We started out talking about the weather, as we often do. But it wasn’t long before we got into the subject that keeps bringing us back together: the state of our country, the direction of our politics, and what it’s going to take to turn things around.
There’s a lot riding on the elections ahead, especially in Texas. And what makes this moment interesting isn’t just the possibility of changing who holds office. It’s the possibility that voters are beginning to question the system that got us here in the first place.
For years, we’ve watched politicians promise prosperity while ordinary people struggle to afford their lives. We’ve watched campaigns spend fortunes attacking opponents, often relying on personal smears and inflammatory claims rather than meaningful conversations about what people actually need. And we’ve watched wealthy donors pour money into elections, trying to shape the choices available to the rest of us.
At some point, we have to ask ourselves: Are we going to keep playing politics by the same old rules, or are we finally going to change the game?
The power of speaking to people where they live
One of the most encouraging things we see in this election cycle is the emergence of candidates who understand that people want to hear from someone who understands their lives.
A voter in Texas has different experiences and priorities from a voter in Michigan, New York, or Oregon. There are common concerns across the country, of course. People want to be able to afford housing, raise their families, find security, and believe that their government is working for them rather than against them. But how those concerns are experienced—and how people talk about them—depends on where they live.
That’s why local leadership matters.
We discussed candidates such as James Talarico in Texas, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Zohran Mamdani in New York. Whatever our individual differences over candidates or policies, there’s something important in the way they’ve built support: they speak directly to the people they hope to represent.
They’re not simply waiting for a national figure to tell voters what to think. They’re building relationships, knocking on doors, developing local networks, and making their case in terms people can connect with.
We think there’s a lesson here for the Democratic Party and, really, for anyone who wants to build a political movement. A message that works in one place may not work in another. People need to see that their leaders understand their communities and are willing to listen to them.
And listening has to mean more than showing up during election season.
Hate is easy to sell. Building trust takes work.
Political division is profitable. Fear, resentment, and outrage can be packaged into a campaign message and repeated until people begin to see their neighbors as enemies.
It’s often easier to tell people whom to hate than to explain how you’ll make their lives better. It’s easier to blame an unpopular group than to address the economic and institutional problems affecting everyone.
But if we believe that a better politics is possible, we have to do the harder work.
That means building organizations in every state and community, including places where one party has been so dominant that people with different views feel ignored. It means giving voters access to competing ideas and showing them that they have choices. And it means finding ways to communicate beyond the audiences who already agree with us.
We can’t assume that a national message will reach everyone. We can’t assume that people will discover our ideas on their own. If we want to change minds, we have to meet people where they are.
That doesn’t mean abandoning our principles. It means learning how to explain them in ways that connect with people’s actual lives.
Who does our political system really serve?
Eventually, the conversation turned to money.
We talked about the enormous sums being spent to influence elections and the challenge of preventing wealthy individuals and powerful organizations from exercising disproportionate influence over government. We agreed that money has become a serious obstacle to a political system that treats ordinary citizens as equals.
But how do we fix it?
Campaign spending limits, restrictions on private donations, and public financing all raise difficult questions about implementation and constitutional constraints. Simply declaring that we want less money in politics doesn’t make those obstacles disappear.
Still, the difficulty of reform isn’t a reason to abandon it. It’s a reason to take the problem seriously and work through the details.
We also discussed ranked-choice voting, which offers voters a way to rank candidates in order of preference rather than feeling forced to choose between only two viable options. In our discussion, one of its most appealing possibilities was that it could make room for more candidates and give voters greater freedom to express what they actually want.
No single voting reform will solve every problem. But when people feel trapped into choosing the lesser of two evils, it’s worth asking whether our electoral systems are giving them the choices they deserve.
We should be looking at the rules themselves, not just the people who succeed under them.
Voting is the beginning, not the end
There was another point we kept returning to: we cannot put all the responsibility on politicians.
Elected officials respond to incentives. They respond to pressure, public opinion, organized constituencies, and the possibility of losing their jobs. When citizens disengage after an election, they leave those officials with fewer reasons to listen.
That means our responsibility doesn’t end when we cast a ballot.
We have to contact our representatives, organize with our neighbors, support candidates who are willing to challenge entrenched interests, and hold elected officials accountable when they fail to deliver. We have to keep paying attention even when the news cycle moves on to something else.
We also have to be realistic. Even a major electoral victory won’t automatically undo years of institutional damage. Reforming the Supreme Court, limiting the influence of concentrated wealth, and rebuilding public trust will take sustained effort. There will be legal obstacles, political resistance, and disagreements about what should happen next.
But that’s precisely why we cannot treat an election as the finish line.
The next election is an opportunity to begin rebuilding. What happens afterward will depend on whether we keep showing up.
We cannot return to the old normal
Near the end of our conversation, we turned to a larger question: what does it mean to restore the country?
It can be tempting to imagine that, once the current crisis passes, we can simply return to business as usual. But the old normal helped create the conditions we’re struggling with now. A system that gives extraordinary influence to wealth, leaves communities feeling unheard, and relies on constant political conflict cannot be repaired merely by restoring familiar routines.
Many of the rights and protections we now take for granted came because people refused to accept the status quo. Workers organized for better conditions. People protested for civil rights. Communities challenged laws and institutions that treated them unfairly.
Progress did not happen because everyone politely agreed that change would be nice. It happened because people organized, persisted, and demanded something better.
We need that same determination now—not violence, not hatred, and not another round of treating our fellow citizens as enemies, but the courage to insist that our institutions serve the public.
We may disagree about candidates, policies, and the best path forward. We should expect those disagreements in a diverse country. But we should be able to agree that ordinary people deserve a meaningful voice in their own government, that concentrated wealth should not determine our collective future, and that democracy requires more than showing up every few years.
We are more alike than we are different, and we can work together without pretending those differences don’t exist.
The question is whether we’re willing to do the work.
We are Writing Freedom. And if we want a country that lives up to its promise, we cannot wait for someone else to fix it. We have to organize, participate, push back, and keep building—because the goal isn’t to return to normal. It’s to build something better.
Translated from our audio transcript to a podcast format using ChatGPT.
