Show Notes
Dave Karpf and Peter Loge talk about responding to the Supreme Court probably overturning Roe v. Wade and America's political trailer park of doom. Plus Loge urges journalists to ignore the squirrels, and Karpf mocks Loge for still having an AOL account.
Footnotes: Links to some of what we referenced in the podcast, and to other readings our listeners might find interesting.
Abortion
Liberate Abortion has links to ways to promote and protect women’s rights locally and nationally.
The Stanford Social Innovation Review has a terrific piece worth checking out – How Should the Social Sector Respond to an Abortion Upheaval?
Decoding Abortion Rhetoric by Celeste Condit is an important scholarly work on abortion politics. Her work is worth checking out in general.
Advice for advocates
Give people specific ways to help, and ask what now, what next, what then. On Medium (because Karpf shamed me about my own blog).
Protest
The Myth of the Silent Majority – Americans have learned the wrong lessons about the political consequences of protest by Daniel Q. Gillian. His book The Loud Minority: Why Protests Matter in American Democracy is also terrific.
Why Civil Resistance Works: The strategic logic of non-violent protest by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan makes a compelling case for the power of non-violent protest. A shorter version from International Security is here.
Minority Rule
Republicans represent a minority of Americans
The Republican candidate for President has received a majority of votes only once since 1988 (Bush in 2004, 50.7%)
Bailing Out
For those tired of living in America’s political trailer park of doom, here are homes for sale along Italy’s Amalfi Coast. The politics might be terrible, but the views are lovely and the wine is very good.
More from Office Hours with Karpf and Loge
Why do elephants inspire more trust than engineers, and what do chicken carcasses have to do with safer airplanes? We discuss Dave Karpf and Nina Hall’s piece on Turning Point USA and MoveOn, make the case against the Paramount merger, and ask when Peter Loge last read a book.
On this week's episode of Office Hours, Loge is somehow still talking about bat ecologist certifications and Karpf is too busy marathon training to play D&D. They break down how Trump's $5,000 pledge to voters went viral on prediction markets and discuss the difference between moderate politics as a rhetorical style versus an actionable ideology. Also, Karpf and Loge read the pod's first AI-generated listener email!
Office Hours is back for the semester, and just in time, because Loge is getting a little too fascinated by bat ecologists. As a record high number of Americans say that government corruption is widespread, Karpf and Loge discuss why political elites get away with bad behavior, when voters will punish them and how political actors can effectively push back. Also, our hosts respond to their first listener email!
As summer ends and classes begin, Washington is offering plenty of material for a lesson in political theater: from Natalie Harp's expanding West Wing role to James Talarico turning Ken Paxton’s $1,000 pen into a campaign prop. Karpf and Loge dissect these stories, as well as why Trump's picks keep losing their primaries. They also discuss why a Peter Loge Bot is a terrible business idea, how an alien garbage can won 10,000 votes in Clacton, and their political predictions for this fall.
It's hot enough outside to make Karpf wear shorts on camera, inspiring a deluge of water metaphors. Karpf and Loge dive into the President's insistence through the Reflecting Pool debacle and the war in Iran, even as voters reward politicians focused on making government work. They also break down the latest midterm primaries, the lost DNC Autopsy chapter, and the lessons behind them: democracy is messy, local politics matter, and a good plan means nothing if you can’t execute it.