Every once in a while, a voice emerges that helps us see clearly through the fog of confusion and fear. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, professor at Boston College, is one of those voices. She doesn’t just teach history, she connects it to the moment we are living in, revealing how the patterns of the past are unfolding before our eyes today.
In this powerful conversation first shared by Red Wine & Blue, Richardson reminds us that what we’re witnessing in America is not unprecedented, it’s the familiar rise of authoritarianism we’ve seen before in history. The danger is real, but so is our power to stop it. She makes one thing clear: our best chance to save democracy is in the 2025 elections, not years from now.
This episode explores how we, as citizens, can push back against the forces behind Project 2025—a blueprint for dismantling democratic institutions from the inside out. It begins with local action: electing leaders in our towns, school boards, and statehouses who will defend truth, equality, and justice. Across the country, women are standing up—winning Supreme Court races in Wisconsin, flipping Senate seats in Iowa, and proving that courage and conviction can overcome extremism.
Heather Cox Richardson’s brilliance lies in her ability to bring calm reason to chaos. She helps us understand not only what is happening, but what each of us can do to change the course of history—one conversation, one friend, one vote at a time. Her words will give you hope, clarity, and direction. She reminds us that each of us holds the power to make a difference—and that by acting where we live, we can shape the future of our nation.
Listen. Reflect. Act. Because saving democracy begins with you.
Episode Summary Points:
- The Alarming Rise of Authoritarianism and the Power of Hope
- Unprecedented Alarm: The host introduces historian Heather Cox Richardson, emphasizing the unprecedented and alarming rise of authoritarianism in the country.
- 2025 Elections are Key: The episode stresses that the 2025 elections are the best chance to save democracy, calling on listeners to defeat Republicans and “stand up for democracy” in those races, rather than focusing solely on the 2026 midterms.
- Faith and Persistence: Richardson attributes her optimism to her absolute faith in human beings to “do the right thing” in the end, echoing the quote, “if the good guys aren’t winning, it’s not the end.” Her work in keeping a daily record helps guide people to “do the next right thing.”
- The Structural Grabs for Power and the Counter-Reaction
- Rapid Power Grab: The Trump administration is attempting to “grab enough power” quickly to impose a version of Christian nationalism, moving fast and “breaking a lot of eggs” due to the perceived limitations of the president.
- The Divide and Conquer Tactic: Richardson notes the Republican Party, reaching back to Nixon, has worked to divide Americans into “friends and enemies,” which is a foundation for authoritarianism and a one-party state.
- “We the People” Alliance: A crucial counter-development is the rise of a new coalition: “We the People Against a really small group that’s trying to take over our government,” which she compares to the American Revolution or the Republican Party’s rise in the 1850s. This moment is a chance for new alliances to work on long-stalled issues.
- The Neocon-to-Progressive Shift: The episode highlights the ideological flexibility of this moment, citing figures like Bill Kristol, a former neoconservative, who has now become a leading progressive voice.
- Dispelling Division and Turning Unpopularity into Strength
- Divisions are Exaggerated: Americans are “not actually as divided as politicians want us to be,” with the vast majority agreeing on issues like basic gun safety, reproductive rights, taxes on the wealthy, and clean air/water. This means progressive ideas are “not Fringe ideas.”
- Move Beyond the Fight: To overcome manufactured divisions, listeners must avoid “staying back in whatever the fight of the day is” (e.g., a government shutdown fight being turned into a trans high school athletes debate). The focus should be on shared rights and traditions to “move forward into another conversation,” using Abraham Lincoln as a model.
- Trump’s Low Popularity: Richardson notes that in the 2024 election, Trump did not win 50% of the vote. Accounting for eligible voters, his peak popularity was about 32% of the American people, which is now dropping.
- Exploiting Maga’s Cracks: Strategies to leverage this unpopularity include focusing on local issues and keeping stories alive that divide the MAGA coalition, such as the backlash against the Health and Human Services Secretary for not rubber-stamping the vaccines-cause-autism claim, or the anger over high inflation (e.g., the rising price of coffee).
- The Joy Factor: Winning also requires emphasizing that those fighting for democracy are on the “fun side,” bringing “joy” to the effort through community and events.
- The Central Importance of Odd-Year and Local Elections
- Off-Year Elections as a Bellwether: The odd-year elections (like 2025) are crucial “bellwethers” for the country’s direction, noting that Democrats are “over performing by an extraordinary amount” in post-2024 special elections.
- The Local Takeover Strategy: Changing the country’s direction happens first at the local, then state, then national level. The radical right’s start was in Texas school board races.
- The 52,000 Open Seats: The upcoming 52,000 local races (for city council, school board, etc.) and state races (Governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, Pennsylvania State Supreme Court) are “absolutely crucial” for changing things nationally.
- Vote the Whole Ballot: A historical issue is that Republicans “turn out for every single freaking election right down to dog catcher,” while Democrats often only vote for the top of the ticket. The call to action is to “show up and check all the boxes” to protect democracy at all levels.
- Call to Action
- Defeat Extremism: The fight is to vote for people who support democracy, move forward against extremism, and recognize that women are already standing up against authoritarianism and “winning back big.”
- Community is Key: The work is done “one conversation at a time” within communities like Red Wine & Blue, a group of diverse women, Republicans, and Democrats combining to fight the current authoritarianism.
Consider becoming a patron on Patreon. Your support helps us continue to produce in-depth content, bring you crucial insights, and amplify the voices fighting for a truly representative republic. Join our community and help us safeguard the future of American democracy here.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Our Best Chance To Save Democracy–Featuring Heather Cox Richardson
I want to do something different with episode 146, because I want to have you read an outstanding interview with Heather Cox Richardson. She’s an influencer, she’s a wonderful historian. She’s taught at MIT, she’s taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She’s now teaching at Boston College. I think she has some of the most powerful things to say about what we can do to save our democracy. What I want to say to you is that I think is so important about this is on September 24th, Red Wine and Blue interviewed Heather Cox Richardson.
Urgency Of The 2025 Elections
I know about myself, but I think it’s true of each of you that I’m alarmed at the rise of authoritarianism in our country. What is happening is unprecedented. While many people are focusing on the 2026 midterms, we know that our best chances to save our democracy is in the 2025 election. That means that we have to defeat the Republicans in the elections, and we have to stand up for democracy because they’re not doing it.
I want you to know what is happening. There are Republicans who are now standing with Democrats and having conversations, and I think this will help you see how we can fight Project 2025 and many of the other things that are happening in our country. I want to start this now and have you read what she has to say.
Heather Cox Richardson back for the, I don’t know, Heather, it could be the 10th time, the 12th time. We’ve done this a few times.
I have no idea. I just know that when you ask me to do something, I say yes. I probably shouldn’t have told you that because now I’m in real trouble, but I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I love what you all are doing and what you have done, and this whole idea of creating change from communities and from people’s own squads, it’s just the way it’s done. It’s really cool to be part of it.
You are such a huge part of it, and we’re so honored to have you here every single time that you are. Heather, I was thinking about the fact that we have done this together quite a few times now, and I remember the first time I ever spoke to you on the phone, it must have been in 2020, and you were saying that your plan was to write your letters until Biden was elected
A hundred days after Biden’s inauguration.
September 15th of 2025 marked your sixth year. First of all, I want to say thank you on behalf of every single one of us. Denise from Florida, shout out to Denise, I asked actually in the app what did folks want to hear from you? One of the questions that Denise representing many others wanted to know is, what keeps you so steady and optimistic?
Historical Faith & Optimism In Humanity
I was thinking about this because of course I read the same stuff everybody else does, and it’s crazy. It is coming at you all the time, and it’s really easy to get discouraged, especially when it feels like you’re being lied to and you can’t really tell what’s going on. I was actually out kayaking and I got thinking about how when we study the Puritans in the early America period, one of the things that the great scholars of Puritanism say is that they were, in a way, a really deadly combination because they were completely convinced that they were going to win, that they were doing God’s work on Earth, and they were working really hard to bring God’s vision to America.
I thought about it, and I thought, in a way, that’s why I can keep on doing what I do. It’s because I have absolute faith in human beings, and I have absolute faith that, at the end of the day, human beings do the right thing. Now we all screw up sometimes and all that, but I quoted somebody else and I’ve now been given credit for that quote which is a little unfair to the person I was quoting.
Somebody said, “In the end, the good guys always win. If the good guys aren’t winning, it’s not the end.” That is 100% how I think about things. That being the case, you need to take a really good look at how things are changing so that you can make sure you do the next right thing. One of the things that I do is by keeping a record of what’s happening and trying to say, “This looks like this and this happened before,” and the ways I talk about the past to give us guidance for the present and the future is a way to engage with that and to help people do the next right thing.
That’s exactly what reading your letters every day helps fuel in terms of the fight in me. That’s powerful. You are right, we are not nearly to the end, and it is in our hands. Let’s talk about the current moment we are in, Heather. Every day brings a new low from the federal government. At the same time, in the last 24 hours, ABC put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air under enormous public pressure.
Voters in Arizona delivered a huge special election win, which means Congress now has the final signature needed to push through the congressional demand for the release of the Epstein files. No small thing. Speaking of these special elections, I read that if you’re looking at special congressional, special state legislative elections that have taken place across the country in 2025, Democrats have won or overperformed in 42 out to 43 of them, including 3 times by double digits.
Yeah, they’re overperforming.
Both of these things are true at the same time. Where do you think we are at this minute?
The Rise Of Authoritarianism & Coalition Building
I think we are in a place where President Donald J. Trump and his administration are trying desperately to grab enough power that they can impose on the United States their own version of Christian nationalism. Their problem, if you will, if you look at it structurally, is that Trump is not in good health. He’s not somebody who seems to be able really to fulfill the role of the presidency. They’re moving really quickly in a lot of different ways and breaking a lot of eggs to get to that omelet really quickly.
One of the things that we watch when you watch the rise of authoritarianism is that normally in that rise, the attempt to garner power happens pretty slowly. People take little bites at a time so that people don’t pay much attention. This administration has made really big grabs and not just things like trying to use the Department of Justice to go after the people that Trump perceives as his enemies, and not trying just to take away the First Amendment and not trying just to take away the power of Congress to create appropriations.
They’re really going after really big things that involve a whole lot of people that might not otherwise see themselves as part of a coalition. For example, the people who are watching Jimmy Kimmel are probably not soybean farmers in the middle of a country, but they both have issues right now with the administration. On the one hand, they’re trying to grab as much power as they possibly can, but that being said, they’re doing it so quickly, they’re creating this huge backlash.
One of the things that I think is really important to remember in this moment is that this administration, but for a long time now, reaching all the way back at least to Nixon, the Republican party has worked really hard to divide Americans into friends and enemies. If you think about the way that a lot of Republicans now think about the Democrats, for example, right now, Trump and the Republicans in the Senate and the House are refusing to negotiate or even talk to the Democrats about trying to figure out some way to keep the government open.
That’s ridiculous. How can you not talk to an entire group of lawmakers from another political party? That attempt to create friends and enemies is a really well-established way to create a world in which you can have an authoritarian because you convince the people on your side that the other people have no rights to govern at all. You end up with a one-party state, and from that, you get authoritarianism.
What we’re really seeing now is something different. That is, although there is a huge effort to divide us into friends and enemies, what we’re really starting to see looks a lot more like the American Revolution or the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s, which is we, the people, against a really small group that’s trying to take over our government. That’s totally cool, not just because it means we have a chance to stop the rise of authoritarianism, but also because, let’s face it, our system has not been working very well for the last 40 years.
[bctt tweet=”What we’re really starting to see looks a lot more like the American Revolution or the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s— we, the people, against a small group trying to take over our government, and that’s actually pretty cool.” via=”no”]
When you get these moments where people are like, “You and I don’t agree about these three issues, but we can agree that we don’t want to lose our Constitution.” When you get to the other side of that, you end up with a really different government than you had before with very different alliances and with different issues on the table. You don’t know who is going to end up being on your side and not on your side.
I could give you examples of that throughout history and sometimes do. One of the things that people laugh about is if you think about the way that people are approaching American government in this moment, you know who is one of the most outspoken progressives by far is Bill Crystal. Bill Crystal was one of the original neoconservatives or neocons who was in the George W. Bush administration and was a real mouthpiece for what later became this radical right.
He’s just simply jettisoned that and is now way out in front on the progressive side. You think about the creativity in this moment and the chance that we finally might have to work on the issues that are dear to our hearts, I’m thrilled to see that New Mexico is going to have childcare for everybody. We can really deal with the things that have been hanging over our heads now for 40 years, and that’s really exciting.
We’re in this weird paradox of, what’s happening now? What is the latest assault on human rights taking place in the United States of America? On the other hand, there’s such a backlash to that we can make these new alliances and create a new country. That’s exhausting, too, by the way, but it’s not all bleak or all optimistic in this period. It’s very yin and yang.
It’s the good kind of exhausting. It’s the creative kind of exhausting that does create rather than deplete our energy. This reminds me, I want to jump to a question from Amira, who is a Troubled Nation leader, for those of you who are newbies. Troubled Nation is Red Wine and Blue’s program where you can start a local group all over the country. We have them in all 50 states. There’s over 800 of them.
Amira has a Troubled Nation group. She’s based in North Carolina and her group is called Operation Unite, and it’s bringing together military spouses actually from across the nation. Her question was that we’ve been in dark divided times as a country before. Are there lessons and or examples that we can take from some of these past instances where the temperature was so high and apply them in the present to get us to a less polarized place as a country?
Yes, and I will answer that once I thank you for the work you’re doing. A shout out to people who are not necessarily following military issues. Both Stars and Stripes and Military.com are free and they’re available on the internet and it’s really good coverage of what’s the perspective from the military of what’s happening in our news. That’s something I tend to read every day.
We are not actually as divided as politicians want us to be, because the way you get people to turn out to vote is that you can convince them that something horrific is going to happen if they don’t. If you actually look at polls, even on hot button issues, the vast majority of Americans are in agreement on things like basic gun safety and things like reproductive rights and things like taxes on the very wealthy.
[bctt tweet=”We’re not actually as divided as politicians want us to be, because the way they get people to turn out to vote is by convincing them that something horrific will happen if they don’t.” via=”no”]
There’s in clean water and clean air, lots of things that are certainly perceived as being hot button issues that are not. That’s important to remember because when you’re trying to convince people that we should be doing things in a more progressive way, it’s worth remembering that 80% of your neighbors probably agree with you.
Obviously, that’s a general thing across the country. It’s going to be different in different pockets, but these are not fringe ideas that we’re talking about. After you remember that we’re not all that divided, one of the things that is important when you think about getting rid of those divisions is to recognize that if you are facing the language from the administration that is trying to drag you into a certain kind of fight, simply butting your head against that argument reinforces it because it says that’s the most important thing, and you’re in that box with them.
Strategic Reframing Over Confrontation
You can think about this in your own life. We have all dealt with that impossible worker or family member or neighbor. If you try and hit back, not literally, but if you try and stay within whatever argument they are trying to have, you’re just stuck and you just feel like you are going crazy because you can’t get on to solve whatever the issue is.
If you think about that on a larger scale, it’s important to remember that, in fact, Americans do share wide ranging traditions as well as ideas about the way they want the world to be. Rather than staying back in whatever the fight of the day is, and by the way, you could see the President now trying desperately to turn the approaching shutdown of the government into a fight over trans high school athletes, which has absolutely nothing on the table that has anything to do with high schools, athletes or transgender people, you could see him trying to get that fight going again.
If you can move beyond that to whatever the issues are that matter to people, the fact that you should have control over whether or not your child has access to books in school rather than somebody banning them so that they don’t exist, that your kid can’t get their hands on them, those sorts of issues framed as our rights are very powerful and so are our traditions.
One of the things that I do when I’m trying to figure out how to frame something that people understand that this is not about whether or not somebody sufficiently mourned a murdered activist is to think, “What are the principles at stake here? What is the constitutional amendment? What leader that everybody has heard of grappled with this particular issue?” If you can do that, I think of it as taking their box and putting it to the side and moving forward. That is absolutely what Abraham Lincoln did, and he’s the person I use as my model.
I think if I’m trying to figure out how to do this, how would Abraham Lincoln have framed this and moved on? You can’t live up to his ability. That sense, again, think of getting past whatever that fight is with that difficult person in your life, you just can’t stay wrestling with that pig. As they say, you both get dirty and the pig likes it. You’ve got to move forward into another conversation.
Heather, the truth is, at this point, Trump is the least popular president in history. It’s been true for a bit and it’s deepening. That’s becoming more true as the weeks passed. Exactly as you said, the majority of Americans do not want this. We support free speech, we support public schools, reproductive freedom, and we see, of course, that inflation, the job market, it’s all getting worse. What lessons can we learn from the past about how to turn his unpopularity into our strength?
Just to be sure people are aware, when we take a look at the 2024 election, which Trump did not win 50% of the vote in that for all that he talks about a mandate, more people voted for somebody other than him than voted for him. One of the statistics to keep in mind is that many people confuse voters with the general population.
G. Elliot Morris, who publishes Strength in Numbers, unpacked those and pointed out that if you recognize that only 64.1% of eligible vote adults voted in November, 2024, that translates to Trump’s popularity in November 2024 at its peak of about 32% of the American people and that is now dropping. I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind. In terms of continuing to pressure that, there’s a couple of things to think about. One is, again, moving on to issues that people really care about and that matter at the local level and that create coalitions at the local and at the state levels.
We’re going to talk more about that, I hope. There is also the recognition that one of the reasons things like the Epstein files matters to our politics as opposed to the survivors and the strength of the rule of law in the United States is because it is badly dividing MAGA. By the way, so is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose supporters expected that he would deliver a government rubber stamp on the idea that vaccines cause autism, despite the fact that’s been thoroughly debunked. He has not done that. That has made them very angry. If you watched after the announcement about acetaminophen and autism, all over X, people were saying, “This isn’t what we signed up for. We want him to say it’s vaccines that cause autism.”
These places where you can see wedges are things to keep in the news. You can see people in the administration trying to cover those things over. Trying to distract from the Epstein files, trying to make sure that the big stories fall under the radar screen. Things like a number of people in the MAGA alliance are furious that that Trump has called for 600,000 Chinese students to come to the United States.
Keeping those stories alive will help to break that MAGA coalition. You’re never going to get every MAGA to turn away from Trump. It’s simply not going to happen. As you say, as prices continue to go up, as inflation hits, have you looked at the price of coffee? I’m just gobsmacked every time I go to the supermarket. Aside from everything else, coffee is like solid gold.
As those things hit, the more that we can keep in the news, those kinds of stories, the more it will hurt that coalition. There is also the very important thing of making fun of Trump and his people, weakening the people around him and also emphasizing to people who are trying to recreate American democracy. We’re on the fun side. We are the ones who get to have the kind of red, white and blue organizations. We’re the ones who can claim Fannie Lou Hamer and can claim Abraham Lincoln and that joy, the dancing in the streets at the marches and the mariachi bands and all that stuff, that really matters. Bringing your joy to this effort is going to be really important going forward.
The Critical Importance Of Local/Odd-Year Elections
Amen to that. Alright, you mentioned local elections, local organizing, let’s talk about it. We are less than six weeks away from the 2025 elections. November 4th, 2025, we are going to have the governor’s race in Virginia, but not just that. All the executive offices and their general assembly, so their state legislative races. New Jersey Governor’s race, Pennsylvania State Supreme Court, a critical ballot issue we know about in California. The other thing that far too few people are talking about, but a lot of women on this call are, are the fact that we have local races, 52,000 open seats we will be voting on in communities across this country for city council.
I’m talking about school board, I’m talking about school funding issues. This is an opportunity we have in front of us in less than six weeks. What I want to hear about from you, though, that I don’t know as much about and want to learn more is that from a historical lens, what do we need to know about the importance of these odd year elections, these elections particularly that take place the year after a presidential race?
There are two things going on this time around. First of all, usually in the first couple of years after presidential election, the incumbent party does poorly just because people always have incredibly high hopes that are not usually delivering. You can’t deliver everything you promised in a campaign. That is common. As you say, the Democrats are overperforming by an extraordinary amount in every election since the November 2024 election.
We have in part that going on. This is a good bellwether. A bellwether, by the way, is the sheep that is out in front of all the other sheep and cutting the pathway. It’s a good sign of what’s going to come in the way the country is moving. There’s actually something else that’s really important for us in this upcoming election.
If you’re trying to change the direction of the country, one of the things that people who care about the sorts of issues that we’re talking about, education and human rights and reproductive rights and so on have tended to miss in the past was that the way you change the direction of the government is by changing it at the local level first and then the state level and then the national level. That is quite literally the way that the radical right got its start, really, in taking over the government was in Texas school board races. To the degree that those 52,000 local races begin to turn the control of school boards and town governments and crucially state legislatures and state supreme courts because the court’s huge on the table right now for 2028 is gerrymandering.
[bctt tweet=”The way you change the direction of government is by changing it at the local level first.” via=”no”]
So long as we have veto proof majorities in a number of Republican dominated states, they can push through any maps they want. The people taking back control of their local and their state governments is absolutely crucial to changing things at the national level going forward. I think we have both of those things going on.
One of the key points to this, and my friend Tom Nichols who writes for the Atlantic and used to be a Republican and is still a conservative, used to say, “Republicans turn out for every single freaking election right down to dog catcher and they vote for everyone. Democrats tend instead to vote only for the races in which they personally have done research on those races.” What that means is that in races that have less turnout, like off year elections, do the Republicans tend to win them simply because everybody showed up and checked all the boxes.
The next couple of years are going to be show up and check all the boxes kinds of elections because again, this is not about partisanship at this point anymore at all. It’s about protecting democracy against the rise of an authoritarian. It’s we, the people, and that’s going to be central to these next several years of elections. On the other side of this, when we have reclaimed our democracy, as I say, partisanship is going to look very different. I don’t know what it’s going to look like. You don’t know what it’s going to look like, but now is no longer the time to say, “I voted Republican in 1984 and that’s who I am.” It’s not who you are anymore. This is the time to say we’re going to protect democracy at all levels of our governments.
—
What I want to say to you is I really think it’s the reason I’ve done this. I think you can see the reason I’m putting it before you. I think that we have a lot of hope in what Heather Cox Richardson is talking to us about. She’s showing us how we can fight by voting in people that are going to support our democracy and support us moving forward against extremism.
[bctt tweet=”This is the time to say: we’re going to protect democracy at all levels of government.” via=”no”]
I think another thing too that we need to recognize is from the Supreme Court in Wisconsin to the state senate and Iowa are all the other things that they’ve named here, women are standing up against authoritarianism and we’re winning back big. You’ve heard that from them. You’ve also learned how you can bring these wins to your own community. It’s one conversation at a time.
I do think Red Wine and Blue is a community of diverse women who are working together to defeat extremism. It’s Republicans and Democrats that are combining in this group to fight what we need to fight against, which is the current authoritarianism. I think it’s interesting also what they’ve said about Trump because I think that is really true when I look at the situations that are constantly occurring. I want to continue on and allow you to read the rest of this because I think it is so important.
—
Voting The Entire Ballot
For those of us here to read this call to action from Heather, this is called ballot roll off, where people just vote the very top of the ticket and think, “Okay, I voted and I haven’t gone and done my research on the rest of the ballot.” We need people to vote the whole ballot. You can be the person among the people that you know who helps people know about the importance of voting the whole ballot.
We can help you do that research to know who exactly to help people know who to vote for because some of these are non-partisan races, it can be hard to get information about these local level races, but we’ve got your back and we can do this together. These elections can really be the whole ball game. I think we all know the big impact. If you’re reading this, you care and you understand what a huge impact a school board member, a member of the city council can have on whether or not there is appropriate school funding.
If a curriculum that does actually teach real history is protected in your local school district, if the library doesn’t have layoffs, etc. These things can have huge impacts in our local communities. Heather, can you also talk about what clues local elections provide about broader shifts in voter sentiment? You’re getting to this a bit on the bellwethers, but I think sometimes people think, “I want to say I’m so angry about what’s happening in the federal government and I feel like I call Congress and nothing is changing and I signed a petition and nothing is changing.” Can you talk to us about the significance of these local elections where we are going to have outcomes and thousands of these races and what opportunity we have to send a message there?
The Feedback Loop Of Political Change
I love this. People often stop remembering how voting actually works and how political change actually happens. When you show up to elect somebody, that person has looked at the electorate and has run and has gotten through the primary based on looking at what the people he or she expects to have to vote for them, what they want.
There is this this loop where if enough people show up and say, “We really care about cleaning up our waterways,” you will get a leader who puts that in their platform. What you are seeing right now in the Democratic Party, not in the Republican party so much, but in the Democratic Party, is an awful lot of leaders, and I’m going to use the word younger here, but it’s not necessarily anything to do with age. It’s usually people who are new to the system coming up with all kinds of new ideas. You might like some of those ideas and not like others.
What they’re doing is they’re listening to this newly mobile electorate and saying, “If I speak about these things, I can get elected.” You’re seeing James Talarico, for example, in Texas talking about a new kind of Christianity. You’re seeing Mamdani in New York City talking about making the city much more usable for the people who live there. You’re seeing all these different new voices coming up with new ways to think about the country, and that’s how the system works best. If you’ve got a lawmaker taking a look at this new language and wanting to be elected, they’re going to change their behavior.
What does that look like? That looks like just happened in Georgia where the lieutenant governor who had been a Republican had stood up to Trump in 2020 and been drummed out of the party is now running for office as a Democrat. He’s not doing that because he suddenly thinks that he’s had this conversion and he wants to change entirely everything he thinks about. He’s reading the leaves and saying, “People will elect me if I seem like I am embracing democratic policies because those are the things that people care about.”
He says, “I don’t agree with the Democratic party 100% and they’re not going to agree with me 100%, but I fit better over here and I think that people will vote for me over here.” Make your voice heard at those lower levels. Even I say to my students, when they’re applying for jobs, “You’re not going to get them all, but every time that you’re out there raising your voice and making it clear that you care about these things, you’re advertising.”
Even just showing up to a school board meeting and sitting on the side and nodding as somebody is advancing a policy that you care about, that matters so much because people are paying attention to that and they’re saying, “Everybody on that side of the of the room is nodding and they’re frowning when that guy speaks.” That’s the feedback loop that creates change in American society and in American politics.
The way you do that is by speaking up on the ground in local areas, in state areas, on social media, making sure that you’re taking up oxygen because what we see is that lawmakers respond to the voices they hear the most often. The more you speak up, the more people do what you want them to do. Just look at what Disney has just done with regard to Jimmy Kimmel. That was absolutely about the backlash to the attack on free speech.
[bctt tweet=”Lawmakers respond to the voices they hear most often. The more you speak up, the more likely people are to do what you want them to do.” via=”no”]
Heather, what you have just described, I have seen myself over and over in person in Ohio where I live. I have seen it in North Carolina, I have seen it in Pennsylvania and all the places in Michigan and in Virginia, in so many places all across this country, as you know, where Red Wine and Blue has women organizing locally on the ground. I have seen it with my own eyes. Truly, it’s the reason why I started Red Wine and Blue because I heard about women taking this kind of action in their own local communities. The true power of it is not just in the me deciding I am going to show up at a school board meeting, or I’m going to make sure I vote in this odd year school board election. It is me deciding and realizing and honestly, before I went on this journey with Red Wine and Blue, I didn’t fully grasp it.
The Power Of Local Organizing/Community
The power that I have at the local level to influence the outcome of a school board vote, to influence the outcome of a city council vote, the outcome of who wins in one of these elections because some of these races have 1,000, 2000 people voting in them, sometimes less. You and I get together a crew of people we know, and those people all talk to one person. We are swinging that election ourselves.
If I show up by myself at a school board meeting, okay, maybe someone will notice. If I bring 2 other people and those 2 people bring 2 other people and we bring 12, we are going to own that room. That is why at Red Wine and Blue, over and over again, you are going to hear from us if you’re new here. If you’re not new, you’re used to hearing the power of your own voice and your network, your circle of influence is tremendous.
We have the opportunity in these next six weeks to continue to lean into this feeling of overwhelm. No matter who I call, no matter what I do at the federal level, they’re continuing to frustrate us or we could decide to organize in our local communities, to organize our friends and send the biggest message yet on November 4th. That’s what I’m hoping people reading will choose. That’s why I’m going to ask you all to be staying in these after parties, making sure you’re getting on the app, making sure you’re organizing with us in these races so that we can do that together because we cannot do it alone. Heather and I can’t do anything of what we do all alone. It is 100% about this community.
That’s the fun of it too. You meet great people. I was saying someone that one of the things about politics is I often feel like people think it’s a different world, that maybe politicians come down from Mars or something.
It can seem that way sometimes.
Yeah, I suppose. The truth is you want to elect people that you trust to do what they think is right for the community as opposed to doing what’s right for a small set of donors or for themselves. Are they trying to do the right thing or are they not? That doesn’t mean you’re going to like everything they do. In fact, if you did, that would be weird. If you elect people who are trying to do the right thing for the United States of America and your state and your town, you’re not going to be happy 100% of the time. Maybe next time, you’ll switch them out to somebody else. What you’re going to do is you’re going to help turn the country back to a place where we’re trying to do the right thing for the most of us.
That’s not that high a bar. I think we deserve that. I think aside from everything else, we deserve to have people representing us who are trying to do the right thing, just the way we try to do the right thing every day. Yeah, we screw up sometimes, but you don’t surround yourself with people who are deliberately trying to knife you in the back. Why would we put those people in charge of our laws and our country?
I just want to reiterate what you said too about this actually being a good time. Every single time I have gone to a school board meeting or a city council meeting, I have had a great time because I’m doing it with other women who I just feel such a connection with over values. We’re doing something where we can see a concrete impact and these women become friends for life. This is truly work that we bond over. There’s so much power in that it’s truly unbreakable. I see it again and again, and I know it’s why women continue to create local groups together. We might start these groups because we feel frustrated, angry, scared about something, but we stay for the people. We keep showing up for each other. Heather, I want to ask you about a couple more things.
—
What I’d like to say to you is that I think you’re hearing things you can do yourself, and I think you can join with your networks of people. I am having conversations with some of my Republican friends because they’re seeing what’s happening in here, and they are supporters of our constitution. They don’t like the corruption, they don’t like what’s happening in our country, and they’re beginning to be uncomfortable.
I think that Richardson has made it very clear some of us will shift and we’ll do things to align with each other so that we can really bring the best people back into politics that are going to support what she calls 80% of our country right now. I want to go ahead and continue with this interview, and I hope that you’re gaining a great deal from it. It certainly has given me hope.
—
We we’re talking about community. Can you just talk a little bit more about in the face of the current media environment we’re in? I’m talking about we have these Trump ally billionaires talking about taking over TikTok, CNN. We’ve already seen people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos take steps back from doing anything to stand up to those in power. What is the importance of things like being able to connect through our communities, through local groups, through things like the Red Wine and Blue App? I’m feeling a great deal of urgency in this moment. Given this shifting media, media ecosystem, how are you thinking about that right now?
The Rise Of Independent/Citizen Media
The media ecosystem is changing really rapidly, and so is education for that matter. In fact, our entire world is changing really rapidly, and we do have the problem that you identified that our traditional or our legacy media is being consolidated under a few very wealthy, usually right-wing billionaires, a lot of them. All of that is a real problem. There’s no doubt about it.
[bctt tweet=”Our entire world is changing rapidly, and we have the problem that traditional or legacy media is being consolidated under a few very wealthy, often right-wing billionaires. All of that is a real problem.” via=”no”]
However, when this has happened in the past, what we have seen is the rise of independent media, and that’s exactly what we have going on nowadays. There are all kinds of new independent media where you can learn about all sorts of things that you couldn’t have learned about before. For example, we have at least four people out there that I read usually every day talk about legal cases. I’m not sure I ever read about a legal case in a newspaper before. Now, you can actually hear somebody explain in everyday language why Humphrey’s executor matters.
We do have the rise of this independent media, but the reason we have media, and the reason any of this matter is because people cannot make good decisions about their lives unless they have accurate information. This is one of the reasons that the rise of pure right-wing media has been such a problem. It’s because it does not present reality. People make decisions about their own lives and their communities and their states and their country based on a lie.
Think about that, again, in your own life. If you’re trying to start a business with a partner and you don’t know that that partner is talking to somebody else and getting ready to embezzle all your money, you cannot make good decisions about how to put your business together. You think about that in your personal life and so on. You need to have accurate information.
For me, one of the reasons I write is because I feel like taking away somebody’s right to accurate information is a profound attack on human self-determination because you’re tricking someone. You’re making them do something that they wouldn’t do if they had accurate information. What that means in this moment for the news is that there are lots of places in the country that have what we call news deserts.
People don’t know what’s happening, and that matters in a way more at the local level even than at the national level because you don’t know when they’re going to pave over waterway that’s used to absorb storms that come in off the Atlantic, or you don’t know that they’re going to decide to cut funding for a school program that you care about because it’s not being reported on.
One of the things that I like to encourage people to do is essentially what I did when I started the letters from an American. If you know something’s happening in your town, tell people about it. We have the tools now to tell people about it through social media, through any of the places where you can publish for free. Do you know how many readers you need to have to make that make a difference? One.
This idea that somehow you have to become the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer in order to make a difference is absolutely not the case. If your neighbor would like to know that they’re going to pave over the storm drain in front of your house, tell people, because that’s how you get individuals interested in their community and recognizing what the forces are in the community, in the state that are influencing their lives.
I am less concerned about the consolidation of media than a lot of people are because there is so much new independent media more every single day, and it’s really good. You’re starting to see the backwash so that legacy media is beginning to do the sorts of things that people like me do. Have footnotes. Explain how things work. That’s actually, I think, a really good thing.
I’m also really interested in the rise of independent online media that you’re seeing all across the country. The Baltimore Banner, the Tennessee Holler. Cal Matters. Find your local, small, they’re usually online because that’s free, newspapers and support them. If there isn’t one around you, start one. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, but let people know what’s happening in the world around them of you know something they don’t.
You have said that the story of America has always been a battle between those who want to expand democracy and those who want to restrict it. What gives you hope that democracy can win out again?
When you asked a similar question, the first thing I talked about, the idea that human beings would deliberately choose to end their self-determination strikes me as being completely contrary to the entire human project. I really think that at the end of the day, human beings, at least those in the United States of America, which is the only country I’m qualified to talk about, will not, in the end, choose to get rid of the opportunity to choose their own future that they’ve had in the past, never perfectly.
Those principles that were outlined in the Declaration of Independence, that we are all created equal, that we have a right to have a say in our government, and we have a right to equal access to resources, including things like healthcare and education, are a fundamental pathway to achieving what is, to me, the end of the desired end of humanity, which is the ability to create your own story.
I have faith that those people trying to take that away from us, in order to aggrandize their own power, are going to fail. You can see it happening for short bursts of time, and it certainly has happened in the United States for short bursts of time. However, the only time it’s really taken over in the United States for a long period of time was in the American South from about 1874 to 1965.
One of the huge advantages we have now over that attempt to silence the majority of voters and people in the American South, is that they couldn’t communicate with each other and they didn’t know where the resistance was, and there was huge resistance, but they didn’t know that they tried. Now we have the ability to call out the fact that people are missing from some of the detention centers that the administration has built, and to call out the sweeps that ICE is making in different cities, and to call out the loss of our right to free speech and to call out the Department of Justice when it goes after the people that Trump thinks are his political enemies.
To call out the use of our tax dollars to do things like beef up detention and to spread right wing propaganda in Latin America as opposed to funding. USAID We can see that and we can call it out and we can create coalitions that say, “We don’t agree with each other about where the interest rate should lie, but we can agree that we need to stand firm on American principles, the ones that have served this country so incredibly well for so long, and make the United States even better than it was before all this began.”
[bctt tweet=”We don’t all agree on where interest rates should be, but we can agree that we need to stand firm on American principles — the ones that have served this country incredibly well for so long — and make the United States even better than it was before all this began.” via=”no”]
Heather, it’s really inspiring to me to watch, as you were speaking, so many people have put up probably 100 different names of writers, independent creators they’re now following to get fact-based pro-democracy information. It strikes me about this enormous cadre, so much more than a cohort, this inspiring army of people who are writing and spreading the truth, reaching millions of people day in and day out. You all are still going. We actually do have a media rich environment, a fact-based pro-democracy information. It’s giving me an incredible amount of hope to be reminded of how many voices there are out there.
Let me throw in here though that while the writers are very important, and I will always speak up for writers, not just the nonfiction writers. Fiction is its own truth. This is a moment for musicians and for artists. Artists are so important in pro-democracy movements and people who know how to design gardens and creating the colorful, creative, hardworking world because work is itself not a punishment. It is a gift. Those voices are all so crucial right now.
If you compare where we are now to the late 19th century, which looked very much like where we are now, one of the ways that people spread the idea of creating a society in which the government served the majority of the people as opposed to the very wealthy robber barons was through sculpture and through clothing, through new kinds of clothing designs and through new kinds of music.
You get things like ragtime coming out of Texas and go and moving up the planes where people just said, “I’m going to give my best to this country.” Other people saw that and ran with it. From that, we got this incredible outpouring of creativity and new ways to think about governance and we got the progressive era. I still expect that that’s what we’re going to see now.
We have these independent, pro-democracy, fact-based writers to keep us informed every day. We have artists to keep us inspired and fueled and remembering what we’re not only saving, but restoring and building. We’re building something more beautiful. That possibility does exist, but we do all have to take this inspiration, this information, and do the next right thing. This is why we show up for each other. It is to become informed. It is to be inspired, and it is to believe in ourselves that if together we do the next right thing, we get to write the next pages of history.
—
I really hope that you have truly enjoyed reading the interview with Heather Cox Richardson and the woman that is head of the Red Wine and Blue. I’ve been looking for something that would give me hope, and now I see a direction that I can take and all of you can take. Start paying attention to what’s going to be happening in your town, your city, or in your state when we get into these November elections. I know they’re close, but the League of Women Voters provides excellent information and provides ways that you can truly be educated about what you’re voting for.
Please remember what they said in the interview. You need to desperately make certain that you vote the full ballot, no matter whether you know or have seen everything you need to get educated, but you still need to vote the complete ballot. I look forward to hearing from you. If you think this has been helpful, you can write me at my email, Jackalyn@DTPLeadership.com. Thank you for taking the time to read this interview and my comments.
Important Links
About Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and professor at Boston College, where she specializes in nineteenth-century U.S. politics and economics. Educated at Harvard University, she has written several acclaimed books, including How the South Won the Civil War, To Make Men Free, and Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre.
Richardson is best known to the public for her daily newsletter Letters from an American, launched in 2019, which interprets current political events through a historical lens and has attracted over a million readers. Her work emphasizes the ongoing struggle for democracy in American history and connects historical understanding to contemporary civic life.
About Red Wine & Blue
Red Wine & Blue is a national network of suburban women working to build community and counter political extremism through grassroots organizing. Founded in 2019 by Katie Paris, the group focuses on empowering women to influence their social circles and advocate for issues like education, reproductive rights, and inclusion.
Its mission is to “defeat extremism one suburb at a time” by helping women organize locally, talk across divides, and engage in civic action in approachable, relational ways.
To learn more or get involved, individuals can visit their website at https://redwine.blue, where they can find resources, join local groups through the TroubleNation program, and sign up for news and updates.