Preparing For GOP Midterm Subversion

Austin Payne: I'm currently 33 years old and have, up until this point, been primarily focused on trying to establish a career and pursuing financial security. With the whole MAGA movement, and the second Trump presidency in particular, I'm feeling an increasingly urgent desire to do something i.e., get involved in a substantive way (up to, and including, a career shift towards politics). My gut is telling me that now is a critical time for technologically-skilled and motivated people of the younger generations to become more civically active to combat all the ignorance, creeps, and crooks that are fueling this second Gilded Age.

Do you see this moment as a sort of watershed moment -- in a positive way -- for our democracy (read: Mamdani's primary victory resulting in 10,000 new candidates declaring for office)? Do you see a generational shift / internal reckoning underway? If you were just starting out now, how would you go about getting involved? How would your path and/or entry points be different/similar to the way you got started with your political career?

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So, I’d been toying with the idea of soliciting advice-column questions, in addition to questions about politics and related trivia, but Austin, you’re giving me second thoughts!

I mainly hesitate to respond with too much certainty, because while the circumstances of your youth and my youth bear some resemblance, the terrains are different in important ways. In 2004 and 2005, I changed tracks in life against the backdrop of the post-9/11 freakout. The wars, the PATRIOT Act. I developed strongly-held opinions about all of it, but as a physics undergraduate, my views were up for grabs, heavily influenced by the most prominent journalists of the day. Over the course of a year or two, the careful reasoning and reporting of writers like James Fallows and Mark Danner overpowered the glib but self-assured arguments people like Christopher Hitchens made, and their work pulled me into opposition. But more than anything it was the discourse between them that I found seductive. I attended a Hitchens-Danner debate at Wheeler Auditorium in Berkeley on the question of the Iraq war, and decided I wanted to be part of that world: where journalism institutions pay writers to evaluate the issues and controversies of the day and then change people’s minds about them. So I moved to Washington and started working as a journalist. That’s how I thought I could do the most good in the world, with the skills and interests I had.

But that world was already dying; I just didn’t realize it. If 9/11 had occurred in today’s technological and cultural climate, I doubt I would have been exposed to anything like florid debates that unfolded in magazines and behind lecterns. I imagine I’d have tried YouTubing, or else joined a worthy campaign and become a speechwriter.

Today’s crises are if anything more urgent, but the question of how to get involved is harder to answer because realms of political action have atomized, and mechanisms for making change are themselves changing so rapidly. I think if I were in my 20s or early 30s, working happily as a physics researcher, but becoming radicalized by the Trump presidency, I’d choose direct political involvement over joining the online cacophony. I’d try to get work writing speeches or doing logistics for JB Pritzker or Beto O’Rourke or one of the handful of House and Senate Democrats who see things clearly and don’t mince words about them. Candidates and campaigns (and newsrooms and “content creators”) have analogous tech needs, so I’m practically certain you would find a role for yourself if you chose to make a hard break.

But I can’t be certain that’s the right advice.

I feel more confident saying you shouldn’t ignore the urge to get more involved in some way. Without knowing much about your situation, there’s something maximally flexible about being a late-20s/early-30s professional. You’re young enough to take risks but old enough to be taken seriously by the people my age and older who tend to run everything. You can dip your toe into content creation, campaign volunteering, or even just helping out with your local Indivisible chapter, meet people, talk to them about how you imagine serving, and see where fate takes you.

The life-changing advice I got was much more concrete: With dedication—whether by gaining new experiences and expertise, or showing up and being useful—you can get a decent journalism job; and everyone who chooses to make a career of it will eventually find a rewarding role for themselves. It was true at the time. I’m not sure it is anymore, and political journalism has lost much of its power.

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@suzannecloud: What should the Dems do if Trump calls off the midterms (for whatever reason) and the Republicans support it?

I’m going to take the liberty of rewriting this question just a bit: What should Dems do if (or, really, when) Trump takes illegal actions to subvert the midterms and Republicans support it?...