Off The Record With Paul Hodes

In the last few months American politics has become a little mysterious, if not downright confounding. By almost every measure, President Joe Biden and the Democratic party have had an extremely successful year. Remember we started this year with an insurrection in the very heart of our government, with armed vigilantes roaming the halls of Congress. We also had a brand new set of vaccines but almost no Americans vaccinated against a deadly pandemic. Unemployment was still six and a half percent.  Economic output was hundreds of billions of dollars lower than the start of the pandemic. Fast forward to the end of October: GDP had fully recovered and grown beyond pre-pandemic levels, employers were adding half a million jobs a month, unemployment was down to 4.6%, and people were leaving their jobs at a record rate because the job market was so good.  Wages were up 5.0% over the year. And Americans had accumulated $2.3 trillion more in savings, with the median household’s checking account balance 50 p

Markets have been spooked by Omicron news in recent days.  And Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are down year-on-year.  So which of these is a bigger concern, or are either of them really a bad sign at all?  Also, Dorsey is OUT at Twitter, Amazon is taking over the shipping market, and what can we learn for business from the Patriots? Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money weighs in. Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In 2016 the Democratic Party lost control of every branch of government. Countless explanations and excuses have been offered, and despite an anti-Trump backlash in 2018 and eking out the Presidency in 2020, Democrats have been on a continued downward slide down ballot. And now, facing the midterms, their prospects don’t exactly look rosy. The news media is full of doom and gloom, the President’s popularity is underwater despite some massive successes, and Republican voter suppression efforts look likely to keep them with the upper hand into the future. So what’s the answer? Our guest, Tom Reston has one. His book Soul of a Democrat: The Seven Core Ideals That Made Our Party — and Our Country — Great, focuses on the root ideas of the Democratic Party and how to start from the foundation of what the party is supposed to be about. He argues that Democrats need a coherent, blunt set of American ideals and in this book, he provides one.

By most measures, the economy is doing great. The country's economic output is way past where it was before the pandemic. In October alone, the country created 531,000 jobs and set a record for the number of people leaving their jobs, which is a sign the people see a hot job market and want to take advantage of it.  Unemployment is way down, wages are way up, and the average American has 50% more their checking account today than they did just two years ago. Not to mention that businesses are also happy and flush with cash: consumer spending is surging while the stock market was up 7% in October, capping off a strong year. BUT...Inflation. It's on everybody's minds.  It was up 6.2% in October, and that has made Americans feel like the economy is terrible. 68% of Americans told Gallup in October that they thought the economy is getting worse, while the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey finds that Republicans feel worse about the economy than at the height if the Great Recession. So, ho

Matt joins legendary West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe on his show to talk about his Alternet article describing the government's massive bias toward the old over the young, and why it needs to end. Then, a discussion about Republican infighting and growing threats of violence, what it means, and why it's happening.

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money explains what to make of the very different things people are saying about the state of the economy / their personal finances, and how they are actually acting. Right now, Americans tell pollsters that the economy is bad and that they are worried. But they are spending, seeking new job opportunities, and investing like things are great. So what does that mean, and what do businesses, investors, and analysts do when those things diverge?

Josh Schwerin is a communications veteran among Democrats, and it sure seems like they need one right now. A former press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he served as the National Spokesman for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and as the Senior Strategist and Director of Communications for Priorities USA, the biggest Democratic outside advocacy group and political action committee, where he played a big role in figuring out how to spend $153 million in advertising in the 2020 political cycle, and what to say with all that money. He’s also a veteran of the Terry McAulliffe political operation, which makes him the perfect person to talk about where we are now, and what Democrats need to do in the coming year.

The degree to which President Biden can sell his agenda to the American public maybe the single most important factor in driving the politics of the coming years.  Many analysts have compared President Joe Biden's legislative plans for America to the Great Society program of President Lyndon Johnson -- widely regarded as the most ambitious set of social investments in American history. With the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Joe Biden's signature social investment program, the Build Back Better agenda, waiting in the on-deck circle, it appears the President Biden is on track to make that comparison very real. But will the public end up supporting these achievements, and will they reward Democrats politically for them? After all, don't parties in power use their position, especially the position of the President, to sell their ideas to the public and then reap the rewards by touting their achievements? The answer is no. In fact, we may be thinking about how this works all wrong. Dr. Geo

Matt appears on The Watchdog with Howard Monroe to run through what actually happened in the elections last week and whether it was really all that surprising. Also, what will it take to win in 2022, how much will passing BBB matter, and Weird Al Yankovic!

Adnaan Muslim is one of the most sought-after campaign consultants in America. A top counselor to Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Raphael Warnock and Boston mayor-elect Michelle Wu, Adnaan joins the show to explain what happened last Tuesday, how Dems can fight the CRT and education messaging from Republicans, what the path to a fighting chance in 2022 looks like, and what his favorite Elizabeth Warren stories are. 

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money, the #1 stock investing radio show in America, returns from a summer break spent dominating the airwaves on his own show to talk about the biggest moves and most puzzling questions in the business world.  What's driving the Meta shift?   Why on Earth is Microsoft back on top? And has anyone figured out the new Hollywood model? Plus, wing-chef robots????

Today, we’re going to take you on a journey down into some of the most insidious, infuriating, and un-American skulduggery that has gone on in this country. And then, we’re going to talk about how we’ve started to turn the tide, and how maybe, maybe we can finish the job. Our guide on this trip is David Daley. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and the author of two recent books, one that takes us on the journey down, the other that takes us on the journey back: Ratf**ked and Unrigged. This is the explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting, and how a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters’ revelations might provide a blueprint for what must be done to keep American democracy afloat.

I do a regular show with financial advisor Mike Morton about personal financial planning.  Today, he and I got into a bit more of a politics, policy, and tax discussion around the idea that we could tax the ultra-rich to pay for social investments. It's a conversation about practical politics, how hard t is to come up with a rational tax policy, and how the ultra rich avoid our best efforts to get them to pay their fair share. 

Far more than the high-profile antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan—and yes, even bigger than Donald Trump’s "Big Lie”—our guest today says that it is anonymous, often corrupt politicians in statehouses across the country who pose the greatest dangers to American democracy. Our old friend David Pepper is the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Born and raised in Cincinnati, he’s served in city and county offices, run statewide in Ohio, and has a law degree from Yale. But he’s also an accomplished author of works that are eerily prescient about American politics. He's written Laboratories of Autocracy, a chilling new account of just how bad things have gotten at the state level, and what we can do to fix it. 

The way we run political campaigns has changed drastically in the last two decades. Today, political campaigns spend three times more money and leverage far more sophisticated data and media tools, paired with an unnerving amount of information on voters. But those extraordinary powers have mostly been used not to have a more nuanced, persuasive public conversation, but to stoke outrage and election turnout. It is possible to argue that way we run campaigns has been a huge factor in how angry, divided, and dysfunctional our country has become. Today, guest Michael Cohen – author of Modern Political Campaigns – argues that a “Moneyball”-like search for smarter ways to win might actually drag American politics back away from the extremes and toward a more reasonable center.  He also explains how the role of political parties has changed, what is working and not working in campaigns today, and whether things like yard signs are ever helpful to winning.

Matt talks about his recent Newsweek op-ed with West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe of The Watchdog.  Will Trump run in 2024 (yes!), if he does are there any good outcomes (no!), and if the threat to America is so big, is there anything that can be done about it right now (yes!)

Congressman John Yarmuth has served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee since 2019, and was one of the key architects of the $1.9  American Rescue Plan that is lifting 5 million American children out of poverty, saving millions from losing their homes, and saving lives every day by getting people vaccines. He's also the hidden force behind trying to wrangle Democrats together on Build Back Better.  In this fascinating interview before his retirement from Congress next year, Chairman Yarmuth shares what it was like trying to herd cats between moderates and progressives in the negotiations over the Build Back Better bill, what Mitch McConnell is really like, and what the unseen physical demands of being a member of Congress are. 

Do Democrats actually have a chance to hold on to their majorities in the US House and Senate in the midterm elections in 2022? History is not on their side. Since 1946, the average number of seats in the US House of Representative lost by the president's party in the midterm elections is 46. Projections by our recent guest David Shor show that in 2022, if Senate Democrats somehow manage to beat Republicans by a stunning four percentage points they’d only have about a 50-50 chance of holding onto the majority. If they win only 51 percent of the vote, they’ll likely lose a seat — and the Senate. But our guest today says the Democrats can give themselves a fighting chance by employing the right strategy and focusing on the right places. Colleen Loper is the Senior Director of Political Strategy at Way to Win, an organization founded after the 2016 election to channel more funding from Democratic donors into organizations and campaigns that focus on voters of color.  They’ve raised $165 million to do just t

In recent weeks, there's been one person driving the discussion in Democratic circles: David Shor.  Big profiles in the New York Times and Politico have further elevated this rising political star, along with his stark warning that if Democrats think they're sitting pretty for the coming years having beaten back the forces of Trump in 2020, they're deluding themselves.  Three months ago, we interviewed David on this show, and today, we bring you a re-release of that terrific episode, in which David explained his argument, his evidence, and his interpretation of what we're seeing around us.  The discussion included this summary from David of his outlook: "We actually aren't winning the war of ideas as much as we think...and the Republican Party is more popular relative to the Democratic Party than people think.  The Democratic Party brand and agenda has shifted a lot in the last four to five years, and it's gone  in a direction that a lot of voters aren't comfortable with.  People

One year ago today, political scientist EJ Fagan published an article called "End the Algorithm" on Tech Policy Press in which he identified the basic problem with Facebook: that it is powered by machine learning algorithms which favor outrageous, inflammatory, and degrading content.  Now, new revelations from Facebook product manager-turned-whistle-blower Frances Haugen have rocked the company, drawn the attention of the world, and completely confirmed everything that Professor Fagan wrote. The algorithm --  which feeds Facebook's basic business model built around maximizing engagement from users -- is a one-way ticket to warping our brains and shaking the foundations of democracy. Dr. Fagan joins us to discuss what we have learned, how deep the problem goes, and whether anything can be done to fix it.