Voter turnout will break generational records in 2020, here’s what that could mean for the next generation of US politics.

This year we’ve become accustomed to looking at charts more often. Watching the ebb and flow of COVID infections across states, and inferring from the hip guesses of what it says about our society.

“Oh America is number one in COVID deaths? *Sigh* not surprised”

“A third outbreak? Seems like we’ve just been in a constant outbreak since the start”

“Oh look at that honey, South Carolina has more cases than most countries in the world. Thats interesting!”

But another chart that I think is worth looking at and inferring these from the hip guesses is relevant to our upcoming election, and thats the statistics around voter turnout year over year.

What sticks out to you?

What sticks out to me is a couple things

Presidential voter turnout never really gets past this ~60% number

This number is almost like a resistance level in the stock market, we seem to get close to it, especially in times of War or political unrest like in the 40s-70s, but in times of economic growth it dips back down. This dip is even more observed in mid-terms. with 2014 being the lowest turnout since 1914 at just 36.4% . By contrast, the Super Bowl that year, where the Seattle Seahawks embarrassed my Broncos. saw a record high of 115M US viewers, which would account for an estimated 35% of the US population. Man 2014 seems like a great time right now doesn’t it?

Obviously the factors that jump out to you about this number range from the state of the economy (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it), and voter suppression tactics. And in many deep blue or red states, obviously the incentive to come out to vote is less if you see your vote as not being consequential.

And of course, there are issues like of not having a National Holiday to vote, so many working class people are unable to take the time off to do it. And a common trope, low youth turnout, due in some part to their general apathy with the electoral system.

But in 2018, something remarkable happened. Something that I think is currently changing the math of electoral politics nationally, and is the beginning of a new paradigm that candidates will have to deal with, and that is a drastically different electorate.

In 2018, a mid-term election, remember, the type of election where we see people generally voting at high 30’s, low 40’s levels, which skyrocketed to 50.3%. And one of the biggest causes of this was we saw a change in how the youth came out to vote more than usual. In fact compared to the previous midterm, we saw a jump in voting of 15.7% with voters aged 18–29, and 13.2% with voters aged 30–44.

And of course, no surprise as we said earlier, this becomes even more apparent in crucial swing states where the incentive to vote is even higher, despite not being the “swing” for a presidential election. We saw massive swings in youth turnout in places such as

• Georgia (19.7%), which had some highly contested races for Governor in the case of Stacey Abrams near win (if potentially not for some funny businesses with running a race against the then Secretary of State Brian Kemp who’s job was literally to oversee elections, yeah nothing to see there!).
• Florida (18.3%), which saw highly contested races for both Senate & Governor
• And other states like Minnesota, Nevada, and somehow Montana (likely due to their small size/success in turning out college towns).

Now let’s look at back at that first chart.

Now I want you to imagine what happens if we even get close to the same impact of what happened last mid-term with youth voting, and voting in general, but during a Presidential Election.

Well we don’t really need to imagine that much because we can already see how this is impacting early voter turnout. It’s lead some analysts to believe we will surpass 65% for the first time in 112 years, since 1908.

Now, take that change, and I want you to imagine that that percentage is now actually including Women, which 1908 didn’t, and much higher minority vote. What are the possible implications of that?

1. States that are normally safe red are becoming battleground states, driven by huge rise in youth & urban center voting.

Texas, which hasn’t had a democratic senator since the early 90’s is now in play. You may remember that Ted Cruz barely beat his democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke in that race by less than a 3% margin.

Now Ted Cruz approval ratings are unfavorable in Texas according to polling, so that might have influenced it, but that does not fully account for the huge rise in voter turnout, particularly for young people that drove this.

In fact, early turnout from Texas right now is already hitting 2016 levels, before election day has even happened.

What this means is that any supposedly red state, or battleground state, with a major metropolitan area, has untapped oil mine of voters that just by rising to 120%-130% levels of their usual turnout could swing an election

2. The issues of concern with the majority of voters is swinging toward the young and working class, which has a huge impact on future Senate races.

In exit poll after exit poll, healthcare (and particularly now with COVID), climate change, and government corruption are seen as top issues of concern. This puts a ton of Republican Senators who have been actively working against these goals in a tough bind as their usual reliance on low youth voter turnout to quell the influence of these things is potentially reaching a breaking point.

I do not think its out of feasibility to see a 56–44 Majority in the senate for the Democrats. My map below

The question is, will this surge in turnout continue to impact elections like this in the following years.

What will the turnout for the 2022 midterms look like? Will a rise in turnout swing the other direction or will we continue to see population centers in the midwest and Southeast continue to bring more states to lean democratic?

If this trend continues, I think what you will see is a very important cross roads for Mitch McConnell and the republicans.

• Do we lean into the (faux) populism that Donald Trump has been espousing, that has seen Republican outsider candidates have success in the congress in order to level the playing field? Or do we allow for more moderate Republican opponents to run for Senate in those states?

The way this election plays out will create a new decade of norms an expectations for the next 10–15 years of what to expect from elections. And my hope is that this is not a one time thing but that the new norm becomes the US voting at rates that are more aligned with the rest of the developed democratic world.

A national campaign should adopt a 4 day work week policy and change the conversation about how we improve the lives of every day people.

Many progressive cornerstone policies like Medicare For All, $15 minimum wage, and recently, The Green New Deal, all involve some amount of persuasion outside of the progressive base. Whether its spending, implementation, or most often, how likely these policies are to pass, a lot of effort is being put forth in order to get these policies to the popularity they’ve seen today. And we still have a lot of work to do.

These policies are extremely popular when Americans are polled. (and don’t get me started on how you can’t trust political polls, just because 538 and others said Hillary Clinton was a shoe-in doesn’t mean the data they were misreading was wrong, it was just their predictions were Off!).

But they all require Americans to use some amount of imagination and hope to turn the abstraction of the benefits of those programs into reality. And with many Americans more and more feeling like they can’t depend on government to represent them, that adds a lot of risk into centering your platform on just these policies. Things that even simple lie-filled bad faith arguments from the mainstream media and pundits can persuade people against, and stop in their tracks.

Now I am not advocating away from those policies. In fact I would say that those policies are life-saving. Species-saving (i.e Green New Deal) and we have no choice but to fight tooth and nail to get everyone on board with them. But the left has been challenged, in my opinion, in getting pigeon-holed into being thought of as a type of big eyed, wishful, unrealistic personality stereotype that on a cultural and intellectual level can fracture our base (and lead to disappointing candidates like Biden who seem just status-quo enough to appeal to Republicans instead of exciting enough to turn out more of the left base).

What if we could reimagine that narrative and show Americans that the left is where creativity, innovation, humanitarianism and pragmatism can all converge? That our policies are actually not idealistic but actually, so desirable and doable that they just make sense.

I’ve been thinking about the 4 day work week ever since I saw this study from Microsoft Japan that showed tremendous benefits in trialing a program that showed 40% gains in productivity. From the piece:

Microsoft Japan says it became more efficient in several areas, including lower electricity costs, which fell by 23%. And as its workers took five Fridays off in August, they printed nearly 60 percent fewer pages. All of the employees who took Fridays off were given special paid leave, the company says. Encouraged by the results, it plans to hold a similar trial in the winter. Because of the shorter workweek, the company also put its meetings on a diet. The standard duration for a meeting was slashed from 60 minutes to 30 — an approach that was adopted for nearly half of all meetings.

Intuitively you read that and I truly believe most people don’t need to be convinced. Anyone who’s working right now, especially non-essential workers who are working from home know that the 40 hour a week work-week is not filled with productivity. It’s filled with meetings that could have been emails, work that is wasted due to red tape and bureaucracy, just time melting away, melting our brains, melting our mental health.

And that’s because the 40 hour week itself is arbitrary. There was no hard science that took into account the perfect “sweet spot” of when productivity, accountability, and our well-being all converge and maximize the American workforce. It was only because of labor unions striking starting in the late 19th century, and only passing nationally under the Fair Labor act after 50 years of advocacy and battles with employers and politicians did it come to pass at a national level. Without strong unions, you wouldn’t have a weekend. Thank you Unions! <3

When I look at the increasing rate of income inequality, while worker productivity has continued to rise, AND real wages have remained stagnant. In plain English, workers haven’t been getting a raise (yes individually people might have been getting raises, I’m using a figure of speech about the “worker” in the abstract, you little nit picker).

A 4 hour week could be that raise.

Pay us the same, and give us the most priceless employee benefit of all. Our time back.

Strategically, it also has tons of knock on effects to other goals we have, with a lot less of the push back that those other policies I mentioned have in the form of adopting individual taxes or having to make the case to conservatives or libertarians who are wary of increasing government control or the bureaucratic state.

• Improving mental health (at a time when 25% of Americans between ages of 18–24 are contemplating taking their own life, this is a dire need).
• The environment (reducing carbon emissions)
• Productivity, and efficiency gains like i mentioned
• And to me, most importantly, giving people time back to be with their families, more time for parents with their kids.

I think this is why Andrew Yang, who’s UBI went from lofty academic theory to now a central policy that is being advocated for us to deal with the pandemic, is now championing the 4 day work week. I believe Yang will run for office again (probably president in 2024) and will adopt a 4 day work week as a key part of his platform, And I hope by this time, the labor force will have a stronger class consciousness, and be ready for this, we’ll have more empirical evidence of its benefits, and hopefully the benefits of automation will make this as obvious as it seems to people like me, enjoying a nice watermelon on this oppressively hot Bay Area Labor Day today.

It was hard not to write about Michael’s death as a source for coaching. It hit me, and the progressive news media that he was one of the new leading voices, out of nowhere. July 20th, he died weeks before his 37th birthday unexpectedly of a blood clot, mere months after releasing his first book “Against the Web”. I had just started reading it a week before.

Michael has had an enormous influence on my political perspective. His ability to weave in a global perspective about leftist movements, with an “integral” approach to holding different truths and contradictions that was so necessary for making sense of the current political climate. And he was just getting started.

I’ve come to understand some things from the last month of grieving, and trying to cope with this loss. Of someone I’ve never met but for some reason has hit me harder than even the deaths of people’s parents in my life. And in reflecting, what I’ve learned is that living a life like Michael is something that we should all try to model parts of. Because he transcended his own self and saw the greater goodness in all of us, all while being brave enough to be himself, and meet his own self-needs to become more abundant to support others.

I sometimes imagine our human needs often similar to Mazlow’s pyramid. I think that the psychological needs we have are often a barrier to getting to that level of “actualization” at the top of the pyramid that Mazlow spoke of. Of that deeper purpose, and meaning. Often we push it down because it may seem indulgent. Maybe we even lack awareness of what can provide that sense of actualizing in the first place.

Michael’s death has shown me that these needs are not something we desire to “put off”, even if we don’t tend to them. Actualizing is a daily practice, and investing in something he believed in, reading voraciously, led him to the success he had. He was able to interview his heroes, from Dr. Cornel West, to philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, and his ultimate hero, former Brazilian PM Lula De Silva.

All of these gifts and the recognition he received was from his genuine pursuit of his passions. You see this so clearly with the smile on Michael’s face as he’s interviewing Lula. That little light of the goodness in him shining through, just by being him. That is actualization to me. It’s being present and witnessing the natural goodness that’s in the moment. Of feeling filled up with gratitude and comfort with the present moment we exist in together. And I believe that actualization doesn’t desire to give us an inflated ego, or worth. But rather a sense of connectedness to the human experiment. In realizing how valuable the worth of that experiment and your participation in it is.

Mazlow was working on another level of human needs before he died. He described it as transcendence, the most abstract human need. To quote him:

“Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos” (Mazlow, 1971).

That transcendent quality was strong in Michael’s perspective. I think many around him were inspired by his humility, and in seeing someone so purely connected to sharing his voice, his spiritual connection to humanity, while being himself and having fun. And from that perspective, he was able to model for me, someone who often lives between different truths, different stories, a way to center in conflict.

I really relate to this, that I often feel conflicted, whether it’s my divorced parents, feuding friends, my political values vs. people in my tribe. It makes me think about how it’s hard for me to feel comfortable to share things I create that involve my opinions because I worry they won’t be good enough. But even more so what people will say about it, what people will think of me. I looked up to Michael because he embraced this, and harmonized it into a strength to bridge divides.

I feel what I’m realizing is that life is short, and that all these things we do, is that our essence is actually a shared one. I believe a great goal for coaching is helping our client fill themselves, actualize, find their genuine self, so that they can make room for the transcendent possibility that life is really about all of us, not any individual one of us, but that everything starts with us.

Not just to say “Life is short, treat yourself”. It’s much more than that. Its an intention to gain awareness of how much goodness is already in us. So much that we don’t even pay attention to, that becomes obvious when someone dies, and you see the impact they had on people.

Michael was famous for many ideas, but this saying in particular seems to have stuck with people who followed him. “Be ruthless with systems, be kind with people”. He understood that we are shaped by the world around us, and that we are all humans affected by things greater than things within our control.

I believe that kindness is not just about “doing service, or helping or having empathy” with others. It’s centrally about being kind, to yourself, as part of that greater humanity. Having empathy with yourself, and viewing yourself as part of an interconnected web, a system that we can all impact and change, that we cannot fully control, but we are a part of. And to remember that each node in the web needs energy, and to each node needs to be filled so that it can naturally have the ability to support the rest of the nodes on the web.

This is the energy I hope to find with my clients. To bring them to an understanding of how special they are, by being kinder to themselves, and having empathy for others by seeing all of us as being a unique and special part of something greater than all of us.

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”

― J.M. Barrie , Peter Pan

As Mnuchin and the Trump admin jump through another hoop by inventing a fake statue to obfuscate releasing Trump’s tax returns, I’m again reminded by this Guardian article I read weeks after Trump won the election. In it, Stephanie Kirchgaessnerin lays out for the uninitiated the case for America some foreshadowing warnings from her experience dealing with the polarizing political outside Silvio Berlusconi, who served as Italy’s Prime Minister for much of the late 90’s and 2000’s.

In hindsight the #resistance should have grappled with some of these more. Here are some highlights:

(1) “Stop crying and try to understand his voters”,

(2) “Journalists must be wary of complicity”

(3) “Prepare for a new feminist fightback — Berlusconi’s attitude prompted a sort of revolt from women, and women’s groups, who had been silent and absent for years”

(4) “Berlusconi had an unspoken agreement with the Roman Catholic church that helped him hold on to power”

(5) “Berlusconi tried to use his political power to defend himself, making laws and using his position as prime minister to delay trials.”

I think that what the beltway class, the writers of socially liberal leaning (albeit economically conservative) outlets like the Washington Post, the NY Times, the Late Night Talk show hosts fail to realize is that they are in some ways Trump’s greatest strength. Trump rose to viability only when he sucked up all of CNN and the like’s attention in the aftermath of his strong showing in the debates. Like Berlusconi, Trump used brashness and his brand as a political outsider and successful business man to bring into the fold people who have a distaste for being looked down upon by coastal elites, who wanted nothing more than to flip the apple cart, and to this day still smile widely whenever Trump overcomes another challenge. This Tax Return side-step is but another WWE title fight that turn impropriety into strength.

Liberals, you won’t beat Trump with process and formalities. He doesn’t care about the process, and he knows he doesn’t have to, because his base (and let’s be honest the majority of voters) don’t care about it.

You won’t beat him with the law. His base has disdain for the law, using it as a weapon when it serves them such as Trumps upending of immigration laws & visa, but applauding his ability to overcome it as an obstacle when it comes to his shady dealings. Not only that, but the American public has contempt for all of congress, polling at an average of 21% to the President’s 38% in approval. Why should the President be held to the law when people don’t feel like the other side is held to it either.

You won’t beat him with scandal. There’s an entire wikipedia page just outlining all the scandals Berlusconi was wrapped up in. Again, just feeding the narrative that no matter what you throw at the guy, he can dominate you and change the rules while you’re following them.

Ultimately the context that seems to have upended him, and led the way to a narrow victory by center-left candidate Prodi in 2006 was the context of a struggling economy without growth, and a sharply divided country. My intuition here is that ultimately what Berlusconi lost was his ability to project strength, and power. His economic vulnerability put a massive chink in the armor of his “businessman who knows what he’s doing” image.

Power. Among all the things that are guaranteed positives for a political movement and candidate is the perception and reality of power. As we moved towards the 2020 Democratic Primary we should be wary of this perception of power. As Trump presides over a perceived strong economy (though peripherally weak with stagnating wages and a labor sector quickly transitioning from careers with pension to contracted gigs without healthcare) and comes out of the Muller scandal appearing strong on its surface by “beating” those pesky Democrats, Liberals and progressives should think through what the average American’s view of power is, and what kind of power will ultimately turn out enough voters to swing the election.

We should think through what weakness is, and how easy it is to appear weak when not being mindful of picking your battles where you are sure to lose in the headline war. We should think about weakness in equivocation of positions that Democrats should be unified on such as increasing the minimum wage and ensuring healthcare is available as a right to all by moving to a single-payer Medicare for all system. But on a deeper level, understanding these headlines and ideas through the lens of power and engaging with the reality that “anyone but Trump” is a form of weakness in the same way that “Repeal without Replace” was a weakness for the Republicans in losing the Healthcare battle.

Power will win the day, whether or not the Left decides to use it.

So there’s checks and balances right?

Legislature writes bills, executive signs/vetos, judicial makes sure its all kosher and can overrule everyone. And then of course us the voters that are supposed to be able to decide who sits in these chairs, (or who can appoint federal and some state judges, through a combo of legislative & executive decision)

But what happens when that last part isn’t really a firm “check”. When we can’t be sure that a vote cast is a vote counted. Who has the power to decide that?

Well, in this example, a lawsuit was brought to an Alabama judge who ruled that destroying digital ballot records (which is necessary to audit in close races) not be allowed. The fact that this was even an open question is crazy enough.

But that same night, the supreme court of Alabama, all GOP members, decided to overrule the judge’s edict. And under what justification. From Alternet; ““The only Defendants to this case — Secretary of State John Merrill and a member of his staff — do not have authority to make changes to voting machines or to require local officials to do so,” the state’s brief said. “It [Monday’s earlier court order] purports to order Counties, which are not parties, to take action that the Secretary believes is impossible to complete before the election and which will disrupt the election. The order will cause confusion among local election officials who are not party to this suit and who will be unsure of their obligations.””

But whats confusing about checking one box in the software for “save”. How little does the supreme court think of it’s county election offices? Why is this not a default setting, mandated by law!?

More importantly though, is the fact that this kind of action can happen, at the 11th hour of an election, with 0 oversight. This election is not just important because of the cultural magnifying glass it sits because a candidate is an accused pedophile, but it completely changes the power dynamic in the US Congress (if lost, would go from 52–48 to 51–49, meaning only 2 GOP members need to be flipped to vote down a bill like the Tax bill that just passed instead of 3).

The fact that elected state judges, can arbitrarily decide that “checking a box” in a software that ensures the vote can be audited, to ensure results can’t be tampered with is “confusing” is whats able to happen when officials operate with an assumption that no one is watching. That no one cares about these hugely important decisions so they’ll just decide healthy democracy is not a priority for them.

I hope that when tonight’s results come in, all of my huffing and puffing here won’t matter much to the outcome. But the damage done here still sits on our balance sheet of crimes against our democracy. And if we don’t pay off that balance soon by flipping seats and spotlighting these situations, we’ll be in debt forever.