I met Cliff Schecter last year in Cincinnati at an event for Rabbi Robert Barr, an early Democratic candidate for Congress in Ohio’s District 1. We hit it off right away over our shared interests in writing, the media, and change. Schecter (@cliffschecter) is a columnist for The Daily Beast and wrote the book The Real McCain.
As I got to know him, one of the more interesting things he shared was how he was written up years ago here on Daily Kos by Mystery Science Theatre 3000’s own Bill Corbett for his skill in TV debates. It’s a skill that got Schecter disinvited from mainstream shows.
Recently, he started a podcast with fellow activist John Aravosis called UnPresidented. I wanted to ask him about it and get his thoughts on change based on his significant experience both as an outside activist and as a political strategist.
1. What’s UnPresidented about?
UnPresidented was inspired by a combination of Donald Trump’s third-grade spelling abilities (he was trying for “unprecedented” in a tweet, but is, ya know, dumb) and our need as a functioning republic to “UnPresident” him. It seemed like a perfect double entendre.
I had been looking to do a podcast. I’ve had regular guest gigs over the years on NPR in L.A., The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder, and guest hosting the nationally syndicated Leslie Marshall Show, among others. Some folks who are kind (or demented, depending upon your perspective) enough to listen to me on these or other programs I’ve been on, or read what I’ve written, began asking me to start a podcast. A good friend and longtime activist, John Aravosis, was looking to do the same thing.
So about 10 months ago, The UnPresidented Podcast was born out of a combo of my wanting to do something more regular that reflects my beliefs and tone, and the stunning, stupefying, degrading, embarrassing existence of our very own Mango Mussolini on the international stage. We of course were all reminded of this very fact just a few days ago during his thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another, candy-ass, art-of-the-heel performance on stage with his handler in Helsinki.
Oh, btw, you can subscribe!! And you should!!! All the cool kids are doing it! :)
2. How’s it different than other shows out there?
I think what we do is different because both John and I have been on the inside (presidential campaigns, on Capitol Hill, for the State Department, insider-y universities) but have both been serious activists who have planned and taken part in marches and protests on issues we care about, such as gay rights and gun control.
So we know what works, what might work, and what is ridiculous. We do our best to let people in beyond the velvet rope and share anecdotes from work we’ve done. And we don’t come with any built-in, black-and-white beliefs, because context matters, the world is gray, and sometimes an insider strategy is best, sometimes outsider. Often both.
And jokes! Don’t forget the jokes! We can’t help but try and have a sense of humor with all going on around us.
I think this also allows us to get some pretty awesome guests on both sides of that divide. We’ve had, to name a few: Malcolm Nance, Sarah Kendzior, Asha Rangappa, Jake Tapper, Lauren Duca, Paul Begala, Shannon Watts, David Frum, Neera Tanden and many others among our guests, and we’ve been pretty proud of both how the shows went and the growth in our listenership that has followed.
Cliff taking on Republican strategist John McGlaughlin on MSNBC during the Iraq War.
3. With so much interest in politics since 2016 and so many new people, one of my favorite topics is talking about what works to create change. In your experience, what works to create change?
I talked about some of this above. What works is what works with policy, business, family, and most other things. Having an open mind, so that pre-conceived notions, conventional wisdom, or hardened ideology don’t determine your course of action. Experience, data, common sense. Bring this to what you do.
The reason you hear so much about “disruption,” is … well, one reason is because people want to sound cool so they say it :). The other reason is because so many biases are brought into even the process of making change.
So analyZe the problem, and think of the best over-arching strategy to solve it, including tactics, meta-narrative, etc. When I worked with Mayors Against Illegal Guns (now Everytown) on my first project back in 2009, when digital PR was still a new thing, I was brought in at the last moment and had 72 hours to try and help move enough votes on the Senate floor to defeat the idiotic bill they’re still trying to pass called Concealed Carry Reciprocity. This shit-tastic bill states that even though there are no licenses for guns like there are for cars, we should just go ahead and treat concealed carry licenses the same from every state. New York, where I grew up, has actual, real laws governing who can carry, while Ohio, where I live now, has some laws but is not nearly as tough. Meanwhile, if I’m correct, in Alabama AND Alaska at this point I believe you only need a pulse. And that might be negotiable.
So I analyzed the landscape, what we needed to accomplish, what the pressure points were for individual Senators, how they reacted to differing types of activism in the past, what the major media outlets were where we could reach them, and numerous other factors before going forward. We applied grassroots pressure at their offices and in their media outlets and we were able to get almost all our targets—including Democratic SeNs. McCaskill, Udall, and Bennet, and Republicans Voinovich, Bond, and Specter—off the fence to join our side. We—and I say we, it was a group effort—beat the NRA (you know, the traitors who give Putin his second in-bath loofah-ing when Trump is done with the initial one) for what was then the first time on the Senate floor in five years.
This is what’s key: Come to any situation open-minded about what it might take to win. And then execute. But hey, jump below to the next question, my friendly blog-reader, and I’ll give you another completely different example ...
4. Can you give us some examples?
When the goals have been different than the CCR battle with the treasonous, domestic terrorism organization known as the NRA, from local races to ballot measures to … any number of things, so has the plan.
For example I am now running a group in Cincinnati, Ohio, called Ohioans for Economic Opportunity—follow us! And follow our funny campaign where we tell people they can very easily break The Chabot Habit—a c4 that aims to make sure everyone knows that Congressman Steve Chabot will rip away their healthcare if they’re one of the 306,400 (~35-40 percent) in his district with pre-existing conditions, 700,000 hard-working Ohioans who rely on Medicaid, etc. (healthcare #Chabotage, as my team calls it). Chabot has this thing where he loves to hand out keg cups (to freshmen in high school sometimes, btw. Yup, GOP for ya) with his supposed accomplishments on them, he’s been doing it since about The Second Punic War.
His bullet points are complete robo-slop, of course. He claims to have lowered the debt (yeah, not so much by voting for the GOP tax bill that gave 83 percent of its benefits to his large corporate donors, it will add another $1 trillion of debt in 2019 alone, $25 trillion overall by fiscal 2021), for example. The rest are just as bad.
So we decided he has built this brand over two decades with these cups, people take them and think nothing of it. So we started going to local events in the district, including four marches/picnics/fairs, in fact four on July 3rd and 4th alone, and we brought cups we had made that look exactly like his, but tell THE TRUTH! You can see the cups in the picture above.
These cups got people real information when their guard wasn’t up and they were open to taking in new information, and from what I’ve heard, he blew his shpadoinkle! All good things, IMHO. In fact, if you were to share that picture above via social media with the hashtag #ChabotCups and some creative idea you might have to mock him, it might get Steve Chabot even more upset. Which would be a shame.
5. What doesn’t work to create change? And, do you have a personal example where you learned something?
As I stated above, one-size-fits-all approaches very much don’t work. Let’s see, an example. Well, I worked on President Clinton’s re-election campaign shortly after graduating from college in ‘96. While there I worked for a couple of lunkheads named Mark Penn and Doug Schoen. Ya know, slovenly, nasty guys who were in politics only for their own advancement and public celebration. Think Commodus from the movie Gladiator.
When that is what motivates you, that is what I might call a pre-conceived notion. Their own (risible) greatness. Of course they are now two gelatinous turdbuckets working as Fox News “Democrats” giving Dems advice there and in the pages of The Wall Street Journal about how to win. Even though Mark Penn managed to lose the 2008 primaries for Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama by ignoring those things called “caucuses” where these things called “delegates” were. (This is not a knock on Hillary, btw, who smartly dumped him after that and won in 2016 by all measures not including imbecilic Comey announcements, Russian meddling, and voter suppression).
Moral of this story: Don’t be Mark Penn and Doug Schoen. They suck. Also, don’t come to any campaign with pre-conceived notions: let the data and smart people you hire and experience tell you where to go, and you’ll win more often than you lose.
6. How do you judge what works and what doesn’t?
I judge this in Republican tears. Just kidding!
I actually believe in stuff and don’t subscribe to Martian-Pizzagate fantasies where Roy Moore, Jim Jordan, and Vladimir Putin are the sole protectors against child molestation because liberals are evil so I just do stuff to make them cry.
I judge this by wins. By data. By changed laws. By an improved political culture. There are numerous ways, but they all involve setting a goal that is measurable and achieving it. Not by proving Richard Hostadter a genius for writing The Paranoid Style in American Politics in 1970, which is the world we’re now living in.
7. What question am I not asking that I should be asking? And your response?
The key question you are missing here, of course, is “why do you have such a healthy glow about you?” And of course the answer is, because I’m not a bloated neo-Franco enabler. Also, ya know, I work out.
Cliff Schecter has been feted for tearing into Republicans on MSNBC, FOX and other spots as far back as the early 2000s. Look for his commentary in places like The Daily Beast, follow him on Twitter, and subscribe to his podcast, UnPresidented!