
the evangelical Christian right
is a really important player,
and you wouldn't
necessarily think
that the ultra-free market
ostensively not socially
conservative Americans for
Prosperity group, and this sort
of well-organized longstanding,
excuse me, evangelical group
in the state would have a lot
in common, but my research found
that there are really
specific ways
that organizations have
sort of figured out how
to work together,
specifically around a lot
of state policies here.
For example, school of choice,
things that will lower taxes,
and sort of flatten the tax
rates, and that's been related
to efforts that Americans for
Prosperity has made in a state
like Wisconsin, where there's
been sort of an easier marriage
between anti-public union
forces in the state.
And the activities
look really different.
It's not necessarily, you
know, an explicit press release
that they're going to work
together, but if you actually go
on the ground and
talk to people,
you realize that there
are some connections here
and there's some relationships
that are built both
between these elite
organizations that have sort
of power players who
know the legislature.
They know federal candidates
in the state and can push
to get policies passed,
and the ability to connect
that we grassroots activists
who will turn their people
out to vote, who will call
representatives, who will sort
of add the organizational
grassroots have
to validate a lot of policies
that might otherwise we know
that are not necessarily
majoritarian popular,
but they win support
through these sort
of relationship-building
activities organized
around specific things.
>> Theda Skocpol: Caroline,
yeah, let me just add to that,
and it's exactly right that
by tracking the organizations
and the networks and literally
looking at what do they do,
for example, some of our
researchers coded events
that Americans for Prosperity
sponsored in key states,
and that's extremely
tedious work.
It means going through the way
back machine on the internet
because believe me, Americans
for Prosperity knows
it's being looked at,
and it doesn't really keep all
that in an [inaudible]
acceptable way.
But things on the
internet are there forever,
and if you code them,
you can find
out that even though Americans
for Prosperity always talks
about lowering taxes and getting
rid of environmental regulations
and never says anything about
gun rights or abortion directly.
They co-sponsor things in
certain key states with groups
like that or with Tea Parties
that include people who think
that those are the
most important issues
and also think sometimes
that opposing immigration
is a very important issue,
which is certainly
not a priority.
So, we sort of look at what they
do, not simply what they say.
And that's important in
understanding both electoral
and policy politics, because
strange bedfellow coalitions
and particularly strange
bedfellow coalitions
that can reach across many
states or districts have a lot
of clout in American politics,
even if they are pushing
for unpopular ideas overall.
And one of the big questions
in the book is how do organized
constituencies on the right
and the left, but especially on
the right in our period bring
about electoral and policy
victories that do not align
with what most Americans tell
pollsters they want done.
And with the latest example of
that, by the way, which is not
in our book, but our book
helps you understand it,
is the Amy Coney Barrett
nomination to the Supreme Court.
She stands for a judicial
philosophy and has stated
that she's an academic, has
stated positions on policies
that are simply not popular
with the American public,
but she's a perfect
meeting place for Americans
for Prosperity on the one
hand and the Christian right
and the Tea Party
movement on the other hand,
and so they're all behind her.
And because they're
all behind her,
so are Republican legislators.
>> Caroline Tervo: I'll also add
that I think Theda has said
this before, and I just want
to repeat it, because I think
it so astutely captures a lot
about American politics
that right now Americans for
Prosperity and the organizations
and networks we were just
talking about are very pleased
with Amy Coney Barrett's
nomination,
and that's the culmination
of a very long-fought effort
to implement American politics.
And what our research
shows, and a question
that we get a lot is
how did they do it.
And there's no sort
of magic wand.
There's hard, deliberate work
at local and state levels
in enough key places
to build up power,
and that's definitely something
that I hope readers
take away from the book.
>> Dan Turello: So, it seems,
you know, one of the things
that the right has
been really good
at has been identifying
issues that are galvanizing
and that really get folks
working in a coalition.
I wonder if you could
talk a little bit
about them on the left.
I mean it seems like
in 2016 at least,
perhaps the issues were
not as easily identifiable,
that there was, there were not
as much of a rallying point
and perhaps that changed in 2018
with Obamacare and so forth,
but I wonder what you
see on that level?
>> Theda Skocpol: So, I
think it's interesting
that if you look at the two big
surges of political organizing
and advocacy that we've
seen in the United States,
and I would add a third
has happened more recently,
which is the Black Lives Matter
protest, but that is built
on the broader resistance that's
been in the field since 2016.
If you look at the Tea
Party and the resistance,
and they have kind of
top-down professional parts
and bottom-up local citizens
group parts, they happened
when something that
used to be rare
in American politics
happened, which is the election
of a controversial President,
an unusual President, let
me just use that term,
it's a euphemism, but it
encompasses both Barack Obama
and Donald Trump, with
control of the Senate and House
by the same party, at a moment
when sweeping changes seemed
possible in a direction
that totally terrified the
other end of the spectrum.
So, it is important that this
happened after several decades
of polarization in
the advocacy world
and in the electorate
and in Congress.
But because those
moments come together,
what unites the various parts,
once the other side gains power,
is a combination of
fear and anger at that,
which is highly mobilizing
in politics.
And, you know, I think
that there's a tendency
to think politics is about
issues and issue briefs.
Actually not.
It's much more about who
we are and who they are
and what are our values and our
hopes for the country might be,
particularly Presidential-level
politics.
And so, that's a
commonality between both
of these upsurges
that have happened.
Now, when you get down to
issues, of course Democrats
and liberals being what they
are, they're more concerned
about issues, and in the
2016 Presidential campaign,
the fact that there
was no incumbent
that was seeking
reelection, it wasn't Obama,
it was Hillary Clinton,
really helped Democrats
to focus more
on what they disagreed about,
and particularly
the disagreements
between the Bernie wing
and Hillary Clinton.
But that really modulated
fast after Trump was elected,
and I think from
November 9, 2016,
until now you've seen a
coming together despite policy
disagreements of the two, the
kind of more progressive parts
of the Democratic
coalition, which is about 40%,
and the more mainstream liberal
to moderate parts,
which is about 60%.
The Tea Party is a
different matter.
Tea Partiers represent
two-thirds
of the Republican party,
and the Tea Party's effect
on the Republicans
after 2009 was
to push them toward never
compromising with Democrats
and opposing every that Barack
Obama and the Democrats did,
and it pushed the Republican
party further toward the far
right, particularly on
ethnonationalist as well
as free market issues.
On the other hand, I think
Democrats have not been pushed
further to the left.
They've simply been energized
across the board and able
to work together much more
effectively this time behind the
Biden candidacy.
We don't see the same
kind of splits that we saw
around Hillary Clinton.
Now, I do think gender has
something to do with that.
I think it was hard for
a woman, particularly
against Donald Trump, but the
fact of the matter is that fear
of the other side is a
profoundly galvanizing force
in these movements, and to say
that Democrats have been scared
out of their wits
since November 9, 2016,
would be an underestimate
of the situation.
>> Dan Turello: So, we had
lost Janna there for a minute.
I'm glad you're back.
I think you had a question
about women and demographics,
and so that might be
a great segue to that.
>> Janna Deitz: Thank you, Dan.
Yes, I had a couple of
questions with regard to some
of those demographics, such
as specifically women's roles,
both in this work, and
Theda, in your work
on tea parties as well.
I noticed there was a particular
role that women leaders played
in terms of grassroots activism
across the political spectrum.
Also, if I could get your
feedback, too, on what you see
as the importance
of youth activism,
and perhaps bridging
some gaps between rural
and urban differences
that we see.
>> Theda Skocpol: Okay.
I mean there's lots
to talk about here.
The fact of the matter is that
if you get down to the level
of local citizens groups
that volunteer their time,
which was true for local
Tea Parties as well
as for the resistance, women
had a big role to play.
Surprise. Who is it that
actually does the work
of organizing a local group.
In the case of the Tea Party,
often raising funds
through bake sales.
I attended Tea Party meetings.
I'm probably one
of the few people
in the United States who's
attended both Tea Party meetings
and resistance group meetings,
and they have a very
similar let's pitch in
and get it done flavor
that women are often,
as local leader,
are often part of.
Now, the overall
demographics of the Tea Party,
just like the overall
demographics of [inaudible]
in the United States
are 50 to 60% men.
But the way I like to put it is
that men have been the couch
potatoes or the casual voters
of the conservative
republicanism whereas women are
often, not always, but
often among the active
volunteer leaders.
When you get to the resistance
that emerged at the grassroots
after the Trump election,
you know, the national media,
if you turn on MSNBC, or if
you look at the national media,
you're going to see a constant
touting of a very real force
in the [inaudible] resistance,
which is young people
and people of color.
No question, they matter, and
that they have often been,
they've created new
organizations, new networks,
new social media campaigns.
They have been important,
especially last summer
in the Black Lives Matter
marches, and young people,
I think, were anxious to
get out of the house anyway,
and frankly, the appeal
of racial justice now cuts
across racial lines among young
people in the United States
to an extraordinary degree.
Most marches in the
resistance before
that were heavily older women,
and the local organizations
that we've studied, up to
3000 of them spread all
across the United States, in
cities, suburbs, rural towns,
you name it, they're everywhere.
They are 75 to 90% led
by college-educated,
often post-graduate
educated women.
And we're not talking
about wealthy people
in a lot of places.
We're talking about the
town librarian or a worker
in the local public health
department or somebody who works
for the local hospital
or teachers.
Teachers, teachers,
teachers, teachers everywhere.
So, these are the
people who have organized
to revitalize the Democratic
party, and they are the ones
that fueled the blue wave in
2018, and they are the ones
that are doing a lot of
the personal contacting
that is going to ensure, I
suspect, a pretty large victory
for Democrats in three weeks.
They are not visible, and
often they are not celebrated.
But even when young people
organize, and this is going
to be my last point, there's
a chapter in the book looking
at the [inaudible] movement.
And it's the only
chapter that's really
about an issue movement rather
than more electoral politics,
and it found what I also found
when I visited various
communities,
which is that young people
often organized in high schools,
you know, the march for
our lives type events,
but it was often their mothers
and grandmothers
behind the scenes
who were providing a
lot of the support.
And in the big marches,
those mothers
and grandmothers
were also there.
So, and in the black community,
it's often older black women
organized through churches
and church networks
who give their children
and grandchildren
a kick in the butt
to get off the couch
and go vote.
So, I think the role of women,
most movements, but particularly
in this wave since 2016
cannot be stressed enough.
>> Dan Turello: So,
I think we have time
for one final round
of questions.
I'm going to go with a
question that's an obvious one,
but it's one that
everybody is talking about,
and I think it's so important.
And it has to do with centrism.
The trends over the last
years have all seemed
to be pointing towards greater
polarization in the country.
The two parties seem to be
gravitating further away
from each other, and yet,
there's also other
dynamics at play.
Within the Democratic party,
the platform that has prevailed
in 2016 and now in 2020 has
been more of a centric one.
What do you see as the trends.
What do you see, Theda, doesn't
necessarily agree with that,
so curious to hear
your take on this.
What do you see as the
trends moving forward?
Are we doomed to
further polarization,
or is that centrism
still possible
and compromise still possible?
And Janna, I know, I think has
a question along those lines
as well.
>> Theda Skocpol:
Well, let me be quick
so that Caroline
can chime in too.
I mean, I think that I would say
the Democrats have ooched left.
That word, ooch, is an
academic word, and --
Joe Biden is a reassuringly
old-fashioned character
and therefore attracts a fair
amount of moderate support,
and the anti-Trump coalition
has always included Republicans
and independents who
don't like what they see.
So, that's true, but I mean,
if Biden is elected, you know,
his healthcare policy is
actually more progressive
than anything Democrats have
put forward in a long time.
And he has a green jobs,
not a Green New Deal,
but a green jobs
investment policy that's
pretty progressive.
So, part of the reason
that you've seen this coming
together, of the more leftist
and more moderate Democrats
is that there are policy ways
to work out a way forward
that makes everybody
at least somewhat happy.
But that's the major
point, you know.
These two wave or
organizing, particularly
at the grassroots level, the
Tea Party, I think it's fair
to say, has fed extremism.
It's added in an element of
ethnonationalist extremism
and an anger and unwillingness
to compromise to politics.
Added that on top of the
kind of free market forces
that had already triumphed
in the Republican
party before 2009.
The impact of the
resistance overall,
if you consider its grassroots
parts spread across the country
in more swing states as well as
liberal states, in communities
of all types, has been
to encourage a broad-tent
Democratic party, and Democrats
in general are less fierce in
their opposition to compromise
than conservative
Republicans are.
So, I am actually mildly hopeful
that we might see a resurgence
of people being willing
to talk with one another
in the near future,
but there's no question
that there are clashing
visions and fears at work.
>> Caroline Tervo: I'll just add
that I think one
really interesting point
of agreement among the
various progressive Democratic
coalitions is voting rights.
I think that that will be,
voting rights and changes
to make the democratic
process easier
and more accessible will be an
extremely important discussion
for 2021, and it's a point where
Theda's observation about fear
of the other side and anger
being really powerful motivators
could not be like more
fundamentally different
on the two sides.
So, a lot of grassroots
activists
in the resistance networks
are trying to educate people
about how to vote, trying
to register new voters,
trying to make it
easier to vote,
coming out against voter ID
laws, and a lot of people
on the Tea Party side are
afraid of voter fraud and afraid
of people showing up at
the polls, and you know,
there are both elites and
grassroots people talking
about rigged elections
or rigged processes.
And I think we're cueing
ourselves up for an election
where we're going to be
testing a lot of the systems
that we have in place,
and then, I think,
once we get to the other side
of that, there's broad agreement
on the Democratic side sort of
no matter what your stripe is,
that voting is a useful thing,
and you see Joe Biden really
and Kamala Harris
really cuing people
that that's what they want
you to do this election.
I think that would be really
fundamentally opposed by sort
of Republican Conservative
Tea Party types.
But I do think a point of
agreement there are reforms
to the redistricting process,
which we're also going to kind
of run headway into after
the Census is completed.
A lot of Tea Partiers don't
like that their community
is splintered
into separate congressional
districts.
Sometimes that helps them, and
they wind up with a congressman
with which they agree
or a congress person
with which they agree,
but sometimes it doesn't.
And the extent to which
those sort of things
that are fundamental to
being engaged in politics
and being civically
engaged are on the table.
I think you're going to find
both points of strong agreement
and points of strong
disagreement
at different [inaudible].
>> Dan Turello: Janna, do you
want to follow up on that?
>> Janna Deitz: I just wanted
to say that one of the things
that I really enjoyed about
this work is the focus not just
on the federal government
system but also
on the federated practice of
politics, and I'm just curious
to kind of bring
this back around.
In terms of the title
of the book,
Upending American
Politics, what do you see
as longer-term effects of this
all politics is local in terms
of the organizing
that you've seen
at the state and local level.
What do you think might be
the long-term impact of this
for American politics at large.
>> Theda Skocpol: Well, it
would be great if citizens
across the board stay more
engaged and give new life
to local Republican and
Democratic parties everywhere.
We are studying some of that
now, and we do see especially
on the Democratic side,
but I saw it earlier
with Vanessa Williamson among
the Tea Parties that, you know,
more [inaudible] local
party organizations
and state organizations where
nobody paid any attention,
and a few insiders
decided everything.
Those have been changed as
you've gotten these kind
of extra-party but party related
groups more engaged not just
in Washington, DC, where
there are a zillion of them,
but at the local
level among citizens
for whom it's not
their full-time job.
So, we're seeing many
of the resistors running
for party offices in their local
political party organizations.
And sometimes they get
there, and they think
about things very differently
than the old-time regulars,
but that's creating a new set
of pathways and a new energy.
Now, I do think that
both sides may agree
on some de-gerrymandering
reforms.
One of the things that
both local Tea Partiers
and local resistors had to
do was to figure out who
in the world represents us,
and it's very frustrating,
if you're trying to organize
a local citizens' group
and your jurisdiction is
divided up into 10 pieces.
So, that's an area where
there might be some agreement.
I don't think there'd
be a lot of agreement
on expanding the vote
and the electorate,
but there will be on that.
And so, that could
be a good thing.
Now, you know, this
is nothing new.
I want to stress that I don't
think, I think we're in an era
where national symbolism
connects
to local passions much
more powerfully than it has
in some other eras, partly
because of the media system
and the way it's polarized.
But I don't think it's new
to say that local districts
and state representatives matter
in American national politics.
That's always been true.
And when you get a geographic
sorting out of the kind
that we have now,
pitting, you know,
urban and inner suburb
[inaudible] areas
against the rest, that can lead
to real amoral polarization,
not just electoral polarization.
And it happened in the Civil
War in the 19th Century,
and it's happening in new
forms now, and somebody
in American politics
at the state
and national level is going
to have to figure out ways
to devise arguments
and policies that speak
to the real-life
concerns of people
in very different community
and economic situations,
and that would be
nice if that happened.
I'm not sure it's going to
be an automatic result of all
of this new mobilization,
but it could be.
>> Dan Turello: Caroline, Theda,
thanks for being with us today.
We really appreciate
your taking the time.
Look forward to a time, perhaps,
when you can actually be
at the Library in
person and [inaudible].
>> Caroline Tervo: Yes.
>> Theda Skocpol:
Wouldn't that be nice?
Yeah. I think we're all getting
zoomed out here, but yeah.
Thank you.
>> Caroline Tervo: Thank
you so much for having us.