Russia Invades Ukraine

Last night, what many had feared for weeks came to pass – Russia invaded Ukraine.

The images of plumes of smoke and fleeing citizens are jarring and heartbreaking. A peaceful Democratic country is under assault from a hostile neighbor with designs of empire and millions of people are in fear for their lives.

The senseless destruction and loss of life – essentially because of one man, Vladimir Putin – is beyond comprehension. It feels like a return to an earlier era of history, reminiscent of the mid-20th century.

My friend Ian Bremmer calls the invasion ‘a turning point in the global order’ of a GZero world – that is a world without a dominant power or an international community that can enforce norms and behaviors. Nature abhors a vacuum, and rogue actors will fill it in different ways.

I remember back in 1990 – 32 years ago – when Iraq invaded Kuwait. There was an international response that culminated in the first Gulf War, when a coalition led by the United States expelled Iraq and liberated Kuwait.

Of course, there is a massive difference between Russia and Iraq, with Russia a nuclear power in command of one of the world’s largest military forces. Ukraine is itself a sizable country with a population of over 40 million.

What will the American response be? It feels, unfortunately, like Putin is taking advantage of a weakened and divided United States to advance his expansionist vision. There is little appetite for war, just months after a failed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

And yet, it seems clear that if Putin is allowed to invade and conquer Ukraine with impunity that his ambitions won’t stop there. Every other country with similar goals will also be emboldened to further its own plans, leading to more instability and conflict.

Putin has to pay a massive price. Will sanctions be enough?

This week on the podcast with Zach, I mentioned that Putin has been interfering with and subverting American democracy for years with little accountability. I suggested that most Americans could regard these as acts of hostility and aggression. Indeed, Russia could likely take credit for some of the division within America over the past decade.

In a just world, Putin’s aggression leads to massive consequences for him and his regime. Do we live in a just world? We have been groomed to believe so, but that belief is withering before our eyes with the dying dreams of the Ukrainian people.

The Boy Crisis

Hello, I hope that your weekend was great! On Friday night we had a viewing party of the Forward event in NYC – it was a blast and a joy to share with hundreds of people and relive the night. If you want you can access the recording for only a $10 donation to the Forward Party. I guarantee you will learn something and even laugh at the situation we find ourselves in.

This weekend I spoke at a tech conference, ETHDenver. I met some amazing entrepreneurs building fascinating offerings and communities as well as a lot of energetic young people. Big things are ahead for Web3.

A couple weeks ago I published an OpEd in the Washington Post about the struggles of boys and men. It received a lot of attention, including discussions in the national media.

But I’m far from the first person to sound the alarm regarding male struggles to develop and flourish. Warren Farrell, PhD and John Gray, PhD published ‘The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It’ several years ago and made a very powerful, data-driven case.

Warren and John write about a Path-to-Purpose Generation Gap for boys that leads to massive challenges. They hold that boys are told to value themselves for external attributes – strength and self-sacrifice, embodied in a heroic ideal – that end up running afoul of long-term Emotional Intelligence. This can be encapsulated in a pretty simple phrase: “I’m fine, leave me alone.” They also write about the high incidence of ADHD accompanied by medication.

The book explores why Dads are so important for boys; indeed the data shows that having a Dad is an enormous boost for outcomes from education to health to earnings to avoiding legal problems and incarceration. Dad-deprivation is, unfortunately, correlated to 70 negative data points for boys. Dads have a tendency to enforce boundaries in families in ways that aid development. They also tend to roughhouse and tease in manners that spur both empathy and resilience.

I interviewed Warren for the podcast this week – as you can imagine it was an absorbing conversation. Warren served on the board of directors of the National Organization of Women in New York for quite some time, so he’s something of a feminist. But during this time, he was exposed to many men and became equally passionate about their struggles.

Warren actually interviewed me along with other Democratic presidential candidates back in 2019. He noted that a couple candidates expressed interest in men’s issues, but didn’t want to say or do anything official because they feared it would turn off certain voters.

This is something that makes me very sad – it seems plainly obvious that boys and men succeeding is both a condition for a thriving society and would help everyone. I hope that the Forward Party becomes a voice and a force for both helping to recognize the depths and seriousness of the Boy Crisis and also pushes for real investment, commitment and solutions.

Lobby3

Hello, I hope that you’re having a great week!

Today on the podcast Zach and I announced Lobby3, a new effort to represent the Web3 community in DC.

As you know, I want to get rid of poverty. It was why I launched my presidential campaign and why, when I realized that our political parties were not designed to be effective, I launched a third party to advocate for democracy reform. Web3 technologies based on the blockchain have already created immense value for millions. I believe that this new iteration of the Internet could be an enormous tool to combat poverty at scale, and could give rise to a whole new generation of financial services that broaden opportunities in dramatic new ways.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to Web3 reaching this potential lies in regulators in DC deciding to opt more for managing risks than fueling innovation and growth. As it happens, I started an advocacy organization some time ago in D.C. to combat poverty. So I’ve decided to provide a platform and voice for members of the Web3 community to make the case to our leaders in D.C. that decentralized offerings could benefit everyone. If this is something you’d like to join us for, go to lobby3.io and let’s work on it!

Also on the podcast this week, Zach and I discuss the trucker convoy in Canada. Who would have imagined that our neighbors to the north would be dealing with this kind of protest before us? Those of you who have been keeping up with me for a while know that I’ve been writing and talking about a possible trucker convoy since 2018 in my book ‘The War on Normal People.’ I suggested that it would be in response to the automation of jobs, not vaccination requirements. Still, it’s a tough sign that some of the scenarios I’d imagined are now coming true.

My OpEd in the Washington Post about the struggles of men and boys continues to make waves. Morning Joe discussed it on Tuesday and press requests are rolling in. Next week on the podcast, we’ll talk to Warren Farrell, the author of “The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It.” I’m sure it will be a fascinating convo.

The problems are clear, but so are at least some of the solutions. Let’s do all we can to maximize and build on the good things that are happening out there.

- Andrew

Friday is the livestream premiere of my Forward Tour event in New York City! You can watch and chat with me live. Click here to join us, it will be a really fun event. I have very fond memories of that night and will be glad to relive it with you.

Darius Baxter and GoodProjects

Hello, hope all is great and that you had a wonderful Superbowl Sunday!  That game went down to the wire.  The Bengals had a storybook feel, but the Rams’ talent won out in the end. 
 
This week on the podcast I interviewed an outstanding young social entrepreneur, Darius Baxter.  Darius is the co-founder and CEO of GoodProjects, an anti-poverty organization in his native Washington D.C. 

Some of you know that I started a non-profit in 2011, Venture for America, that I ran for 6 years.  Darius and I have a lot in common, though his trajectory is a lot more impressive than mine. 
 
Darius grew up in tough circumstances with a single Mom in Washington D.C.  He credits playing football with developing his grit and getting him a scholarship to Georgetown.  His time at Georgetown led him to working on the Bernie campaign and to social entrepreneurship.  GoodProjects is now a multi-million dollar organization and Darius has received awards and accolades for his work. 
 
GoodProjects has a very clearly defined mission – to elevate the income of 500 families in D.C.’s largest public housing project to $80,000 a year; the average in the community is only $14,000 per year, significantly below the poverty line.  GoodProjects does this in part by pairing families with Family Success Coaches, who help partners access opportunities and sustain a positive mindset. 
 
According to Darius, having someone knock on your door and tell you that you can achieve a goal leads to more confidence and better actions.  Darius compares it to having a personal trainer; you push harder, sometimes harder than you thought possible.  The growth mindset is a huge part of staying optimistic and breaking through.    
 
Said Darius, “There are two types of people out there: energy-givers and energy-takers.  You want to be an energy-giver.”   
 
Darius is a big believer in the potential of Web3 technologies to fight poverty.  “Poverty is a social construct that doesn’t need to exist . . . financial technologies that have been created recently, [like] cryptocurrencies and the utilization of Web3 is . . . how we can do it, it obviously allows us to do it at a much quicker and more efficient pace.”  I love Darius’s vision and want to help make it a reality not just for his community but for millions. 
 
It was phenomenal sitting down with Darius – I hope that you listen to the convo.  And if GoodProjects is the kind of cause that you’d like to see succeed, you can support them here. 
 
I like to think big while keeping my eye on the steps in front of me. Let’s move the world forward, one family – or one neighborhood – at a time.  
 
- Andrew
 
Friday is the livestream premiere of my Forward Tour event in New York City!  You can watch and chat with me live.  Click here to join us, it will be a really fun event.  Have a great week!    

The Lesson From California

Hello, I hope your week has been going great! First a few pieces of news:

The Washington Post published my Op-Ed on the struggles of men and boys. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback for calling attention to such a widespread issue.

The Forward Party in Minnesota just launched! Our first official state party is up and running. Let your friends in Minnesota know, and more states are coming soon.

Also, for those of you who wanted to attend the Forward Tour but didn’t, the video from our New York event is being premiered next Friday via livestream! It should be a really fun group watching occasion.

This week on the podcast Zach and I talked about a few things, including the lesson out of California last week.

For a bit of background, progressives in California have been running on single-payer healthcare for years, and Gavin Newsom ran for Governor on it as well. Democrats enjoy a supermajority (75%) of state legislators. So if there’s anyplace it would have a strong chance to pass, it would be in the Golden State.

Unfortunately, it never even came to a vote. It was derailed by a furious effort on the part of health insurance lobbyists in tandem with moderate Democrats. This was considered a major blow.

I’ve been for some version of single-payer healthcare for years. I met literally thousands of Americans struggling with a lack of access over the last several years.

Seeing it fail in California in this way sent a powerful message – even when Democrats are exclusively in control, they can’t pass a plan because of corporate influence and money preventing it.

I’ve concluded something similar about Universal Basic Income; the duopoly won’t pass a robust version of it because they don’t have to deliver results to stay in power. Actually, quite the opposite, as a lot of corporate interests don’t want anything to change.

That’s what drove me to start the Forward Party – we have to reform the system itself in order for anything real and fundamental to change that will improve people’s lives.

Often, people from one party will say, “If we had a majority we would deliver!” and blame the other side for any inability to get things done. But in California, there’s no one to blame but the party in power. If our politics don’t change, nothing will.

The data are clear: The boys are not all right

This op-ed ran in the Washington Post on 2/8/22.

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Here is one of the biggest problems facing America: Boys and men across all regions and ethnic groups have been failing, both absolutely and relatively, for years. This is catastrophic for our country.

The data are clear. Boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; are five times as likely to spend time in juvenile detention; and are less likely to finish high school.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get better when boys become adults. Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students. Male community college enrollment declined by 14.7 percent in 2020 alone, compared with 6.8 percent for women. Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.

Economic transformation has been a big contributor. More than two-thirds of manufacturing workers are men; the sector has lost more than 5 million jobs since 2000. That’s a lot of unemployed men. Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicide, overdose and alcoholism — have surged to unprecedented levels among middle-aged men over the past 20 years.

Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.

Many boys are thus often growing up raised by single mothers, the share more than doubling between 1980 and 2019, from 18 percent to 40 percent. A study from 2015 found that “as more boys grow up without their father in the home, and as women … are viewed as the more stable achievers, boys and girls alike [may] come to see males as having a lower achievement orientation. … College becomes something that many girls, but only some boys, do.”

Yes, men have long had societal advantages over women and in some ways continue to be treated favorably. But male achievement — alongside that of women — is a condition for a healthy society. And male failure begets male failure, to society’s detriment. Our media, institutions and public leadership have failed to address this crisis, framing boys and men as the problem themselves rather than as people requiring help.

This needs to change. Helping boys and men succeed should be a priority for all our society’s institutions. Schools that have succeeded in keeping boys on track should be expanded, by both increasing the number of students they serve and exporting their methods to other schools. Vocational education and opportunities should be redoubled; the nation’s public school system should start the process for early age groups, and apprenticeship programs should be supported by the federal government. Nonprofits helping boys and men — such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the YMCA — should receive more investment.

Resources that keep families together when they want to stay together, such as marriage counseling, should be subsidized by the government — a much more cost-efficient approach than dealing with the downstream effects. The enhanced child tax credit should be renewed, helping stabilize families.

Drives for national service and contribution, such as an American Exchange Program or national service years, should be resuscitated. And businesses and industries that employ large numbers of men, such as manufacturing, should be invested in and reinvigorated.

On a cultural level, we must stop defining masculinity as necessarily toxic and start promoting positive masculinity. Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well.

The above is, of course, a prodigious undertaking. But I see the need around me all the time.

A number of my friends have become detached from society. Everyone hits a snag at some point — losing a job, facing a divorce — but my male friends seem less able to bounce back. Male dysfunction tends to take on an air of nihilism and dropping out. As a society, we don’t provide many avenues for healthy recovery.

Here’s the simple truth I’ve heard from many men: We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves. We deal with idleness terribly.

“A man … with no means of filling up time,” George Orwell wrote, is “as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain.” Left to our own devices, many of us will fail. And from our failure, terrible things result for the country, well beyond any individual self-destruction.

The Meaning of Life

Hello, I hope you are doing great! 

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Arthur Brooks this week.  Arthur is a Harvard professor and author of the popular Atlantic column “How to Build a Life.”  His new book is entitled “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.” 
 

Arthur has spent years studying what makes us happy.  His book is fascinating. He posits how most of us start to slow down professionally, typically in our 40s and 50s.  Our fluid intelligence – processing speed – dulls.  We push harder and harder and get frustrated that we aren’t quite as fast and productive.  At the same time, our successes have diminishing returns on our emotional state.  He describes an incredibly accomplished man in the twilight of his life who is miserable and feels like a complete failure. 
 

But there’s a second intelligence curve that grows as the other diminishes – crystallized intelligence.  It’s when you can take different data points and put them together into a picture and then convey it simply to others.  It makes one a better coach, or mentor, or teacher. Some might call it wisdom.  That curve goes up as fluid intelligence goes down.  
 

Arthur advises finding a way to get on this different curve.  He took his own advice, becoming a professor and author and stepping away from running a very prestigious thinktank in D.C. 
 

What makes people happy as they age?  Relationships and feeling useful.  The most important things are real friendships and close family relationships.  Real friendships are those that are intrinsic – no value changes hands except for the friendship itself. 
 

There's a lot more.  I read Arthur’s book with great interest.  I just turned 47.  I’ve made a few major professional switches myself.  Unhappy attorney, failed entrepreneur, startup CEO, nonprofit founder, presidential candidate, political figure, etc.  I pride myself in being able to shift gears.  
 

At the same time, as one’s responsibilities grow, making a change is that much harder.  And I sometimes have found myself too tired to be truly present for friends and even family this past number of years.  With each example, I’ve thought, “Well, this will pass after the campaign is over.”  But there is always another figurative campaign or urgent project or timeline.   
 

Arthur’s book closes with some word to live by: 

Use things.

Love people.

Worship the divine. 

He says that we often mess up the order into:

Use people.

Love things.

Worship ourselves. 

He also believes that politics has taken the place of the divine or spiritual for far too many Americans who are looking for meaning.  It's one thing that's driving polarization.   
 

One of his findings is that people often either discover or rediscover their relationship with God or spirituality as they age.  This happened with his wife who re-engaged with her own faith.  This was news to me, but it makes sense.  Religion has taken on a bigger role in my life now that I have a family.  And as you get older, the meaning of life adopts a different type of urgency. 
 

I found Arthur to be a very wise man.  There's much more to his point-of-view.  Check out my interview with him here and you can buy his latest book here. 
 

I try to take action when I learn something new.  My immediate adjustment in seeking the meaning of life?  Call my Mom more often.  

Quentin Palfrey

Hello Massachusetts! It was always a blast campaigning in MA these past years.

One reason I enjoyed my visits is that I would stop by and see my high school classmate Quentin Palfrey, who is now running for Attorney General in MA! He just announced today. Quentin is exactly the kind of person you hope runs for office: smart, principled, high-integrity, and motivated solely by a spirit of service. I’ve known Quentin for over 30 years and he has been the same person the entire time. He was kind of straight-laced as a teenager.

You know your friend who started the tutoring service for underprivileged kids? That was Quentin. He was also very proud of where he grew up.

Today, he’s the father to three lovely young kids. It’s a very busy household. Quentin has been Assistant District Attorney in MA, an official in both the Obama and Biden administrations, and a non-profit founder. The entire time he’s been trying to have as positive impact as he can, either in Massachusetts or for the entire country.

I’m supporting his run for Attorney General and I hope that you consider doing the same. You can check out his launch video here and also donate and volunteer. I promise you that Quentin is the real deal. Imagine having an Attorney General who wakes up every day looking to do as much good as possible. With your help, that will happen in MA when Quentin wins later this year! Let's make it happen!

Your excited out-of-stater,

- Andrew

I feel so strongly about this that I’ll be headlining an event for Quentin in the coming days so keep an eye out!

The Next Civil War

Happy Chinese New Year! I hope you celebrate the same way Evelyn and I did – a delicious night out with family and friends at a local restaurant.

This week on the podcast I interviewed Stephen Marche, the author of the fascinating and painstakingly well-researched “The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future.” Stephen started his book after attending the Trump inauguration. As you likely know, the subject matter is near and dear to my heart.

I’ve been concerned about political unrest and societal disintegration wrought in part by the polarization of America for years. Stephen puts a firmer stance behind it – “It’s a matter of how it happens, not whether it happens.”

First the numbers. Stephen uses a definition from the Peace Research Institute Oslo that a Civil War has broken out when there are 1,000 political combatant deaths per year. Have their been deaths born of political violence in the U.S, these past years? It turns out domestic anti-government extremists in the US killed between 37 and 72 people per year from 2015 – 2019, before the January 6th insurrection. So we are about 3-7% of the way to Civil War right now. Incidentally, 25+ deaths per year from political violence is categorized as ‘civil strife.’

Stephen categorizes the United States as being particularly prone to political unrest as an ‘anocracy,’ which is defined as a semi-democracy or a regime that mixes democratic and autocratic features. “True democracies don’t have revolutions. Neither do autocracies, which suppress them. But America right now is in a middle ground, neither truly democratic or autocratic.”

This definition may seem extreme to you – is the U.S. not the world’s most storied democracy? Unfortunately our democracy is rife with problems that more and more Americans are waking up to: a two-party system that locks out different points of view with both parties awash in special interest money. 85% of Congressional districts are safely blue or red and are effectively decided by 10% of voters, further stifling the will of the vast majority. Polarized media organizations trumpet different versions of reality separating people into tribal camps. One reason so many people are now concerned about a possible shift to authoritarianism is that our two-party system is uniquely vulnerable to it in a way that other nations’ more representative systems are not. The Forward Party is geared to help change that.

How does Stephen imagine Civil War being catalyzed? He paints a detailed set of scenarios, all of which are plausible because they are based on things that have either happened already in some form or experts expect to happen soon. U.S. armed forces taking up arms against anti-government militias on American soil. Lone wolves radicalized into teenage assassins. Social order swamped by the ravages of climate change. Secessionist movements moving from the margins into the mainstream. Indeed, Stephen wrote a chapter on a January 6th-type insurrection before it happened, thus requiring significant edits to the book.

Some of you read my book ‘The War on Normal People’ which painted a picture of a decaying society torn apart by technological automation and economic marginalization. “The Next Civil War” is in many ways a portrait of how this process could play out politically. I think that we will experience some version of the near future that Stephen presents – the question is how will our institutions respond, and is the American political system itself capable of evolving? We will certainly become either much more autocratic or democratic in the coming months – millions of us would vastly prefer the latter. We need to make the case to our fellow Americans that a genuinely multi-party system and more real representation is the necessary antidote to polarization and Civil War.
​

- Andrew

2024 – Trump vs. the Field

Greetings from Houston, where I gave a talk last night for the Forward Tour! We had a phenomenal time. Being out and about made me excited about my next trip.

This past week I sat down with Marianne Williamson, a friend from the trail. She talked about the Democratic Party, third parties, 2024 and much more. You can see the conversation here.

My conversation with Marianne helped shift my thinking. For a while now I’ve been projecting a Trump vs. Biden rematch in 2024. Now I believe it’s going to be Trump vs. the Field.

Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party is as strong now as it was several months ago – perhaps stronger given that time has passed and no new rival has emerged. He held his first major rally in Arizona last week and was clearly testing out attack lines for 2024. His campaign machine is already running to the tune of well over $100 million. Some of his potential rivals are bending the knee and saying they won’t run against him. I believe his strongest opponent will be Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland who is term-limited. Right now the heavy favorite is Trump.

On the other side, I used to think it was going to be Biden because he’s the incumbent who beat Trump and the Democrats would want to avoid a fractious primary. But there have been a few developments that have changed my mind. First, Joe’s weakness has continued – his approval is mired in the low 40s, even in the 30s by some polling. Stacey Abrams declining to show up to a voting rights event in Georgia with Joe struck me as shocking. Build Back Better has stalled. His address on the filibuster was pre-empted by Kyrsten Sinema and the Senate was all sent home after being told they’d be working on election legislation all weekend. Deference to Joe is dissipating.

Second, there has been increasing unease from large DNC donors. One donor told me that several funders were openly talking about sitting out the next cycle until they knew what/who they were backing. Another suggested that donors were trying to figure out who to coalesce around as a new candidate in 2024. If donors are talking this way, they certainly have multiple candidates-in-waiting who are thinking this way.

Third, I’ve now heard from at least a couple people who are considering mounting a challenge. Nature abhors a vacuum. So does politics. As the sense deepens that Joe may not run for a 2nd term, people are beginning to prepare their own runs for 2024.

I thought that we’d have until the midterms in November. But now I think it’s going to get pushed up to earlier in the year, in part because Trump is so clearly the Republican frontrunner.

When I ran for President in 2020, Democratic Primary voters had one threshold question for candidates – “Who can beat Donald Trump?” It was the central question, and it was why Joe Biden became the nominee.

It seems that voters will be asking themselves that question again, and trying to figure out if Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren or someone else from among a host of new candidates (e.g., Kyrsten Sinema, JB Pritzker) can convincingly answer “I can.” Keep an eye on JB Pritzker as one of the only mainstream Dems who can self-finance.

I also believe there will be at least one 3rd party candidate who declares in 2022, in part because of Joe’s weakness, a desire for an alternative to Trump and the hazy Democratic field.

Joe Biden emerged from a scrum of a race to take on Trump. It feels like yesterday. But the next scrum will be here before we know it.