The Good Life Movement

Hello, I hope that you are doing great. The Forward Party is sending volunteers to communities around the country to support some awesome candidates – I’ll be heading to Utah to campaign for Evan McMullin later this week! Want to join in? Click here to volunteer.

I’ve been an enormous proponent of mental health for decades – I saw a counselor as a teenager and my brother works in the field as a professor. When I was running for President I encountered hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who were struggling.

How do we turn this around? I thought abolishing poverty would help. Studies bear out the fact that money influences your happiness a lot if you’re stressed with day-to-day needs and make below a certain amount. My presidential campaign became a feel-good movement for some who loved the idea of putting buying power into people’s hands.

I hope that the Forward Party can become a positive, uplifting movement and community for people who want a different, more humanizing approach to politics. The connection between people, families and our well-being and what is actually being legislated has been broken. Restoring it is our best hope.

This week on the podcast I interview Andrew Frawley, who is starting a movement to advocate for mental health – The Good Life Movement. “There is a mental health crisis in America. Everyone knows it. After COVID-19, everyone seems to care about it. So, why are we not seeing a major political presence for mental health? Why are we not seeing major legislative reform? Many people think the problem is that we do not have the science or policy to transform our mental health. This is not true. While there is more research to do, we know more than enough to improve outcomes and save lives.”

He’s certainly right on about the depths of the problem. One in five American adults experiences a mental illness annually. Depression is worsening and is now 10 times more common than it was 50 years ago. Suicide is now a top 10 leading cause of death. Fundamentally, people are dispirited. 25% of Americans say they do not have a strong sense of meaning in their lives and 58% say they are lonely.

We know there’s a problem that millions of people are both affected by and passionate about.

"The reality is that the mental health crisis is like a house on fire. And with mental health care the way it is, it's like we haven't even built the fire department." Andrew is also right that there are many things that we could do that would help people live better lives. These range from teaching social and emotional learning in school to equal insurance coverage of therapy and mental health services or expanding the suite of urgent care services to include things like mobile crisis teams. "To end the crisis, though, we must think bigger and stop individualizing societal problems," Andrew says. “Health care itself only explains a small portion of our health outcomes. We must rebuild our communities by focusing on meaning, social determinants, and whole person solutions." This means that The Good Life Movement could also make a case for measures like the Child Tax Credit or more park spaces or paid family leave.

“Mental health is bi-partisan and resoundingly popular because everyone is affected by mental health issues, whatever your politics, whether you’re rural or urban, military veterans to kids,” Andrew says. “Despite this, our leaders are lethargic. The main thing that’s missing is thousands of people taking action to pressure politicians to pass legislation they already have. That’s what The Good Life Movement can provide. Think March for Our Lives for mental health. It's shocking but no one is doing this.”

I personally love the idea of millions of Americans advocating for common sense measures that would lead our people to live better lives. It’s not coming from within our current politics, because we are meant to blame each other and clash only on certain litmus test issues. Mental health has the chance to be a unifying issue that can bring people together. How our kids and our families are doing ought to be the point of our policy. What is keeping us from living the Good Life, indeed, and how can we change it? It will start with us and other everyday Americans.

To support Andrew or find out more, go to GoodLifeMovement.org.

To check out volunteer opportunities at Forward Party, click here – I’m heading to Utah this week!

Liberalism and Its Discontents

Hello, I hope all is great on your end. This week I was in D.C. for an American Promise event trying to get dark money out of politics. I also hosted an event for Evan McMullin, whom I see as one of the most important candidates in November.

Today on the podcast, I interview Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University, one of the most prominent political scientists in the country. I’ve admired Frank’s work for years and cited him in my book ‘Forward’, which comes out on paperback tomorrow. His most recent book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, puts forward an important case.

Frank argues that classical liberalism – the institutions that arose to govern diverse societies to avoid conflicts over religion and nationalism – is now under assault from both left and right. “[Classical] liberalism lowers the temperature of politics by taking questions of final ends off the table: you can believe what you want, but you must do so in private life and not seek to impose your views on your fellow citizens . . . the most fundamental principle enshrined in liberalism is one of tolerance: you do not have to agree with your fellow citizens about most important things, only that each individual should get to decide what they are without interference from you or the state.” In America, classical liberalism takes the form of the Constitution, the rule of law, Congress, the courts and other mediating institutions.

Today, classical liberalism is being challenged all over the world. “Modern democracies are facing a deep cognitive crisis,” Frank writes. “If the US doesn’t fix its underlying structural problems, it will not be able to compete effectively with the world’s rising authoritarian powers.”

On the left, classical liberalism faces a series of critiques, many of which are born of the contemporary version of identity politics, which originated in academic circles. Frank writes that earlier popular movements began as attempts to have liberalism live up to its own ideals to include, for example, the rights of women, African Americans, the LGBTQ+ community and others. Most prominently, the Civil Rights movement was about reforming institutions to include those that they should have included decades earlier. These were positive movements that helped institutions advance and evolve.

These movements on the left, however, have more recently morphed and shifted to instead assail institutions as irredeemably racist or biased and unable to address prevailing inequities. Instead of seeking equal treatment while accepting the institution’s ability to improve, the new approach is to attack and undermine and leave little hope for progress.

The elevation of various identity groups above any other consideration or affiliation eats away at one of the core premises of classical liberalism. “At the heart of the liberal project is an assumption about human equality that when you strip away the customs and accumulated cultural baggage that each one of us carries there is an underlying moral core that all human beings share and can recognize,” Frank writes. Liberalism assumes that we are all fundamentally equal and deserving of equal consideration.

On the right, there has been both an assault on the veracity of institutions – think election deniers - as well as those who have prioritized overriding economic freedom in the face of public well-being, even when practices have run afoul of any other consideration. “There is no reason why economic efficiency needs to trump all other social values,” Frank writes. Indeed, some of the triumphs of liberalism involved the cultivation of broad-based economic prosperity after World War II, some of which involved deliberate policies.

Most fundamentally, some on the right now argue that liberalism’s separation of the state from religion reduces the impact and meaning of nationhood – even though managing diversity of faith was one of the original purposes of the liberal order.

Frank ends his book – and our conversation – with a call for institutions to modernize and adapt to contemporary circumstances while also championing a belief that both classical liberalism and its principles remain the best hope for diverse societies to thrive.

I agree with Frank that we must indeed try to improve and upgrade our institutions while remaining optimistic about their ability to evolve.

Some see the Forward Party as simply a challenge to the existing order. It is actually a popular movement to modernize our institutions and political system to live up to their ideals for all of our sakes. It reflects a very deep belief in our ability to evolve with the times – because the alternative is one we do not want to experience.

Want to help Forward? Join the movement here!

For my interview of Frank click here. Forward comes out on paperback Tuesday!

Longpath

What an incredible event in Houston! Hundreds of people came together to celebrate the formation of Forward Texas and our national launch. It genuinely felt historic and it was wonderful to meet so many active and fired up volunteers and leaders from all over the country.

Between now and Election Day we will be getting out to support candidates and ballot initiatives as well as working to gain ballot access in15 states. If the people in Houston were any sign we are the team to do it!

This week on the podcast I interview futurist Ari Wallach, who wrote the book “Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs, An Antidote for Short-Termism.” I’m passionate about trying to move our policies away from continuous reactivity and short-term thinking, and Ari makes a compelling case on how to move toward thinking bigger.

Ari believes we are in a period of dramatic transition that will ‘reset the defaults of how we think and operate as human beings,’ similar to the Enlightenment or the First Industrial Age. It’s a period of ‘both crazy creativity and crazy danger.’ He writes: “All around us we see that the old ways of being and doing no longer work . . . meanwhile, we also see new, positive ways of thinking, doing, behaving and organizing popping up . . . the old ways are dying hard deaths, but the new ways are still in the process of being born, and being in the in-between can sort of suck.”

Ari posits – as we all know – that short-term stresses dominate today, in part because of social media. “Our short term tendencies are getting worse . . . The rapid pace of technological development exacerbates presentism . . . [our] brains become so addicted to the dopamine rush that “ding!” offers them that it takes more and more to satisfy them. The brain is in a perpetual stance of awaiting the next hit.”

Ari’s appeal is the opposite - Longpath wants us to embrace long-term empathetic thinking that prioritizes future generations. Many will come after us, after all. “We need to focus on a vision of the future that’s very much about the humans we want to be – the pro-social intergenerational way of being and feeling in the world that we spread through our everyday actions.” Ari emphasizes individual behavior as much or more than macro change; in this way Longpath becomes something of an approach to living your life as opposed to advocating for a specific policy shift.

Ari’s stance reminds me of a talk by the writer Sebastian Junger I attended recently, where he instructed everyone to throw their smartphones in the nearest body of water. We laughed but I think he was serious.

The other big principle of Longpath is that the future is fluid, not fixed, and we should be deliberate in trying to determine not just what lies ahead but our purpose. Why do we do what we do? What is the future that we want? “The unexamined future is not worth fighting for,” Ari writes. He also says that the 'official future' that we are presented with is not something that we should accept, especially given that it tends to be more dystopian than the opposite.

I agree with that – the idea of a movement of people who are both thinking and acting with the long term in mind is just what we need to move our trajectory in a more positive direction. Ari compares this tribe of long-term thinkers to a trim tab that turns a submarine by redirecting the flow of water: “If you’re willing to go against the flow, a very small change can turn something very big around.”

I hope that Ari's book helps bring people together and get them thinking both bigger and longer-term. Let's plan on being here for a while and being positive about what's ahead. It starts with a plan.

Can Forward move us toward a better future? Click here to join us and find out.

The Return of Facts

‘Forward’ comes out on paperback on October 4th!  Here is a never-before-published excerpt from the book.  I hope you enjoy it and will consider buying a copy! 

The Return of Facts

I ran for president on a platform of eradicating poverty. In order to compete, I became a character that was at first marginalized and has now been normalized.

There have been times when I’ve felt like the Black Mirror character in the episode “Fifteen Million Merits,” where the protagonist played by Daniel Kaluuya rages against the system and is then given a weekly TV show, plugging into the system again in a different way.

At the beginning of my presidential campaign, way back in October 2018, I spoke at an Iowa Democratic event, the Johnson County Democrats’ BBQ fundraiser. It was billed as a gathering of potential presidential candidates, though I was the only candidate who had actually declared: the speakers were Tulsi Gabbard, the Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington, and me.

I spoke directly after Jeff Merkley. His speech had a series of applause lines invoking health care, drug companies, Betsy DeVos, Brett Kavanaugh, separating children from families at the border, internment camps, climate change, voter suppression, corruption, Democratic majorities, and blue-collar working families, among other topics.

My introduction was not great: the county supervisor said to the crowd, “Keep an open mind, there may be twenty-five candidates running, it’s our job to start weeding them out. This man has some very interesting ideas.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement. I delivered my usual remarks about automation, a transforming economy, and universal basic income. My speech cited several facts about Iowa and job loss: the state had already lost forty thousand manufacturing jobs and twelve thousand retail jobs. The country’s largest truck stop—Iowa 80—was in Walcott, Iowa. What happens when the trucks drive themselves? I got very limited applause; my main applause lines were when I referenced health care and the value of parents.

I walked offstage thinking, “Huh, did I not do a great job? Am I not a fit for this state?” In most cases politicians are communicating with their most active partisans in the most activating language possible. They are throwing out a red meat list of issues they know will elicit a fiery response.

A year later I would give a similar speech in Iowa at the Liberty and Justice Dinner at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines for about fourteen thousand people. By then, attendees were able to shout answers to my questions.

“One state has had something like universal basic income since 1982,” I proclaimed. “And what state is that?”

“Alaska!”

“And how do they pay for it?”

“Oil!”

“And what is the oil of the twenty-first century?”

“Technology!”

Eventually, my facts had become symbols that brought with them their own responses. I had managed to introduce a new language and new applause lines to the people of Iowa. It had taken a year.

I’ve had thousands of conversations with Americans of all political backgrounds. If you sit down with the average person and ask a question like “Hey, do you think prescription drug prices are too high?” or “Do you think you should have health care even if you lose your job?” most people will agree with you regardless of their political affiliation. But if you use loaded terms like “Do you think we should have socialized medicine?” that have been coded as negative, many people will dislike it intensely.

Michael Grunwald wrote in Politico in 2020, “There is a line of thinking that America has entered a kind of postmodern political era where the appearance of governing is just as politically powerful as actual governing, because most Americans now live in partisan spin bubbles that insulate them from facts on the ground.” Passing laws, solving problems, and measuring impacts don’t matter anymore. You can simply argue for your version of reality and aligned media outlets will trumpet and reinforce that narrative to your people. Value statements and virtue signaling have assumed the role of laws and policy for many in the day-to-day back-and-forth of cable news.

Instead of achieving results, our leaders are asked to demonstrate the correct moral approach by evincing sadness or anger, invoking certain words and issues, and inveighing against the excesses of the other side. Speaking to a group is now an enormous expression of alignment or allegiance. Neither side can pass laws, so we are reduced to warring languages and symbols.

The former Michigan congressman Justin Amash observed of fellow members of Congress in 2020 that there is now a “performative aspect” to their activities and “the sad truth is that the majority of them prefer this system . . . If they bend the knee to leadership, say we’ll go along with whatever show you’re doing, you’re putting on the Democrat Show, you’re putting on the Republican Show . . . As long as they play along and do the performance, they are taken care of, they’re babied.”

In his book The Righteous Mind the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt tried to answer a fundamental question: Why is it that well-meaning people can disagree so violently when it comes to politics? He argues that there are six fundamental human values that cross all cultures and constitute our universal sense of morality: caring, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Haidt posits and observes that people on the progressive side of politics naturally use arguments that emphasize the values of caring and fairness: “Every child deserves a quality public education” or “Women should have equal rights.” Conservatives acknowledge caring and fairness but are much more likely to make appeals to loyalty, authority, and sanctity: “Protect our troops,” “Respect law enforcement,” or “Preserve American families and values.”

You can see this dynamic play out in issue after issue. When it comes to separating children from their parents at the southern border, progressives are outraged at the shocking mistreatment of families. Conservatives are more likely to question why immigrants are breaking the law by entering the country illegally. The first point of view is about caring and empathy. The second is about authority.

Haidt argues that conservatives’ ability to use and appeal to all six values gives them a broader moral palette that gives them an advantage in political communication. They can hit more varied notes that ring true to different types of people.

Case in point: I remember sitting in the waiting room before one Fox News appearance watching the programming before I was to be interviewed. The hosts were showing images of the remains of soldiers arriving back in the States on a flight from Afghanistan after being killed by an explosive device. The MSNBC stories while I was waiting in their greenroom were generally about Trump officials’ malfeasance or families separated at the border. There is a specific symbolic language that works for people on each side. Fox News ratings are typically about 60 percent higher than MSNBC’s or CNN’s; more Americans self-identify as conservatives and enjoy appeals to loyalty, authority, and sanctity than caring and fairness.

Our media organizations relentlessly push us into tribes with our own applause lines and sources of outrage. Our leaders are transformed into characters to either cheer or boo, to catalog their steps or missteps. We are degenerating into a set of characters in a play, with the media mapping our relative rise and fall while our communities at home fall apart. As the author Philip Howard put it, we are playing games of “You lose, I lose,” passing the ball back and forth while the people lose no matter what.

While campaigning for president, I met many people who voted for Donald Trump; this group includes some family members of mine. The vast majority of them struck me as good people. Many seemed open to supporting me or at least listening to me because I adopted a language that was neutral in their view; it wasn’t coded either positively or negatively. It was for the most part just numbers and economic trends. Later, a January 2020 survey of my supporters indicated that 42 percent of them weren’t planning on supporting the Democratic nominee if I didn’t win the nomination. I was using a different terminology and moral language and thus reached people who weren’t traditionally Democratic or, in many cases, even political.

I awakened a significant group of people who were not politically engaged. In the book Open Versus Closed, the political psychologists Christopher Johnston, Howard Lavine, and Christopher Federico tested responsiveness to various political opinions among those who did not follow politics. They found that disengaged citizens had less of a fixed political identity based upon their psychological profile. They were more pragmatic and practical when presented with a question. They reacted to a policy by trying to answer “what will this policy do for me?” They heard “$1,000 a month” and did the math.

Meanwhile, those who are more politically attentive were more likely to try to answer “what will supporting this policy say about me?” They are joining a group.

This indicates something very important—that political engagement ends up forming an allegiance based on perceived values and identity as opposed to perceived advantage or disadvantage of a policy. If you watch a lot of Fox or MSNBC or listen to conservative radio, you actually get pushed into tribes that are completely distinct from how you might be affected by, say, a tax cut. It’s one reason why some voters seem to “vote against their own interests”; they define their interests based on what their vote says about them rather than what they think their vote will do for them.

My appeal—which struck many partisans as ridiculous initially—was to say we should give everyone enough money to get by. The politically disengaged heard this and responded, “Hey, that would help me a lot.” This appeal was initially dismissed because it didn’t fall into an existing group narrative or language structure. But eventually this idea made headway among the more engaged as well.

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‘Forward’ comes out on paperback on October 4th – get your copy today!

Democrat to Forward

Hello, I hope all is great with you! I spent this week in Wyoming at a Democracy conference – it’s like walking onto the set of Yellowstone the moment you get off the plane. I recommend it.

Some fun news – Forward comes out on paperback on October 4th! I used to wait until books came out on paperback before picking up a copy myself.

Perhaps most exciting - over 1,000 people have signed up for the Forward Kickoff in Houston on September 24th!  Let your friends in Texas know that’s the place to be this Saturday.  It’s on! 
 
I left the Democratic Party almost a year ago.  I didn’t think much of it at the time – I simply changed my voter registration to ‘Independent’ and wrote a blog post.  I did this because I had become convinced that what was needed was structural reform that would not happen from within the two-party system. 
 
I was surprised at the reaction.  Headlines were written.  People I didn’t know seemed to project all sorts of strange things onto me.  The tribalism was evident. 
 
In some ways, the reaction made me feel more confident that I was doing the right thing.  One friend I admire a great deal called me to express his appreciation.  I felt that the right people would see what I was building with Forward and would come to join the effort. 
 
It was true.  Phenomenal people have come to help.  One of the most important is Kait Saier, whom I interview on the podcast this week. 
 
Kait grew up in Kentucky and came to politics the hard way – through personal tragedy.  Her brother was shot in the head when she was 18 years old.  “I was always a Democrat, even growing up in Kentucky.  But it became personal to me after what my family went through.”  Part of her work was with Everytown for Gun Safety pushing for sensible gun violence prevention policies.  She also worked for a senior member of Congress and a Democratic governor, spending a decade in Democratic politics as a fundraiser. 
 
Why did she consider leaving? “I didn’t feel like I was making a positive difference.  I saw the dysfunction of the system up close. I said I’d give the Democrats one more cycle, one more cycle but it kept getting worse, not better. I saw that if they had a choice between a messaging bill that wouldn’t pass but would win a press cycle versus a compromise that might help people, they would choose the messaging bill.  Things like that would happen over and over again.  There are good people who came to it for the right reasons, but the system isn’t rewarding solving problems or helping people.  It’s rewarding politics as usual and blaming it on others. I just couldn’t keep doing it and still feel true to myself.” 
 
Kait goes on,  “I still have tons of friends and family here in Kentucky.  I felt all of the time like I was having to try and fight to include the perspective of someone like me who maybe grew up in a reddish part of the country around people who might be working class.  I would get into arguments about language and approaches all of the time. It became exhausting.  I went to school in New York and lived in Boston so I’ve seen both sides.  There really is a bubble.” 
 
Still, it wasn’t an easy decision.  “It was terrifying to leave the Democratic Party because I had spent a decade building a career, and I need to make a living.  I need a job.  People called me trying to discourage me or even intimidate me.  Some said things like, ‘I would never have the guts to do that.’  But I reflected on why I got into politics in the first place – to help people.  And I became convinced that Forward is exactly what the country needs.” 
 
When Kait reached out, our little team was thrilled.  Kait and I have traveled the country together for months making the case for Forward.  We have roadtripped in a tiny rental car (her choice) and almost went on a hot air balloon ride.  She’s great at her work and also a joy to spend time with.  I’m grateful to her for doing what she thought was right for the country. And, I’ll confess, I feel a certain responsibility to make sure that she never feels like she made the wrong decision. 
 
On that front, people like you who have helped.  “I’ve been in politics for a long time, and I’ve never seen energy and people like this.  People want it.  I wake up every day feeling good about what I’m doing.  I haven’t regretted it a single minute.” 
 
Let’s keep building the movement that Kait wanted to see when she joined. 
 
Click here to get your copy of Forward on paperback and here for the Houston event info on the 24th!  Or click here to join Forward and check out the Forward chapter in your area. 

Getting More Out Of Life

Hello, I hope the Fall is off to a great start!  I visited St. Louis this past week and met with Forward Party volunteers to kick-off Forward Missouri.  It was awesome. 

This week on the podcast I interview Bill Perkins, poker champion and investor about his book “Die With Zero: Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life.”  Bill has a unique and compelling perspective. 

“What are the Key Performance Indicators for your life? I talk to businesspeople who know exactly whether their operation or division is succeeding, but if you ask them how to measure their own success, they have no idea.”

Bill’s Rule #1 is simple but profound: Maximize your positive life experiences. Bill asserts that our lives are the sum total of our experiences, and we should be pursuing positive ones whatever that means to us individually. He also puts forward a new idea: Memories Pay Dividends. That is, if you have an awesome experience, it actually gives you value later to reflect on it, tell your friends about it, cherish it, etc.

One implication to this is that there’s a right time to have different experiences, and in many cases you’re better served trying to pull it forward. “There’s a right time to do certain things, and if you miss it you don’t get the same value from it.” Travel in particular is something you might enjoy more when you’re in your twenties and can do so with fewer responsibilities. As Bill says, “Remember that ‘early’ is right now.”

I spent my twenties mostly single. I promoted parties in New York and went skydiving with some friends for my 30th birthday – that gives you a sense of how I spent that time. I’ve found that Bill’s right in that some of my memories from that period make it easier to do things that are, probably, a bit more age-appropriate now. (I met Evelyn when I was 31,)

Bill’s advice is to write down your goals for certain periods of your life – he calls them “Time Buckets.” Say from 25 – 30 or 46 – 50 you want to volunteer, learn a new language, achieve a fitness goal, visit Europe or whatever it happens to be. These goals will likely shift over time. But writing them down and following up on them should be a core activity.

Bill’s book has different guidance for people at different life stages. If you’re younger, it’s about being bolder when you have less to lose. “So many people don’t take advantage of those times when they can take risks.” He says that people tend to overrate the risks of taking action while not realizing that there are also risks to inaction. They also tend to overrate the benefits of staying in a current role or geographic location. For many people the sweet spot for certain experiences is between 26 and 35.

For people who are older, it’s often about trying to make more active decisions and avoid autopilot. “You want to save money for your kids? Maybe you should give them the money a bit earlier while you can enjoy it together.” He notes that the average age at which one receives an inheritance is 60, which is a bit after the time of life when money can help maximize life experiences. He observes that retirees tend to go from “Go-go, to slow-go, to no-go” and the money can make a bigger difference earlier.

Bill is now 52, and he talks clearly about how certain things that he used to enjoy are less exciting to him now. “I used to love just walking around a new city for 10, 15 miles. Now, I might do it but it’s shorter, in part because my knees hurt.” He’s got two daughters and is married. For his 45th birthday he got tons of people together, in part to make memories that would last a lifetime and to enable his Mom to attend while she was still healthy. That set of memories continues to pay dividends.

“I love spreading these ideas to help people live better,” Bill says. You can check out his bestselling book or its free companion apps at diewithzerobook.com. He also supports Forward, in part because he thinks we can move policy in a positive direction. Who knew that leading a better life can also mean trying to build a better democracy? Life is full and what we make of it.

A Huge Step in Connecticut

Hello, I hope all is great!  I'm writing this from Missouri, where I met with democracy reform activists and Forward Party volunteers.  It's been a phenomenal trip.  

As you know, I have become convinced that Ranked Choice Voting is one of the keys to improving our politics and incentives.  It will decrease polarization and give rise to new points of view.  Millions of Americans are digging into RCV for the first time since the Alaska special election last week.  And this Wednesday the Governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, endorsed Ranked Choice Voting and pledged to bring a bill to a vote in the Constitution State.  

Why is Ranked Choice Voting suddenly a relevant issue in the Connecticut gubernatorial race?  It’s the result of years of hard work.  

In 2018, Oz Griebel and Monte Frank ran on a joint ticket for Governor, receiving nearly 55,000 votes and qualifying a new political party, the Griebel-Frank for CT Party.  This gave the party a ballot line in Connecticut, which is a fusion voting state (i.e. each party puts its chosen candidates on its ballot line).  The Griebel-Frank for CT Party is affiliated with the Serve America Movement, one of the orgs that merged to form the new Forward Party in July. 

Both Ned Lamont and his opponent Bob Stefanowski wanted this ballot line – it’s probably worth a few points in the election in November.  The condition for the endorsement was support for Ranked Choice Voting.  Thus, the governor’s announcement on Wednesday, four years in the making. 

There are a couple big lessons here.  First, a third party like the Forward Party can influence policy and reforms without winning a race.  Imagine if candidates knew in states around the country that coming out for Ranked Choice Voting is worth a few points because of our endorsement.  States around the country could adopt Ranked Choice Voting because candidates see it as a winning issue.

Second, the political system responds to politics.  Oz Griebel ran for Governor twice and activists worked for years in Connecticut, going so far as to run a gubernatorial ticket that got 4% of the vote. That gave them a seat at the table and the ability to influence policy in a way many could only dream of. 

Can what happened in Connecticut happen in states around the country?  Yes, but only if we put in the work.  Here in Missouri, it takes 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot.  The Forward Party aims to be on the ballot in 15 states by year-end and 30 by the end of 2023.  A few years from now we could be celebrating what happened in Connecticut this week as the new normal as incumbents and candidates alike embrace Ranked Choice Voting for the simplest of reasons – they want to win the election in front of them. 

How do we change the system?  Make changing the system the way to win.  Alaska is getting a lot of attention right now, but what's happening in Connecticut could be even more of a roadmap for us to follow.  Let's go get some signatures!  

What Joe Biden’s Speech Should Have Said

Joe Biden recently gave a speech in Philadelphia about democracy in crisis in America. Here's what I wish he'd said:

My fellow Americans. We are facing a crisis of democracy. 64% of Americans believe our democracy is in crisis for different reasons. Polarization is getting worse and worse.

It would be easy for me to stand up here and say vote for Democrats, because I’m a Democrat. And yes, I do think that Democrats are better at defending democracy than the current version of the Republican Party, which has now succumbed to Donald Trump and his vision of a state where autocracy governs and the rule of law fades. I feel we have to defeat Donald Trump and make sure he never sits in the Oval Office again.

But the truth is that it’s not enough to simply vote for Democrats, because the problems are bigger and deeper than that.

First let me say that the Democratic party has adopted some practices that I will now apologize for and pledge that we should never do again. We have boosted election-denying extremists like Doug Mastriano and Joe Gibbs for our own political purposes against more moderate Republicans, including even figures like Peter Meijer who voted to impeach Trump at great personal cost. How can we argue that democracy itself is at stake and then spend millions of dollars supporting candidates who represent that very threat? We will never do so again. We will defend those who defended our democracy.

Second, we have spent millions of dollars combating ballot initiatives around measures like ranked choice voting and non-partisan open primaries that would open up our democracy and give people more real choice. Again, we have done this for our own political purposes, and are doing it right now in Nevada. We will instead begin to support these measures as good for our democracy, as was recently seen in Alaska’s non-partisan primaries.

Third, we have systematically kept minor parties off the ballot in states around the country, from North Carolina to New York, because our own party’s dominance mattered more to us than people having a say. Democrats will begin to stand for democracy in fact as well as name.

The Republican Party has become a cult of personality around a single man, and it has demonstrated to us just how fragile our system is. How can it be that if one party’s leadership sours that we are all at risk? But this gives us an opportunity to invigorate our democracy to stand the test of time.

The fact is that 90% of Congressional districts are uncompetitive in the general election and up to 70% of the nation’s local races are either uncontested or similarly uncompetitive. We have declined to 28th in the world in basics like public education and clean water regardless of which party is in power.

There is a bill in Congress called the Fair Representation Act. It would shift our current Congressional districts with one representative to new, bigger districts that would have multiple representatives from different parties. Some would be neither Democrats nor Republicans. This would give rise to new voices in our country and make us more resilient to authoritarianism because there would be more seats at the table that are not beholden to leadership of one party or the other.

I’ve always believed that we need to make way for the next generation. That is why Democrats should now support term limits for elected representatives, something that is supported by three-quarters of Americans. I believe this would help restore faith in elected leaders as working on behalf of the people and then coming home.

Democracy has been the source of our country’s strength and prosperity for generations, and it now lies in jeopardy. The measures that will be required to defend and modernize it go beyond traditional partisanship – and I now ask all Americans, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent or some other affiliation, to join me in doing so. The reforms I've enumerated here are just the beginning. Together, we can pass on a vibrant democracy to our children and grandchildren and ensure that America’s future remains brighter than its past.

Joe Sestak and Forward

Happy Labor Day!  I hope you are having a wonderful holiday with family and friends. I'm heading to St, Louis on Thursday for a MO Forward Party kick-off and am looking forward to it.  

Of all of the people who have joined Forward, perhaps the most exciting for me has been my friend Joe Sestak.  Joe and I met when we both ran for President in 2020 though I’ve admired him from afar for years. 

Joe’s exploits are the stuff of legend. He served in the U.S. Navy for 31 years and commanded the USS George Washington aircraft carrier strike group in the first Gulf War.  He led fifteen thousand sailors who trusted him with their lives, though he would say it was the other way around.  He became a three-star admiral and received 10 medals of distinction and part of the National Security Council.  He got a PhD from Harvard years after graduating second in his class from the U.S. Naval Academy.  After leaving the Navy, in part because he took the stance in 2005 that they should invest more in cybersecurity and less in ships, he ran for Congress in a Republican district in his native Pennsylvania.  He shockingly won, and then won his re-election by 20 points without spending a dime. 

“People would say to me, ‘you’re a retired Navy admiral?  And a Democrat?’” on the trail during his first Congressional campaign.  I interview Joe on the podcast this week, which will give you a powerful sense of him and his story.  “A lot of people in Pennsylvania have family who served, so I kind of appealed to those who leaned to the right.  Most of the people in military service lean the same way. I would tell them ‘I’m an Independent who happens to be a Democrat.’” 

After being named one of the most productive members of Congress, Joe ran for Senate in 2010.  All establishment Democrats, including the Governor Ed Rendell, Senate Majority Leader at the time Harry Reid and the entire Obama Administration backed Arlen Specter who had just switched from Republican to Democrat.  Despite this, Joe overcame a 29-point deficit and prevailed over Specter 53 – 47 in the primary before losing a tightly contested race to Pat Toomey 51 – 49 in the general. 

After such a narrow loss, it was very natural for Joe to run again in 2016.  He decided to walk across the state – 300 miles over 28 days – to meet people and generate press.  The sensible thing to do if you were the Democrats would be to say, “Okay, Joe defied us last time by running but he is going to be the strongest candidate against Toomey.  He already has statewide recognition in all 47 counties and has a track record of appealing to people across parties as someone who won a Republican district in this state by 20 points.”  You can tell from my writing this that the Dems did the opposite.  They spent more than $6 million in the primary backing Katie McGinty and attacking Joe with negative ads, including at least one that was classified as “false” and “sleazy” by the Washington Post.  McGinty would go on to lose in the general and both the people of Pennsylvania and the country lost an opportunity to have a truly great Senator.      

In June of 2019, Joe joined me in the presidential field.  He declared late because his daughter, Alex, was struggling with cancer and he wanted to make sure she was okay.  I met Joe and saw him speak several times and thought to myself, “Wow, what a true patriot.”  If you have commanded thousands of sailors and held such massive responsibility, it shows.  Joe emanated both command and character in person while remaining down to Earth. 

Indeed, Joe decided to walk across New Hampshire – an easier task than Pennsylvania – during the presidential to meet voters.  But, due to lack of media attention, Joe’s campaign never took off.  He conceded about six months later. 

Still, he and I kept in touch and are now working together to bring Americans together with Forward.  I couldn’t be more honored. 

“I think that we’ve just lost trust in America. The average age of the sailors on the Navy ships I commanded was only 19-and-a-half years old.  Yet they would regularly put their lives in each others’ hands because that’s the only way that a ship can operate.  That’s the kind of trust we need to regain.  I see Forward as a way to help re-establish that trust.” 

It means a lot to have Joe with us – if anyone can rekindle the trust of a divided nation, it’s him.

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I hope that you are excited about Forward – if you haven’t already done so, please sign up or make a donation!  After my trip to St, Louis, I'm heading to Houston with Joe and hundreds of others for the Texas kickoff on September 24th and then out to support candidates and ballot initiatives around the country.  Join us.  

Hope from Alaska

Sarah Palin lost in her bid for a House seat on Wednesday. And ranked choice voting was a big reason why.

I’ve been talking all year about how Alaska’s combination of non-partisan open primaries and ranked choice voting has the potential to fix our national politics. The system was approved in 2020 so this is its first use. It replaces party primaries with one primary that all candidates participate in with the top 4 progressing to the general election using ranked choice voting.

How did it work? The non-partisan primary was held in June with 10 candidates. The top 4 candidates were Sarah Palin (R) at 27%, Nicholas Begich (R) at 19%, Al Gross (I) at 12% and Mary Peltola (D) at 10%.

If you look at those results, you’d think Republicans are the heavy favorites, which makes sense in a state that Trump won by 10 points. However, unaffiliated voters outnumber both Republicans and Democrats in Alaska; it’s a very independent voting environment.

Al Gross dropped out, so only Sarah Palin, Nicholas Begich, and Mary Peltola went through to the general election in August; this is a special election to replace Don Young who passed away. Peltola had 40% in the first round, Palin had 31% and Begich had 28%.

In a conventional system, Sarah Palin would have defeated Begich in a Republican primary and become the Republican nominee, who would then have defeated the Democrat by a count of 59 – 41. That’s what you’d expect.

Here though, Alaska used one combined election and Ranked Choice Voting. Begich was eliminated and his voters were then sent to their second choice, either Peltola or Palin if applicable. Peltola edged Sarah Palin by 51.5 to 48.5 in the final round.

“I’m really hopeful that voters will feel like they can vote their heart and not feel pressured to vote for the candidate that they think is most ’viable,’” Peltola said before the special election. “And my hope is that we shy away from the really extreme-type candidates and politicians.”

Peltola got her wish by having a process that actually reflects popular will and preference instead of empowering one party’s base or the other.

Now, there is another election in November for the full two-year term with Peltola, Palin and Begich again (a 4th candidate is dropping out). Sarah Palin still has a chance to win the seat. Still, that will also be decided by ranked choice voting which should again reward the candidate with the broadest appeal. Palin called it a “new crazy, convoluted, confusing” system despite a poll showing that 85% of Alaskans found it simple to use. Palin doesn’t like it simply because it means fewer extreme candidates will win.

Imagine if the same system of non-partisan open primaries and ranked choice voting was used in states around the country. How different would our politics be? It’s on the ballot in Nevada this November and there are 23 other states where it can be activated via ballot initiative. This is Forward’s mission. Let’s go make it happen! Join us today.

I’ve personally become frustrated when people make a plea for compromise or moderation while the system is set up to reward the opposite. You want better candidates, elected officials, and better incentives when they get there? Change the system. Alaska shows us how.