In this episode, Katelyn and Grace discuss major issues in state politics like the reorganization of the South Carolina Democratic Party and the decline in party popularity. They touch on factors altering the political discourse, including the rise of social media, the loss of local community connection, and outdated norms. They also discuss the increasing tendency of public figures to distort truth, the Taylor Swift effect, and review Tucker's talk with Putin.

00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter

00:20 Discussing the State of the Democratic Party in Spartanburg

01:41 Analyzing the Political Shift in South Carolina

02:56 The Impact of Gerrymandering and Political Ideology

05:24 Exploring the Political Engagement of Gen Z

07:06 The Erosion of Political Norms

12:39 The Impact of Social Media on Neighborhood Dynamics

22:36 The Power of Celebrity Influence: Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl

23:42 Analyzing Tucker Carlson's Interview with Vladimir Putin

26:04 Conclusion

Copyright 2024 Grace Cowan

• "Give Me More" - VAV - VAV - 'Give me more' (Feat. De La Ghetto & Play-N-Skillz) Music Video Apple Music : https://apple.co/2YbKeEf Spotify : https://spoti.fi/2LBHRZM

Hey Katelyn, what's up?

Hey Grace, how are you?

I'm actually traveling with my daughter today, so I'm holed up in a hotel room recording our podcast.

I can only imagine the setup you have trying to make this sound good.

I have a towel over my head, Katelyn. Okay, so I had a conversation this week with Kathryn Harvey, who is the chair of the Democratic Party in Spartanburg.

She talked about some common sense stuff that for the South Carolina Democrats, they need to hear that. Our party. In our state has gotten exhausted.

Exhausted is the word for it.

She said things like they're doing a total reorganization of the party that Christale Spain is really focused on the long game and that they're really focused on small towns, colleges.

I don't know since Jamie Harrison's enormous fundraising hall feels like that was turning point. For the party to maybe look at itself and say, what is happening here? Right?

I think one of the pieces that brought it to the forefront for most South Carolinians was when Mia McLeod stepped back from being a Democrat and part of the criticism and the reason for doing that was because of the internal workings of the South Carolina Democratic Party. And since then, it would seem to me from the outside that there's been quite a reckoning internally, all new leadership, Christelle's doing an incredible job, and you can just tell from the communication that's happening, there seems to be more of a focus.

I did some looking cause I'm always so like fascinated of how did we get here? Right now, the South Carolina state house. 88 to 36, Republicans and Democrats , 30 to 16 in the state Senate, two Republican senators on the federal level, Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham. And then one out of seven us house members is a Dem.

I went back and pulled some numbers just to see when did this start? And this is really crazy. This is going to blow your mind. Nineteen ninety-two, 73 Democrats to 50 Republicans. That wasn't that long ago. In South Carolina? Yes. Was literally reversed. And then in the state Senate in nineteen ninety-two, 30 Democrats to 16 Republicans, literally the exact opposite of where we are now.

Grace, what happened?

Well, I think that was the year of Clinton. And then in 1994, let's see, it then went to. 62 58. And in the Senate, they lost four seats in the next election cycle. And then it just kept going until it's now literally the opposite.

Going back to our episode on gerrymandering, it's not surprising to hear some of those stats, but we keep saying, you and I, we're not as red as people think we are.

And I was like, I need to know what the numbers are behind that. And the reality is the political ideology, according to the Pew Research Center, says that 43 percent of individuals in South Carolina are conservative, 35 percent are moderate, 15 percent are liberal, and 6 percent don't know. South Carolina is a relatively moderate state, and so the fact that there aren't candidates on both sides of the aisle running for every single seat in South Carolina just demonstrates the problem.

What year was that study done?

So that was 2014. If you go back to 2007, 48 percent identified as conservative in 2007, 43 percent in 2014, which means we've gotten more moderate. In those seven years and less democratic in terms of who we're electing in the same time span.

I'd be curious to see what those numbers were post-Trump. I'm curious, after 2016, what happened to those numbers? Because I would be willing to vet that there's probably even a smaller portion that are Trump Maga. People that said conservative probably now identify somewhat as moderate.

Yeah. It's been 10 years since that data came out.

So in our house, this goes exactly to that point. We have 124 state house seats and 65 of those seats didn't have competitive races. That's more than half. We have to do something about that South Carolina. But what that also does is it reinforces this belief that we are this super duper red state.

But it also allows for political organizations and all of these far right leaning think tanks to be able to come into our state, push a narrative that we are this thing. That sort of keeps the people that don't know a ton about politics or follow politics. into believing that's what we are. It makes them feel like, Oh, I'm just a drop in a big bucket. It's not productive for democracy.

One of the things that I want to talk about today really lends into that. I think we need to look at Gen Z and their belief that our political system actually works. And there are reports out there that Gen Z Is deeply engaged in the political process, but not because they have faith in the system.

It's a defense mechanism because they are scared of the future. They are watching this political instability and effective governance, and they are scared about what is happening, and that is why they are involved. And that is only a motivating factor for a short period of time. Once that young, zealousness of your late teens, early 20s fades away, you start to receive that apathy. And I'm really interested in exploring how that affects South Carolina.

I've read some statistics lately. Adults under 30, 70 percent favor having a national popular vote for president. 58 percent favor expansion of the Supreme Court, 45 percent favor amending the Constitution to change the way representation in the Senate is apportioned.

So those are pretty major changes and anyone looking at how our government is governing right now can see that there's something really wrong in that over time we have been able to manipulate different parts. of our constitution to make one side better off than the other. One of the things that comes out of this of like how Gen Zers feel in changing all of these things is that goes along with norms.

And I don't think that the Gen Zers have seen what we considered normal, political norms, societal norms. We had political norms that were in place for a really long time. And for a lot of my growing up, those political norms were all pretty much still in place. And beginning, I think, maybe George W. Bush's term and then definitely into Obama's term, that's when a lot of the norms were upended.

When you're referencing norms, you're, in my opinion, speaking about things like the Peaceful transition of power. What are some other examples of norms?

Yeah, I would say that a nor a political norm is defined as what's acceptable and what is not within a group.

And from a political side, you can look back even on some funny Fox News clips of Obama use a selfie. People freaked out. Obama wore. A tan suit, a tan linen suit, people limped out. George W. Bush had a lot of, he referred to his buddies with like nicknames. People freaked out over that. And even during Clinton's run, his affair with an intern.

Prior to that, press would have never told on a president. Through all of JFK, it was hinted and everyone knew it, but the press didn't ever let secret out. It was normal to keep these secrets of the president because that was considered respectful of the office. And so you can go through a million of them.

When it comes to things outside of pop culture, applying to political norms. Those are changeable because with every generation, we get a little bit more tolerant, open, and liberal. But with political norms, those things used to be set in stone. Peaceful transition of power, that's a fundamental piece of our society, but it's also a political norm.

Another is calling the president of Taiwan, Trump called. The president of Taiwan, the first day he was in office. And that's a really big no, because even though we recognize them, there's this agreement with China that we don't too. And I think that Trump has upended all of those. I would agree.

I think of things like a president is not typically allowed to brag about grabbing a woman by their pussy, or they are not allowed to run for president without releasing tax returns. And I think those old norms We're broken at such a rapid pace during the Trump campaign and during the Trump presidency that people were so overwhelmed with it that the old norms didn't exist anymore and right We talked a lot about being overwhelmed by the amount of information that new media gives us last week, and I think social media catapulted The, the breaking of norms on a daily basis into our daily consciousness and part of the reason why we were so overwhelmed during the Trump administration was because we didn't know how to behave anymore. We didn't know how to talk to each other about what was expected.

Just in the last several years, we've had so many crazy things. We've never seen a speaker of the house in our lifetime fired, right? They just impeached a member of the president's cabinet. In the Senate, one of the two party leaders, Mitch McConnell, 81 years old, has frozen in public, unable to speak, and didn't step down.

That was just no big deal. We've got a Supreme Court justice that's flying on donors planes, and his wife was one of the people that Urged officials to overturn a presidential election, and yet he's still sitting on the bench. We have a former president running for the job after causing an insurrection, and then has several criminal trials happening.

While he's running, it could potentially be in jail. Meanwhile, him and the current president are literal old men. They've outlived the average lifespan. So what the whole system could break down because of one of those things, and that's really unsettling, I think particularly. to Gen Z who hasn't really ever experienced normal. Their normal now is chaos.

Exactly. And for boomers, they're looking at this going, where did the peace and stability go of American democracy? We used to send people all over the world to quote unquote, teach them how to be a strong democratic society. And whether you agreed with that or not, it was what we did.

And people believed that American democracy was impenetrable. It is no longer the case. I spent most of my 20s traveling and working across the continent of Africa, and some of the behavior that I heard people criticize African countries for on a regular basis is happening every day in our political system.

Um, there are several factors that have led into this, and we've talked about a bunch of them. Partly, it's that we don't talk to each other directly anymore. Some of it is the decline of institutions like labor unions or churches or small businesses that dominated small towns in employment. A lot of that is gone.

And then we also have these political leaders that people aren't connecting to anymore. Why do we have two people running that are in their eighties? The president is supposed to inspire you, be innovative, be creative. We're not allowing for new successors to come in and. Inspire the country in a way that I think we really need to be inspired.

There has to be some sort of rules and boundaries and regulations here. As we talked about for the safety of the Democratic process,

I think there's a stat that says something like, in 1994, only 6% of Americans viewed both political parties negatively. Now, it's like over 28%.

Grace, how do you think we get back to a place where there is belief in the system?

Here at home, in South Carolina, what is believing in the system look like?

I think part of it goes back to what we keep talking about, which is we have to stop identifying as one thing or the other. Secondly, I have to say that we need stronger foundational You know what I mean? We need that type of civic community based face to face thing on a weekly basis.

You can see it in kids and teenagers where they literally don't know how to talk to people. There are little tiny things like that that we lost that were really key making sure that you knew how to communicate .

I would also offer that it's okay if the people that we voted for. If we hold them accountable, I don't think because you vote for someone that you automatically give them carte blanche to do whatever they want when they're in office.

And I think it's even more important to hold members of your own party accountable. And even though you might continue to vote for your party the rest of your life, that doesn't mean that the, those that are holding The keys to the kingdom at that particular time are the right ones. And I don't think we have a culture right now that really appreciates the art of being wrong.

The other thing I think is because so much of politics now is not policy based. And so you're not listening to what the actual policies are. And that's why I think it's so important for us to have people on this podcast to talk about specific policies because I want to hear what people say on specific policies because that to me is how we get out of this.

Really learning what those policies are and the history of them and why they're where they are. And then people think the outcomes are going to be based on the policies they want to input.

There are so many ways that we could truly improve political engagement if politics studied behavior change in the way that I think universities do across the country.

There are seven individual factors that people have to experience in order to change their behavior. So if you're going to ask somebody not to vote, full party ticket. You're going to have to get to the barriers to that behavior change. And for me, I think once you get past the first few years of being politically engaged, you're building your habits then.

And if you grew up being aligned with the same party that their grandparents are aligned with and their parents, if you're going to change things, you need to be able to speak into the listening of. Completely ingrained social norms within aesthetic.

Yes, I totally agree with that. I think the millennials and Gen Z are both very self-aware and always looking at themselves as, what am I feeling?

So perhaps after going through this, perhaps this is just like the pinnacle of chaos. And it is Gen Z and there's this older generation of the boomers and maybe even some Gen X who are trying to hold on to what this traditional norm of politics once was. And it's all getting completely blown up right now.

And so maybe out of this will come a new type of political discourse and new norms that are the aftermath of the rubble of this. This giant house fire that we're in right now. The other thing that has become an acceptable norm is that public figures blatantly lying is now inconsequential. You can say whatever you want, what at, whenever you want in the name of political free speech.

And even though people know you're directly lying to their face, it's become acceptable. You have more room for exaggeration in politics because really, who's the arbiter of truth, right? Who gets to be the judge of that is taken out of context or that's not true. So they give a lot more leeway than they would if you were an advertiser.

That is another part that's just feels like former norms have been completely eroded. Because if you exaggerated something in the past, you would get called out on it.

My mom always taught me that when you're losing an argument and you resort to name calling, you've lost the argument. And that does not seem to be Perception of most people in modern day society, name calling seems to be the answer to continuing an argument.

We have pushed society to a place where we have dumbed down the national discourse and removed civility, whereby we can allow people to give nicknames to political opponents that are derogatory, that are offensive, and that they are widely adopted. By the infotainment and the new media that we discussed last week, and there's no recourse.

You can look at this as if it were the microcosm of a neighborhood, right? People were out talking to each other. If somebody walked by, you wave, the kids are outside playing. Everybody was flying the same American flag. You weren't flying a political flag, certainly. You weren't showing who you are on the front of your house politically.

You just had neighbors and there was a neighborhood snoop that everybody knew. That person knows what's going on with everybody else in the neighborhood and everyone else didn't really care. Now, we have next door. This is a perfect example of how our discourse has gone from just a tiny little thing to an entire platform.

That's there were kids in my yard last night. I'm calling the police and reporting this. It is next door is beyond. Are you on next door, Katelyn?

I'm not on next door for this exact reason. I can't take it. In fact, I quit my prior Facebook neighborhood group because it was nothing but cranky people with nothing else to do except for complain about what happened in our deeply beautiful, high functioning neighborhood. I just can't take it.

My neighborhood, it's either talk about the coyotes. It's someone seeing someone walking down the street that nobody recognizes and flipping out and saying, should I call the police? And then there are a lot of bird and snake identification, but just about once a day, there's something that pops up that's about, they didn't recognize someone.

My favorite one, and this wasn't from mine, but it was from one that I read about was. There was a man driving a nice car around, and the person posting said that she saw him driving, but she never saw him going to and from work. And so she felt like he was probably a drug dealer, because if he's not going to work, how could he afford the car that he was driving?

People say the thing out loud that they should just keep to themselves. There are so many problematic things with that.

There used to only be like one person, and now it's everybody doing that. And there's your behavior change. That's a massive behavior change that's taking place, but not for the better.

Not only are people saying it, but when they say it, they think they're right. And you cannot convince them otherwise. I am part of a neighborhood in North Charleston that's a little hipster. And so anytime anyone comments something silly like that, they will receive probably no less than 20 responses that just say, call it in, making fun of people who do nothing but call it in.

Oh Lord. Okay. What's your whole nother thing for this weekend, Miss Katelyn?

So my whole nother thing is that it shocked me beyond all possible comprehension that the Super Bowl on Sunday was watched by more people than the moon landing. I just Taylor Swift, baby. She just keeps on keeping on. And I, it really blew my mind that we are in a day when one individual can harness The attention of more than the amount of people that watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon.

Think about all of the ripple effect of things that are making money off of her. The NFL must just be like thanking the golden gods for this . I cannot even imagine what they are doing to Travis Kelsey to be like, do not do anything to bring up . You must love her. And do whatever she says.

Travis Kelsey made a bit of a splash too.

He lost his temper with the head coach and there's been a lot of talk about his behavior during the game.

And he gave a real apology for it. Self awareness, Travis. Well done. Self awareness. My whole other thing. It's Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin. We need to have a whole nother podcast because it was him saying none of the American journalists will go talk to him.

Christiane Amapour has been doing everything she can. She is a legit global journalist. She understands conflicts in a way that I think no one else on this planet probably does because she's been everywhere and she's on the ground talking directly to the people being affected. So I find it somewhat offensive that he would make it sound like Other journalists like her wouldn't wanna talk to Vladimir Putin.

Second of all, right off the bat, he says hello. He asked Vladimir Putin a question. Putin goes back at him and says, is this an entertainment show? A talk show? I think we have a clip of it.

You, America. It's not that America, the United States was going to launch a surprise strike in Russia. I didn't say that.

Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?

To me, pinnacle, why that any person should listen to what that ding dong balls and things. If you're getting called out by aggressive foreign leaders, and it's like having a talk show versus being a journalist. Maybe you should just go have a talk show.

I can't watch Tucker Carlson or take him seriously because his serious face looks like he's constipated all the time and it just makes me giggle.

The cutaways of his face were so absurd and so ridiculous, I just, I couldn't stop watching. I wanted to watch it because I really felt, if you are a serious person, and you have the opportunity, To interview a world leader, particularly one that is super relevant right now. I just felt like he just walked in and was like, Hey man, what's up?

Tell us what's going on over here. So I, that's my whole nether for this week. It was ridiculous.

That's how I prepare for this podcast. I just walk in and say, Hey Grace, what's up?

Some days I feel like that's what I sound like where I'm like, I don't have any notes. That's all the stew for today. Talk to you next week.