#262 The Future of American Democracy

The core argument in my book is that people will do what their incentives demand. And if you are a political figure today, your incentives are to generally cater to the most polarized and extreme points of view and voters in your district because that's who's going to vote you back in.

Congress has a 28% approval rating nationwide right now ... Three out of four of us don't think things are well. The individual re-election rate for members of Congress is 92%. So, even though seven out of ten of us are really, really sad with how things are going, you're almost assured of re-election if you decide to run, which most of them do, since they like this job.

The media gauntlet was such a huge part of running for president. And I'm now convinced that that's core to our problems—it's core as to why we can't seem to make any real progress.

We heard later from a producer, Ariana Pekary, who was at MSNBC during that time that she was given a list of candidates not to ever invite on the show or interview, and I was on that list.

There is a particular discourse and language in media; there's a particular discourse and language in politics. And they aren't the discussion of fact in the way that you'd hope.