Welcome to the Hot Dish, comfort food for rural America. I'm Heidi
Heitkamp. And I'm Joel Heitkamp. Today we're going to focus on what voters
are thinking in rural America. You know, a lot's happening in our country, so I
think it's good to check in with what folks are thinking and
saying. You think there's a lot going on there, Joel, you think?
I think it's like every day is just an incredible
rush of information. But, you know, the question is, how are
people consuming it? What are people thinking about it? And that's why I think
we have some great people for our show today. I spoke with Sarah
Longwell of the Bulwark. She had a lot of insights about
what's happening with the Democratic Party. Also, what she has learned
dealing with focus groups that she does almost on a regular basis,
Joel. I'm jealous that you were the one that got to do that interview, Hyde,
but I was pretty lucky, too, because I got to speak with Phil
Snape of Impact Social, an online analysis
company that recently partnered with us here at One Country
Project to learn what voters are feeling based on their social
media posts. It's going to be so cool. We have two journalists
joining us today, Heidi Marttila-Losure and Christopher
Vondracek. They're going to tell us about their experiences living and
reporting about rural spaces. You know, it's going to be a great episode
with lots of insight into how rural people are feeling right now.
So you know what, Hyde? Let's get to it. Yep.
I'm very honored to be with Sarah Longwell today. She is the founder
and publisher of the Bulwark, an independent media company that
reaches millions of subscribers every day. I have followed
her career for a long, long time, and she has really
found a spot in the dialogue of American politics
today, conducting focus groups and highlighting some
of those results for her podcast, the Focus Group. So
she's here to talk about the Focus Group. But before we get there, I want
to talk a little bit politics because this has been an
extraordinary couple days. Basically, looking at
the deployment of troops and National Guard in
California being nationalized against the wishes of the Governor.
You see active duty military on the streets. You
saw the largest protest in the history of the country over the
weekend in the No Kings Protest. You saw a horrific,
absolutely horrific act of political violence in our neighboring
state and with our friends in Minnesota. And then you're also
seeing that we may be on the verge of engaging in a war. And
that's all what's happened in the last five days.
And so the news moves really fast, Sarah. And so when
you're looking at all of these kinds of trends, how do you stay
ahead of it? As somebody who is asked repeatedly
to tell us, what does the public think? What are you hearing? How do you
stay ahead of this? I mean, I think fundamentally by having an
orientation about Donald Trump, I think we understand
that he is unqualified to be the president, that he is not a good person,
and he is not going to act like a normal politician. And so I often
think that just our ability to understand, because we are all
former Republicans and, and so we understand the tension that
exists between how a normal Republican would behave in this environment
and how Donald Trump would behave, because we've seen him before. And I think
as 'Never Trumpers,' as people who from the jump said, if you take
somebody who's fundamentally a bad person and put them in
charge of a country, the outcomes are going to be inevitably
bad. And so I think a lot of times, because we
have unfortunately, a bit of a darker outlook,
we are too often vindicated in our worldview because Donald Trump
behaves in ways we think he might. We thought going into 2020 that he wouldn't
accept the results of the election, and he didn't. And so, like, when you
understand that we don't live in normal times, when you believe
that actually we are underreacting as a country to what
the threat Donald Trump presents, I think that that has allowed us
to know that a lot of the like right
now, just take the situation with Israel and Iran.
Normally this is a time you really want grownups to be in charge. And
what you don't want happening is somebody sort of tweeting
through it their own evolving impulses.
That is an incredibly dangerous place to be. And I think
that there's a lot of people in the media or in the
Republican Party or maybe even in the Democratic Party who still, they, they
try to make these things normal, right? They, they don't, it's people - we talk
a lot about normalizing, but part of it is like, because our nervous systems
can't take the chaos, like, we can't live that way. There's
this constant desire to put it in a framework we understand. And
so people are always doing that with Trump. And if you take that off
and you say, no, guys, he might do something completely
outside of anything we've ever seen before, and you should be ready
for that. And you shouldn't treat this like, well, he'll probably do a normal thing
because the situation's so serious. No, no,
he very well may not. You know, I've been following, as I know you
have, kind of the MAGA faction that
is really, I think, headed up by Steve Bannon, who is really the populist in
the group, the architect of 'Let's Get Rid of Forever Wars.'
Those people are hot right now because they think that this president is
going to engage militarily in the Mideast on
behalf of Israel. How serious do you think that division
is when you see people who were instrumental in
legitimizing him in the last election saying, I'm sorry
I misled you, that's not the guy that I endorsed.
Look, understanding the origins of Donald Trump, and this is what I mean where,
look, the Republican Party that I came up in was a hawkish party.
We believed in American leadership in the world. But one of the reasons that Donald
Trump resonated with a new kind of base voter in the Republican Party
and outside of the Republican Party, Independents, is because he didn't vote for the Iraq
war. Now, he wasn't in office then, but he was able to sort of run
against Jeb Bush on his brother's reputation
as, as having failed in the Iraq war. So Trump
really fashions himself and his followers fashion themselves about a guy who is
against Forever Wars. He's not going to get us into that. But Donald Trump is
also pulled by his impulse to be a tough guy, to bring the might
of the American people in some, like, impulsive way.
Right? And so those things right now are intentional and they also
represent a tension within the Republican Party itself, meaning
whatever's left of the responsible sort of Republican Party that
says American leadership is needed here. That is very much
opposed by the Bannon Wing and the Laura Loomer Wing and the more Populist Wing.
And so those things are going to come into conflict, both in Trump
internally, because he'll say whatever when he's running, but when push comes
to shove, this is what being a leader is about. And so Donald Trump's empty.
His emptiness, his inability to have, like a real view of how the world should
be, ends up being pulled between what his most fervent
followers want him to be and then what he thinks he's got the opportunity to
do as a, as a tough guy. Yeah and if you're looking for
an informed decision making structure, I don't think that's what we've
seen historically with this president. In fact, as recently as
his attendance at the economic summit with our allies,
he confused European Union with the UK
So I don't know. He's not a smart man. No, I mean, honest to God,
Sarah, the thing that is fingernails on a chalkboard for me is when people say
he's smart. I said, he's clever, he's cunning, he's sly,
but he is not smart because he's not curious about the world. He doesn't
understand kind of all the history that goes into a lot of these
decisions. I want to just kind of pivot before we talk about the
work that you do in Focus Groups, I want to talk about something that's really
been bothering me, which is, you know, in the past, when, when
politicians say stupid stuff or they make bad decisions
on their public statements, there was always this moment where
they'll walk it back, they'll say they're sorry. Maybe it would be a
little disingenuous, but they'll acknowledge that this was a problem.
We have seen three events now where that hasn't happened.
Joni Ernst basically saying people are gonna die and then doubling
down with a march through the cemetery and talking about
the Tooth Fairy. And you've got the Senator from California,
Alex Padilla, basically be taken to the floor as he
is basically telling them who he is. No apology. In
fact, the best defense is a good offense. And now you have this
situation with Senator Lee, who tweeted really
insensitive things about what happened in the state of
Minnesota, doubling down and not saying they're sorry.
So where does that trend come from? Is that because of Donald Trump
or, or is that just everybody realizes, no, Donald Trump
never says he's sorry, so they're not gonna say they're sorry? Yeah, well, it's
both those things, right? So Donald Trump's his doubling down strategy,
right? Republicans have basically allowed Trump
to show them a path that overwhelms their decency but
that works kind of in our social media era. And they've
convinced themselves that this is okay because the mobs,
right, the online mobs that came for them, that was
censorship, that was, you know, curbing free speech, speech. And so the
way to handle this is just to push through it, to never say you're
sorry, to never let them see you retreat
from your position. And Donald Trump really pioneered that in politics.
But people sort of forget that Donald Trump did that, in part because he
does have, like, he's not smart, but he has a reptilian sense
for how to dominate space, almost like a wrestling sense,
like a kayfabe. And I think that, that people
have lost in that what it means to be a decent person because Donald Trump
doesn't have any decency. And so I know that Joni Ernst
probably is a human. And what I've seen, what I saw her as, you know,
eight years ago or something, she doesn't think this is a good idea. I mean,
Mike Lee, the things that Mike Lee tweeted where
he's blaming Tim Walz for these murders,
but he does it in sort of a joking way the day after the
murders happened. It is...it's the kind of
grossness that says, like, your - I don't
know if I'm allowed to swear on this podcast, but, like, your need for shitposting
is overwhelming your human sense of decency.
And a lot of that is because Donald Trump has both convinced
you that they have so dehumanized their other side.
Like the idea of Nancy Pelosi and her husband's another great example where people were
then dressing up as Paul Pelosi for Halloween as somebody who got
hit with a hammer. Like, this is a political movement that
is steeped in indecency. They've told themselves a story in
which they are the victims. And so they, they have this grievance-based politics,
but then that allows them to feel like they can be just
disgusting, despicable human beings to people who are not.
See, this is the thing. Mike Lee thinks that those people are his enemies.
Not his colleagues, but his enemies. And I
think that is a grave loss for our politics when people start
seeing each other as an enemy. It's like Barack Obama. I mean, everybody sort of
understood, like, politics in America, it's an intramural sport. You know, like, if you're a
Senator, like, this is the thing, this just shocks me. Padilla, Senator
Padilla, when he was - obviously that was, it went way too
far in terms of what they did to him. And I think most Senators agree
with that. Yeah. Where are his colleagues who know him as
a human and say, 'hey, look, maybe he shouldn't have
been at the, maybe he shouldn't have interrupted,' like, whatever throat clearing they need to
do. 'But you can't treat Senators like this. I watched the video. Guy identified himself.
You cannot do this.' Like, where's the collegial respect? That erosion
is the gut-coarsening of our politics is really harming us
as humans. And in the category of you
can't make this up, when Corey Lewandowski is the
same person in the room telling people, 'you can't do this to a United States
Senator,' you know that whatever that center is, that normalcy
has moved so far. Well, that's before they get their story
straight. Right? So Corey Lewandowski knows it's bad. It's like when January 6th
happened, everybody knew it was bad. But then like people get their story straight and
they're like, no, no, no, we're not going to act like this is wrong. We're
going to act like it's Padilla who should be censured. That's what I'm saying is
that there isn't an apology anymore. There isn't a sense of, oh,
and this is a good jumping off spot because for us to talk about the
work that you're doing on Focus Groups. I hear so
many people saying Senators and the people in public life
are reflecting their constituencies. They're
reflecting the anger and the desire of their
constituencies to go out there, just punch, punch, punch, and
don't ever retreat, don't ever sit down, don't ever
compromise. Is that what you're seeing in your focus group,
Sarah? So there's a phenomenon that I have that I call the 'Republican Triangle
of Doom,' and it is the toxic and
symbiotic relationship between Republican elected
officials, the voters and the right wing info-tainment
media. And if you think about it as sort of three points,
right, and leave Donald Trump out of it for a second. But like you can
see how it is mutually reinforcing and radicalizing because
there is some, and let's just, I'll use as an example something like the election
being stolen. So Trump says the election stolen. And
now most of the country after the election, they don't
think it was stolen. Most Republicans don't think it was stolen. Trump's sort of saying
it and everyone's like, okay, but there's some segment of Trump voters
who are like, yeah, it was stolen. And so Newsmax
says, okay, well, we're going to put people on that says, yes, this
was stolen. And then Kevin McCarthy says, oh, well now
if the, you know, right wing info-tainment media and some of these voters are saying
it was stolen, I better go on Newsmax and say, yes, something fishy is going
on here. And then pretty soon some other, you know, Fox News say, well, if
Kevin McCarthy is saying that it's stolen, maybe there's something to
it. And then another segment of voters say, I don't know, if Fox News
and Kevin McCarthy are saying that it was stolen, maybe something was going on. And
pretty soon the entire right wing ecosystem has told itself
a story and convinced itself because more and more people buy into
it over time. And it becomes fact then in this ecosystem.
And so in some ways it's not, some people are chicken and
egging this in a way of like, is it the voters or is it the
politicians? And I'm saying these things are all working together in this
very toxic and symbiotic way that creates this almost
contained bubble of falsehoods where when I'm in the focus groups,
you can tell who lives in these bubbles and who doesn't really
quickly. And it tends to
be the more devoted you are to Trump, the deeper you are in
that bubble. One thing that I would ask you is
when you're doing focus groups, is there any sense of, you may
believe that, but here are some facts that would maybe
help you recalibrate or rethink kind of where you're at
politically or where you're at in understanding this issue?
Yeah. So here's what happens is that it's not that people are all
nuts, but for a lot of them, they're so, they're either pretty deep in
the ecosystem or they're difficult to even get to with
alternative information, right? Like the real information isn't even
penetrating. It's not getting to them. But then when it does,
part of what happens is in that 70% of people,
70% of Republicans who said the election was stolen is that there are gradations
of how they think about it. There are people who are like,
the voting machines were rigged and they switched people's votes.
And that's what happened. And even after Fox News had to pay an
enormous defin- defamation suit, like, they still believe that. They believe
it to this day, then there are other people who say, well, I don't
think it was that. I think it was more, and there's, there's been, there's a
whole media ecosystem for that. Mollie Hemingway wrote a book called "Rigged," where it was
a much subtler type of what they would call rigging, where it was the changes
that happened during the Pandemic to some of the voting, the way that people
are allowed to vote earlier, the way that they were allowed to vote by mail
when they previously hadn't been able to because of the Pandemic. That's how
it happened. It was because of the rules changes, which doesn't mean it was what
- didn't mean those votes weren't real. It just means that the election was rigged
in some way by the people who were in charge. And so there's gradations to
these stories that although layer up to a
large part believing that there was something unfair about it. Well,
I mean, it's just interesting because you have that insight to
voters every day as you look at the work that you do and
the work that we do at One Country. And I've said all
along, I started this One Country Project because I
could see this trend, and I could see this trend moving outside
of rural America and moving into suburban
America or even urban America. The same messages
that will develop a sense of grievance, a sense of this
guy is on our side and the other guy or the other woman isn't on
our side. That same sense and that same cultural
attack, you could see migrate. And, you know, the
Democratic Party has been woefully inadequate at cauterizing
that wound and basically pushing back on that message.
And I'm curious about how you see, number
one in your work, the difference between urban and rural and how people
perceive these issues? But basically also, what
do you think are the messages or the methods that could persuade
people that they need to, you know, not change their mind necessarily,
but at least open their mind to a different way of thinking? I've
been doing the focus groups now for about seven
years, really consistently. And since 2020, when
the Pandemic hit and we started doing a lot more of them online, we
were just able to do, you know, three or four a week. And so I'm
constantly able to sort of get feedback from voters. And
there's a ton of things in there that I have learned, much of which is
about information flow and what people hear and what they don't and
what gets through and what doesn't. And you can see the results of this in
an election like we just had in '20. The people who voted
for Kamala Harris, like, the vast majority of them
read mainstream media. Like they were, they were following the news. They read
regular news. People who vote for Donald Trump live in an entirely different media
ecosystem. Or - or it's not, and this is, this is
to your point about rural divides. One of them is, you
might be somebody who doesn't follow politics very closely, and this is something
that's Donald Trump and the Republicans now, they, they count on a what, what somebody
might call "Lower Information Voter," which just
means somebody doesn't pay a ton of attention to politics. I think this is a
perfectly rational thing to do, not pay a ton of attention to politics. However, you
swim in a cultural soup of Trumpism
when you're in these rural areas, meaning the people that you know
that you're friends with on Facebook or that you're friends with on social media who
share posts and share things about politics then tend to come
from a political persuasion that is MAGA, that is Trumpy. And so
the stuff that you are seeing from your trusted sources, which is
not a media source, not the Wall Street Journal, it's not
even, might, might not even be Fox News. A lot of times people are like,
oh, it's Fox News. I'm like, half these people who vote for Trump, it's not
Fox News, it's not news. It's not even, it's just they swim now in a
cultural soup of Trumpism that, that sort of permeates on social
media and in other ways in which we're now so hyper, hyper segmented. Oftentimes,
like the redder places are getting
redder. Sarah, you're just depressing me. I
just, I want you to give me some, some hope that this is
reachable. So here's the thing that I'll say that gives me hope, although it makes,
it makes a lot of people mad when I say it, which is the vast
majority of people who vote for Donald Trump. I think there's a lot of people
who are like, well, these must be awful people because Donald Trump is an awful
person and how could somebody vote for him and not be a terrible person?
And I gotta tell you, I don't see that at all. Like, I just see
a lot of people who, where they get their information now
has changed. People are living through an enormous amount of disruption.
You know, I just said the thing about Low Info. What I'm saying is
people, these are people who don't follow news clearly, but, like, they're awash in information,
information is coming out of their pores. They can't, they can't avoid information.
And people are confused about what to believe and what to trust. And
so I just still see a lot of people every day who are working at
pet shelters and taking care of their sick parents and who love their country.
And they're not bad people. They just
believe, based on what they're hearing, that Donald Trump was being
unfairly prosecuted by his political enemies. And they
think that's wrong. And so, like, it's funny because sometimes you're like,
Democrats talk a lot about, well, we're losing democracy, but
Republicans think that they're defending democracy.
Oftentimes, I have to tell you, on Election Night, I was
on television at ABC and CNBC and
I saw the early exit polls and they listed defending
democracy was high on the list. And I automatically assumed, oh,
those are Democrat votes. No, no, no, no, they were not. And so
I think, you know, this argument about, well, we are the Defenders of Democracy.
If you're a Democrat, that's not how people see it. They see democracy
being threatened on both sides. Yeah, democracy's been
polarized just like everything else has. Because, you know,
Democrats think Republicans are a threat to democracy because they, you know, lied
about the election being stolen and attacked the Capitol on January 6th. But
Republicans think Democrats are a threat to democracy because they think a) either they
stole the election in 2020 or in 2024 didn't hold
a real election. Or ironically, that they
politically persecuted the president, therefore - Or that they politically prosecuted
Donald Trump. Yeah. And so this is where, this is where I go back to
the Republicans right now who are feeding this
garbage to, like, this is where I would turn it around for people who are
like, well, these elected officials are doing what their voters demand. And I'm like, but
these elected officials know what they're doing is wrong. They 100% and
leading - if they cared about this country, they would explain to their
constituents why what Donald Trump did on January 6th was wrong. Like,
instead, they have, they have decided to abdicate. And they tried at first,
or some of, many of them did at first. And because they lost their jobs
or saw that it wasn't as politically popular, they just gave up on leading.
And now they just go in for - I mean, Mike Lee is a great
example of somebody who used to be, he, he was a Never Trumper like me.
He really didn't want Trump to be the nominee in 2016. And now you fast
forward to 2025, and he is like the lead shitposting
conspiracy theorist guy out there. And
so, like, Trump has changed. He both tapped into something that existed
and then accelerated it and has changed the party in all kinds
of ways that are deleterious not just to the Republican Party, but to the country.
And a lot of it is just an absence of fidelity to the truth, to
decency and all the things we've been discussing here. So I want to ask you
this, because the Democrats had four years of Biden and, you
know, had had workable majorities, the ability to make
decisions. Why couldn't they turn this around? I think
it didn't work cause I think Biden's theory of the case was just 100% wrong.
And this is when I say I feel like people are often underreacting. I
think Joe Biden thought, hey, I'm gonna
just restore normality. We're gonna come in and we're gonna go
do politics. We're gonna bring it back to normal. And they didn't realize how
much people had changed. And I'll just give you one example. In our
communications environment now, Donald Trump changed the way voters are
used to hearing from their president. Like Donald Trump sets the news
every day. He was tweeting, he was in people's faces. And there were plenty of
people who didn't like that, but there were lots of people who also just got
used to it. And when Joe Biden came in and was like, I'm not going
to hold very many press conferences, I'm not going to be out there talking, voters
were like, is he dead? Where is he? I don't hear from him. He thought,
hey, I'll pass big bipartisan legislation and people will like that. We're going to do
infrastructure. People did not like that. They thought they knew the price tags
of the bills. But this idea that people were gonna reward him for sort
of politics as usual and being normal just wasn't the case.
And so you do have to, one of the ways in which our politics has
really changed over the last decade is you have to communicate to people all
the time. You cannot just give a State of the Union. That's not the thing
anymore. People, the Left right now is deciding they've got to build their own sort
of Left Wing media ecosystem. And I'm not against the Left building more of that,
but it's also about being able to go into the existing media ecosystems. It's not
that many of the, the Joe Rogans or the influencers, they're not Republicans, they're
kind of Red Pilled, they don't like a lot of the stuff happening on
the Left. But they're not Republicans in any stretch of the word or even MAGA.
But the MAGA guys go on and talk to them, they can sit down and
be normal. And Democrats are gonna have to realize they're now in a culture war
as much of a political war. There used to be axiomatic that, that culture
was downstream from politics. But they're really fused together right now. And so
this idea that Joe Biden, Joe Biden did need to be a bridge, he needed
to be a bridge to a next generation that they were building while he
was in office. And the fact that they didn't do that and they
decided to go again with somebody who was in their 80s and was going
to be closer to 90. I mean, voters were telling me all day long they
didn't want it. They didn't, Democrats didn't want it, Independents didn't want it.
And the fact that it was, it was a massive. So, like, I think there
were, there were obviously two tactical errors there. The first was they didn't understand what
was happening to the country when they got back in and what people really craved.
And then the idea that Biden needed to run again was insane. I
mean, just - and, like, the fact that they're out there now saying, oh, Biden's
like, why I would have won, like, absolutely not. Not
even close. And I think that, thank goodness
Kamala Harris actually got in there and, and took a run at it and stopped
just the bottom from absolutely falling out of Democratic politics. And
the reason people are mad at Democrats right now isn't because they hate
everything Democrats do. It's because they are so angry that Democrats won't do anything
to push back. They feel like they're weak and they can't stand
up to this party. And that's what they want. They want someone to stand up.
The question now is, if you were advising,
let's say, Gretchen Whitmer or Pritzker here
in Illinois, what would you tell them right now? What's the three bits
of advice that you think they need to hear? Okay, top
thing is an "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once"
communication strategy. So it's a movie I didn't like, but
it's a good communications philosophy, philosophy. So you have to be comfortable. And I'll tell
you, like, somebody like Josh Shapiro is doing a good job of this right now.
He's going on all these sports talk radio shows in his state, and he's getting
out there. You've got to be out there. You are - And, and then that's
my first piece. But you got to get out there, and it's on you. It's
on you. Second piece of advice: ignore consultants, consultants.
And, and so it's funny because, you know, I do focus groups.
And so people are like, weren't you kind of a consultant? And I'm like, actually,
my main thing when I listen to focus groups is I
want to go grab politicians by the lapels and say, I know you spent a
long time learning how to be a politician, but I'm going to need you to
unlearn all that right now and just figure out how to be a human. And
when somebody asks me, hey, what should I say when someone
asks me about trans women playing sports? And my
response to that would be like, what do you think? Like, what do you think?
Tell me what you think right now. Because I bet your answer is something like,
I don't think they should be able to do it. But I really want people
to stop bullying trans kids. I don't want to pick on trans kids. I don't
want to throw trans people under the bus, but I don't think they should be
playing sports. And I'll be like, because I don't think that's fair to women. And
I'll be like, go say that. That makes perfect sense.
Like, the idea that everybody needs a consultant that
has perfectly focused grouped something before you have a policy position is like,
the Democrats have got to shake that off. Their, their addiction to testing. They're
losing their heart. They're losing the part where it's like, this is what I believe.
This is what I'm passionate about. This is what I'm going to go talk to.
People like that. Everybody, like, has this buzzword "authenticity" right now, which is like, true,
but also it makes people be like, boy, how do I be more authentic? And
I'm like, don't ask yourself that. You've just gotta learn how to talk to people
like a person, for the love of God. And then my third piece of advice
is do popular stuff. And you know what's popular? Saying that
you want the border secure. Like, there's just a couple of policy things that Democrats
are gonna have to take the L on. Well, I don't know that it's even
a loss. I was endorsed by Border Patrol because
I spent a lot of time down on the border. I understood the complications
and basically understood that those guys were doing a tough job
and they needed some additional help. Did I say we should build a wall? Hell,
no. That was really a dumb idea. And, you know, I think that we have
a habit in Democratic politics to endorse people
who've never been in a tough fight, who've never had to
walk into the VFW or go to a focus group where
people disagree with them and try and figure out how you're going to persuade them
without losing who you are and what you believe. And when we
nominate people who only want message testing, will only
want to, I mean, I agree with you. Throw all of
that out and start figuring out how you're going to govern this country and
persuade people. I've done this thing when people say, well, why is it
so bad? I said, because politicians are so lazy. Yeah. And risk
averse. Yeah. Like, I just take some big swings, guys, and, like, maybe
you'll get some things wrong, but, like, everyone's going to have to start trying a
lot harder. If there is a lesson of Donald Trump, isn't that the lesson?
Yeah. I don't like what he says. I don't like what he does. I don't
like everything. But damn it, he's doing it. He ignored 100% of
the Autopsy Report that Republicans had put together about how they could win
places. He threw it out and he said, this is what I think. I've thought
it for a long time. He made, he, you know, compromised on a couple things
that people - But, like, basically, he ignored all the consultants, went with his gut,
and like it was, I disagree with most of it, and
I don't think that Democrats need their own demagogue or need their own Donald Trump,
I do think they need to take the lesson of say what you believe, make
a pitch that you believe in, and - Because then, you know what? If you
believe it, you'll be consistent whenever you talk about it anywhere. And you don't have
to be so afraid to go on everything because you're so afraid you'll say something
wrong. Not if you really believe it. And it's just a thing you say all
the time. It's easy then. Well, Sarah, it's, you and I could go on and
on and on, and you've offered some, I think, really great suggestions. I
don't, I think that people keep waiting for the Democratic savior
to show up. And, you know, right now, the hero
of the Democratic Party is in every community like Fargo,
North Dakota, where 3,000 people showed up and said, we don't like the direction of
the country. Because I think that's sending a message.
Well, I do think we are the ones we're waiting for. I
think that you're right. Like, there is no knight in shining armors coming. And
there's, I think that the chances that the
2028 Democratic Nominee is somebody who's not officially in politics
right at this moment is pretty, pretty good. Because I think that,
and the good thing about this kind of opposition is it does give birth
oftentimes to new voices. And I think, I think the
Democratic Party could stand for a big,
rowdy primary with lots of new voices.
Absolutely. Because it's gotta find its way. It's gotta find out who
it is. Yeah. And people have to be tested, Sarah. I mean, you
know! And in the meantime, you'll continue talking to voters, and I hope
at some point you'll come back. Of course. This is so fun. Okay,
thanks so much, Sarah Longwell. Thanks for having me.
Next, Joel will be getting into some data analytics with Phil from Impact
Social. Thanks, Heidi. I'm Here with Phil Snape from the
Impact Social team. Impact Social uses data software to
track over - ready for it - 60 million online sites!
One Country Project has recently partnered with Impact
Social and Phil is with us here to give
some specifics. Phil, welcome to the Hot Dish. Thanks for
joining us. Delighted to be here. I think it's best if you just
explain the methodology, explain how this works.
So we're a social media analysis company, and what we do is we use social
media conversations to understand what's happening. It could be in politics, could be in brand,
could be in anything. The way the methodology works is kind of crucial to
understanding our accuracy. What we do, first of all, is we
go and create massive focus groups, right? So these aren't focus groups that
people would know, like 20 people in a room. We're talking about thousands, hundreds of
thousands of potentially millions of people. For this specific project, we have
five different focus groups which are basically taken America into five
different zones, as you were, sort of Frontier, Midwest,
Northwest, Pacific and the South. Then what we do, if you
write some code, and this particular instance, we're writing code about the cost of living,
people understanding the thing about inflation, eggs,
housing, et cetera, et cetera. And another biggest analysis we're doing is in terms of
the job security. How do people feel about their jobs? So we write a lot
of code where we're trying to understand. We then press go, all the
information comes in and we're talking about, in this case, millions of social
media posts. We then take all the bots, so we take all the
marketing and things like that out of it. We then randomize the
entire data set and pull out a statistically representative
sample. And we physically read the sample. Okay? And this is
really important to what we do and the reason we have to physically read the
sample, and I'm talking about thousands of social media posts here. And just to let
everyone know, these are all publicly available, right? So there's nothing - if I can
read it, anyone can read it. The reason why we read these particular posts
is because algorithms can't pick up sarcasm. They can't pick up cynicism,
they can't pick up context. So, for example, if my parents said something is sick,
it means it's bad. If my daughter said something was sick, it would mean it's
good. Okay? So context is really important and tone is very important. How are people
feeling? How are people thinking about things? So what we do is we'll read all
these particular posts. We'll read it. In this particular instance, we're reading it from
the Trump administration's perspective, are they feeling positive or are they feeling
negative about these particular subjects? And then we'll effectively,
we'll take the positive conversation from the negative conversation, and
we get what we call the net sentiment. And the net sentiment is then tracked
over time. And from the net sentiment, what we can see is why
people are thinking more positively about cost of living or job security and
why people might be feeling more negative. And we see what the overall trend
is, therefore, over time. And because we're taking it across the entire
country in five different segments, and because of the fact that we're looking at
such a massive data set, we're very confident that, effectively, this is a lot
of the voice of America. This is what Americans are thinking and feeling and why,
about their cost of living and also their job security. You
know, when it comes to job security, there's been a change, there's been a rebound
in May after those numbers were dropping
significantly in previous months. Why have
you found out why people's attitude has changed?
Initially at the start of the year, this wasn't the case. The first quarter, which
we looked at, what happened was people started off being optimistic. There was a new
president, he was talking a good game, and people were sort of thinking, well, you
know, this is going to be fine. Let's give this guy a go. But what
happened was, is that I think in January, February and then March,
increasingly because of the tariffs, people were concerned about the impact of the
tariffs, in particular, what that meant for their job going forward, especially
then, which went into April. Also, very importantly as well,
DOGE. What happened with DOGE was people aren't necessarily
specifically against DOGE. They're not against there being cuts in the federal
workforce, and they think that obviously America's spending too much. But it's the
haphazard way of the cutting, the feeling that there's no plan, the feeling as
if they're just basically making it up. And so what happened was, on the one
hand, you're very concerned about the fact that the terrorists might come in and they
might lose their jobs. And also they're very concerned, and I can't
emphasize this enough, there's a lack of feeling that there's a competence
within the administration that people feel secure about that.
It just gives a feel of huge amounts of anxiety. And then,
as the tariffs are not being spoken of as much, and DOGE hasn't been spoken
of as much, what's happened is the amount of conversation in
May online in relation to these has dropped in terms of the
job security by 39%. This is the tone
coming away from, this is the anxiety coming away as the tariffs are being
spoken of less. However, there's a legacy.
And the legacy is, although people feel a little bit more secure about their
job than they did, say, maybe a month or so ago, people are still
talking about how they, they're not going to ask for that job raise, they're perhaps
not going to look for that job that they thought they're going to get, that
the employers are saying that they're still concerned about taking other people
on. So the real legacy here of people basically saying,
let's just wait and see, let's wait and see what happens here. Because at the
moment, I'm not sure what's going to happen from day to day. And the Trump
administration would be looking at our data and thinking, well, we've got people's confidence back,
et cetera. They should be aware that that confidence isn't too deep because
of the fact there's an anxiety and there's concern in there. Do
people seem to understand the tariffs, or is it just
the word that scares them? You know, a lot of people using the phrase TACO,
a lot of people talking about things in a presidential
way in regards to how he always backs down. And is
that the reason that they've quit worrying about tariffs? They do
understand tariffs, for sure. They don't understand the real impact of the tariffs
because it wasn't explained to them. That 120% tariff does not mean
that your stuff goes up by 120%, right? But they are very,
very aware this means something which is bad for them. And it means
that it could be bad for their jobs, it could be bad for their local
area. When Trump then comes back away from the tariffs and
all of a sudden the tariffs aren't being spoken about anywhere near as much, there's
a sense of relief. But that's not to say the bad feeling
that was caused, it still exists, because it very much do. And you can see
it in the data, the way people are speaking about things to each other online.
They're basically saying to each other, you know, that job is going to go for,
I'm just going to leave it. We need to wait til this whole thing settles
down, and then I'll make my move. And the same with an employer, too.
Do you have a way of monitoring the small business owners? Because
in my job as a talk show host, one of the things that a lot
of the small business owners are saying is that
as they fear the tariffs and what this might mean to them more
than anything, they fear the opportunity to expand.
We don't look at small businesses specifically, but there's enough
people in the data who are small business owners who are talking about,
exactly as you say, Joel, exactly that point. I'm just going to sit this
one out. So what concerns me is that what this is going to do to
the American economy. Obviously you won't come to an abrupt end, but nevertheless,
people would be less reluctant to change jobs, to employ
people, or to go and buy something, you know, like a house or a
car or something, those kind of bigger spends. So your
groups that you've put together by region, you can determine
whether or not they've made up their mind to spend money? And let
me give you an example. I'm sitting here looking at a pickup
with 90,000 miles on it, right? So I was looking at potentially a different
pickup and I found myself getting into
more of a hurry to buy a pickup. If I was going to buy one
anyway, I better hurry the hell up and buy one, If steel prices go up.
Yeah. Can you tell that in your survey? Very much so,
yeah. Yeah. You could see that decision making process. So
the decision making process being I'm going to buy this now because I know it's
going to go up in a month's time. When you're talking about a truck, when
you're talking about a car, when you talk about bigger spends like that, these are
always big decisions for any household. But when they are matched with such
uncertainty, they're much less likely to happen. And that's what
we're seeing in the data. That's what we're seeing in the conversations of saying, you
know, I was, you know, I was going to move house, I'm just going to
leave it for a while. I live in a farm community. The area I'm at,
a lot of farmers. And one of the concerns they have
is trading, shipping. The fact that, will
China even want their product anymore is, does your survey
get that defined in regards to what happens per
region? In this particular case, in the Ag region? Yeah, so
soybeans, for example, right? That's exactly what
I'm getting at, Philip. Yeah, this is what we have in the data. People saying,
if there's a tariffs there, how on earth can I sell my soybeans to China?
And I'm a soybean farmer and so what can I do about this? This is
the end of my business. But then, of course, what happens is it's not just
the end of that person's business, it's the community, it's the shop,
it's the everything in that particular area then starts, starts to be
concerned. Because the other thing to remember as well is that people didn't go
into this particular administration feeling like they had a lot of money,
right? They didn't go in there thinking, oh, it's fantastic already, and
Trump's going to make it even better. They're going in there, hanging on, a lot
of people are sitting there and they're counting their cents on the dollars every single
week, and they're living paycheck to paycheck. Or the businesses also, you know,
they're looking at their tractor, they're looking at their combine harvester, et cetera, and thinking,
that's going to have to go another year, right? They were already in that
spot. And then all of a sudden, you can imagine them sitting there and Trump
turns around and says, this is what we're going to do in China, et cetera.
And you're thinking, this is my entire livelihood, right? So this is what, this is
what we're getting from, particularly from farmers. Farmers saying, you know, we're about
to get turned over. Do they trust him more? Do
they...is their perception that Donald Trump is actually
winning when it comes to these tariffs? It depends where you go.
So there's still plenty of people out there who are effectively saying, you need to
give Trump time, right? These tariffs are going to work. These tariffs are going to
bring jobs back to America. But I suspect that even a lot
of these people, and we can see it in the data, if you look at
the amount of positive discussion which is in there, the bands of positive discussion
drops. And that tells you one of two things. Either less people feel positive
about it and are prepared to express this to one another online, or it means
they just don't want to talk, which effectively means the same thing. So
you kind of feel that even amongst Trump's base, some of them are thinking,
you know what? I don't want to wait and see whether this works or not.
This just seems a little bit out of control to me. So he still has
lots of support, he still have lots of people who have his back. There's no
question about that. But the fact that the amount of positive
discussion has dwindled, both in terms of the tone and content, and
also the numbers tells me there are less people supporting him now
than they were back in January. So what the data's telling us is they're Trump
and people, they're MAGA people, and they love all Things Trump. And yet there's
another reality which effectively says, well, you know, he did say he was
going to lower the gas prices, and that's not happened. I'm still waiting for that.
He did say the prices were going to come down on day one. In actual
fact, I thought they were about to double. So, as a consequence, some of
his most loyal supporters have been disappointed. They're still there,
but nevertheless, they've been promised things. It's all going to be fine
once we get rid of Biden, and it's going to be great when we get
Trump. And here we are in June and prices haven't come
down, right? So there's a feeling of disappointment, which is there. I could
do this all day, I'm not going to lie to you. Like, for me, as
a talk show host, the example I use, Philip, is this one got the phone
lines going. Yeah. You know, that one didn't get the phone lines going. And
data like you talked about here is, you know, if you know what
they're talking about on social media, you're already to there.
I mean, you really are. Yeah. Thank you. I think the thing that we're doing,
which nobody else is doing, is we're physically reading the data. You have to physically
read it. The algorithms can't tell you - and we've looked at AI many times,
and it's nowhere near. It doesn't understand sarcasm, it doesn't understand
cynicism. It doesn't understand tone and context. It just doesn't
know, it just sees things. If somebody says Trump is great, well, then they think
it's a positive, Trump's great. But the person's being sarcastic, right? And so therefore,
that's what we get down to. That's where we can get into the emotion. And
when we talk about sentiment, it's not just a topic of positive and negative. How
are people feeling about this? Because that's what's important, right? That's what's important in
your community. It's what's important in mine. How are people feeling about it? Not just
what they're saying, the way that they're saying it. And I think that's the thing
I think people really like about what we do. Philip, good to have you on
Hot Dish. It's a pleasure. I look forward to many more of these
conversations. Good to speak to you. Thank you for having me.
Now let's hear from Heidi Marttila-Losure and Christopher
Vondracek.
Hello, Hot Dish listeners. I'm Heidi Martilla-Losure.
I'm recording this from my family's farm near Frederick, South
Dakota, where I grew up. I was away for 12 years
and moved back, which is kind of a lot of the story of a lot
of people who live in rural places. They leave and then, you know, something pulls
them back home. And I have a background as a reporter,
writer and designer in journalism, and I'm still using
those skills, but kind of in a different way. I'm Director of Communications
for a suicide prevention nonprofit. So I'm very excited
today to be on the Hot Dish. And I'm especially excited
to be speaking with Christopher Vondracek, an esteemed
former agriculture reporter from the Minnesota Star Tribune. Thanks
so much for joining me today, Christopher. Yeah, thanks, Heidi.
It's wild still to hear myself referred to as a former agriculture reporter because I
think it's like, like in my soul now. But yeah. Christopher is the
Washington correspondent for the Minnesota Star Tribune, but prior to that
recent assignment, he covered agriculture for the Star Tribune and has
covered legal affairs, education, religion and politics
at different times in his career. In 2020, he published a book of poetry
entitled Rattlesnake Summer, which is a collection of 66 poems
for 66 South Dakota counties, which is very cool. I'll have to look up
what the poem is for Brown County. It's about baseball, naturally,
the minor league team that used to be there, the Pheasants. Yeah. Well, we're just
going to have a little conversation about rural. Excited to dive in.
June is Men's Mental Health Month, and I know that
that is a topic that has come up in rural places
among the farm community especially. So, you know, in
your reporting and your experience, what have you heard about
men's mental health especially? What would you say is the state of men's
mental health right now? Sure, I think it's improving in terms of
people are carrying away kind of the taboo that used to be around, sort of
surround the conversation around mental health for men and particularly I
think rural men. In my farm beat, when I was out in
Minnesota, I vividly remember a number of conversations
with farmers that would be about one
topic. Say, for example, I went up in the fall of
2023 to interview a turkey farmer in central
Minnesota and he and his brother in law had to
depopulate their farm because of bird flu, right? We
were talking about sort of bird flu but then quite quickly the
conversation turned into sort of discussing what, what that
personal impact was on him and his and his brother in law in terms of
what that tough process, you know, did to them in some
respects. And so I know that whether it's
financial or whether it's sometimes the lack of
access to mental health services in rural
places. I oftentimes had an ear for being able to pick
up when I'd be out on the road and talking to farmers.
And there was just a longing, a hurt, a kind of
quietness. And I actually think a lot of agricultural groups
are doing a really good job of trying to change the
narrative and make that a topic that is
discussable and not to be sort of shied away from.
I know that Farm Bureau in Minnesota particularly had reached out to me
to do some stories when I first started on the agriculture beat.
And I think that organizations know this is definitely
a critical need for the community. You know, just thinking about
my day job, you know, I come across a number of statistics on
mental health and suicide. And one of the statistics that stands
out is that the highest percentage of suicide deaths are among
men, certainly way more than women, but then also ages 20
to 29. And that's a really tricky age group to
try to target, you know, so it's just tricky to think about, like,
what kind of programming, you know, how do you actually try to
get to those people? I think that, that the conversation's
moving in that direction is, you know, how do we work with workplaces or
other ways to reach people who might need mental health services?
When I talk to these farm groups, they oftentimes emphasize also a
sense of community and the ability to
create strong towns and sort of bonds within these communities as a way
to sort of also build a sense of togetherness for folks. And I think
that may also have a kind of a mental health impact. I think it's really,
truly easy to get lost instead, post-COVID to get lost in your phone or
to kind of isolate yourself in certain ways. We've seen that happen in
a lot of unsettling ways, but I think that that can have a mental health
impact. And the ways in which you can talk
about building strong main streets, you can build, I think
it's been sort of much discussed the idea of like, a third place in town.
Like in my hometown of Wells, Minnesota, they now have a coffee shop. And I
kid you not like my brother and I, my
mom helped organize, like, a little Christmas musical, like Sing Along
last Christmas for the town at this coffee shop. And,
like, way more people showed up than we ever imagined were going to show up.
And it was really great. And it felt like kind of, you know, something
you would see out of a small town of Yore, in a way. But I
think people were kind of hungry for that, you know. Yeah, I definitely think
so. We can kind of maybe swing into that, that our next topic, which
is news deserts. And I think that that is one of the
reasons why people are feeling a little bit more isolated, is that they don't
have this news source that is telling
them when your Sing Along is, you know, bringing people together
around, you know, a common source of news, a common understanding of
what's going on in their community. So if we talk about, you know, just what
are some of the challenges you've seen as far as, you know, not having that
common news source in rural places? You know, I mean, I started as a journalist
working in a small town. Like, I wrote in the ninth grade for the Kiester
Courier-Sentinel, which is like a softball throw from the Iowa border. I was writing,
like, football stories, you know, and it really felt like everybody would read them, but
I appreciated that, like, everybody was reading the paper, right? Right. And to your point
about news deserts, you know, we've seen so many papers fold, understandably,
because they've done it for 50 years, and there's no one to hand
it on to. Right? I think what happens is when you lose that common
thread, there can be a, a cynicism or a distrust
that develops. And I had had the wonderful
experience of interviewing the radio programmer from an independent radio
station in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, about a week ago, and she actually
told me that, for example, during the recent fires in northeastern Minnesota,
that their traffic digitally, like, skyrocketed,
because in that kind of kinetic event, people needed to have the news.
And the ones that are standing, like, they're not coming to the paper from Minneapolis
for that. They're going to the local radio station to hear from people who live
and work with them what's going on. Yeah, definitely. To give
one example of a positive development right around here, the
Aberdeen American News, which was the paper for
many, many years, has kind of shrunk to a
former husk of itself. People really like to, you know, mock
it right now. But in its place, one of my colleagues
and a friend, Troy McQuillan, started another newspaper
and that has started up with, he has hired
some of the former journalists from the Aberdeen American News, working
at the Aberdeen Insider now, including local sports, which
I think that, that I don't understand why any newspaper would give that up, because
that's one of the things that would absolutely bring people to a newspaper.
Yes, right? So I had a book talk in
the Dakota Prairie Museum in Aberdeen and Trey came out
to me. I did not know him at the time. He was just someone who
had come to the talk and he told me some of their numbers about in
terms of traffic and I was like, gobsmacked. Yeah, you
know, I kind of didn't believe them at first. And then I started talking to
more folks and being like, oh, no, this is like what's replaced the, the previous
sort of legacy media there. And it's wonderful. And you
know, a comment on sports. Like, I think we've discovered in Minnesota
that like, actually there's a huge appetite for local sports. And it kind of breaks
my heart because, and now what we're discovering 20 years later is that actually, I
mean, you don't have to be a lover of football to appreciate
what a Friday night football game can do for a small town.
Exactly. Yeah. I definitely think that sports is a key. There
are other organizations that have stepped in to do that sports piece.
But I do think that the organizations that have been able to marry the local
sports and the local news are finding a sustainable
business model. And I just think that sports is a key thing
in these rural places. I mean, I've really found it to be
the bridge to my neighbors, you know, whatever.
Because we're not talking politics then, right? We're just. We're cheering on the
local team. We're, you know, we're finding our community pride. You
know, we're all wearing the same colors. There are people that I have been
surprised to find out that I'm completely at odds, odds with politically.
But, you know, we are some of the loudest cheers or it can bring a
community together in a - You know, I think sports is unique and that has
a certain draw. But I think whether we're talking about athletics or academics, I
mean, I was a knowledgeable, you know, like that kind of thing. I think there's
a way in which those sort of activities are really unique and they can
build like generational connections. Like there were people when I was playing basketball who would
be like septuagenarian substitutes who would all of a
sudden would be in the stands and then they would, and they would tell their
friends about you and you'd be at the drugstore getting, you know,
like a Cherry Coke and then see, you know, like, like there was just something
really wonderful about those experiences, those center rituals in
small towns. Absolutely. It does sometimes bring
about the rivalry between towns. But even that is kind of fun, you
know, so gives people something to talk about. So we can move on
to our last topic here, which is some of the highlights of living in rural
America, which we've hit on a few of them already. But what are some of
the just really good things that people who don't
live rurally might be kind of surprised to know are positive
aspects of living in rural places? I think there's a pluralism that actually
really exists in rural America that it often doesn't get credit
for. When I was on the Ag beat, I would go into these
packing towns in western Minnesota, be it Windom or
Worthington, and you would talk to the school officials who'd
say there are, you know, dozens of languages spoken in our school
and there are bustling main streets, oftentimes
immigrant-run businesses because of the, the
work that is here. But you know, it felt like
that didn't match sometimes the simplistic two dimensional
like stereotype about what small towns are, you know, kind of
like Mayberry sort of impulse. And I also
think that I said, I mentioned Wells earlier in south central Minnesota. You
know, my parents and their dear neighbor do not
agree on politics. They fly flags literally
sometimes for the opposing candidates. And yet, you
know, they're out here with me this summer watching our, watching their
grandchildren in Washington D.C. and it's that very neighbor who's
like keeping watch on the house, you know, versus I think it's
sometimes easier to find your sort of bubble. And bubbles can
be nice too. But you can find that bubble more
easily in a larger community than you can in a small town where
you're on the library board and you're singing in the church choir and
you're running in against folks in the grocery store and you, yeah,
you know, politics are so front and center, but I think that small towns have
a way of like in some respects pushing them behind you. Like you said at
the sports game, right? You didn't even know that you were in disagreement with these
folks. Exactly. Yeah. I sometimes like to use the
framing of bridging versus bonding social capital.
The idea is that you can form bonds with other people and they can either
be bonding, which is among people who are like you,
or bridging. Yes. Who is, you know, bridging social capital, which
is between people who are different than you. And so much
in our society is really pushing us to do a lot more
bonding social capital. But in rural places, you're really
much more forced to do that bridging social capital, right? Because you
are, you, you can't pick who's, who your neighbor happens to
be, right? And. But you want to necessarily, you know, keep up
relationships with that neighbor, because you're going to be living in this
place, theoretically, for, you know, many, many years. Right.
Sometimes I hear the adage about, like, shoveling snow, which is maybe a particularly, like,
upper Midwest analogy, but - Or, like, if you
go in the ditch, right? And I've gone in the ditch, I've had complete strangers
help me out. I think for a lot of rural places, it's, it's a
different kind of framing, right? Because it's, we're thinking about what the community
is and how to be a member of a, of a community where
you are a key player in it. They need you in that small town
to bring whatever gifts you have to do the work that that community
needs. Yeah, no, I agree. I often go back to Kathleen
Norris and her book Dakota and the way she talked about community as
kind of my, like, lens on that. You know, I think we have
run through our list of topics and we are close to the end of our
time. So, Christopher, this was a great conversation. I really
enjoyed it. Thanks, Heidi. So nice to hear from you. Same. This will be
really enjoyable to chat. Next time I'm out in Brown County, I will let
you know, it's been a minute. And I'm gonna go
find that poem, see what's up with the Pheasants in baseball.
I'll give you a heads up. It's not just about the baseball team. It's also
about, there's a crime about a century ago, kind of a notorious crime
that happened in Brown County. And so it's, I weave in some of that, too.
Okay. Now I'm even more interested. Just beware. It's got a trigger warning. All
right, wonderful. Thanks so much, Christopher.
I think hearing about all these different issues in rural America is really
important right now, and I think that hearing all the hope that
these guests are bringing is equally important. I truly agree
with you, Heidi. And, you know, we hope you learned something about
what it takes to live rural in this episode. And if there's something
you think we need, need to talk about, you know, you gotta let us know.
Yeah. We like to think that this is a podcast where we can
bring all kinds of discussions to rural America. So please
email us your thoughts. Our email address is
podcast@onecountryproject.org.
And you know, we're also on Bluesky and Substack, so
give us a follow and reach out there too. Thanks for joining us
today on the Hot Dish, which is brought to you by One Country Project,
making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard in Washington.
Learn more at onecountryproject.org. You know what? We're
going to be back in two weeks with more Hot Dish, comfort food for rural
America.