Heather Cox Richardson on the Power Each of Us Has to Make Real Change in the Election and in Our Democracy

This week Maria was joined by Heather Cox Richardson to help us make sense of what is going on in this world, what our responsibilities as citizens are, and what we all can do to make a difference. Maria’s mother always used to remind her that you can’t complain if you aren’t going to do something about it. So, what are you going to do? How are you going to make your voice heard? Let us know in the comments below!

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College and an expert on American political and economic history. Her book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America is available now. You can subscribe to her wildly popular newsletter, Letters from an American, here.

Full Transcript:

Maria  

I wanted to talk to Heather Cox Richardson because I'm a student of politics, nothing like her, I grew up in a political family, as many of you know and I'm always trying to make sense. This is called Making Sense with Maria. Who can make sense of the world we live in? I don't know. Not me, maybe Heather. This is a time where we want to make sense of what's happening in our country and we need a guide, and she's an incredible guide. Her book was a big bestseller. It was called Democracy Awakening, you could still buy it, you can subscribe to her extraordinary newsletters that's called Letters from an American, it's on substack. And every day, she just grinds it out—explaining, making sense, giving insight, and all this knowledge that she has accumulated. Hi, Heather. How are you? 

Heather Cox Richardson  

It's good to see you. 

Maria  

Nice to see you again. How are you? 

Heather Cox Richardson  

I'm good. I'm a little tired. You know, I can't believe we're already at the end of February. It's a leap year. So we got an extra  day this time, right?

Maria  

I was just saying how much I love speaking with you, because you're so smart and because you have such great insight. You help us make sense of what is going on in our world, which is I think something that's really hard for people right? To figure out how do I make sense of what is going on in my country right now when it comes to politics. So I said, let's go to the authority. Let's go to the woman who I go to. And so Heather, help us make sense this morning after Michigan a week before Super Tuesday, people are disillusioned kind of feeling like is this all wrapped up? Do I get any choice in this presidential issue? Should I care? Why?  Heather is frozen. So maybe we'll be able to get Heather back in just a moment. I want to make sure that I'm talking about what matters. And what I wanted to talk to Heather about was not just what happened in Michigan, not just what's going to happen on Super Tuesday, but what is happening in our country at large, how do we stay engaged? How do we stay hopeful? How do we stay optimistic? Those are the questions that I'm really interested in that I asked myself and that I asked others. I'd like to know from all of you. How do you stay open? How do you stay optimistic? How do you stay believing in our democracy and in our elections? That's what's super interesting to me. And so, Heather,

Heather Cox Richardson  

I hope I'm here this time, am I here for real? 

Maria  

You're here for real, fingers crossed. You know, this is one of the reasons we need broadband across this country. 

Heather Cox Richardson  

I live in the woods. And okay, what I was going to say was I'm so glad you asked me the question that you did when you did because that idea of being disillusioned and what does, what you do matter and all that is actually what I've been writing about all day because it finally hit me after the Michigan primary of last night. That what we're seeing is a major political realignment in this country. The Republican Party is dying. The Democratic Party is rebuilding and creating a new identity for itself. And this looks very much to me, like a number of times in our past when there's kind of like this butterfly soup, you know that old expression that you get you don't go from— [Heather's connection drops]

Maria

I'm going to send a letter to the governor of Maine. You need broadband up there. Come on, man. It's such a beautiful state and you have the greatest expert and professor in the country, and she needs better internet. Okay, but what she's saying is absolutely right. There is a realignment going on reminds me about how many of us in our lives have to reclaim a new identity, right? What if your kids go off and you've been a full time mom or a full time dad, you have to reclaim a new identity, right? If you become a grandmother, you're reclaiming a new identity, if you get separated in your marriage or divorce, you have to reclaim a new identity. If you start a new job, you have to reclaim a new identity. And both of these political parties are in the process, which she was just saying, of doing that exact thing, reintroducing themselves in a way to us the voting public. [Heather returns]

Heather Cox Richardson 

I'm sorry, it is what it is. But when that happens, when we get that period, when everything kind of falls apart, and we get political soup, you know, like I said, the butterfly soup where you don't go from a caterpillar to a butterfly, you turn into soup first. (That's not actually true, but that's the the old saying about that.) We're kind of in political soup and when that happens, what has happened in our past and the 1850s, the 1890s, the 1940s and 50s, for example, people start to rethink what they want out of their government and out of democracy. And when they do, it becomes this incredibly creative, thoughtful period when we reinvent American democracy. So why does it matter to be in to be involved now? Well, first of all, because we don't want to lose our democracy. So that's the first thing just cast your vote if you don't care about anything else, cast your vote for democracy and walk away. But the reality is that if we are all involved in this moment, we get to define what the future looks like. And that means you've got to bring to it your political principles, sure. But your your artistic sense, and your love for your neighbors, and for all the pieces of what makes you, you to bring them to the surface of the nation. And that's actually really exciting and fun, as opposed to "Oh, my god, I gotta listen to another primary." So one of the things you saw in the primary last night was that Trump is not popular, you know, he's just not popular, but what is popular, we are still inventing. 

Maria  

What I think is great about that, but I think so much of the coverage of politics is about two people, or a third person who wants to be one of the two people, right, and so people focus. But what you're saying is step back, and let's create a party, let's create a new vision, let's lay down some new values, or restrengthen the values that are already here. Is it to pay less attention to the two people, and more about the vision for the country?

Heather Cox Richardson  

It's not just those two people. I mean, that's one of the mistakes we make, I think, is to envision our politics as a few people pulling all the strings. In fact, our politics is about us. You know, it's our voices that convinced different elected leaders to move in different directions. It's our voices that create new organizations, it's our voices that say, "Hey, climate change is really important to me, or IVF is really important to me or feeding kindergarteners is really important to me, or a strong national defense systems are strong is important to me." It's actually us, they work for us, not the other way around. And we lose that a lot. I think in our country and the way we talk about politics, politics is about agency, your ability to change the future. And we need to grab that in this moment. As those different parts are falling out of the sky to go into new patterns in front of us. 

Maria  

Heather isn't a good way for people to think about that, though, is maybe to think more about what's going on on the local level. If you're disillusioned about "Oh, my god, we're having a rematch" or "How did we end up here who can make sense of this," but to think about those issues that you think are important. You just mentioned IVF? So much news around IVF. Right? You talk about climate change. You talk about school lunches, you talk about, you know, maybe it's a woman's right to choose, those things are very often decided locally in local democracy, right. And so if you happen to find yourself like, I can't make sense of what's going on nationally, is it wise to turn your attention to what's going on right in front 100%

Heather Cox Richardson  

100% and also to find friends, you know, find your squad as they say, so that you know, you're actually not doing this alone, that you're part of a larger organization. I do love the image that somebody pointed out, if in fact you're trying to to unravel a giant blanket, you know, you may not be the person unraveling that whole blanket. But so long as you're pulling on your thread alone, if you got a lot of friends pulling on threads together, you can make the whole project work. And as I say, that's, that's part of our history. That's how we create change. That's how we have moved this country in better directions in the past is when people work together, and recognize as the government belongs to them, and not to somebody who's who's pulling the strings that you have no control over. You know, I always worry when people say to me, what's going to happen? What are they going to do to pay? It's not time for that yet, right? Now it's time for what am I going to do to change what the future looks like.

Maria  

Giving people what you talk about, "What am I going to do?" You talk about agency, people don't feel like they have it, they don't feel like they have power, they don't feel like they have agency. They feel like they can't make sense of what's happening, and so they turn away, they tried to go like, "Okay, well, I'm just going to focus on my family, or my corner or my home."

Heather Cox Richardson  

Well, you know, I'm not against the idea of focusing on your family or your garden or your neighbors. I think that that's a perfectly legitimate way to resist the encroachment of authoritarians who want to control every aspect of your life. But I think as you start to make that corner of your life beautiful, there is plenty of room to reach out to a neighbor or to reach out to a border to reach out to the state legislature or to reach out to Congress person or eventually to reach out to national newspapers or wherever your future takes you. But, but the key part of that is to recognize that the way you have control over your destiny is to take back control, don't wait till somebody gives it to you take back control, take your agency and say, "You know what, I'm not going to wait to be told what to do. I'm going to take the future into my own hands and start to make a difference." Whether that means picking up the trash in front of the elementary school, more running for office.

Maria  

I know you talk, we've talked about, you know, democracy, the importance of supporting democracy. And I get the feeling that when I talk to a lot of people about democracy, they're like, "What are you talking about exactly? What are you asking me to vote for exactly?" What does that, that's a big word, it's on the title of your book, we hear you know, Joe Biden talking about it a lot. We heard at that big conference in Washington, people saying, we came to get democracy on January 6, and we want to dismantle it, can you boil it down for people who are sitting at home, and there are a lot of them with us today? Democracy means this to you:

Heather Cox Richardson  

The right to be treated equally before the law and the right to have a say, in your government. Both of those things are guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence. And there's a real difference between people who are fighting for democracy to expand those rights to their neighbors, and those who are fighting for their version of democracy that takes those rights away. So the January 6, people were trying to take away the rights of the rest of us to choose our president. That was not an attempt to expand democracy that was an attempt to contract it. The people who were fighting for the you know, the American Revolution, in contrast, we're fighting to expand that democracy. So the idea of democracy has many different layers in it. There's, you know, talk about economic democracy, and all sorts of things. But fundamentally, in the United States, it's the right to be treated equally before the law, and the right to have a say in your government. And with those two things, the rest will come.

Maria  

I love that what you were saying in the beginning, even if you don't like the two people just vote for democracy and go on about your way. And for many people, I think maybe it's better to say or maybe different to say, vote for the person who wants to expand democracy, as opposed to the party that might want to restrict it, that might want to take your rights away, that might want to end up in your bedroom or tell you what you can and cannot do with your body. And this is what that big word, and those conversations are really all about and what I like. Heather, you're constantly going wake up, wake up, America, right? Wake up, because there's some really serious things on the line. This can't be the time to yes, you can tend to your family. Yes, you can tend to your garden. Yes, you can tend to your local issues. But there's some big important stuff going down on a national and really international, who we are globally, who we present ourselves as what does it mean to be America in 2024?

Heather Cox Richardson  

Yes and what I find so important in this is not only protecting that, but recognizing that this makes you part of a much longer history of our great leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer and Siting Bull, and Abraham Lincoln and you know, the people who really work to expand that vision. And it also, as I say, comes from a place of joy, you know, we have the right to construct the government that we want, we don't have to put up with somebody else telling us how to live. And this is the moment when we make that manifest to take those ideas. And in this, this political soup, if you will, while the Republican Party is falling apart, and the Democratic Party is rebuilding itself, and we have all these exciting things going on, now is the time to take a deep breath and step forward in saying not only am I casting my ballot, because that's my civic duty, I'm gonna have a say in what the future looks like. And that future can take on gun safety, and can take on equality before the law, and can take on climate change and can take on sovereignty of nations and can take on all the things that will enable us to create a more just and equitable future. Really exciting.

Maria  

So you're sitting there going, it's exciting, can actually use the word joyful, or joy experiment. And yet when I talk to people about politics, they're just like, "Oh, my God, can you believe what's going on?" It's the opposite of what you're describing. Am I talking to the wrong people? Or do you talk to people who also feel like that? And you're find yourself going, No, this can be exciting. This can be joyful, this can be creative.

Heather Cox Richardson  

I'm laughing a little bit because I was complaining just yesterday that I did not want to write another stupid letter about the same thing. You know, what's going to happen? Right? The Republicans are radicalizing, they're not going to put stuff through Congress. There's a lot about the daily business of politics, that is not terribly exciting and that's okay. I think if governance is going well, it's a little boring, to be honest. But I always love the big picture. You know, I just love the end, actually, I'm writing a big piece this weekend, I hope, when you look at things like taxes, okay, that may not sound very interesting, but what they're really about is, what should the government do for the people who live in a society and who should pay for it? Those are really interesting questions, right?

Maria  

I have that conversation all the time with my kids, and their friends, where they're constantly talking about, I can't believe the taxes and what I make and what I ended up with, and I'm like, "Well, who's gonna pay for it?" And they're like, well, not me. And I'm like, Well, who is? It's such a fascinating conversation where people like, "Well, I think I will pay for the police and the fire, but that's it." I think that's such an incredible thing that you're going to write about that. Because, what do we actually owe the country that we live in? What should we be paying for? What is our tithes as we give to our church, right? Or what do we think, "That's fair to live in a country a democracy, where I can practice my religion, where I have free speech, where I can vote the way I want to vote, or I have a judicial system. So for that, I should pay."

Heather Cox Richardson  

Yes, and we will not all agree on those things, but that's a really interesting question. And one of the other things that I'm actually working on for the weekend is the idea of anti-trust. Again, you feel eyelids closing and yet, how big really should a company get? I mean, should it be able to raise prices so that it's maybe cheaper for them to make stuff but way more expensive for us to pay? Or should we break that up so that there's more opportunities for people to enter into the market? That's been a question that has been part of United States history since the very beginning and we have to think those questions through again, but it's not just a question of saying, gee, do I really want Kroger to mix with another supermarket and why does that matter to me? There's a much larger question about having a right to a say in our government, living in the kind of society we want to live in, and creating the kind of change we want to see. The bigger picture things are the things that have always drawn me. Yeah, I get as bored as everybody else does by the latest vote on the latest procedural thing in Congress. You sit there and think, "How do they do this?" But the larger picture is about who we are as Americans and to me endlessly fascinating because who gets counted in that as an American is vitally important to the outcome.

Maria  

So many people as I was beginning to say, particularly so many young people that I speak with do feel like this process makes no sense. The electoral college makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me that by next Tuesday, it'll all be decided and millions and millions and millions of us haven't even gotten a say, this whole system needs to be changed.

Heather Cox Richardson  

So let me just back a little bit off that, I would be the first to say we have real problems within our system because it is no longer guaranteeing that there is a majority in power. Okay, so there's a problem just from the start there. But there's two ways to look at our government, you can look at it as people on the far right in the far left do and say, democracy is terrible, we got to tear it all down and rebuild something else. And my problem with that is on the right, what they always want to rebuild this authoritarianism. On the left, they've never come up with any system that doesn't turn into being authoritarian. So people like me, ones who say, democracy is flawed, it is not operating the way it's got to. Some real problems in this country, but it can be fixed. And it's the fixing part that I find interesting and exciting. I think it's not illegitimate to say it's frustrating to live in a society where because of the way that the Electoral College altered, it was never intended to be a winner take all system. I think it's okay to say we got a real problem here. But the question is, do we burn the system down and hope something good replaces that when nothing else ever has? Or do we fix the system we've got. That's what camp I'm firmly in. Let's fix the system we've got rather than burn it down and start again.

Maria  

I love that. Heather, for people who want to take away like, want to go to a kitchen table, want to go to a party and say I heard Heather Cox Richardson say, here are two ways we can fix the system. She also thinks the Electoral College system is flawed, she also thinks that we can do better than we're doing. And she suggested two things. What do you think?

Heather Cox Richardson  

Well, you know, if you could make me emperor to the universe, the first I would do and this is gonna sound weird, because, you know, I like tax policy, the first thing I would do is significantly raise taxes on the very wealthy people in the United States. For this reason, I mean, for many reasons, of course, we're in a period where we have extraordinarily low taxes. But the real thing that I think is the problem in this particular context is that there's so much money washing through politics right now that ordinary people don't have the power that they ought to. When a when a multi billionaire can simply say, I'm going to dump so much money into the state parties that I'm going to be able to run the state legislatures and therefore have a bigger, say, on the Electoral College. That's a problem. Now, I'm probably not going to get that but a very similar, at least not in the short term, because my Emperess papers are probably a little bit stuck in the mail. But the other thing is, even with the Electoral College, there are a number of ways that people are trying to work around it. And my answer to that is, let's bring back the proportional system in the Electoral College, which is the way it was supposed to work, rather than take all which means we end up with a very few states getting to be the only swing states in the country. If things were proportional again, politicians would have to compete in all the states because they would need those proportional electoral electors. And you saw that in 2020, when Donald Trump campaigned in Maine, because Maine and Nebraska are the two states that still split their electoral votes, he wanted one vote, but he came all the way up to me to do that. So that's one thing I would do. And I'd really like to see money out of politics as well. But there, there are many different ways in which our system is not currently represented, it does not currently represent the majority. There's a number of things that I think we should do as a Supreme Court. But the good news is going forward here is that again, historically, in our country, we have long periods where we don't change the Constitution and then we have short periods where we add a lot to the Constitution. And it's been a long time since we've adjusted the Constitution. My guess is that in our lifetimes, Maria, I'll say that, you and I will see the Constitution adjusted to make sure that my minority cannot essentially hack it and take over.

Maria  

What would have to happen for that to happen?

Heather Cox Richardson  

All of us in our country, Democrat, Independent Republicans need to stand up and say we back democracy, we back the system, and we are not going to back the people who want to tear it down. Once we have supported democracy again, then we can hash out what that looks like to protect democracy. And I firmly believe that the majority of us want that, we want it. We're having a problem with the fact that the minority has sewn up some important nodes of democracy that have made it possible for them to do things like stop legislation from going through the House of Representatives.

Maria  

So people say like, "God, You're gonna talk to Heather Cox Richardson, the government's gonna shut down again. I mean, is this really serious? And how could this be? How could this be happening?" And, I always try to step back and go, it's better than anywhere else, we have way more freedoms than any other country in the world. As you just said, there are things as always in your own home and everywhere that need adjusting that need growth that need fixing. But if we get involved, if we believe that it's possible, that's a big part of it, if we just give up and say, it makes no sense, I'm out, right? But that your whole philosophy, which I love is that every single person has a vote and has power. And I want you to leave people with that, that they have tremendous power right now, even if one of these candidates is not coming to their state, they still have power.

Heather Cox Richardson  

The way you change politics is to change the way people think. And the way you change the way people think is that you make sure your voice is heard. And you find your friends and you speak together. And you speak up not only in it by voting, but by, you know, talking to people, by writing letters to the editor by calling your congress critters, by making sure that what you care about is on the table. And do politicians respond to that, 100%. Not all of them by any stretch of the imagination, but younger people coming up will recognize that if they want to get your vote, they've got to act in particular ways and that matters. That's how you change the ship of state. I will say one thing that I always want to point out to people when they complain that they feel the government is not responding to them in this moment. You know, I'm watching the Biden administration incredibly closely, probably better than anybody else in the country, actually and they're working incredibly hard to do the things that will make people be treated equally before the law, have equal access to resources, and get to have a say in their government. But we have let that ship of state drift a very long way from the mooring for 40 years and it ain't coming back in three years. This is going to be a much longer process of recreating American society. And as I say, when you think about what we can do in this moment, when so much is required of us to address climate change, to address the attempt to tear apart the international order, to the rise of oligarchs and authoritarians, it's wildly exciting to think about the fact that this is our mission in our lifetime. And this is our time to stand up and be counted. It's scary and it's sometimes it's boring, and sometimes you wish you could go to sleep earlier, but nobody who gets stuck in a moment like this says, "Hey, this is great, I get to be miserable in this process." What they do get to say is, "I did the right thing when it really mattered and at the end of the day, that's really what it means to be a human being right.

Maria  

I love that. Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much. I love our conversations, let's keep them going. And people actually said that they love them too. You're so wise and what I love is that you put it back on us. My mother used to always do that, don't complain, put it back on you—What are you going to do? Right? Where is your role, because we all do have a role. We all do have tremendous power, as Heather was saying. And she puts it all in context that this. We let it go because we weren't paying attention and now we got to pull it back, and we can write it and we can add to it, and we can be creative, and we can have our voices heard, but the worst thing is to complain it and then do nothing about it. So I want to thank you for joining us from Maine. We're gonna all send a letter to the governor there about the broadband. I mean, come on. 

Heather Cox Richardson  

Listen, I'm back on the road next week, and I'll be back in civilization. But you know, I it just just happens to be a place where we haven't managed to get wires yet.

Maria  

You're smart, from the woods, from the trees from our civilization and civilization. So I'll talk to you anywhere, anytime. Thank you Heather Cox Richardson.

Heather Cox Richardson  

Thank you.

Maria  

Thank you so much. And I want to thank all of you so much for joining us for listening to this remarkable woman. Her remarkable brain, her remarkable years of studying about our country about our history and being able to distill it in a way that we could all understand and most importantly, to a way that we can all take away and do something about it. So Heather Cox Richardson, you can get her newsletter, you can buy her book, you can hear her anytime, read her anytime, and she'll come back here some other time. Thank you all so much. Have a great rest of your day.

Please note this transcript was generated from the audio file and may contain errors. Please refer to the linked video to confirm accuracy.