What Democrats Should Take from No Kings Protests

I'm scared of crowds. But before we get into all of that night, there was some news over the weekend that the louver was robbed and within seven minutes a team of robbers was able to get into the second floor window and steal some priceless jewelry. They got in, they got out. By the way, this was nine thirty in the morning, right, Like, this wasn't late at night, just completely brazen daytime robbery.

but it didn't completely break Okay. Also, like what the hell love like their security, Like I think this is the museum with the most number of robberies like that in the twentieth and twenty first century that I know of the Mona Lisa was stolen, right, Like that should be the one thing that like you're really really guarding really well, and they've had other break ins throughout history of Like, come on, French people, French security.

this heist brought to you by bit Quiet Watching. But yeah, it's a it is a hilarious I mean not hilarious, but it is a funny bit of news. And maybe Nate, So we're recording this on Monday, October twentieth. Maybe by the time it airs on Wednesday, the thiefs will have been caught and that will be like a huge win

for French police. But it took a long time for the Mona Lisa to be recovered when it was stolen, and I'm from Boston, I obviously remember like the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum heist, which was huge those none of those works of art have been recovered, so it can take a really long time from moment of theft to actually recovering, and that moment of time could be never. So let's see what happens this time day. If you were going to rob a museum, purely hypothetically, what would

you steal? Like, is there an item in a museum somewhere that you're like, man, I really just want this at home.

way a museum can. And I think there's a there's definitely a case to be made that sure, you can have it, but like lend it out, let people see it. Share the beauty, right, share the beauty with the world. And by the way, talking about risk, during the Palisade fires earlier this year, some absolutely irreplaceable works of art were destroyed, right Because you could be a billionaire with a gorgeous Pacific Highway house in Malibu or wherever, and your house.

where I never go. I hate Grand Central, but I went because it really Yeah, Grand Central's nice, it's beautiful, but I just, oh, I don't like any of the like I don't like going to train stations like and if I go there, it's for travel, but like Grand Central, I never have to use like for whatever reason, you know, I never travel out of Grand Central anyway. So I went there specifically to see the Dear New York exhibition from Humans of New York that was closing this weekend.

It was two weeks during which Grand Central all of the advertising was taken off and it was completely taken over by the humans of New York Photography. And they also had a Steinway piano which was donated that was in the middle of the hall, and they had Juilliard musicians play during the day and some other cameos. Anyway, so this was a big thing and I wanted to see it, and I ended up leaving very quickly because going the day before it closed was not a good idea.

And it was so ridiculously crowded and there were so many people that I couldn't appreciate the photography and the art and all of these things, because not only could I not see anything, but I was being jostled from every single side, and I was like, you know what, it's not I'm getting out of here. Like I actually started feeling, you know, this sense of claustrophobia and anxiety. So I don't do well in situations where there are too many people near me. I hate crowded subways.

But the underlying question was kind of was there for a reason, which is that if we think about protests in a broader sense, there's a very strong kind of game theoretic reason why protests are powerful, and that has nothing to do with like, oh, you're in a crowd, but everything to do with signaling. Right, So a protest, there's I didn't not go because I don't think it's not worth it. I didn't go because just personally, I,

like I said, I hate crowds. But I do think it's worth it for the simple reason that there's coordination issues and kind of there's power in sending a very strong signal that people can then look at to say, oh, I'm not the only one who feels this way, there

are lots of people who feel this way. And now I know, right now that I know that there is all of this support out there for something that I believe that is not always visible because when you're online kind of in you know, Twitter or whatever it is, you see a very specific subset of opinions. You're in

a very specific bubble. But protests throughout history, when people go out in public, it's a signaling mechanism, right, and it's then a coordination mechanism where you can actually point to it and say, Okay, look, you know, here's a group of people who hold certain views, and that can be incredibly powerful for future momentum and future decision making. By the way, it's even more powerful when we're talking about truly authoritarian regimes countries where there's very little communication

between people. We're not there yet in the United States, but it's powerful even in a democratic society.

one day protests at least. I mean, look, as you get a larger size of crowd, then these things tend to become a little bit more amorphous, right, And you can see various critiques like, Okay, maybe the protests are a little bit cringe and considering who we're dealing with, right, we're dealing with like kind of like mostly boomery, good government democrat types. Yeah, they're a little cringe, right, And like the message just when you can critique, I mean, you know.

He's not popular in the polls. He's not that unpopular either, right, but like you know, these things can be a spectacle in part and attract attention, that is, if anything like a little bit outsize relative to the number of people participating, right, because they're physical, they're outside there. In some cases do you seem to be rather gentle minded, but they can be like confrontational.

intentionally divided economy. Right, it to not in the past where everyone watched one single TV show, right, or one single news channel, and there was kind of this collective knowledge of like, oh, these are the things that are in the news, et cetera, et cetera. These days, it's very fragmented, right, There's a very fragmented media landscape, and so many different things are vuying for our attention on

any given basis. And the Trump administration has shown itself to be much better than a lot of democratic operatives, to be perfectly honest at capturing attention and creating a narrative, right and creating something that makes it feel like it's this inevitable all American force, and something like the No King's protest is a really interesting moment that can potentially shape the narrative of weight.

congress people like, you're not doing anything like that. But on the other hand, you're doing something because you're sending a signal to the government. You know that these are the things that matter here where people who feel this

way live, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So let me let me just let me just stop there and get your thoughts on this and on because of your thoughts, your thoughts more broadly kind of about the effectives of certain tactics versus other when you're trying to shape a narrative that with the ultimate goal, because presumably this is the ultimate goal of change, right, of actually affecting real change in the government, in government policies and in what happens in the country going forward.

balances which are being substantially fraid. I think we might be in like the ante room before the doorstep, though, right, ye and gef there are actions such as like Trump trying to make it difficult for people to vote in twenty twenty six or twenty twenty eight for example. Right, I mean you can imagine open defiance to leave the White House after his term is over, open defiance of

a Supreme Court order. You know, one thing that I'll hear from is you'll see you'll hear your kind of democratic activists types kind of say, like, look, I realized that if you're kind of like leading your life, then things might seem pretty normal unless you're an immigrant or unless you's these other you know, a student, unless it's

other sugar categories. And like in some sense and some since Trump has been smart about that, right, Like he's been smart about like the world doesn't feel like it's in chaos if you live in in New York, right, And I even think that, like, you know, there are things like the ice raids and National Guard deployments in different cities and things like that, right, and if you're very politically aware of these will seem a whole right,

But like I don't think they're noticeable for ordinary people either, right, Like I was in Chicago for a talk the you know, the we can There are a bunch of ice actions there on the South side of Chicago, and like I

actually had a bunch of like political conversations there. I mean, I have friends there who are interested in politics, and they woud talk where we talking abouts and stuff like that, and like it didn't really come up, right, not because of what they think about Politicia unaware of it though, because like you know, I think there's this gap between the way that political insiders and political message crafts people who are very online experience politics and the way that

ordinary people do. I mean talking about a protests that has mass numbers millions, millions, you're bridging that gap like a little bit, right, because you know what percent of people watch MSNBC, Box and New CNN. It's like one percent of the country like watching them on the given day. It's like quite small, you know what I mean?

But yeah, people kind of miss these scale things and like and the number one problem that like political strategies, most polical strategists have is like they think exactly the opposite from how from how the normies do, right, and you know, a more narrow protest, right, like you know, I would take again the GOSPAP protests as something that have like relatively fear both, right, and they spin out on the things and there's messing that might be dumb

in whatever health, right, But like you know, on a university, we want the university to bess these investments and changes policy and this and that, right, you know. And those are pretty narrowly targeted protests, but smaller in scale. This is amorphous. I mean things like Occupy Wall Street, which was not particularly large protests, right, but like where the Tea Party is an example on the Republican conservative side a little bit more right, that's a little bit i'morphous.

And amorphosis can be good because like you want different people to be able to interpret it in different ways, and you know, the overall sentiment is clear enough Trump babert aboutthoritarrying rule or monarchical rule. I'll give them a credit of paths on the imprecise metaphor.

But what's your sense of Like if you were trying to be like, Okay, you know, I want people to be aware of all of these I want draw attention to all of these excesses happening that people might not be aware of unless they're very like politically tied in. I want them to be aware of, you know, tipping points in kind of the legal structure, et cetera, et cetera, that some of these checks are you know, yes, so

far democracy is holding. We do have robust checks and balances, but we are in the ante room, as you said, as you phrased it, and like some of these things are really being strained, and a lot of people don't seem to be aware of that. Like if you were organizing a protest, would it look like the No Kings

protest broadly speaking? Broadly speaking, like let's as you say, you know, let's ignore the semantics, Like would it be kind of more amorphous like general sentiment, like please work with us legislators and like let's try to figure out a strategy to counter this, or would you say you know what before we do this protest, like, let's think of three big goals and like have everyone have posters with those you know, with those goals, et cetera, et cetera,

and like actually try to do something that is more targeted but still broad. I don't know that I have a clear answer to that, so I'm curious whether you do.

I'm not. I'm not unendorsing any of these ideas, by the way, right, But like Trump has always given people so many such a large attack surface to term is different ways in that like it actually kind of renders itself toward it ineffective, right, And so like, on the one hand, it might seem like the way to attack that is to focus on one particular avenue, right, However a is at the right avenue and be like I think Karen Tula, that might that might work less well,

right because like remember one again, all the total anti Trump democratic energy, they're trying to make a shutdown about healthcare. If you read the newsletters, read the sub sex of little Subtext or blue Sky whatever else, right, maybe one or two percent of the messages are about healthcare from like not the actual base, but like the activist online part of the base, right, And so like, you know,

you're kind of losing people there a little bit. Number two, Trump is very very good at like changing the subject or redirecting attention. Right, So if he ever has a weakness, he's like it's so the metaphor of like Trump being a ship that you have different kind of which to attack, right, Like it doesn't quite work because it can fight back in different ways. Right, yeah, so you know, yeah, maybe having this kind of like more amorphous kind of gathering of energy.

were you know, replaced. Do you want to take a couple of mulligans or exceptional right, But like, you know, so they have like you know, so, yeah, I'm not so sure that it's so far from what I indoors I can the vibe is not mine. It feels a little cringe to me. But like the cringe is okay, creates happens when you have mass support for something, right, it's inherently a little cringe. If you go like a NFL game, the NFL is the most popular sport, cringe.

I love football, Right, they're a little bit cringe. Parades are fucking cringe at right, Holidays are cringe. I mean, all these things that are really popular are like, you know, so watch American Idol. American Idol is cringe. Like popular things are cringe for you.

crosses Seventh Avenue. And then one day decide I saw like there was a restaurant I really wanted to go to, and like finally saw reservation pop up, and I was like yay and took it. And of course the reservation popped up because it was on the other side of Seventh Avenue.

few issues. And when we were talking about how do they win, right before Trump got elected, we were saying, Okay, you know, your messaging should be focused on a few issues where you can actually get votes, where people are passionate about this, because the Trump campaign was much more effective at that and we were saying, you know, I remember you talking about immigration and saying, hey, Democrats, like immigration's not your issue, Like stop talking about that instead,

like let's try to focus on on things that like healthcare right that could actually be much more effective. Then we were talking, you know, with the shutdown, et cetera, that we should really be focusing on, like let's focus on tariffs, Like let's let's do something focused when we're talking about inside the government, and yet our advice for people kind of outside the government seems to be to have more of that vibe type of approach where you have, as you say, cringe but we don't have to call

them crinch. But when you have these large scale events that just show a general state of malaise, displeasure and opens the opens the conversation up for policymakers to kind of act in different ways as opposed to like pinpointing one specific thing.

particular goals you have for that day, that week. That news cycle right in the media is the same way, right, we have to we have to you know, some weeks, Maria, we have eight things people to talk about, right, some weeks it's a well struggle, right, but you kind of even the ow and something to come talking to point and so like you know, yeah, it should be more long term focus. Right. We still have more than a year until the midterm elections, even we have more than

three years until the presidential election. And so yeah, you know, look, the direct Party has always been that historically they're kind of like this collection of different interest groups, right that Democrats were collection of young people and union workers and people of color and college professors.

Hispanic and Asian Americans. It's some sport among black Democrats. It's also live support among like working class union worker type of Democrats. Right, it's also sport young people pecularly young men. Right. So, well, you know, you still don't have a lot of people who have their hat quote unquote issues with the environment or LGBT do plus rights, or over healthcare or or economics and authority. Right, and like when do you say, oh, let's focus on this

one issue. Well, the other groups you're really upset, right, and they'll say, my issue is a matter of existential importance. There's with called special pleading, right, It's like very hard to like have you know, who gets to pick and choose what issues we prioritize and so like have seffy amorphous and it's project cussures, Like ambiguity is okay, you can be yeah, absolutely USU on your paper, the better.

I'm like, it seems kind of weird, right, but I was pretty good at being optimizing for intiguity.

Because if you think about kind of the psychology of in groups and out groups, right, we are very good at forming in groups and out groups based on anything, right, almost almost immediately, but we're also very good at unifying when you can actually kind of get a bigger issue

that focuses on commonalities as opposed to divisions. And so I think that's something like a No King's protest test did a really good job of actually tapping into that element of psychology right on a high level, Like let's

put our differences aside. Right, let's put aside whether like who we are and what to us is the existential issue, and how we feel about you know, all of these different people and all of these different policies, and instead let's focus on one thing, Like, let's we believe in America. We believe in democracy. We want to preserve this thing

that the country was founded on. And I think that's why the No Kings like, even though not quite right, while symbolically it actually helps kind of get to that unification. It helps to harken back to a moment in history when America was united, right where it didn't matter what political party you were, it didn't matter, nothing mattered other than that we were fighting against the British and we wanted to be free.

of it's kind of exclusionary. Right. Republicans do lots of that too, they are fortunate enough to have this kind of And again I'm not a super lib Right, I'm gonna say this in a way that believe is like a correct arms like fritigue, but like there is a substantial like personality cult around Trump that helps keep Republicans

united with all types of long term cosmus to the country. Right, But like Democrats have no equivalent of right, So they're both exclusionary at least people kind of like the blue sky types and and leaderless really bad, you know what I mean. It's like, we have a great idea, but we don't want you. You will while you're participating unless you agree with us in all these issues. Right, So the rep and inclusivity is is very important.

of these things. I think that the Republicans have actually been much much better at including people in the party and saying, ah, fine, like you don't believe in that, but like, at least you you believe in Trump, you

believe in this, Like, come on in. And I do think that the Democratic establishment has actually been very quick to I don't want to say like cancel, but to cancel their own right to say, well, like sure you're you're a Democrat, but you said something I don't like about this issue, and.

don't think Democrats do the same thing. Right. They don't go and say to evangelical white church and say, you know what, you're as rationals you might want to hope for Democrats, right, maybe you kind of implicitly do it, and like who are on the center left are regarded as enemies by the far left and often vice versa, and so like it. It's you know, getting out of that mentality is essential.

So yeah, the main kind of takeaways here are like, coordination is important, and signaling is important at kind of understanding all of that from a game theory standpoint is important, but also inclusivity is important and trying to frame things in broad terms where you can actually unite people and focus on uniting as opposed to dividing and nitpicking and like you know saying oh, well you belong, but you really don't. You're not our perfect archetype of who we want.

That it's really important to think in those types of terms. And the third thing that we haven't talked about as much, but we have mentioned is like people just don't think long term, Like if I don't do something right now, the Democratic Party is just going to implode. Like if I don't if I don't do this, then these are the long term consequences, and you don't think, well, like, if I don't speak out now, then there might be nothing to speak out, nothing left to speak out for

in a few years. So I think that thinking more long term and long term strategy is very important. I don't necessarily endorse Nate, you know, acting everyone over fifty fifty seems awfully young, but still I you know, I think that what you were the spirit of that that

we do need kind of a little bit. We do need some young blood is fair because we do need to be thinking about the future, and people who are eighty years old are not the future because they're going to be dead in the long term that we're talking about, absent the singularity.