Spirit in Action

Blue Jeans in High Places

Mike McCabe, founder of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign creates a blueprint forward, out of our widespread disillusionment which is based on parallel situations over our history. The result is his book, Blue Jeans in High Places: The Coming Makeover of American Politics. Mike speaks powerfully of a proven way forward for the common citizen.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 14 Feb 2016
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ I had a very special treat this past November when I attended for the first time and that in itself is surprising that I hadn't actually attended the blockbuster event known as "Fighting Bob Fest" before. Look it up. It is wonderful. This year, I saw and heard a number of inspirational speakers there. Among them, Mike McCabe. I've had Mike McCabe on Spirit in Action once before, almost six years ago, and he's got new power and energy to share, and it pours out through his new book "Blue Jeans in High Places, The Coming Makeover of American Politics." He addresses fundamental questions about the widespread disillusionment with our political system. He finds the historical experiences that parallel today's situation, and he uses the lessons to design a blueprint for an exciting and fruitful way forward. You can get Mike McCabe's book at any of the major book suppliers, like Amazon or the bookchains, but just maybe you want to buy it directly from its small publisher, Little Creek Press. You can find the link to littlecreekpress.com via Google or on northernspiritradio.org. In the book, you'll learn loads of important history and thought, including why the book is called "Blue Jeans in High Places." I did ask Mike to tell you the why and where for of that name, and you can find his answer to that and a couple other bonus excerpts on northernspiritradio.org. It's well worth the visit to hear these extra comments, but right now we'll go to the phone in Madison, Wisconsin to speak with Mike McCabe. Mike, welcome back to Spirit in Action. Well, thanks for having me, Mark. It's good to be with you. You are the author of a relatively new book, "Blue Jeans in High Places, The Coming Makeover of American Politics." Were you able to write that at the same time you were doing the work of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign? I was writing it during my time at the Democracy Campaign. I was spending a lot of evenings writing. I was writing during the weekend. A lot of what appears in the book is accumulated experience over the course of 15 or 20 years. And that time, of course, I was the director of the Democracy Campaign. So that work is central to a lot of the ideas in the book. And that work is certainly featured in the book. But yeah, I was writing as I was also running the organization. And why did you write this book? I wrote the book really because we're in the midst of a political market failure in this country. And over the last year or two, I had countless encounters with people around the state and was able to speak to all kinds of different groups in every corner of the state. And what I found was people despairing over the condition of our democracy and extremely frustrated about the fact that the political system is failing us. And I think there's a huge number of people who believe that both parties are failing us and they really feel politically homeless. That condition and the level of frustration and anxiety that I've encountered, especially in the last year or two, led me to offer some thoughts about how we might get out of this rut and reflect on some ways that past generations were able to create landscape altering political change and sort of offering what those recipes were because in many ways we've lost faith in our ability as citizens to make change and to get our political system to be more responsive to ordinary people. And so the book is really in a sense a recipe book that draws from concoctions from past generations that were successful in creating landscape altering political change while facing conditions that were eerily reminiscent, virtually identical to the conditions we face today. I think to understand your motivation and your perspective, maybe we have to do two things. We have to take a look at history here in Wisconsin where both you and I live. You're down by Madison. I'm a few hours away in Eau Claire, and also the county in which you grew up, the environment where you grew up because you didn't grow up as an ivory tower liberal, did you? I grew up on a dairy farm in Clark County, Wisconsin, which is about halfway between Eau Claire and Watha. And I lived outside of a little town named Curtis, which is only about 150 people. And if you look at the entire population of Clark County, there are more cows than people in that county. I spent my entire childhood on a farm, and that really shaped who I am today. And I still feel very deeply rooted in rural Wisconsin, and that defines me as a person. Well, I've seen rural communities and rural people increasingly feeling ignored or abandoned by those who are running our government. And there's enormous frustration in small rural communities just as there is in larger urban centers. You know, it shows up in Gallup polling. It shows up in Pew Research. It shows up in the opinion surveys by all the major media organizations. The percentage of people who refuse to identify as either Democrats or Republicans is at its highest level in three quarters of a century. You know, we're at a point where both parties are failing us. And in the book I talk about how we've got one party that's scary and another that's scared. I've used that line in presentations to all kinds of audiences, dozens and dozens of times. And I've yet to have a single person in a single audience ask me which one is which. They instantly connect to that. They instantly relate to that characterization of the political market failure that we have. And they instinctively understand how we're being failed as a citizenry. And they're frustrated about it. And they're looking for ways out of this trap that we're in. And it occurred to me that if you look at our own state's history here in Wisconsin, there are episodes where we can draw great inspiration and draw great comfort from those episodes because people faced virtually identical threats to democracy and virtually identical conditions in society as the ones we face today. And they overcame them and they found ingenious ways to beat back the very kinds of forces that are lording over us today. And so the book is really about how we might apply those lessons to modern circumstances and modern conditions and how we might invent a citizen movement that can have a similar impact again in our time. I refuse to believe that we're less able to make change than our great-grandparents or our great-great-grandparents were. In many ways, we've got a lot more going for us today than they did back in their time. I refuse to believe that we are less capable of dealing with these threats today than they were. And they did overcome them and they did produce landscape altering political change that changed the face of American politics. And I think it's our responsibility as citizens to repeat that history. So you refer to the history, which is one of my first questions. Can you tell us a little bit about the history? Is it only Wisconsin or is this U.S. history that we need to focus in on? It's not just Wisconsin, but there are episodes from Wisconsin's past that are very illustrative. One dates all the way back to the founding of the Republican Party. At the time of slavery, there were two major parties in America, the Democratic Party and the Whig Party, and both were basically pro-slavery parties and there was a growing abolitionist movement. There were people feeling very disenchanted with the two major parties. They felt politically homeless. And there were people who went into a little white schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin and they entered that schoolhouse calling themselves Democrats or Whigs. Some of them were so alienated from the major political establishment that they were calling themselves things like free soilers. They went into that schoolhouse calling themselves all those things that came out of the schoolhouse united in calling themselves Republicans. They fashioned themselves a new political identity and they accompanied that new identity with a very ambitious agenda about what change was needed in their time and they changed the face of American politics. In that instance, the Whig Party refused to adapt to this external threat, this new citizen movement, these people calling themselves Republicans, and the Whig Party was driven to extermination. When the smoke cleared, we still only had two major parties. America is a two-party system. We didn't have three parties or four or five parties. We still had two parties, but suddenly it was now called the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. And about a generation later, a prominent Republican here in Wisconsin by the name of Bob La Follette, who came to be known as fighting Bob La Follette, grew so disillusioned with his party, he felt that his party had grown corrupt. Now we're in the gilded age, in the age of the robber barons, and timber interests and railroad interests were lording over society and standard oil and the big corporate trusts were basically buying legislators and buying legislation. And a 35-year-old attorney by the name of Bob La Follette was offered a bribe by a leader of his own party to fix a legal case. He was so outraged by that and felt that he could no longer in good conscience call himself a Republican and he started calling himself a progressive. And of course, virtually every political strife flocked to this new progressive movement and it again changed the face of American politics and had a huge impact on public policy in our country, huge waves of reform washed over the land. When the smoke cleared, again, we didn't have three parties or four or five. There were still two parties, but you had Teddy Roosevelt running as a progressive for president on the Republican ticket and some years later you had Woodrow Wilson running as a progressive on the Democratic ticket for president. And so both major parties in that instance adapted to this new threat. They embraced the progressive agenda, they enacted progressive policies, and they survived, but they were both transformed. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were fundamentally reformed. And you saw things like workers' compensation and unemployment compensation and creation of a vocational, technical, and adult education system. And you saw railroad reform and insurance reform and the creation of the first system of taxation based on the ability to pay. You saw these astonishing and ambitious progressive reforms made into law because of this citizen movement. Now in the book I call these kinds of movements first party movements to distinguish them from third party movements. Third parties try to create three or more parties, but we don't have a parliamentary democracy. We don't have a system that allows fusion voting or other kinds of election systems that empower third party or independent candidates. We have a two party system, a system that really rigorously enforces a two party arrangement. Again and again attempts to create a third party has ended up being a dead end. And whether it's Ralph Nader one time or Ross Perro, another, it has left people feeling deflated. But past generations used what I would call a first party movement. The goal is not to have three or more parties but to have at least one that's truly doing the will of the people. They don't organize to the left of one party or to the right of another major party. They actually seek to compete for the affections of all voters. And they created these vast citizen movements. First people calling themselves Republicans for the first time. And later people beginning to call themselves progressives. And in every instance the first step that citizens took was fashioning themselves a new political identity. That's really what my book is about. It suggests that we have reached another moment where there is a political market failure where the major parties are failing us and perhaps it's time for people to think about building a first party movement to try to create at least one party that authentically owes its allegiance to the people and is doing the will of the people. And the suggestion is that as past generations understood the first step is fashioning a new political identity. And that actually has a lot to do with the title of the book. Why the book is called Blue Jeans in High Places. And we'll get to that in just a moment. Remember folks though we are talking with Mike McCabe. His recent book is Blue Jeans in High Places, The Coming Makeover of American Politics. There are a couple things in history that I want to bring in, get your reaction to. First of all, you point out that at the time of the formation of the Republican party that was actually a third party came in and essentially the wig party got destroyed. So we couldn't do that today. I guess there's something structurally different that we couldn't do that. No, I think there just has to be a recognition that we do have a two party system. And when the smoke clears, we will have two parties, not three, not four, not five. We don't have a system where competing factions can join forces and form coalition governments. We don't have a parliamentary democracy like some of the European countries. But what the Republicans did was they simply said, look, the two major parties have left us politically homeless. They fashioned themselves a new identity. In that instance, one of the major parties refused to adapt to that threat. Now, the Democratic party was a pro-slavery party and remained so for a long time. But the wig party also resisted the abolitionists. And in that case, there was enough political clout behind this movement to actually drive the wig party to extinction, to so weaken it that it went away. A little over a generation later, a new citizen movement emerged. They started calling themselves progressives. And in that case, the two major parties at the time decided to embrace this agenda, embrace this new identity. You had people running in both major parties as progressives. You had both major parties actually working to enact progressive reforms. And so the two major parties, they survived, in that case, during the Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, but both of them were transformed. So a third party movement, a true attempt to create three or more permanent parties on the political landscape, they've failed over and over again. But when citizens have made their aim the transformation of at least one of the major parties, it's had remarkable results. In some cases, it will lead to the extermination and replacement of a major party with this new identity that emerges. In other cases, the two major parties might adapt and embrace the citizen movement and survive, but they will be transformed. And so the real goal of a first party movement is not the establishment of three or more parties as permanent fixtures, the real goal is to force change within the two-party system, to compel at least one of the parties to either adapt or perish. And when citizens have used this strategy, it has had remarkable effects. It has changed American politics. Now, I confess that one of the reasons that I got to thinking about all this was the Tea Party movement, because here in recent times, you saw this new thing called the Tea Party arise. And what fascinated me about it is that it wasn't a party at all, but rather it was simply a brand that was used to take over one of the major parties. Now, the Tea Party, its launching was planned for over ten years, primarily by the Koch brothers who run Koch Industries. One of the Koch brothers actually was once a third party candidate on a presidential ticket. He was the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in 1980, ran against Ronald Reagan, and they didn't think that Ronald Reagan was devoted enough to their interests, and so they ran as a libertarian. Well, they got their heads handed to them. They lost horribly. Most people don't even remember that one of the Kochs was once a vice presidential nominee and was involved in the 1980 election. The Kochs learned something from that. They realized it doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter how famous your name is. You try to run outside the two-party system and you get nowhere. They then spent ten years planning the development and the launching of the Tea Party. And again, what fascinated me is that they didn't create a party at all. They created a brand that was used to take over a party. And you have to say, they've been remarkably successful in transforming the Republican Party. They've made the Republican Party way more subservient to their interests than the party was previously. That got me to thinking, well, if they understand how to make change within the two-party system in this dramatic way, why couldn't ordinary citizens, people who aren't billionaires, why couldn't they use the same strategy to make change for a much more public-spirited purpose? The Kochs did it for very selfish reasons. They did it to make the Republican Party more subservient to them and their interests. But why couldn't citizens do it for a more public-spirited purpose to promote the common good? And then it occurred to me, looking back at history, that actually past generations of citizens had done just that. They had done exactly that. They had used this exact same strategy to transform one, or in some cases both of the major parties. What I'm suggesting is that we dust that strategy off, we apply those lessons, as the Kochs did with their manufactured Tea Party movement, and think about seeking to transform at least one party that is failing us. I think that when you see the percentage of Americans who refuse to call themselves either Democrats or Republicans at its highest level in three-quarters of a century, we are facing conditions that we haven't seen in our lifetimes. We're facing conditions that are so eerily reminiscent to the conditions that prompted the birth of the Republican Party or the growth of the progressive movement a generation or so later. I was going to ask you actually about that Tea Party movement as an example of what you were looking at, so I'm glad you brought that up. It wasn't so clear in the book. Again, folks, the book is Blue Jeans in High Places, the coming makeover of American politics. I don't know if that's prognostication or just hope hanging out there. But one of the cases in the past that I thought about where I think that kind of transformation perhaps took place was within the Democratic Party in the course of the 1960s. Would you identify that as one of those seminal moments where the Democratic Party looked very different within 10 years from what it had started out as? Oh, yeah. You go back to the 1950s in Wisconsin was a Republican state. It was a one-party state. Joe McCarthy was sent to represent Wisconsin in the United States Senate. There were only a handful of Democrats serving in the legislature. The Republican majorities were vastly larger in the legislature than than they are today. This was a one-party state here in Wisconsin in the 1950s. And there were a bunch of young upstarts, people like Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire and people who sought to work within the Democratic Party to take over the party and to transform the Democratic Party. And they did succeed and they turned Wisconsin back into a two-party state. And of course, Gaylord Nelson and Bill Proxmire both went on to be elected United States Senators representing the state of Wisconsin. Bill Proxmire didn't lose an election in Wisconsin for 30 years. He was revered by Democratic and Republican voters alike. He would win by landslides every election and never once spent more than $300 on one of his statewide campaigns for office. And in Bill Proxmire's last run for office, which he won by a landslide, he spent $145.10 on his entire statewide campaign and voters elected him by a huge margin. Right there, you saw an effort to go within a party that was failing. And failing even more miserably than the Democratic Party is failing today in Wisconsin with Republican majorities much larger than those we see today here in Wisconsin. And some young Turks went in there and took over that party and transformed it and turned Wisconsin back into a two-party state. So, yes, we have seen on multiple occasions this first-party strategy used to great effect. And yet, we've sort of been trained as citizens to think that there are only three options that we have as voters. Today, you know, we've been conditioned to think that we either have to accept whatever the two major parties offer up. And if we don't like that, every once in a while we'll get a hankering to support some third-party candidate or an independent. And like I said, whether it's Ross Pearl one time or Ralph Nader another, we end up feeling let down when we go that route. And that ends up being a dead end. And that leads us to option number three, which is withdrawal, just resignation. And you have to admit that's endemic to American politics today. Huge numbers of people have just thrown up their hands and headed for the sidelines and just said, you know what, my voice isn't being heard, my interests aren't being served. I'm not being represented. You know, I'm not going to waste my time. I'm out. What fascinates me is that past generations realized that there was another option, that if you didn't like what the two parties were doing, you didn't have to simply vote for some third-party candidate. You could actually go inside one of the major parties and fundamentally change it. And you are absolutely right when you look at the 1950s and the 1990s and the 1960s in Wisconsin, that happened within Wisconsin's Democratic Party. You know, you look at Minnesota, for example, and the Democratic Party has not even called the Democratic Party anymore. It's the DFL, the Democratic Farm Labor Party. And again, citizens there in Minnesota decided to fashion themselves in new identity and transform their party. And they did it to great effect. And people should note that the DFL is not a separate party. You don't have the Democrats and the Republicans and the DFLers. The DFL is the Democratic Party in Minnesota. But they made it a different party than it had been before. And so there again would be an example of what I would call a first-party movement, rather than a third-party movement. And when these things have been tried, they have on multiple occasions been highly successful. So I'm suggesting in my book that we've got to reacquaint ourselves with this option. We've been trained to think that it doesn't even exist, that it's not even a door we could open. And past generations realized that the door is not only there, but when they opened it, what they found behind it was transformational. It was landscape altering. And we'll get into more of that change in just a moment. And I want to remind our listeners that you're tuned in to Spirit in Action, which is a Northern Spirit Radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. And on that site, you'll find nine and a half years of our programs, free listening and download. You'll find links to our guests, so you can find where to get Mike McCabe's new book and its connection with his former employer, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. You'll find that on northernspiritradio.org. You'll also find a place to post comments, and we love two-way communication. So please, when you visit the site, post a comment, and also support us. There's a place to click for your support to donate to us. Please do help us out that way, but even more important than that, and I think this is absolutely crucial, support your local community radio stations because they provide a side of the news and of music that you get nowhere else on the American radio waves in this country. So please, remember to start out by supporting them. Media can make all of the difference for us to have a voice. That's one of the reasons that we have Mike McCabe here today. His recent book is Blue Genes in High Places, The Coming Makeover of American Politics. He's the former director of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Just left that recently. We'll talk more about that a little bit. But right now, I think he's trying to be part of the yeast that makes this political change come true. I do speak accurately there, right, Mike? Well, the book wasn't written as an academic exercise. It was written to be a blueprint, and blueprints are useless unless they're used to build something. At some point, Hammer has to hit nail, and so what's next for me is to do my part to create a new venture to operationalize the ideas in the book. I have stepped aside as director of the Democracy Campaign after 15 years in that role. December 30th was my last day. Since then, and here in the new year, I've thrown my energy into laying the groundwork for this new citizen initiative that is aimed at bringing to life the ideas in this book. I didn't write the book just to get a book published. I certainly didn't write it to make money. I wrote it as a blueprint, and I just don't think blueprints have any value whatsoever unless they're actually used to build something. I'm going to do my part to build something, because I think the moment is right. I think the need is great, and I think there's a strategy that can be used. We've lost faith in our capacity as citizens to make this kind of change, but there is a recipe that we can use. As I said before, I just refuse to believe that we are somehow fundamentally less able than past generations to make change. It's just a matter of sort of regaining our confidence in our own capacity to produce political renewal. There's never been a time in our lifetimes where democracy's health has been so poor and where the threats to democracy have been so great. I don't think there's been a time in living memory when the political system and the economy have been so stacked against plain folks. The need for us to summon not only the courage, but the creativity to produce political renewal is great, and I want to do my part. I think one of the things that we need to talk a little bit about is the money in politics issue. You can talk about Bill Proxmire running for office, never spending more than a few hundred dollars for a senatorial campaign. That's amazing in this day where that's several million dollars at the very minimum. My question is, how did we get this way? And you talk about a little bit more of the history. Most of us have heard about Citizens United and have some concern about that. It didn't start there, though. Could you give us a little bit more of that history? It didn't start with Citizens United. Citizens United put the problem on steroids. You know, here in Wisconsin, we've seen elections spending more than triple since the Citizens United decision. But we already were in the midst of a raging campaign arms race by the time the U.S. Supreme Court magnified that arms race many times over with its decision in the Citizens United case. But the problem was already upon us. You know, Bill Proxmire, in our lifetimes, we used to be able to elect a United States senator who spent a couple of hundred dollars on his entire statewide campaign. Here in Wisconsin, we've now had elections for governor where as much as eighty-one million dollars was spent. That's all within our lifetime that we've seen this change. And when I look at what happened, I guess if I had to boil it down to its essence, I would say TV happened. In Bill Proxmire's day, of course, television existed, but it was not yet the primary means of political communication. Candidates didn't air TV ads. It was only at the very end of Bill Proxmire's career that some of his opponents ran ads. Proxmire never did. Newspapers were king in American politics. And Bill Proxmire was very skilled at getting his name in the newspaper. And that's how most people got most of their information about politics and elections and candidates for office. Well, today, I think sadly television has become the primary means of political communication and the problem is that America is the only major democracy on Earth that doesn't have some system of free air time for candidates during election seasons. Candidates have to pay for the privilege of getting their message out to voters, and that air time is insanely expensive. That's why we've had eighty-one million dollar elections for statewide office here in Wisconsin, and there have been even more expensive elections elsewhere in the country in the bigger media markets. So that's one of the fundamental problems. Well, a couple of things that I think we have to reflect on. First of all, television's not always going to be king in American politics. There's going to come a day when some hand-held device that hasn't even been invented yet is going to be the primary way that people learn about government and politics and elections. And if we have a free and open internet, when that day comes, that could be transformational. The future generations could actually see a return to Bill Proxmire-style politics if we have internet policies that enable that to happen. What a lot of wealthy economic interests are looking to do is turn the internet into something akin to cable television. We could have something like free air time, and America's the only major democracy that doesn't have it. Every other major democratic nation gives candidates some ability to communicate with voters on television without having to pay for the air time. We don't do that, but the internet could become such a tool if internet policy is made in a way that enables it. The other thing that I think is really important, Mark, is that we've been trained to think and talk about politics in ways that make us active participants in our own disempowerment. And one of the ways that we've been trained to think is to assume that there's only one political currency that's relevant, namely money. And past generations were up against immense organized money. In the Gilded Age, ordinary citizens were up against standard oil and the timber barons and the railroad barons and the huge corporate trust, and the Carnegie's and the Vanderbilt's and the Rockefeller's. They were up against enormous concentrated wealth in a very few hands, and they beat those forces. They defeated them and enacted a wave of progressive reform that reigned in that concentrated power. And they did it by marrying a couple of political currencies that we've been trained to forget about. They married provocative ideas, extremely ambitious agendas, with organized people. And they came up with a concoction powerful enough to overcome the force of organized money. And we've been conditioned to believe that that's impossible. We've been trained to believe that there's only one political currency that matters, and both major parties reflect it. They both seek out standard bearers who are independently wealthy and are able to pour millions of dollars into their own campaigns. I think part of the way out of this trap is the emergence of a new primary means of political communication in this country. The internet is still in its infancy, politically speaking, but it will eventually surpass television as a means of communication. And then I think the other key to our salvation is to become reacquainted with other political currencies. We've lost faith in our capacity to put other currencies into circulation that actually can have as much power as organized money. And that brainwashing has led us to become active participants in our own disempowerment. We need to challenge our own thinking in that regard. We need to, again, look at how past generations faced just as entrenched money to interest as those that exist today. And they overcame them. They beat them. And they beat them by putting into circulation political currencies that we've been trained to ignore. You mentioned you grew up in Clark County. Unfortunately, a lot of the local folks in Wisconsin, I think you say this, and I think it's generally true. That the conservative and the Republican Party, the Tea Party, is maybe more better expresses their values than the Democratic Party. I don't think that's true, but I believe that a number of people believe. And some of the dialogue that I kind of pictured from the side was organizers stepping away from Madison and going out to Clark County and trying to get their favorite latte, or at least that's how they're viewed. And they're organic vegetables and disparaging people who don't eat organic or drink plain coffee, not espresso or something like that. And this kind of a cultural divide between them with each side looking at the other and disparaging them because they don't have the same norms. I think that we do ourselves a vast disservice by supporting that gap between us. Could you talk about your perspective on those differences? Well, I'm a farm kid from Clark County, and it aggravates me to no end when I'm around a place like Madison, and I hear people say, you know, these folks out in rural parts of the state are stupid. They're voting against their own interests. You know, they're voting to slit their own throats. That aggravates me to no end. People in places like Clark County are not stupid. They are not voting against their own interests. They are voting for their interests as they see their interests, and it would do liberals or progressives well to do a little bit more listening and to find out how people really do see their interests. You know, when I was growing up, my dad was a dairy farmer with an eighth grade education. My dad was a Democrat. He wasn't active in the party. He wasn't a political person. He was a dairy farmer, but he voted for Democrats, and he voted for Democrats because he measured every single candidate his whole life by the extent to which they reminded him of Franklin Roosevelt. Now, he believed that Roosevelt saved his family, saved his country from the depths of the Depression, and he became a Roosevelt Democrat as a result. And you think about what people like Franklin Roosevelt did, you know, they created the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps. They created these jobs programs that brought the country out of depression, policies like rural electrification, revolutionized rural life. You know, no electric company was going to string electric wire out to farms out in remote parts of Wisconsin. You know, people like Franklin Roosevelt said, "Look, we've got to make sure that everybody has access to electricity, and, you know, social security was created." And later, my dad went off and fought in World War II, and when he came home, the GI Bill was waiting for him and created opportunity there. Then you look at the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and people forget how that revolutionized rural life. It enabled people in rural agricultural communities to reach markets. They couldn't have dreamed of reaching before the Interstate Highway System was built. So one of the things I say to liberals or democratic audiences is, "Tell me, what is the modern-day equivalent of the WPA or the CCC? What's the modern-day equivalent? What policy is in place that has the same reach and impact as rural electrification? What's the modern-day creation that is as impactful as social security or the Interstate Highway System?" And, of course, people kind of shrug, and they can't come up with an answer. Well, people in places like Clark County aren't stupid. They realize that. They see that handwriting on the wall. They realize that the Democrats don't have any answers. They don't have anything that they've offered in decades that has the kind of impact on people's lives that those policies I just mentioned had. And so the calculus, I think, that people in those areas have made is that, well, if government's not really going to do anything for us, then we should keep it as small as possible. And if you're going to keep government as small as possible, what becomes your default option at election time? You vote for the Republicans, because that's the party that professes the greatest interest in limited government. And these people aren't stupid, and they're not voting against their interests. They've made a conscious decision that if government isn't going to do anything that makes our lives better, let's keep it as small as possible. That's a logic that may aggravate people who are liberals or Democrats, but it's logical. And it's for the Democrats to say, look, we've got to go out and make people in rural areas a better offer. We've got to show them that we have a plan that can make their lives better, that can make the future of their communities brighter, that can make the future for their kids and grandkids brighter. And people don't believe the Democrats have those answers, and so they've turned to the Republicans. That's a logical choice. That is not irrational, and it's certainly not stupid. And what that suggests to me is that there's an opportunity here for the Democrats. When I was growing up, Clark County was sending Democrats to the state legislature. It wasn't just my dad who was voting Democratic. All of Clark County was voting Democratic. Now it's one of the most Republican counties in Wisconsin, and my hometown at Curtis, 150 people, had the distinction in the 2014 election of providing Scott Walker with his biggest margin of victory of any community in the state of Wisconsin. Scott Walker won 90% of the voting Curtis. My dad told me that the Democratic Party was the party of the poor, and the Republicans were the party of the rich. He wouldn't be able to make heads or tails out of how Curtis is voting today if he were alive. But there is a logic behind that behavior. And I think when people out around the state of Wisconsin talk about liberals and Democrats, they talk about how condescending they are, how arrogant they are, how elitist they are, how they look down on everybody. They think they're better than everybody else, and that they should be the ones making decisions about how people live their lives. And that aggravates people. And you know, there is an element of truth to all of those caricatures. In fact, there is condescension and arrogance in a lot of liberal thinking. And that's got to end. We've got to realize that we're all in the same boat together. And there ain't any of us who's better than anybody else. And we've got to be serious about trying to address the problems that we face in all of our respective communities and try to collectively make a brighter future for everybody. Once the Democratic Party starts to embrace that kind of thinking, there is absolutely no reason why they couldn't win back places like Clark County. Clark County used to send Democrats to the Capitol. They don't anymore. That doesn't mean that they never will again. It only means that right now the Democrats aren't making them a decent offer. And they actually see it in their best interest to vote for Republicans. There are two more parts of this, Mike, that I'd like you to comment on. One is, at least my perception, that cynicism is rampant in our society. And that cynicism I see, particularly amongst young people, people over 70 are probably not cynical. They probably have allegiances that are hardened by a lifetime of devotion. But the other part that I would like your input on is religion's place in this. I see an increasing amount of the population of the United States, which does not identify with religion. And yet I see religion being used as a tool in political campaigns frequently. So what are your takes on cynicism and religion's place? We live in a very cynical age. That's true enough. I think a lot of that cynicism really has roots in the fact that there are two fundamental conditions that I think animate our politics in really profound ways. And I don't think either party has shown itself to be up to the task of dealing with these conditions. The first reality, this is an almost universally held feeling, is that the economy and the political system are stacked against us. So many Americans believe that. They believe that the economy and the political systems are rigged and that they are stacked against us, and that the politicians serve a privileged few. They aren't listening and aren't serving the vast majority of people, but rather are catering to wealthy donors and people who can afford $300 in our lobbyists, prowling the halls of the Capitol to do their bidding. And neither party seems to be up to the challenge of dealing with that exasperation. And of course that exasperation, left unaddressed, does morph into a very corrosive cynicism. The answer to that is for at least one of the parties to come clean and reconnect with the people on that basic point and acknowledge that yes, what we've got is a system that's rigged against ordinary people. And yes, the political system and the economy are stacked against most people, and we've got to change that. The other thing that I think animates our politics to such an incredible degree, it's something that key partiers feel, it's something that occupiers feel across the political spectrum. Most Americans believe that future generations will be worse off. Most Americans believe that it is inevitable that the American dream will be downsized. And that has enormously corrosive effect. And you know, a lot of people who are not religious, sort of marvel in frustration at people who embrace end times thinking and sort of have put their faith in the fact that the world's coming to an end, but there's salvation to be found. But you know, end times thinking has roots in a belief that the future is not going to be bright, that the American dream is vanishing and that future generations are going to be worse off. The remedy is to give people authentic reason for hope. And the reality is that there's no reason on earth why the American dream has to be downsized. This is one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world. I think it's fair to say it's the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and there's no reason on earth why this country should only work for a few, that it only should enrich a few. And when finally a political party taps into that and aggressively promotes an American dream agenda that makes a brighter future available to more than just the wealthiest few in our society, that cynicism will start to melt away. I got to believe in the mid-1890s that people had to be pretty depressed, fresh off the panic of 1893 when the banks were failing, the country plummeted into an economic depression. On the heels of that came the progressive movement, and on the heels of that came enormous change in not only American politics, but in the American economy. And it did usher in a better period, and now we've sort of re-entered a very cynical age, but I think it's an age that really calls on us to summon our courage and our creativity and imagine political renewal. And that's why I think this is such a critical moment. We've got so many people believing that our best days are behind us and that future generations are going to be worse off. And that is corrosive. It breeds cynicism when people are believing that. I think citizens need to focus on coming together. The real leadership is going to come from places like Clark County, Wisconsin, and similar places all across the country. That's where the change is really going to come from, and its final manifestations will be played out in Washington, D.C. And then history books will be written about the significant figures who spent their time in Washington, D.C. and will take a lot of credit for the change, but the change will actually have been produced by plain people. Any real change, any meaningful change, is always done by plain people. And I think that Mike McCabe is one of those plain people, so you've left your job with Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. What are you doing now? You're just staying home, keeping your feet up, you're not writing a book anymore. What are you doing? I'm in the midst of laying the groundwork for the launching of a new venture that is aimed at operationalizing the ideas in this book. And I'm pulling together people all around the state. I've been traveling the state and talking to groups and having meetings and almost exclusively outside of Madison and Milwaukee. Just getting all into the other parts of the state and working to organize people. I hope to be able to launch publicly this new initiative in March or April. There's a lot of groundwork to lay. For the time being, I've taken a risk here. I've taken the risk of trying to create something new from the ground up, starting it from scratch. I've given up my income for the time being, which is an uncomfortable position to be in. But I really believe that this is necessary, and I really believe that a moment is upon us that we can't squander. And so I'm willing to do that. And I fully understand that I might not prove capable enough. And this effort might crash and burn. And if it does, I'll pick myself up and dust myself off and I'll go find myself a job somewhere. But for the time being, I'm going to try to make this work. And I guess the thing that gives me confidence is that it's not the first time I've been involved from starting something from scratch. The Democracy campaign was started from nothing. We just had an idea. We were starting to notice that a lot of money was flowing in Wisconsin politics that had never flowed before. We were used to bill Proxmire-type campaigns, and all of a sudden we noticed that huge money was flooding in. And yet there was no way to track that money. You had to go down to the old state elections board office and pause through thousands of pages of paper reports. And so we thought, you know, this was back in 1995. A few of us thought, well, why couldn't we use this new thing called the Internet? And just put all these donations online and let people be able to see it all on the Internet, free of charge. And we started with that idea. And of course we had to find people who were willing to invest emotionally and eventually financially in that enterprise. And it worked. And it became a really important fixture in Wisconsin politics. And I'm very proud of the work that we did at the Democracy campaign to enable the public to follow the money and to work for Democracy Reform. But I've reached a point where I feel that there's more fundamental transformation that needs to occur. We need to unite as commoners to build housing for the politically homeless and transform political parties that are failing us. And that's what inspired me to write this book and now use that blueprint to try to build something new. And I got my fingers crossed that it can be successful. I certainly am getting an awful lot of very encouraging feedback from people so far. I'm traveling constantly and speaking constantly. My weekends are full. The hours are long. But all I know is that the need is great. And we can't continue down this road where we've got parties that are failing us in a political system that's broken. We've got to resuscitate Democracy and create an economy that works for everybody, not just for a few. And so that's what I'm going to devote my energy to for as long as it takes to get this thing to take off. And I have the sense that if anyone's got the energy and the vision and the ears to be able to pull together the disparate viewpoints that we need to solidify into this movement, you, Mike McCabe, are ideally suited for it. Again, we've been speaking with Mike McCabe. The recent book, Blue Jeans in High Places, The Coming Makeover of American Politics. I'll try and maintain a link so you can find out when this actually emerges what website, what place you can find him on. Mike, you've been doing great work for so many years with Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. You've helped us get a light into the politics and what's going on in this country. You've been inspirational to so many people and the book is a true gift to us, a gift of vision. So I thank you so much for doing that and especially for joining me today for Spirit in Action. Well, thank you so much, Mark. I appreciate the opportunity and I really appreciate the kind words. I mean a lot to me. And just so you folks all know, if you want to track down the book, you can order it through Amazon and other such places. But if you want to support small business, look up Little Creek Press. I've got the link on my site, NortonSpiritRadio.org. Little Creek Press. Find it, read it, share the ideas. Let's make a movement happen and transform this country. Thanks again, Mike. We'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)