As many in the media are deciding which side of the political aisle to join, one new podcast — Practically Political — is trying to unify the country with civility and facts.
Host Dave Spencer, along with Ashley Davis and Kurt Bardella, joined Barrett Media to discuss how the Practically Political podcast is allowing both sides to have a conversation that is not grueling or personally attacking someone for their political beliefs.
Krystina Carroll: Tell me how the three of you came together and said lets make a podcast.
Dave Spencer: I’m a Rockefeller Republican, though. If people would listen to my views these days, the ironic thing is they would probably say, particularly my MAGA friends, oh, you’re more of a Democrat, but in 45 years of following politics, I’ve only changed my view on one thing, and that’s the death penalty. I used to be for it, now I’m against it. Every other view is the same, so I wonder, did I change, or did the party change?
Everything is so uncivil these day. It’s always you’re not only wrong, but you’re bad. And so, what’s kept me sane is always attacking the argument, never the person. If you do that, it keeps you rational, and no one gets offended. So that was the impetus behind Practically Political, is to talk. Try to have some views in the middle, have a healthy debate, but always have it cordial, always have people that are fond of each other, even though they may strongly disagree on a lot of the topics that are being discussed.
KC: I love that. How did you come up with Ashley and Kurt as your go-to people for the show?
DS: Well, the lady I had before, and she’s been on as a guest, a really great lady, very smart really very kind, person, but I think as time goes on, I don’t know whether she became more MAGA, but her answers, and I’ve told her this, so I’m not speaking out of turn, became very predictable. And so I knew exactly how she was going to respond.
I said, maybe why don’t we get 3 people instead of two? And so [the guy who helped me put the show together] was the one who went out and actually found Kurt and Ashley.
We tried a couple of shows [with Kurt and Ashley], and there was nice chemistry between us, it was very friendly, and we did a show in person, and last June. We’re gonna try to do, maybe 2 or 3 shows live every year, maybe have a forum, or a place where people can come, and we can have a debate, because it’s all about civil debate.
That’s really the thing, is there’s so much there’s so much, anger out there. People just take it out on each other. You know, the fact that you look on Facebook, and 60% of the people on Facebook don’t have a friend from the other side or something? Ridiculous? I mean, come on. It’s not what this country is based on.
KC: Ashley and Kurt, what attracted you guys to come to the show?
Ashley Davis: Well, first of all, I knew of Dave, but never knew Dave. And so when I was approached by it, I thought it would be super fun. Kurt and I actually do TV together sometimes. He’s a former Republican who is a Democrat, and I’m a Bush Republican, so I am conservative on some issues, but mainly just trying to be more reasonable.
I knew Kurt and I got along well in regards to, we disagree, but we don’t go after each other personally, which was something that was super important. Over the last couple of months, with some of the contentious issues that have been happening, we don’t agree, but we have, again, not criticized each other individually.
Kurt Bardella: I’m a NewsNation contributor, and Ashley and I are oftentimes paired on their panels. She’s Republican, I’m a Democrat, but I think that because I’m a former Republican who is a Democrat, I’m a Democrat living in the red state of Texas, I come to it with, I think, a much more nuanced and balanced approach in that it’s not a zero-sum game.
Sometimes, you can hold two truths at the same time, and whatever our different viewpoints might be, it’s not personal. I might disagree with Ashley or Dave on something, but I don’t look at them and think, well, you’re a horrible person because you disagree with me.
I think oftentimes, our politics has dissolved into that level of personal attacks, and unfortunately, the incentive structure in our current media ecosystem is rewarding that. The algorithms feed that and fuel that, and so if you want views, if you want clicks, if you want relevancy, there is this incentive to be a j*cka**. What attracted me to this concept of Practically Political is that there’s still a place where full-fledged grown-ups can come together and actually have grown-up decisions that don’t turn into the drunk uncle conversation at the Thanksgiving table.
AD: Yeah, that is funny. What’s important about this is, especially with me, like, there are so many, like, former Bush people or whatever that are now anti-Trump. Like, I’m not anti-Trumper. Like, I can completely support some of his issues, but I’m realistic about things that some things I like and some things I don’t. I’m not gonna just go in there and throw red meat because I hate Trump, or red meat because I love Trump. We try to be reasonable on all sides.
KC: How do you guys stay relevant at a time where being the loud voice and being explosive and being on the far right or far left gets you more attention than being normal people, like, where you guys are?
AD: I do Fox, and I do CNN for, like, commentary, and I would say I find out more and more that even the left is like, so-and-so network is too far left, or so-and-so network is too far right. So I actually think, if you think about most of America, they don’t want shows that are screaming at each other. I mean, we kind of scream at each other all the time, and so I actually think the relevancy. We’re not making clickbait comments, though, but we’re actually showing up with educated conversation. I live in the political world in my business, Kurt does too, and Dave’s, like, the most knowledgeable person I know. We actually give, like, facts. Like, if we had one today and started talking about the house shutdown in appropriations, we would be like, no, it’s not gonna happen, right? And so, instead of screaming at each other, telling us why it is or isn’t gonna happen, we’re gonna give practical information. And so I think our relevancy is that, as well, is that we actually know what we’re talking about.
KB: Yeah, and I think that one of the things… you have to meet people where they are, and a lot of people that are in politics 24-7 in DC get trapped in this bubble where you live and die by every single tweet, every single Politico headline, every single segment on cable news.
Reality is, most people aren’t watching cable news. Most people aren’t actually spending their day watching X constantly and engaged in that fight. Pew just came out with new research that shows the majority of Americans are actually moving independently. They’re tired of the extremes of both ends. They’re tired of the noise.
We see every day, cable news, their ratings are declining. Like, there are fewer people tuning into cable news today than there were 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago. Those people didn’t stop consuming information. They didn’t just vanish; they just stopped consuming that kind of information. They started rejecting that presentation.
What we offer is, I think, a much more, again, adult conversation about what’s going on in a format that I think most people, you know, if they could talk about these things. You know, with their peers and with their family, we are having the conversation they wish they could have, I guess I would say.
DS: One of my favorite stats is that you have, I think, about 50 or 60 counties. With half the people of the country that vote blue, and then you have almost 3,000 counties with the other half of the population that vote red, and that’s true in every state.
You go upstate New York, you go parts of California, things are very conservative, and I think as someone who grew up in New York and went to college in LA, and lives in San Francisco, it’s not real America, to put it mildly.
Going out there [and traveling around the country], you realize, first of all: There’s this stereotype that people have that everyone’s antagonistic, and most people have deeply held beliefs, but they’re very friendly, they just want to be heard. And I think that is if I see one thing about this whole hostility and debate, it’s that so many people just don’t feel heard.
And, most people are so friendly, and they’re so proud of their communities, and yeah, they’re very conservative, and they’re being Trump supporters, but they don’t go for a lot of his BS in terms of wanting to deport the lady that’s been working for 10 years with two kids that are born in the U.S, or some of this harsh stuff.
I always tell people, a lot of my liberal friends who still are in shock about the election, I said, hey, you know, over 60% of the people who voted for Trump thought he, in some ways, wasn’t qualified, morally, temporarily, and he was corrupt, and almost 60% thought he was a potential threat to democracy, but they still voted for him. Right? So what does that say about the alternative?
KC: You three are having conversations that people wish they could have. What’s your advice to everyone to have these conversations themselves, too? Not just through listening to your podcast, but with the people that they know, and maybe people that they know colloquially that are on the other side of the aisle.
KB: You have to adopt the mantra that you can disagree without being disagreeable. You have to understand that just because you’re coming from a different ideological viewpoint doesn’t mean that you know their entire life story, and how their viewpoints came to be. You don’t have that context. Two, the goal of the conversation shouldn’t be to change your mind or to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong. Whether you’re talking politics or marriage, like, I don’t know any conversation that ends well if you begin, you’re wrong, I’m right, here’s why. Good luck. You’ll be sleeping on the couch.
You know, it’s like, the goal of political discourse isn’t necessarily about changing minds, that’s what elections are for. Discourse is about providing context, which is: this is what I believe and why. Here’s the context of where I am coming from and what has informed my viewpoint and I am eager to hear yours just as much as I hope you’re eager to hear mine.
If you approach it from that standpoint and you already go into it knowing, you’re not going to agree with me, you’re not gonna change your mind, but maybe you can at least walk in my footsteps for a second and see how I arrived at this conclusion [and] understanding.
DS: Yeah, I would… for me, I think it’s more… people take too much of a macro approach, like, well, I’ve got to get this guy to not vote for Trump. Or I’ve got, you know, I’ve got to get this guy to stop this woman to stop falling into this liberal, woke BS, you know, and… whereas to me, I think a lot of times, I just… I’ll take it point by point. And a lot… because a lot of times, people actually may agree, and for, like, economics, for example, if you blindly ask people about almost 60% of them agree with Democrats on economic issues, right?
But where people veer off is on the social, cultural issues, and I think that’s the as we talked about on the show just our last episode, I think that’s the Democrats’ biggest problem, is that they’re culturally out of step with a lot of the country, and so you might be able to win an election here and there. And the Senate gets even harder, because then you have the demographics where people are moving from blue states to red states, so the electoral college will become more challenging after 2030.
But you won’t have a majority for 10 or 12 years, where you can actually change government. You can appoint a lot of Supreme Court justices and do the things that would really allow Democrats to affect government long-term, and I don’t see that problem. I haven’t seen any…examples of… I saw in, like, say, in 1992, with people standing up to party orthodoxy, and not just sister soldier moments, but…standing up against… look, I mean, Clinton was against, you know, he was pre… pre-trade… he was pro-trade, he was, pro-death penalty, he was…tough on crime, and I haven’t seen any of that, even if you look at the races that Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill ran.
You know, they talked about affordability, but I still thought they were pretty safe when it came to really challenging the party orthodoxy that I think needs to be challenged if the Dems are going to be, have a real majority.
KC: You guys know what you’re talking about. You’re entrenched in this, but, like, you come at it at neutral, non-attacking way. What’s your advice to people who are overwhelmed with the news cycle and want to just know what they’re talking about, to have calm conversations about politics?
KB: You have to be self-selective about who you’re following, who you’re listening to, and, you know, what you’re consuming in terms of news information or infotainment. You know, there are people out there who are pundits and prognosticators who haven’t actually worked in the [the politics] game.
They’ve made their life by commenting on the game. So there’s just a knowledge gap that exists when you haven’t worked in the executive branch, when you haven’t worked in Congress, when you don’t have that first-hand experience and actually lived through 9-11 in the White House.
I was at the House Oversight Committee during the old Clinton-Benghazi investigation. We have these rich experiences, and when you’ve worked in it, you also have a different viewpoint of partisanship.
It’s like, you know, we’re all in on the same joke. Some of my best relationships that I’ve forged in life are with staffers who were on the opposite side of me in public, but privately, we all understood how that game was played, and we all had a kinship with one another, because we know what it’s like to have a boss. I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat.
When you work for an elected official, there is a unique way in which that job carries out, that no matter what your ideology is, you go through the same headaches, the same hand-wringing, the same… just you know, professional mishaps, and every 2 or 4 years, you know that you might lose your job and that your life dramatically is impacted by those cycles, and so there is a paternity that develops with that experience.
And so I think for just people out there who are just trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not, in a time where fact and fiction are blurred deliberately, where we are contaminated with misinformation constantly. I always say, like, look for the adults in the room. Don’t look for the loudest voice. Don’t look for the most provocative voice. Look for people whom you would actually want to have a conversation with, and who are having that conversation.
AD: Totally agree with that. Kurt’s exactly right, and I think that even, before I get on the show, especially now, because we’re, like, organized, or before I go on, like, other shows. I purposely look up what Republicans are saying about this question and what Democrats are saying about this question, just so I have a general understanding of what each side’s doing, and 90% of the time, I’m like in the middle, maybe 70% of the time.
I don’t think any of us are trying to go back to my clickbait world. Like, I think that’s why we work, is because I’m not going to start screaming to Kurt or Dave about a topic on immigration, for example, or the borders, so… just so it will go viral. Like, that’s just that’s not me, it’s not us, it’s not our brands, and so, I mean, I think it’s more important for us to make sure that we’re continuing to educate people, more than it is, let’s just try to see how many followers we get.
DS: Yeah, the only thing I would add is that, for me, I think if you can listen to both sides, you’ll probably get 90% of the picture. So, what I mean by that is, I’ll listen to The Rachel Maddow Show, and then I’ll listen to The Ben Shapiro Show, and then I’ll listen to Pod Save America, and then I’ll listen to War Room. You know, whatever you think about him, he’s very smart, he’s very articulate, and a lot of stuff in the war room.
Then there’s the other category of people I really enjoy listening to, like the never-Trumper Republicans, you know, the Bill Crystals, the Tim Millers, you know, those guys that used to be the Bush Republicans, but don’t have any interest in the populism stuff that Trump is pushing. So, I think if doing that, I can probably get 90% of the picture, because obviously both sides are very good at presenting their arguments, and they have very articulate people through whom to do it, so that’s one of the ways I do it.
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