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Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change
A brilliant condemnation of political hobbyism—treating politics like entertainment—and a call to arms for well-meaning, well-informed citizens who consume political news, but do not take political action.
Who is to blame for our broken politics? The uncomfortable answer to this question starts with ordinary citizens with good intentions. We vote (sometimes) and occasionally sign a petition or attend a rally. But we mainly “engage” by consuming politics as if it’s a sport or a hobby. We soak in daily political gossip and eat up statistics about who’s up and who’s down. We tweet and post and share. We crave outrage. The hours we spend on politics are used mainly as pastime.
Instead, we should be spending the same number of hours building political organizations, implementing a long-term vision for our city or town, and getting to know our neighbors, whose votes will be needed for solving hard problems. We could be accumulating power so that when there are opportunities to make a difference—to lobby, to advocate, to mobilize—we will be ready. But most of us who are spending time on politics today are focused inward, choosing roles and activities designed for our short-term pleasure. We are repelled by the slow-and-steady activities that characterize service to the common good.
In Politics Is for Power, pioneering and brilliant data analyst Eitan Hersh shows us a way toward more effective political participation. Aided by political theory, history, cutting-edge social science, as well as remarkable stories of ordinary citizens who got off their couches and took political power seriously, this book shows us how to channel our energy away from political hobbyism and toward empowering our values.
Who is to blame for our broken politics? The uncomfortable answer to this question starts with ordinary citizens with good intentions. We vote (sometimes) and occasionally sign a petition or attend a rally. But we mainly “engage” by consuming politics as if it’s a sport or a hobby. We soak in daily political gossip and eat up statistics about who’s up and who’s down. We tweet and post and share. We crave outrage. The hours we spend on politics are used mainly as pastime.
Instead, we should be spending the same number of hours building political organizations, implementing a long-term vision for our city or town, and getting to know our neighbors, whose votes will be needed for solving hard problems. We could be accumulating power so that when there are opportunities to make a difference—to lobby, to advocate, to mobilize—we will be ready. But most of us who are spending time on politics today are focused inward, choosing roles and activities designed for our short-term pleasure. We are repelled by the slow-and-steady activities that characterize service to the common good.
In Politics Is for Power, pioneering and brilliant data analyst Eitan Hersh shows us a way toward more effective political participation. Aided by political theory, history, cutting-edge social science, as well as remarkable stories of ordinary citizens who got off their couches and took political power seriously, this book shows us how to channel our energy away from political hobbyism and toward empowering our values.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 14, 2020
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February 4, 2020
I got the recommendation for this one from a politics podcast, and, if you spend a lot of time listening to politics podcasts, you are probably the target audience for this book. Because... you might be a hobbyist. Hersh explains the difference between the people who spend lots of time actually doing politics -- the people who work on campaigns, go door to door talking to voters, try to get people to register to vote and then actually to vote, and so on -- and those who listen to podcasts, post memes and argue on Facebook, and tweet. The participants and the bystanders. He's sympathetic -- as he admits, he's until only recently been just a bystander himself. But with the passion of the newly converted he points to the need for and the rewards of actually stepping into the fray. He offers stories of ordinary people who have seen a need and taken actions -- little things that build to something more significant -- that result in their having, along with those they are working with, political power.
Nothing here will be new or revolutionary to readers who are already active in politics. Hersh finds, to his dismay, that his local Democratic party has their ways of doing things and is not much interested in his ideas for how they could do them better. So he finds other ways to work on sharing his ideas for how to make things better. Some groups are open to new ideas, some, not so much. But what is clear is that getting out and talking to people -- asking questions about what they want, why they vote or don't vote, sharing experiences and paying attention to the experiences of others -- is more rewarding than stewing and arguing with strangers on the internet, and that, ultimately, it could lead to sympathetic understanding of the needs of others and improvements in the common good.
Nothing here will be new or revolutionary to readers who are already active in politics. Hersh finds, to his dismay, that his local Democratic party has their ways of doing things and is not much interested in his ideas for how they could do them better. So he finds other ways to work on sharing his ideas for how to make things better. Some groups are open to new ideas, some, not so much. But what is clear is that getting out and talking to people -- asking questions about what they want, why they vote or don't vote, sharing experiences and paying attention to the experiences of others -- is more rewarding than stewing and arguing with strangers on the internet, and that, ultimately, it could lead to sympathetic understanding of the needs of others and improvements in the common good.
February 4, 2020
This is a very important book if not an obvious point. You have to play politics to win. And that doesn't mean playing dirty. It means organizing on the ground--at the school board, local party chapter, or anywhere where actual humans interact. I don't think there is anything new or revolutionary in here, but it does give a name to the new and annoying phenomenon of political hobbyism
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October 28, 2020I can't rate this one. My feelings on it are too mixed.
First off, the good: Hersh accurately diagnoses and then lambasts over a few hundred pages the many comfortable liberals in western democracies who act like politics is a spectator sport rather than an action taken to change lives and communities. As he writes on p. 195:
As someone who has spent much of my 25 year career, give or take, working in one level of government or another: yep.
You know what group is most responsible for the abysmal lack of progress in our societies, friends?
Comfortable liberals.
Because you/we are the majority but so apathetic and inactive that our interests are regularly railroaded by a much more active conservative minority. Civil servants work hard to put together projects and proposals that will make change in communities (I know, I've been doing this and witnessing my colleagues doing the same now for a few decades), and the only people who show up to talk about it are the people who hate it. The majority, who support the projects, stay home and watch TV, and then get upset when the projects don't pass or get implemented.
This is totally fucking stupid. It's like expecting that since you posted a note on FaceBook talking about what party you support, you shouldn't actually have to show up and mark an actual ballot and put it in a ballot box. If you want your voice to count, you have to use it as part of an official process. I'm sorry if you don't like it or think that's inconvenient, but civil servants are not monitoring twitter or blogs or op-eds, and in fact, they can't. There are legal, regulatory processes for collecting citizen feedback, and those--and only those--are counted when government officials give a yay or nay.
I've been telling friends and acquaintances (and pretty well anyone within distance) for many, many years that voting is to a democracy as taking out the garbage is to running a household: necessary, but not in any way sufficient, and if that's all you're doing, you're a deadbeat. Pick up your socks (literally and figuratively). Show up! Go to public meetings, send emails, talk to your neighbours. Join a committee or volunteer somewhere. If you can spend an hour a day reading the news and another hour a day complaining about the news on social media with your friends you are not "too busy."
Anyway, off my soapbox and on to Hersh's soapbox: he argues that most Americans (and this applies to Canadians as well) can find an hour or two a day to read about politics and yell about it on social media, but can't find 10 minutes to direct that energy in any even mildly useful or productive direction. (He's right.) He points out that while white dudes do most of the bloviating, most actual political actions and volunteering are undertaken and run by women and people of colour. That a person's wealth increases their political knowledge and decreases their political advocacy, and when wealthy people get involved, it tends to be on frivolous issues. He points out that social media sites run on outrage and do a lot to encourage anger because it's good for their bottom lines.
Hersh compares this kind of political 'participation' and polarization to sports spectatorship: you have a team you root for, you know the cheers, you go to the games, you wear the team colours, you ritualistically hate the other team in the approved venues and at the approved times, but you don't play the sport, and your spectatorship alters nothing about the world. In the same way, he argues, most 'political' Americans are Team Red or Team Blue, and they read the news and follow the scores and know the odds and are aware of the dramas and gossip and scandals and will probably never once in their fucking lives do anything remotely useful with that information. But good god will they pat themselves on the back for voting, even if a good chunk of them don't even actually vote.
Sorry, do I sound bitter? I am a bit bitter.
Anyway, in terms of the general thesis, he's basically right. And he shares a number of stories and anecdotes about regular people who get active in their communities and manage to amass political capital that they use to communicate with governments and get their needs and the needs of their communities met. Those stories are super cool and I enjoyed reading them.
But some of it was unconvincing.
1. He really focuses on voting as the only kind of political power that counts. Like, you do community service to increase your social and political credibility and get people to vote the same way you do. Which, sure, is one thing you can do. But he overlooks all historical suffrage movements in his focus on voting as the only kind of political action that matters. Women got themselves rights, including the right to vote, as did black people and indigenous people; by definition they accomplished this without actually having that right. Voting is important, don't get me wrong, but even directing the votes of a bunch of other people is only one means to political power. I mean, look at the youth climate strikes (which he takes an unnecessary potshot at): most of those kids aren't voting age and many won't be for years, yet they still managed to influence the platforms of all four of Canada's main parties in the 2019 federal election. And beyond protests: there's delegating, analysis, policy-making, committees, letters and meetings and phonecalls--all kinds of things.
2. There's a lot of both-sides-ism in here, which particularly in the case of American politics I don't believe is helpful. He spends some time writing about how voters increasingly demand their elected officials behave badly (by only voting for them if they're sufficiently ideological and angry at the other side), and how TV (and now social media) reward politicians who provide drama, neither of which is good for functioning government. But there's no discussion of how effective negotiation and compromise requires good faith on both sides, and you only need to have one or two bad actors in one party to make it impossible for either side to negotiate. It's been my understanding for years that one of the main criticisms of Obama was that he tried too hard for bipartisanship, and a bunch of Republicans who had no interest in negotiating in good faith effectively hamstrung his administration. But he doesn't even mention this idea, let alone discuss or critique it, so it's impossible to evaluate and I have no idea how this fits into his thesis.
3. In general, he falls prey to the same weaknesses of the group he criticizes: as a comfortable, well-paid, well-educated white dude with a lot of privilege, only one of the issues at stake affects him personally (anti-semitism). He's unable to understand or empathize with people who have moral values around other issues and aren't willing to engage in negotiations around their human rights or humanity (or he does, in words, but this doesn't show up in his analysis). It's easy to encourage empathy and deep conversations and negotiation and compromise when the other side isn't arguing against your right to exist.
He does include community organizers who experience discrimination and manage to empathize regardless, but besides extolling them as examples, there's little to use to evaluate this. I mean, its' great to hear about the successes of deep canvassing and I'm eager to learn more, but I think it's also important to learn about how to handle the minority of people who do react aggressively or violently. It may only be one or two people, but you only need one or two to ruin your day--or your year, or your life.
So there's a lot of good here, and I'd recommend it, and your ego may be bruised if you count yourself political for having arguments on Facebook about Trump's immigration policy, but definitely keep a critical eye out because there are holes. Still, if it nudges people off the sidelines and into the arena, that'd be a great thing.
First off, the good: Hersh accurately diagnoses and then lambasts over a few hundred pages the many comfortable liberals in western democracies who act like politics is a spectator sport rather than an action taken to change lives and communities. As he writes on p. 195:
The only political entities that haven't figured out the relationship between community service and political power are those that are comfortable enough with the status quo that they don't act as if they need more power than they already have.
As someone who has spent much of my 25 year career, give or take, working in one level of government or another: yep.
You know what group is most responsible for the abysmal lack of progress in our societies, friends?
Comfortable liberals.
Because you/we are the majority but so apathetic and inactive that our interests are regularly railroaded by a much more active conservative minority. Civil servants work hard to put together projects and proposals that will make change in communities (I know, I've been doing this and witnessing my colleagues doing the same now for a few decades), and the only people who show up to talk about it are the people who hate it. The majority, who support the projects, stay home and watch TV, and then get upset when the projects don't pass or get implemented.
This is totally fucking stupid. It's like expecting that since you posted a note on FaceBook talking about what party you support, you shouldn't actually have to show up and mark an actual ballot and put it in a ballot box. If you want your voice to count, you have to use it as part of an official process. I'm sorry if you don't like it or think that's inconvenient, but civil servants are not monitoring twitter or blogs or op-eds, and in fact, they can't. There are legal, regulatory processes for collecting citizen feedback, and those--and only those--are counted when government officials give a yay or nay.
I've been telling friends and acquaintances (and pretty well anyone within distance) for many, many years that voting is to a democracy as taking out the garbage is to running a household: necessary, but not in any way sufficient, and if that's all you're doing, you're a deadbeat. Pick up your socks (literally and figuratively). Show up! Go to public meetings, send emails, talk to your neighbours. Join a committee or volunteer somewhere. If you can spend an hour a day reading the news and another hour a day complaining about the news on social media with your friends you are not "too busy."
Anyway, off my soapbox and on to Hersh's soapbox: he argues that most Americans (and this applies to Canadians as well) can find an hour or two a day to read about politics and yell about it on social media, but can't find 10 minutes to direct that energy in any even mildly useful or productive direction. (He's right.) He points out that while white dudes do most of the bloviating, most actual political actions and volunteering are undertaken and run by women and people of colour. That a person's wealth increases their political knowledge and decreases their political advocacy, and when wealthy people get involved, it tends to be on frivolous issues. He points out that social media sites run on outrage and do a lot to encourage anger because it's good for their bottom lines.
Hersh compares this kind of political 'participation' and polarization to sports spectatorship: you have a team you root for, you know the cheers, you go to the games, you wear the team colours, you ritualistically hate the other team in the approved venues and at the approved times, but you don't play the sport, and your spectatorship alters nothing about the world. In the same way, he argues, most 'political' Americans are Team Red or Team Blue, and they read the news and follow the scores and know the odds and are aware of the dramas and gossip and scandals and will probably never once in their fucking lives do anything remotely useful with that information. But good god will they pat themselves on the back for voting, even if a good chunk of them don't even actually vote.
Sorry, do I sound bitter? I am a bit bitter.
Anyway, in terms of the general thesis, he's basically right. And he shares a number of stories and anecdotes about regular people who get active in their communities and manage to amass political capital that they use to communicate with governments and get their needs and the needs of their communities met. Those stories are super cool and I enjoyed reading them.
But some of it was unconvincing.
1. He really focuses on voting as the only kind of political power that counts. Like, you do community service to increase your social and political credibility and get people to vote the same way you do. Which, sure, is one thing you can do. But he overlooks all historical suffrage movements in his focus on voting as the only kind of political action that matters. Women got themselves rights, including the right to vote, as did black people and indigenous people; by definition they accomplished this without actually having that right. Voting is important, don't get me wrong, but even directing the votes of a bunch of other people is only one means to political power. I mean, look at the youth climate strikes (which he takes an unnecessary potshot at): most of those kids aren't voting age and many won't be for years, yet they still managed to influence the platforms of all four of Canada's main parties in the 2019 federal election. And beyond protests: there's delegating, analysis, policy-making, committees, letters and meetings and phonecalls--all kinds of things.
2. There's a lot of both-sides-ism in here, which particularly in the case of American politics I don't believe is helpful. He spends some time writing about how voters increasingly demand their elected officials behave badly (by only voting for them if they're sufficiently ideological and angry at the other side), and how TV (and now social media) reward politicians who provide drama, neither of which is good for functioning government. But there's no discussion of how effective negotiation and compromise requires good faith on both sides, and you only need to have one or two bad actors in one party to make it impossible for either side to negotiate. It's been my understanding for years that one of the main criticisms of Obama was that he tried too hard for bipartisanship, and a bunch of Republicans who had no interest in negotiating in good faith effectively hamstrung his administration. But he doesn't even mention this idea, let alone discuss or critique it, so it's impossible to evaluate and I have no idea how this fits into his thesis.
3. In general, he falls prey to the same weaknesses of the group he criticizes: as a comfortable, well-paid, well-educated white dude with a lot of privilege, only one of the issues at stake affects him personally (anti-semitism). He's unable to understand or empathize with people who have moral values around other issues and aren't willing to engage in negotiations around their human rights or humanity (or he does, in words, but this doesn't show up in his analysis). It's easy to encourage empathy and deep conversations and negotiation and compromise when the other side isn't arguing against your right to exist.
He does include community organizers who experience discrimination and manage to empathize regardless, but besides extolling them as examples, there's little to use to evaluate this. I mean, its' great to hear about the successes of deep canvassing and I'm eager to learn more, but I think it's also important to learn about how to handle the minority of people who do react aggressively or violently. It may only be one or two people, but you only need one or two to ruin your day--or your year, or your life.
So there's a lot of good here, and I'd recommend it, and your ego may be bruised if you count yourself political for having arguments on Facebook about Trump's immigration policy, but definitely keep a critical eye out because there are holes. Still, if it nudges people off the sidelines and into the arena, that'd be a great thing.
January 6, 2020
I inhaled this book in one sitting, literally, while waiting to renew my license at the DMV. Tufts political science professor Eitan Hersh precisely captures the difference between activism and organizing, though his term for the former is “political hobbyism.” Through four well-told stories of real organizers doing the vital work of building relationships and communities where people are bonded in common struggles aimed at achieving more power to serve their needs, Hersh lays down the gauntlet. His survey finds that a massive number of Americans, one in five, claim to be politically active on a daily basis but that most of what they are actually doing is spectating and commenting, not real politics. Part of the blame goes to today’s party leaders at all levels who have largely abandoned organizing, choosing instead to rustle themselves into action mere weeks before every election. And part, Hersh persuasively argues, falls on ordinary voters who have grown lazy about civic involvement.
The good news is that means there’s a lot of room for growth and fallow land to be filled anew. I see it in the thousands of people now meeting regularly all over the country determined to rebuild our democracy. Get this book, and if you aren’t already, get organizing.
The good news is that means there’s a lot of room for growth and fallow land to be filled anew. I see it in the thousands of people now meeting regularly all over the country determined to rebuild our democracy. Get this book, and if you aren’t already, get organizing.
May 2, 2022
From time to time, my habit of not wanting to know too much of what a book is about before I start it makes things interesting. This is one of those times. I picked this book up based solely on the main part of the title ("Politics is for Power") and, as I do, didn't read the description or anything beyond that. I thought that this book would be about how the politics has been shaped so that the mini-Emperor Palpatines (old white men) just keep sticking around and failing upward, despite doing nothing at all FOR anyone. And I was interested in seeing what the argument there was.
But this book is not about that kind of power. Which, in hindsight, is quite obvious from the subtitle I didn't read.
THIS book is about grassroots, interpersonal, community organizing power. It is about trust building, creating and maintaining networks, building bridges based on commonalities despite party allegiance, and about compassion and generosity. It's about focusing our efforts from the bottom up (local), not from the top down (national). It's about not looking at politics as if it's a sporting event. It's about not wasting one's time on social media doomscrolling, or donating $5 to a random candidate, or signing endless petitions, when you could actually be out in your community doing SOMETHING that actually accomplishes something.
And this last bit really spoke to me. I am somewhat of a doomscroller/donator/petition signer/plus Representative contactor. This last was after learning that every constituent who contacts their rep stands in for some number of people who are assumed to agree but won't contact. So I use the Becky-power invested in me by my name and poke my representatives. A lot. (I'm sure they have a list somewhere, and I'm probably on it. If I disappear one day, I'd have said to check Pat Toomey's basement, but he's retiring FINALLY, so it looks like that is probably unlikely at this point. Only a matter of time before his slimy ass gets a gig on Fox "news" alongside Fucker and Scam. I'm not a fan, in case that was unclear.)
ANYWAY, as I was saying... I have been getting more engaged in the last 5 years, because someone left the window open to the White House and an orange buffoon got in and started slinging shit around. But, though that was my catalyst (and I'm sure many people's), it wouldn't (OK, SHOULDN'T) have been possible had not the entire path to that open window been lined with people primed to shove his unqualified ass up and over the sill...
But the way I have been politically engaging is wrong. And that is the point of this book. We focus on the big ticket items, the scandalous national news, the drama-filled Presidential battles, because they are entertaining, something to observe and hold VERY OPINIONATED VIEWS about, while looking right past all of the local offices that ACTUALLY impact and affect our daily lives. We treat politics like a hobby, and not like the critically important aspect of society that it is.
I understand the importance of local elections, and I have been getting more politically active LOCALLY in the last couple years, but I don't think I've found my niche yet. I'm not really one for talking to people or canvassing (the thought of going door to door gives me hives), but I do want to do something. I just don't know what that is yet. There were a lot of different ways of getting involved outlined in this book, but I think I will need to find my own path, and figure out the best way to help in my community.
Anyway, this has turned into a rambly mess of a review (I'm sure everyone is shocked), but I did enjoy this book quite a lot. I learned quite a lot from it, though I did find it repetitive at times, and wanted maybe a bit more guidance or direction from it. But I think part of the writing of this book was the author's own journey to figuring out his niche in his own community, so it makes sense that he wouldn't necessarily have all the answers either. We all have to find out where and how we're needed and how we can fill that need. There's no one-size-fits-all answer.
But I do highly recommend this book for anyone looking to be more engaged in doing something politically. It's accessible and easy to follow, and provides quite a few spotlight people to hold up as examples of how others are organizing and engaging in their communities. Definitely worth a read.
But this book is not about that kind of power. Which, in hindsight, is quite obvious from the subtitle I didn't read.
THIS book is about grassroots, interpersonal, community organizing power. It is about trust building, creating and maintaining networks, building bridges based on commonalities despite party allegiance, and about compassion and generosity. It's about focusing our efforts from the bottom up (local), not from the top down (national). It's about not looking at politics as if it's a sporting event. It's about not wasting one's time on social media doomscrolling, or donating $5 to a random candidate, or signing endless petitions, when you could actually be out in your community doing SOMETHING that actually accomplishes something.
And this last bit really spoke to me. I am somewhat of a doomscroller/donator/petition signer/plus Representative contactor. This last was after learning that every constituent who contacts their rep stands in for some number of people who are assumed to agree but won't contact. So I use the Becky-power invested in me by my name and poke my representatives. A lot. (I'm sure they have a list somewhere, and I'm probably on it. If I disappear one day, I'd have said to check Pat Toomey's basement, but he's retiring FINALLY, so it looks like that is probably unlikely at this point. Only a matter of time before his slimy ass gets a gig on Fox "news" alongside Fucker and Scam. I'm not a fan, in case that was unclear.)
ANYWAY, as I was saying... I have been getting more engaged in the last 5 years, because someone left the window open to the White House and an orange buffoon got in and started slinging shit around. But, though that was my catalyst (and I'm sure many people's), it wouldn't (OK, SHOULDN'T) have been possible had not the entire path to that open window been lined with people primed to shove his unqualified ass up and over the sill...
But the way I have been politically engaging is wrong. And that is the point of this book. We focus on the big ticket items, the scandalous national news, the drama-filled Presidential battles, because they are entertaining, something to observe and hold VERY OPINIONATED VIEWS about, while looking right past all of the local offices that ACTUALLY impact and affect our daily lives. We treat politics like a hobby, and not like the critically important aspect of society that it is.
I understand the importance of local elections, and I have been getting more politically active LOCALLY in the last couple years, but I don't think I've found my niche yet. I'm not really one for talking to people or canvassing (the thought of going door to door gives me hives), but I do want to do something. I just don't know what that is yet. There were a lot of different ways of getting involved outlined in this book, but I think I will need to find my own path, and figure out the best way to help in my community.
Anyway, this has turned into a rambly mess of a review (I'm sure everyone is shocked), but I did enjoy this book quite a lot. I learned quite a lot from it, though I did find it repetitive at times, and wanted maybe a bit more guidance or direction from it. But I think part of the writing of this book was the author's own journey to figuring out his niche in his own community, so it makes sense that he wouldn't necessarily have all the answers either. We all have to find out where and how we're needed and how we can fill that need. There's no one-size-fits-all answer.
But I do highly recommend this book for anyone looking to be more engaged in doing something politically. It's accessible and easy to follow, and provides quite a few spotlight people to hold up as examples of how others are organizing and engaging in their communities. Definitely worth a read.
May 6, 2020
Hersh's book starts out on fairly uncontroversial ground before sliding into substantially more controversial arguments and while much of it is vaguely common sense I think the more controversial bits open up some interesting avenues of consideration.
First the uncontroversial parts: most people who follow the political news are "hobbyists". They don't ever actually do anything. They don't really vote more than other people. They don't help campaigns or politicians in any concrete way. They don't protest or write letters or make any actual changes to their lives. They just read & post & talk about needing to "stay informed". They are overwhelmingly focused on national politics (where they have the least impact) and ignore state & local politics (where they have the most impact).
Hersh (though hardly the first to do so) repeatedly draws similarities between this kind of political hobbyism and people who follow sports. Sports fan also generally focus solely on the biggest national teams, don't generally play the sport, and are primarily just passive consumers of spectacle.
Hersh then makes a decent case that all this amounts to more than just wasted time: it brings out the worst in us and our politicians. It causes politicians to create more empty spectacle on a daily basis in order to satisfy the click & refresh demands of these passive consumers.
Near the end of this, Hersh has a telling anecdote about the realities of political engagement. In 2018, when anti-Trump fervor was running high on college campuses across America, one local college Democrat group could only find seven volunteers willing to go to a nearby town to spend a few hours canvassing for local elections. The most common excuse people gave for why they couldn't volunteer. "They were too busy." A few months later, Pete Buttigieg had announced his Presidential campaign and the college Democrat group organized another event. This time the event featured Buttigieg and this time they couldn't find enough cars to meet demand for all the people who wanted to go.
Along the way Hersh has various statistics showing the collapse of political engagement over the past decades.
None of this is really news, though Hersh does a reasonable job of pulling it all together and offering theories without overstretching.
Where this book stands out from the crowd is the "how to take action and make real change". Through out the book, Hersh's sympathies for deep canvassing and community services/constituent services are clear, so it isn't a surprise to see him double down on that. But what is surprising (and thought-provoking) is his argument in favor of a resurrection of old-school political machines (like the infamous Tammany Hall).
Hersh's argument is that political parties in modern America both very weak (what do they actually have to offer anyone other a fleeting touch with a "celebrity" lawmaker?) and extremely centralized (they don't want strong local organizing).
I'm not sure I really buy Hersh's arguments that strong local political machines are the answer. But I do see the sense in his argument that local organizing doesn't really have the carrots or sticks that would make most people spend their time on it.
Ultimately he's calling for a return to group politics, to transactional politics. He's not actually (I don't think) advocating a return to the old super corruption of Tammany Hall. "Get 80% of your precinct to vote and I'll give you cousin the city garbage contract." But at the end of the day he is arguing in favor of something that is strongly against the current hyper-individualistic, hyper-rationalist view of politics. Which I found thought provoking.
First the uncontroversial parts: most people who follow the political news are "hobbyists". They don't ever actually do anything. They don't really vote more than other people. They don't help campaigns or politicians in any concrete way. They don't protest or write letters or make any actual changes to their lives. They just read & post & talk about needing to "stay informed". They are overwhelmingly focused on national politics (where they have the least impact) and ignore state & local politics (where they have the most impact).
Hersh (though hardly the first to do so) repeatedly draws similarities between this kind of political hobbyism and people who follow sports. Sports fan also generally focus solely on the biggest national teams, don't generally play the sport, and are primarily just passive consumers of spectacle.
A third of Americans say they spend two hours or more each day on politics. Of these people, four out of five say that not one minute of that time is spent on any kind of real political work. It’s all TV news and podcasts and radio shows and social media and cheering and booing and complaining to friends and family.
Hersh then makes a decent case that all this amounts to more than just wasted time: it brings out the worst in us and our politicians. It causes politicians to create more empty spectacle on a daily basis in order to satisfy the click & refresh demands of these passive consumers.
Near the end of this, Hersh has a telling anecdote about the realities of political engagement. In 2018, when anti-Trump fervor was running high on college campuses across America, one local college Democrat group could only find seven volunteers willing to go to a nearby town to spend a few hours canvassing for local elections. The most common excuse people gave for why they couldn't volunteer. "They were too busy." A few months later, Pete Buttigieg had announced his Presidential campaign and the college Democrat group organized another event. This time the event featured Buttigieg and this time they couldn't find enough cars to meet demand for all the people who wanted to go.
Students who were way too busy to canvass locally or canvass in New Hampshire would drop everything to drive to Manchester and post a picture with Pete Buttigieg on their Instagram.
Along the way Hersh has various statistics showing the collapse of political engagement over the past decades.
In the 2012 and 2016 elections, when the college-educated population was three times larger, the rate of those saying they worked for a campaign was a third as large as it had been in the 1960s.
None of this is really news, though Hersh does a reasonable job of pulling it all together and offering theories without overstretching.
A certain detachment from feelings of fear and insecurity is needed to experience politics as a leisure-time activity. [...] Being white and comfortable means already having enough power. Only if you don’t need more power than you already have could politics be for fun.
Where this book stands out from the crowd is the "how to take action and make real change". Through out the book, Hersh's sympathies for deep canvassing and community services/constituent services are clear, so it isn't a surprise to see him double down on that. But what is surprising (and thought-provoking) is his argument in favor of a resurrection of old-school political machines (like the infamous Tammany Hall).
Through the stories in this book, I have tried to show both that politics is a form of service we do for our communities and that political power is earned through service to the community.
Hersh's argument is that political parties in modern America both very weak (what do they actually have to offer anyone other a fleeting touch with a "celebrity" lawmaker?) and extremely centralized (they don't want strong local organizing).
politics in the United States is defined by the strange combination of strong partisanship but weak party organizations.
I'm not sure I really buy Hersh's arguments that strong local political machines are the answer. But I do see the sense in his argument that local organizing doesn't really have the carrots or sticks that would make most people spend their time on it.
Strong parties need to incentivize people through jobs and economic benefits “to perform such tasks as organizing precincts, registering new voters, and providing constituent services.”
Ultimately he's calling for a return to group politics, to transactional politics. He's not actually (I don't think) advocating a return to the old super corruption of Tammany Hall. "Get 80% of your precinct to vote and I'll give you cousin the city garbage contract." But at the end of the day he is arguing in favor of something that is strongly against the current hyper-individualistic, hyper-rationalist view of politics. Which I found thought provoking.
The question is whether the verbalist elite, who from the Progressive Era to the Twitterati have looked down on transactional politics, are finally interested in getting in the trenches to amass durable political power.
January 24, 2022
Reading this book was a very introspective, reflective experience, especially since political hobbyism is most acute in white affluent males and I happened to be reading while the Democrats unsuccessfully tried to gut the filibuster for voting rights legislation.
The driver of this book is the argument that a lot of the "political activities" we participate in are really not political at all – more for entertainment or social status than actual political change. Not only is political hobbyism ineffective, treating politics like a sports game with teams and players we root for only sows more division and sets a principle where politics must be entertaining to be worthwhile (which is why local elections have such low turnout and the difficult work rarely gets done). Think about the time, effort, and intent our parents (here in Southern California) had for the 2020 election in a state/area undoubtedly for Biden, then compare that to how much they pay attention to (much less are involved in) school board elections, county wide elections, local Democratic Party chapters, or even just California state politics. Adults love talking about politics, but how often do you see them actually do really anything about the issues they debate? The energy for Newsom in his recall was so much lower than the energy for Biden, even when Newsom was in way more trouble in this state than Biden was. Clearly the emphasis is on what’s the most fun to watch.
One of the most interesting points in this book is that the reason Congress is so divided and polarized isn't that the entire American public is. Rather, it's because the mostly white, college-educated, ideology-obsessed, and affluent voters who treat their political opponents as enemies to be outsmarted and defeated take up so much space in the political realm, fueling this division for the sake of their entertainment.
Unsurprisingly, this demographic participates in political volunteerism less than the rest of America. So, this elite, white group of political hobbyists who live on Twitter and the NY Times home page (that has all of their basic food, shelter, and health needs met) pretty much just sits back and watches as the division that THEY CREATED is stalling real change in the lower-income, largely apolitical communities they purport to care so much about. And this isn’t to say white educated liberals are just inherently evil, but rather they’re misguided and erroneous in how they interact with and think ab politics.
With all of its anecdotes and studies, this book tackles so much more, but this was the point that resonated the most with me. I feel like so many adults call themselves political because they read or watch the news for 10 minutes a day, which makes me glad I read this book at age 17 so I can consciously avoid falling into that lifestyle. This book is really encouraging.
The only reason I gave this 4.5 and not 5 stars is because it kept on hinting that bringing morals into politics is an unwise political tactic. As the title says, Hersch's key idea is that building power is the only way to achieve real change, and that means deal-making and compromise is needed. While that is 100% true, I think politicians always have a duty to condemn, refute, challenge, and never compromise with ideas that are morally wrong (like racism, classism, and science denial), even when (and especially if) it's politically inconvenient.
If you want to reflect on your own slacktivism and learn how to make real political change, I definitely recommend!
The driver of this book is the argument that a lot of the "political activities" we participate in are really not political at all – more for entertainment or social status than actual political change. Not only is political hobbyism ineffective, treating politics like a sports game with teams and players we root for only sows more division and sets a principle where politics must be entertaining to be worthwhile (which is why local elections have such low turnout and the difficult work rarely gets done). Think about the time, effort, and intent our parents (here in Southern California) had for the 2020 election in a state/area undoubtedly for Biden, then compare that to how much they pay attention to (much less are involved in) school board elections, county wide elections, local Democratic Party chapters, or even just California state politics. Adults love talking about politics, but how often do you see them actually do really anything about the issues they debate? The energy for Newsom in his recall was so much lower than the energy for Biden, even when Newsom was in way more trouble in this state than Biden was. Clearly the emphasis is on what’s the most fun to watch.
One of the most interesting points in this book is that the reason Congress is so divided and polarized isn't that the entire American public is. Rather, it's because the mostly white, college-educated, ideology-obsessed, and affluent voters who treat their political opponents as enemies to be outsmarted and defeated take up so much space in the political realm, fueling this division for the sake of their entertainment.
Unsurprisingly, this demographic participates in political volunteerism less than the rest of America. So, this elite, white group of political hobbyists who live on Twitter and the NY Times home page (that has all of their basic food, shelter, and health needs met) pretty much just sits back and watches as the division that THEY CREATED is stalling real change in the lower-income, largely apolitical communities they purport to care so much about. And this isn’t to say white educated liberals are just inherently evil, but rather they’re misguided and erroneous in how they interact with and think ab politics.
With all of its anecdotes and studies, this book tackles so much more, but this was the point that resonated the most with me. I feel like so many adults call themselves political because they read or watch the news for 10 minutes a day, which makes me glad I read this book at age 17 so I can consciously avoid falling into that lifestyle. This book is really encouraging.
The only reason I gave this 4.5 and not 5 stars is because it kept on hinting that bringing morals into politics is an unwise political tactic. As the title says, Hersch's key idea is that building power is the only way to achieve real change, and that means deal-making and compromise is needed. While that is 100% true, I think politicians always have a duty to condemn, refute, challenge, and never compromise with ideas that are morally wrong (like racism, classism, and science denial), even when (and especially if) it's politically inconvenient.
If you want to reflect on your own slacktivism and learn how to make real political change, I definitely recommend!
August 9, 2022
Imagine if you spent an hour and a half every day reading cookbooks, perusing recipe blogs, and wandering the isles of artisan grocery stores to scope out ingredients, yet claimed you didn’t have the time or the know-how to cook.
Extend that line of thought to politics and you’ve got what Eitan Hersh labels the “political hobbyist.”
Political hobbyists spend hours a week reading the news, signaling their views on social media, signing online petitions and donating to candidates (usually out-of-state or national candidates), and yet are using politics purely as a form of entertainment. They don’t engage in the political system in any type of meaningful way: their heads are full of knowledge on the issues but they do nothing that advances the cause, and they preach their perspectives but only to people who already agree.
The political hobbyist is most likely to be white, liberal, highly educated, and middle or upper income. They are extensively knowledgeable, particularly national issues, because their main form of participation is consumptive in nature only. By reading and debating, they get the emotional thrills of politics – the excitement, the passion, the anger – that makes them feel engaged and thrilled, but which bears no real world results.
Why does this matter? What’s wrong with being a well-educated citizen – isn’t that our responsibility? Hersh’s most crucial argument is that this political hobbyist is harmful to the very causes they claim to support. When engaging only intellectually, they tend to become issue purists, intolerant of any but the most extreme politician who refuses to negotiate, leading to political gridlock and further driving away undecided voters who might have changed their minds. Because they consider their views inherently correct and don't wish to engage with opposition, they ignore the real political work of trying to sway other's minds and so can’t achieve any legitimate political change. Views they hold so strongly at the national level – such as affordable housing or climate change policy – fall apart at the local level, where suddenly they’re against building low-income housing in their neighborhood or don’t want parking fees jacked up to pay for public transportation. They claim to be worried about the future, yet typically come from the highly secure social positions least likely to be affected by negative political outcomes.
This is particularly important when something happens that terrifies one side – say, the election of Donald Trump – but they don’t have any local political infrastructure in place to rally any type of meaningful opposition. There is no conduit for sustained political action. Hersh points to large protests that looked initially successful – the 100,000 person rallies against Scott Walker in Wisconsin, the Arab Spring – but which, after the initial protests, saw the status quo continue. After an initial burst of exciting entertainment, no one had built the local political structures to do the work to continue getting people to show up.
Hersch contrasts the political hobbyist with stories of 6 individuals around the country working to build legitimate political power in their communities and shows the impact it can have: for example, flipping red districts to blue within the last 4 years. The work is slow. It requires seeking out and deeply listening with an open mind to people who disagree with you. It can initially be lonely and intimidating. There are many false starts and wasted time. It is not entertaining: it does not involve, for example, going to large energetic protests with clever signs, hanging banners over highways, or attending talks by exciting thought leaders. But it does work. It brings people over to your side who previously disagreed with you (and who would have hung up on a typical phone banker or ignored a yard sign or unfriended you after reading a political rant). It strengthens your community by suddenly creating a network of people who support one another. And it gets your candidates elected.
I am Hersh’s target reader. Issues like climate change and abortion restrictions ostensibly fill me with anxiety and worry, yet the only political action I typically engage in is…educating myself about these issues and arguing about obscure policy nuances with friends who already agree these things are problems. I have so deeply appreciated this book because it made my cheeks burn with shame and caused me to self-examine whether I act for what I claim to care about – while also helping me to see ways I can actually take concrete action (even living in an already overwhelmingly liberal town). I did try phone banking and canvassing back in my college and grad school days, and I loathed it – I’ve also never been able to shake the feeling it couldn’t possibly be having an effect. Hersh confirmed my suspicion that these strategies don’t do much to shift power, but he also described new ways forward.
To say you are politically active and engaged when your only action is entertaining consumption and to claim to not have time to participate when hours a day are given to leisure is to be disingenuous with ourselves. It is also an excellent way to ensure nothing we care about will change. To engage in politics is to do the slow work of building community coalitions and playing the long game – a game not measured in merely the next election cycle, but of creating the world you want to see a generation from now. And, bonus! – it will get you out of your isolated bubble and deep into your community.
This is an extremely important book, and if anything about Hersh’s description of a political hobbyist might apply to you, I hope you read it. And not just read it – as Hersch encourages, I hope you then go make your own list of ways to start taking real political action, and then follow through with it. I made my own list last night; I’ll let you know how it goes.
Extend that line of thought to politics and you’ve got what Eitan Hersh labels the “political hobbyist.”
Political hobbyists spend hours a week reading the news, signaling their views on social media, signing online petitions and donating to candidates (usually out-of-state or national candidates), and yet are using politics purely as a form of entertainment. They don’t engage in the political system in any type of meaningful way: their heads are full of knowledge on the issues but they do nothing that advances the cause, and they preach their perspectives but only to people who already agree.
The political hobbyist is most likely to be white, liberal, highly educated, and middle or upper income. They are extensively knowledgeable, particularly national issues, because their main form of participation is consumptive in nature only. By reading and debating, they get the emotional thrills of politics – the excitement, the passion, the anger – that makes them feel engaged and thrilled, but which bears no real world results.
Why does this matter? What’s wrong with being a well-educated citizen – isn’t that our responsibility? Hersh’s most crucial argument is that this political hobbyist is harmful to the very causes they claim to support. When engaging only intellectually, they tend to become issue purists, intolerant of any but the most extreme politician who refuses to negotiate, leading to political gridlock and further driving away undecided voters who might have changed their minds. Because they consider their views inherently correct and don't wish to engage with opposition, they ignore the real political work of trying to sway other's minds and so can’t achieve any legitimate political change. Views they hold so strongly at the national level – such as affordable housing or climate change policy – fall apart at the local level, where suddenly they’re against building low-income housing in their neighborhood or don’t want parking fees jacked up to pay for public transportation. They claim to be worried about the future, yet typically come from the highly secure social positions least likely to be affected by negative political outcomes.
This is particularly important when something happens that terrifies one side – say, the election of Donald Trump – but they don’t have any local political infrastructure in place to rally any type of meaningful opposition. There is no conduit for sustained political action. Hersh points to large protests that looked initially successful – the 100,000 person rallies against Scott Walker in Wisconsin, the Arab Spring – but which, after the initial protests, saw the status quo continue. After an initial burst of exciting entertainment, no one had built the local political structures to do the work to continue getting people to show up.
Hersch contrasts the political hobbyist with stories of 6 individuals around the country working to build legitimate political power in their communities and shows the impact it can have: for example, flipping red districts to blue within the last 4 years. The work is slow. It requires seeking out and deeply listening with an open mind to people who disagree with you. It can initially be lonely and intimidating. There are many false starts and wasted time. It is not entertaining: it does not involve, for example, going to large energetic protests with clever signs, hanging banners over highways, or attending talks by exciting thought leaders. But it does work. It brings people over to your side who previously disagreed with you (and who would have hung up on a typical phone banker or ignored a yard sign or unfriended you after reading a political rant). It strengthens your community by suddenly creating a network of people who support one another. And it gets your candidates elected.
I am Hersh’s target reader. Issues like climate change and abortion restrictions ostensibly fill me with anxiety and worry, yet the only political action I typically engage in is…educating myself about these issues and arguing about obscure policy nuances with friends who already agree these things are problems. I have so deeply appreciated this book because it made my cheeks burn with shame and caused me to self-examine whether I act for what I claim to care about – while also helping me to see ways I can actually take concrete action (even living in an already overwhelmingly liberal town). I did try phone banking and canvassing back in my college and grad school days, and I loathed it – I’ve also never been able to shake the feeling it couldn’t possibly be having an effect. Hersh confirmed my suspicion that these strategies don’t do much to shift power, but he also described new ways forward.
To say you are politically active and engaged when your only action is entertaining consumption and to claim to not have time to participate when hours a day are given to leisure is to be disingenuous with ourselves. It is also an excellent way to ensure nothing we care about will change. To engage in politics is to do the slow work of building community coalitions and playing the long game – a game not measured in merely the next election cycle, but of creating the world you want to see a generation from now. And, bonus! – it will get you out of your isolated bubble and deep into your community.
This is an extremely important book, and if anything about Hersh’s description of a political hobbyist might apply to you, I hope you read it. And not just read it – as Hersch encourages, I hope you then go make your own list of ways to start taking real political action, and then follow through with it. I made my own list last night; I’ll let you know how it goes.
January 4, 2023
I read this book mostly because I wanted to write about it; you can get pretty much the whole argument from one of Hersh's interviews, one of which I heard back in 2020. That is: most "political" people, most people who spend time on politics, most people who think politics is vitally important, do not do any political work at all. They are, in Hersh's term, "political hobbyists", who spend all their time on "politics", often enormous amounts of time, reading or watching political news from Washington, tweeting and reading tweets and Substacks and op-ed pages, posting on Facebook and arguing in comments on Facebook posts, changing their profile pic to the latest mandatory cause symbol, commiserating with each other over how terrible the politician they hate is, donating to campaigns for or text-banking on behalf of politicians they like for national or out-of-state office, philosophically debating ideological questions. They almost never volunteer, in person, in their own neighborhoods, even to knock doors and rattle off a script; they never join organizations to attend local meetings (as opposed to sending a check to a national organization with a central office of nonprofit professionals); they certainly never do what Hersh recommends, which is to provide demonstrable community service to build trust and loyalty from their direct neighbors, and then use that trust and loyalty to direct them to vote a certain way, and use their power over votes to influence politicians. (It is even unlikely that they will vote, unless for a celebrity candidate who may or may not need it; Hersh uses the example of the massive turnout for Obama in Massachusetts, a deep-blue state where turnout does not matter, evaporated instantly for the special election to replace Ted Kennedy, which was actually important for Obama to accomplish his goals -- the filibuster-proof supermajority disappeared when the Republican won that race.) That is to say, actual politics instead of 'politics'-flavored entertainment, politics that actually can accomplish something. That sort of thing they are uninterested in, afraid of, even offended by.
Now this may seem to you, as it initially did to me, a portrait of the feckless "PMC" liberal. The sort of person who insists that everyone has to be "political" or they are evil, who obnoxiously "calls out" things for being "politically" offensive, who obsessively watches every Rachel Maddow update on the Meuller Report out of a genuine sense of obligation because it's 'important', but who has no idea of the name of anyone on their own city council or state assembly or possibly even their own US Representative and who "can't" go canvassing, you see, because they have "social anxiety" and anyway if you knock on A Conservative's door, they will probably shoot to kill. Besides, all that matters in politics is national, right? It is very satisfying to realize how angry they would be if told their most self-sacrificing "political activity", that is to say scolding Bernie fans on Twitter and putting an "In this house we believe" sign on their lawn, is exclusively for their own entertainment, and serves no other purpose.
But the satisfaction disappears when I consider that leftists are at least as bad, if not worse, in their own way. The pseudo-left which complains most about the "PMC" and their "wokeness", who would be most insulted by being called a liberal but whose most grandiose utopian vision is better support for small business and homeownership, spends all its time identifying who are the phonies and who's been bought (spoiler: it's everyone) and invent wild purity tests disguised as Twitter campaigns to get politicians to make Medicare For All happen by a magic trick, just like hopeless libs convinced that the latest revelations of the January 6 commission will put all Republicans behind bars and solve all problems. Suggest that they organize local Medicare For All clubs, in the tradition of the Townsend Clubs of the 1930s which helped create Social Security, and they will use the exact same excuses as liberals. The Marxists, tankies, Trotskyists etc, those committed materialists, prefer to practice and to preach "reading theory" and are sure the revolution will come when this consciousness is spread and someone organizes a vanguard party along class lines -- someone else, that is. And my fellow anarchists, who like to say that they care about praxis above all else, are more likely to make ACAB (or anti-tankie!) memes than to join the IWW and salt a local workplace.
In the latter half of the book, Hersh examines the institutional changes which have led to decreased popular participation in politics, especially local politics: all changes advocated by, beloved by, Populists and Progressives of the Gilded Age. You probably love these too, regardless of your ideological views: they are the anti-machine reforms, the anti-corruption reforms, the reforms which were supposed to promote, rather than discourage, the Voice of the Little Man. Things like primary elections, or civil service reform which eliminated patronage jobs. Most people, particularly that pseudo-left but really every American since George Washington, thinks parties are bad, "corruption" is the problem not the system, and the way to fix it is by virtuous, disinterested citizens individually voting according to their conscience, thinking only of the greater good and not their own interest. This led people to combat the machine bosses who influenced votes by giving out turkeys on Thanksgiving and helping when people needed help -- Transactional! cry the reformers. I wonder if the pesudo-left, who hate condescending liberals, realize they are following exactly the same playbook as the middle-class liberal reformers of a little over a hundred years ago. As Hersh notes, the machine they fought was the method by which the working class participated in American politics, and when it disappeared in the 70s with the last gasp of the Daley machine, so did the working class from party leadership. Some more theoretical people might prefer declared socialist parties like (used to?) exist in Europe, but the open primary which they intend to use to foil the Democratic insiders can just as easily foil them in their own party if it became popular enough for "normies" to join. (Just as "democratic centralism" really means "everyone does what I say", the Leninist or Maoist says, "party discipline for thee, not for me.")
As for me? I can confidently say that I am not included in Hersh's "political hobbyist" category. I actually hate politics. I would never have anything to do with them if it wasn't for the hectoring of those liberals everywhere I go, shrieking that silence is violence and all art that doesn't fight the system supports it, and all those kind of ridiculous slogans. My problem is I am easily bullied, but also that I take things literally and seriously, when the people saying it do not, so when I started to realize that my very reluctant hobbyism was not doing anything, and when I heard the old saw of "praxis" from anarchists, I started looking for things to do instead of just reading (blogs) and voting. When Trump was elected and the shrieking to "RESIST" got worse, and the national "discourse" got absolutely unbearable, I hunkered down to pay attention solely and strictly to local matters, the more local the better. (I also carry a certain strange guilt, a feeling that I will never live up to my parents, and my mother, who organized to preserve trees and worked on mayor campaigns in our small city, inspired me greatly.) I went to one DSA event after the election of AOC led to articles about them fixing brake lights and seeing their members at the local teachers' strike, but they said their number one priority was electing Bernie in the primary, so I never came back. Instead I joined the Oakland Tenants Union; the first meeting I attended, there were generously a dozen members attending, but there was also a city councilperson and her chief of staff there, listening very intently and seriously to the suggestions being made and problems being highlighted.
OTU provides tenants with information and advice to solve their problems with their landlords, and advocate for tenant protections -- lobbying, another bete noire of the entire political spectrum. We help people, and hopefully this help makes them follow our election endorsements, which is one reason why elected officials might listen to what we say. (When I first heard, in that 2020 interview, Hersh's story of "the Ukrainian Boss", a very old man in Boston who helped so many fellow immigrants with their citizenship test and other issues that he could dictate the votes of almost a thousand people, I was inspired to start my own voter guide -- if even five people follow it, I've gotten five times as much power as I started with.) It's completely unlike a hashtag campaign or placing a BLM sign in my window; I have to go to several meetings a month, talk to vulnerable people living under the thumb of slumlords and also to the mayor and city council, and in 2022 I applied and was appointed to the city Rent Board, where I drafted a resolution to change the city's rent laws. Not that anyone would (this is strictly online Twitter behavior) but if anyone did any shrieking at me, that I'm the problem because I didn't vote for Hillary or Biden (in California) or my religion-obsessed art does not do enough to #resist Donald Trump, I can tell them to fuck off with a very very clear conscience.
The thing about it is, again, I took the "praxis > theory" thing seriously. If other people did what this book advocates, I don't care that much what ideology they intend it for, as long as it's left of, say, Mitch McConnell. I could never say this to anarchists online, but if, for once in my goddamn life, I ever encountered a tankie who didn't just talk shit but actually had organized a cadre of the vanguard, and intended to build dual power Soviets of workers, then I would be happy to join (and not worry about their tanks, which are entirely imaginary -- my fellow anarchists, please believe me that it is no longer 1953, no Marxist has guns to kill you with anymore.) Eitan Hersh is a massive lib, and I mean that in the most perjorative sense. One of his big arguments is that political hobbyism pushes the parties into extremism, whereas he is more moderate than either. But when I read his idea that "Voters shouldn't have to wait for a party to one day take power and implement a grand new national policy. A party or campaign, not just a government, can take care of people's needs right now," what can I say but this is anarchism in practice, mutual aid, operating outside the state, rather than asking it to save us?
Although I flatter myself I do more than most, I am a coward at heart, and cringe at the idea of going to a block party or knowing my neighbors, lest I have to make small talk with them every day, or something, I don't know what the problem is. But I do my best to overcome. (I hate to imagine what Eddie, one of the pillars of OTU and host of a radio show by and about disabled people, would say to someone who thinks it's "ableism" to ask people to do something politically other than tweet.) There is this educational film from the fifties which I cherish. A man's daughter is dangerously sick, but there are no doctors anywhere near his tiny town, an experience that shocks him into action. He presents the problem to his friends and neighbors, and together, as a community, they solve the problem which neither the state nor capitalism (it is the unprofitability of working in small towns which causes the shortage of doctors there, after all) can fix. It is corny, earnest, stiff, idealistic, propaganda or whatever you want to call it. It is my ideal of praxis, of political action, personal, local, human, solving problems together, which perhaps, in the long term, could convince people they don't need states and bosses to get things done. We can do it ourselves. But we have to do it, not on the internet or TV, but in real life.
Now this may seem to you, as it initially did to me, a portrait of the feckless "PMC" liberal. The sort of person who insists that everyone has to be "political" or they are evil, who obnoxiously "calls out" things for being "politically" offensive, who obsessively watches every Rachel Maddow update on the Meuller Report out of a genuine sense of obligation because it's 'important', but who has no idea of the name of anyone on their own city council or state assembly or possibly even their own US Representative and who "can't" go canvassing, you see, because they have "social anxiety" and anyway if you knock on A Conservative's door, they will probably shoot to kill. Besides, all that matters in politics is national, right? It is very satisfying to realize how angry they would be if told their most self-sacrificing "political activity", that is to say scolding Bernie fans on Twitter and putting an "In this house we believe" sign on their lawn, is exclusively for their own entertainment, and serves no other purpose.
But the satisfaction disappears when I consider that leftists are at least as bad, if not worse, in their own way. The pseudo-left which complains most about the "PMC" and their "wokeness", who would be most insulted by being called a liberal but whose most grandiose utopian vision is better support for small business and homeownership, spends all its time identifying who are the phonies and who's been bought (spoiler: it's everyone) and invent wild purity tests disguised as Twitter campaigns to get politicians to make Medicare For All happen by a magic trick, just like hopeless libs convinced that the latest revelations of the January 6 commission will put all Republicans behind bars and solve all problems. Suggest that they organize local Medicare For All clubs, in the tradition of the Townsend Clubs of the 1930s which helped create Social Security, and they will use the exact same excuses as liberals. The Marxists, tankies, Trotskyists etc, those committed materialists, prefer to practice and to preach "reading theory" and are sure the revolution will come when this consciousness is spread and someone organizes a vanguard party along class lines -- someone else, that is. And my fellow anarchists, who like to say that they care about praxis above all else, are more likely to make ACAB (or anti-tankie!) memes than to join the IWW and salt a local workplace.
In the latter half of the book, Hersh examines the institutional changes which have led to decreased popular participation in politics, especially local politics: all changes advocated by, beloved by, Populists and Progressives of the Gilded Age. You probably love these too, regardless of your ideological views: they are the anti-machine reforms, the anti-corruption reforms, the reforms which were supposed to promote, rather than discourage, the Voice of the Little Man. Things like primary elections, or civil service reform which eliminated patronage jobs. Most people, particularly that pseudo-left but really every American since George Washington, thinks parties are bad, "corruption" is the problem not the system, and the way to fix it is by virtuous, disinterested citizens individually voting according to their conscience, thinking only of the greater good and not their own interest. This led people to combat the machine bosses who influenced votes by giving out turkeys on Thanksgiving and helping when people needed help -- Transactional! cry the reformers. I wonder if the pesudo-left, who hate condescending liberals, realize they are following exactly the same playbook as the middle-class liberal reformers of a little over a hundred years ago. As Hersh notes, the machine they fought was the method by which the working class participated in American politics, and when it disappeared in the 70s with the last gasp of the Daley machine, so did the working class from party leadership. Some more theoretical people might prefer declared socialist parties like (used to?) exist in Europe, but the open primary which they intend to use to foil the Democratic insiders can just as easily foil them in their own party if it became popular enough for "normies" to join. (Just as "democratic centralism" really means "everyone does what I say", the Leninist or Maoist says, "party discipline for thee, not for me.")
As for me? I can confidently say that I am not included in Hersh's "political hobbyist" category. I actually hate politics. I would never have anything to do with them if it wasn't for the hectoring of those liberals everywhere I go, shrieking that silence is violence and all art that doesn't fight the system supports it, and all those kind of ridiculous slogans. My problem is I am easily bullied, but also that I take things literally and seriously, when the people saying it do not, so when I started to realize that my very reluctant hobbyism was not doing anything, and when I heard the old saw of "praxis" from anarchists, I started looking for things to do instead of just reading (blogs) and voting. When Trump was elected and the shrieking to "RESIST" got worse, and the national "discourse" got absolutely unbearable, I hunkered down to pay attention solely and strictly to local matters, the more local the better. (I also carry a certain strange guilt, a feeling that I will never live up to my parents, and my mother, who organized to preserve trees and worked on mayor campaigns in our small city, inspired me greatly.) I went to one DSA event after the election of AOC led to articles about them fixing brake lights and seeing their members at the local teachers' strike, but they said their number one priority was electing Bernie in the primary, so I never came back. Instead I joined the Oakland Tenants Union; the first meeting I attended, there were generously a dozen members attending, but there was also a city councilperson and her chief of staff there, listening very intently and seriously to the suggestions being made and problems being highlighted.
OTU provides tenants with information and advice to solve their problems with their landlords, and advocate for tenant protections -- lobbying, another bete noire of the entire political spectrum. We help people, and hopefully this help makes them follow our election endorsements, which is one reason why elected officials might listen to what we say. (When I first heard, in that 2020 interview, Hersh's story of "the Ukrainian Boss", a very old man in Boston who helped so many fellow immigrants with their citizenship test and other issues that he could dictate the votes of almost a thousand people, I was inspired to start my own voter guide -- if even five people follow it, I've gotten five times as much power as I started with.) It's completely unlike a hashtag campaign or placing a BLM sign in my window; I have to go to several meetings a month, talk to vulnerable people living under the thumb of slumlords and also to the mayor and city council, and in 2022 I applied and was appointed to the city Rent Board, where I drafted a resolution to change the city's rent laws. Not that anyone would (this is strictly online Twitter behavior) but if anyone did any shrieking at me, that I'm the problem because I didn't vote for Hillary or Biden (in California) or my religion-obsessed art does not do enough to #resist Donald Trump, I can tell them to fuck off with a very very clear conscience.
The thing about it is, again, I took the "praxis > theory" thing seriously. If other people did what this book advocates, I don't care that much what ideology they intend it for, as long as it's left of, say, Mitch McConnell. I could never say this to anarchists online, but if, for once in my goddamn life, I ever encountered a tankie who didn't just talk shit but actually had organized a cadre of the vanguard, and intended to build dual power Soviets of workers, then I would be happy to join (and not worry about their tanks, which are entirely imaginary -- my fellow anarchists, please believe me that it is no longer 1953, no Marxist has guns to kill you with anymore.) Eitan Hersh is a massive lib, and I mean that in the most perjorative sense. One of his big arguments is that political hobbyism pushes the parties into extremism, whereas he is more moderate than either. But when I read his idea that "Voters shouldn't have to wait for a party to one day take power and implement a grand new national policy. A party or campaign, not just a government, can take care of people's needs right now," what can I say but this is anarchism in practice, mutual aid, operating outside the state, rather than asking it to save us?
Although I flatter myself I do more than most, I am a coward at heart, and cringe at the idea of going to a block party or knowing my neighbors, lest I have to make small talk with them every day, or something, I don't know what the problem is. But I do my best to overcome. (I hate to imagine what Eddie, one of the pillars of OTU and host of a radio show by and about disabled people, would say to someone who thinks it's "ableism" to ask people to do something politically other than tweet.) There is this educational film from the fifties which I cherish. A man's daughter is dangerously sick, but there are no doctors anywhere near his tiny town, an experience that shocks him into action. He presents the problem to his friends and neighbors, and together, as a community, they solve the problem which neither the state nor capitalism (it is the unprofitability of working in small towns which causes the shortage of doctors there, after all) can fix. It is corny, earnest, stiff, idealistic, propaganda or whatever you want to call it. It is my ideal of praxis, of political action, personal, local, human, solving problems together, which perhaps, in the long term, could convince people they don't need states and bosses to get things done. We can do it ourselves. But we have to do it, not on the internet or TV, but in real life.
April 12, 2020
One of the best political books I've read and a text I will be referencing for many years to come. The Trump Administration has pushed my optimism to the brink and this book just gave me a guide to rediscovering it. Thank you to the author and all those writing their own stories in their communities!
February 2, 2020
The historical background and analysis of present state are riveting. The suggestions for turning party associations to volunteer or community organizations seems far fetched.
March 3, 2022
In many ways, Politics is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change was not the book I was expecting. Nearly all of these ways were for the better as I had no clue that I needed an honest look at political hobbyism -- spending your time on politics in passive ways like consuming news, spending time on social media, and signing online petitions -- that explored how changes to American life has helped turn this behavior into a widespread phenomenon. Politics is for Power also provides a look at several activists, some of whom even started as political hobbyists, as they work to acquire real power in their communities.
"We're taking actions not to empower our political values, but to satisfy our passion for the sport of politics."Politics is for Power was a very approachable read that left me with a lot to think about. As someone who is definitely more of a political hobbyist, it was really useful to read about how that behavior can seem like it's helping the causes I care about but isn't actually a replacement for using politics as a means to pursue power.
June 16, 2021
To quote Goodreads: "I really liked it". Though I'm not really a political hobbyist much these days (defined as someone who constantly watches news, reads news, doomscrolls twitter, etc.), I saw a lot of myself in these pages (which isn't a good thing, btw). But this book doesn't feel accusatory. It felt like an honest offering of how to really make a difference, in a way that isn't virtue signaling to your friends.
It isn't a to-do list so much as a reflection on the different ways that we can and don't get involved in our local communities. Cultivating local power that finds its way up the totem pole. It wasn't too long, it wasn't boring, it wasn't arrogant, and it didn't make bold claims based on extremely flimsy data (the 4 cardinal sins of contemporary nonfiction). I recommend all of my (American) friends to read this since it applies to (almost) all of them.
It isn't a to-do list so much as a reflection on the different ways that we can and don't get involved in our local communities. Cultivating local power that finds its way up the totem pole. It wasn't too long, it wasn't boring, it wasn't arrogant, and it didn't make bold claims based on extremely flimsy data (the 4 cardinal sins of contemporary nonfiction). I recommend all of my (American) friends to read this since it applies to (almost) all of them.
February 12, 2021
This was a really great read. There could have been a much less appealing, aggressive version of this book that shouted action-items at the reader, but the way Hersh writes powerfully emphasizes the "what" and "why" of political hobbyism before jumping into the "how".
It is full of real-life stories of people involved in their local government, which serve as an indirect guide through example for the reader. I found the whole book to be really well-researched and forthright (and I normally consider myself a pretty skeptical reader when it comes to statistical claims).
The news cycle in the past year has felt relentlessly turbulent, so this book (which was published shortly before the pandemic hit the U.S.) served as a nice reminder that even though it feels like a lot has changed, there are steady trends in political involvement that remain applicable. And by extension, the advice given in this book is still very much pertinent to basically all Americans. I'm really interested to read more from Hersh on this and other topics.
In short, I really liked this book not just for the insightful and motivational content, but for the really stellar way in which that content was communicated. I feel a little hesitant giving a full 5-star rating to something like this where the relevancy of the data will fade with time, but at least for the moment I think Hersh earned it.
It is full of real-life stories of people involved in their local government, which serve as an indirect guide through example for the reader. I found the whole book to be really well-researched and forthright (and I normally consider myself a pretty skeptical reader when it comes to statistical claims).
The news cycle in the past year has felt relentlessly turbulent, so this book (which was published shortly before the pandemic hit the U.S.) served as a nice reminder that even though it feels like a lot has changed, there are steady trends in political involvement that remain applicable. And by extension, the advice given in this book is still very much pertinent to basically all Americans. I'm really interested to read more from Hersh on this and other topics.
In short, I really liked this book not just for the insightful and motivational content, but for the really stellar way in which that content was communicated. I feel a little hesitant giving a full 5-star rating to something like this where the relevancy of the data will fade with time, but at least for the moment I think Hersh earned it.
March 29, 2022
How much time did I spend doom-scrolling on Twitter? The answer is 'too much' and this author does well to point out the inherent flaw of using politics as a hobby and how to leverage things to make life better for your community. The book has quite a bit of fluff, but provides a collection of stories which can serve as a 'north star' including the author's own involvement.
April 30, 2024
The perfect book for a failed school board candidate (or aspiring failed school board candidate)
January 14, 2021
This is a "tough love" read. I sense that some political junkies don't appreciate this book because it makes them feel a little defensive about how they spend their time.
But if you heard about this book on a political podcast because you spend 30 hours a week listening to political podcasts, you're probably the target audience.
But politics is for power. Yeah, you might be the most well-read, social media-savvy person in the room who has an opinion on every bill. What good is any of that if your party's local chapter is dying because it can't recruit volunteers, so it can't reach voters, so it can't win elections, so you never get anything you want?
There is no substitute for doing the work. If you're not ready to hear that message, you're not ready to read this book.
But if you heard about this book on a political podcast because you spend 30 hours a week listening to political podcasts, you're probably the target audience.
But politics is for power. Yeah, you might be the most well-read, social media-savvy person in the room who has an opinion on every bill. What good is any of that if your party's local chapter is dying because it can't recruit volunteers, so it can't reach voters, so it can't win elections, so you never get anything you want?
There is no substitute for doing the work. If you're not ready to hear that message, you're not ready to read this book.
November 2, 2020
Overall interesting info - especially the anecdotes about the local Brookline, MA Democratic Party organization. But it feels a little blamey to me. The author doesn't consider that, if political action happens when people have the free time and energy to devote to it, maybe the reason we've devolved into "hobbyism" isn't because we're lazy or disinterested or don't know where to start, it's that we don't have any free time or energy. Given that wages have stagnated for 20 years while rents, home prices and healthcare costs are exploding, it seems reductionist to say that individuals are the problem here. The last thing that anyone wants to do after 8 hours at a soulless office job, or getting screamed at by irate customers during a minimum wage retail job, or a 16 hour shift as an ICU nurse, is to show up to a city hall meeting and try to shout down their geriatric neighbors' racist dogwhistle arguments for why the city needs to ban apartments or cut bus service. If you're not white, cis, straight or male there's also the threat of actual physical violence that deters PoC and trans, queer, femme people from participating in politics even in supposed liberal safe havens like Massachusetts, let alone more openly hostile political climes. By all means, get involved in mutual aid orgs! They're great! But for most people except the very privileged few, political organizing just takes the time, money and energy that most people just don't have anymore, and that's by design - the political donor class that run the major US political parties don't want to give up control. THAT'S why it's so hard to "do" politics, not because we've suddenly become "hobbyists" in the age of social media.
March 10, 2020
5 stars for cluing me into some ways I'm being a total idiot/phony with respect to civic engagement.
February 19, 2022
I yell a lot at people in my local organizing DMs to read this one, I found it hugely illuminating about why some of the orgs I was in were so frustrating to me.
August 2, 2020
My feelings about this book are...complicated. I'm not sure I can sum them up in writing very well, but I also feel like I need to, because it is an important book, and one I'm going to recommend to some of my friends. (I gave it five stars, even though I feel a bit conflicted about it.) So, here's a list of comments:
(1) I think that Eitan Hersh's general theory of "political hobbyism" has some merit, and is definitely interesting to think about. And I do suspect I'm guilty of more of it than I should be.
(2) I do feel like Hersh is a bit unfair in his conclusion that people don't take effective political action primarily because they don't feel personally like they have much at stake: there are also a lot of people, myself included, who are terrified of the consequences that American politics are having for them, but also not psychologically capable of the empathy for people persecuting them that he seems to think is necessary for effective political action.
(3) This is the first modern book---and the only book I've read other than the very outdated Take Back Your Government: A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy to Work by Robert A. Heinlein---that offers any sort of detailed advice or examples of how one actually approaches retail political organizing as an individual. That alone makes me think it's very important, though I imagine that there are better guides to that, and I'd be interested in recommendations for them.
(1) I think that Eitan Hersh's general theory of "political hobbyism" has some merit, and is definitely interesting to think about. And I do suspect I'm guilty of more of it than I should be.
(2) I do feel like Hersh is a bit unfair in his conclusion that people don't take effective political action primarily because they don't feel personally like they have much at stake: there are also a lot of people, myself included, who are terrified of the consequences that American politics are having for them, but also not psychologically capable of the empathy for people persecuting them that he seems to think is necessary for effective political action.
(3) This is the first modern book---and the only book I've read other than the very outdated Take Back Your Government: A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy to Work by Robert A. Heinlein---that offers any sort of detailed advice or examples of how one actually approaches retail political organizing as an individual. That alone makes me think it's very important, though I imagine that there are better guides to that, and I'd be interested in recommendations for them.
October 7, 2021
I want to rate this book 4 stars for being something I really needed to hear, but 2 stars for being too drawn out and not altogether convincing on its recommendations.
This book is (let's hope) a decent kick in the pants towards more meaningful political organizing and away from "hobbyism" - reading endless national political news, shouting into the echo chamber on social media, putting up an "everyone is welcome here" sign in your expensive, single-family housing neighborhood.
The reminder that the KKK is amassing real political power by offering real, local support to people in need, is kinda all I needed to hear.
There was an interesting, though drawn-out, history lesson in the middle about how the Democratic party organization used to be powerful because of its strong, local organizing. The party was everything in the tight-knit community, and when it came to vote they literally gave you a slip of paper with your votes on it, and you put that straight in the ballot box. Eventually there was backlash to this for many reasons, among them the fact that they were essentially racist local oligarchies which clung to power and resisted change. The shift away from blue-collar strongman control of local party organizations, towards bourgeoisie intellectual influence, actually stripped the party organization of its clout - because it stopped essentially bribing locals to vote for a slate - and alienated blue collar workers - because it was now led by intellectuals without a focus on lending a hand directly to the little guy (instead theoretically supporting policies that would theoretically help the little guy). Hersh essentially wants to recapture some of that lost power through local organizing, offering things like local child care, food support, et cetera, but he doesn't explain how he hopes to avoid the pitfalls.
In any case, I found the book fairly repetitive, bashing on the idea of political hobbyism and lumping a wide range of activities into it - pretty much everything other than voting and getting to know your neighbors / building local support organizations. But maybe that's what I needed it to be. Do I feel a little attacked? yeah, and that's because Hersh has a point and I am the hobbyist he's targeting. But when it came to write this review I found myself wishing I had just read some of the reviews here - like Andrea McDowell's rather than the book. It could have been half as long with the same impact... I really need to get better at skimming.
This book is (let's hope) a decent kick in the pants towards more meaningful political organizing and away from "hobbyism" - reading endless national political news, shouting into the echo chamber on social media, putting up an "everyone is welcome here" sign in your expensive, single-family housing neighborhood.
The reminder that the KKK is amassing real political power by offering real, local support to people in need, is kinda all I needed to hear.
There was an interesting, though drawn-out, history lesson in the middle about how the Democratic party organization used to be powerful because of its strong, local organizing. The party was everything in the tight-knit community, and when it came to vote they literally gave you a slip of paper with your votes on it, and you put that straight in the ballot box. Eventually there was backlash to this for many reasons, among them the fact that they were essentially racist local oligarchies which clung to power and resisted change. The shift away from blue-collar strongman control of local party organizations, towards bourgeoisie intellectual influence, actually stripped the party organization of its clout - because it stopped essentially bribing locals to vote for a slate - and alienated blue collar workers - because it was now led by intellectuals without a focus on lending a hand directly to the little guy (instead theoretically supporting policies that would theoretically help the little guy). Hersh essentially wants to recapture some of that lost power through local organizing, offering things like local child care, food support, et cetera, but he doesn't explain how he hopes to avoid the pitfalls.
In any case, I found the book fairly repetitive, bashing on the idea of political hobbyism and lumping a wide range of activities into it - pretty much everything other than voting and getting to know your neighbors / building local support organizations. But maybe that's what I needed it to be. Do I feel a little attacked? yeah, and that's because Hersh has a point and I am the hobbyist he's targeting. But when it came to write this review I found myself wishing I had just read some of the reviews here - like Andrea McDowell's rather than the book. It could have been half as long with the same impact... I really need to get better at skimming.
July 25, 2022
While not a perfect book, I'm giving Politics Is for Power five stars because I think everyone should read it.
Hersh's basic thesis is that too many of us who care about politics treat it more like a hobby. We read news & discuss with friends. We send postcards to strangers and knock on doors in other states. But we spend very little time organizing the type of political infrastructure that generates actual political power: working with our neighbors to solve problems in our local communities.
I like that Hersh makes explicit that this is a book aimed at white, well-educated liberals. Part of the problem is we've never been taught how to organize - the models from campaigns are knocking on doors in other places every two years. The book provides a lot of specific examples of people building political power today across the country and from the author's own experience. He writes a letter to all of the neighbors in his precinct inviting them to tell him what issues are important to them and volunteer on the precinct committee. Despite living in Brookline - a left-wing, well-off neighborhood outside of Boston - the author explores how he and his community might support more affordable housing in their area. He introduces himself to people in store parking lots and offers to pick up an elderly neighbor's groceries. Hersh's point is that these are the civic actions that build parties for the long-term.
I'm especially intrigued by his suggestion that the Democratic Party offer last-minute child and elderly care for people, irrespective of party. I think this is a fascinating example of the new type of thinking needed for organizing - not endlessly microtargeting an increasingly small fraction of the electorate but growing a party on the ground with services and local organizers.
I finished the book inspired to figure out how I too can better build power and create real change.
Hersh's basic thesis is that too many of us who care about politics treat it more like a hobby. We read news & discuss with friends. We send postcards to strangers and knock on doors in other states. But we spend very little time organizing the type of political infrastructure that generates actual political power: working with our neighbors to solve problems in our local communities.
I like that Hersh makes explicit that this is a book aimed at white, well-educated liberals. Part of the problem is we've never been taught how to organize - the models from campaigns are knocking on doors in other places every two years. The book provides a lot of specific examples of people building political power today across the country and from the author's own experience. He writes a letter to all of the neighbors in his precinct inviting them to tell him what issues are important to them and volunteer on the precinct committee. Despite living in Brookline - a left-wing, well-off neighborhood outside of Boston - the author explores how he and his community might support more affordable housing in their area. He introduces himself to people in store parking lots and offers to pick up an elderly neighbor's groceries. Hersh's point is that these are the civic actions that build parties for the long-term.
I'm especially intrigued by his suggestion that the Democratic Party offer last-minute child and elderly care for people, irrespective of party. I think this is a fascinating example of the new type of thinking needed for organizing - not endlessly microtargeting an increasingly small fraction of the electorate but growing a party on the ground with services and local organizers.
I finished the book inspired to figure out how I too can better build power and create real change.
March 13, 2023
One of my favorite reads for 2022, Politics Is for Power hits a little too close to home. Hersh summarizes in the Introduction, "[political] hobbyism is a serious threat to democracy because it is taking well-meaning citizens away from pursuing power. The power vacuum will be filled."
'Hobbyism' is a superficial engagement with politics, particularly practiced by educated, middle and upper-middle income households, marked by habitual following of politics (~2 hours/day) in watching MSNBC, reading NYT and Reddit, and debating with friends, but lacking any involvement with accumulation of power and influence. Under hobbyism, "power is often the topic... when people do politics, power is not just a topic, it's the goal."
Hobbyists often remove themselves from the messy acts of power-building because it's perceived as dirty, holding some illogical view that voters will arrive at making the right vote if they just get sufficiently informed and it's not their place to change minds. This is something like an efficient market hypothesis for electoral outcomes - there are no arbitrage opportunities because all relevant information is known.
But this is patently wrong - Hersh includes numerous examples where canvassing and conversations changed minds and led to voters splitting twith their traditional party (or voting). But achieving those gains requires knocking on doors, facing rejection, and starting uncomfortable conversations with strangers who may at initial contact consider you an enemy of the state.
This book was inspiring and has me committed to deeper engagement and participation in local politics, at minimum. Posting witty Reddit comments will not GOTV. Seizing power and working hard through discomfort, which hasn't been an active gene in liberal DNA, are prerequisites for us shaping the world into the one we envision. The political class will not bend in that direction because of beneficence alone.
'Hobbyism' is a superficial engagement with politics, particularly practiced by educated, middle and upper-middle income households, marked by habitual following of politics (~2 hours/day) in watching MSNBC, reading NYT and Reddit, and debating with friends, but lacking any involvement with accumulation of power and influence. Under hobbyism, "power is often the topic... when people do politics, power is not just a topic, it's the goal."
Hobbyists often remove themselves from the messy acts of power-building because it's perceived as dirty, holding some illogical view that voters will arrive at making the right vote if they just get sufficiently informed and it's not their place to change minds. This is something like an efficient market hypothesis for electoral outcomes - there are no arbitrage opportunities because all relevant information is known.
But this is patently wrong - Hersh includes numerous examples where canvassing and conversations changed minds and led to voters splitting twith their traditional party (or voting). But achieving those gains requires knocking on doors, facing rejection, and starting uncomfortable conversations with strangers who may at initial contact consider you an enemy of the state.
This book was inspiring and has me committed to deeper engagement and participation in local politics, at minimum. Posting witty Reddit comments will not GOTV. Seizing power and working hard through discomfort, which hasn't been an active gene in liberal DNA, are prerequisites for us shaping the world into the one we envision. The political class will not bend in that direction because of beneficence alone.
February 24, 2020
Overall, I think this book is excellent for kicking folks (like me!) in the trousers and telling them to get off their ass and actually DO politics rather than just TALK about politics. I've been slowly piecing together the ways I want to get involved in politics at a local level, and this book cemented some particular ways I wanted to go about it. There are weaknesses in this book, of course; I think he skirts way too much over race and class analysis when it comes to what he calls "political hobbyism" (which is such a great term), and I had been hoping for more on how to work with ones very real righteous anger - something I struggle with - and in transforming it into action. Instead he left that section off with "you should transform it into action", which, well, yeah, but HOW? I will say, the subtitle of this book was TAD misleading: there was less about taking action than I would have liked. But there were many, many excellent sections, and some really good work in there, and I appreciate this book a lot. I read a copy from a library, but I may end up having to purchase a copy so I can reference it when need be.
I am currently trying to find a good book on active citizenship and civics for my university's common book program, and while I don't quite know if this is it, I will also be putting it on the reading list for more people to look at. I think it focuses too much on Democrats to be a viable book at my university, but I still think the ideas are good.
I am currently trying to find a good book on active citizenship and civics for my university's common book program, and while I don't quite know if this is it, I will also be putting it on the reading list for more people to look at. I think it focuses too much on Democrats to be a viable book at my university, but I still think the ideas are good.
February 14, 2021
I'm frustrated with this book. It makes a great many important points that afflict a certain comfortable, largely white liberal population. It's a very good indictment of the futility of The Discourse many of us participate in. Those arguments, those indictments, are why I picked up this book.
But there is a great deal of both-sides-ism throughout these chapters. Hersh never adequately reckons with the fact that while both parties have ideological extremes, one of those extremes is white nationalism.
As an example, Hersh draws a parallel between the decline of boots-on-the-ground political involvement with the ascendancy of "spiritual but not religious" philosophy. There is a point here, about the move away from community and what that splintering has done to us. But he refuses to acknowledge the valid reasons — not just the primacy of individualism he discusses — that people have left organized religion. Those institutions, like political machines, often have failed to live up to their espoused views and sometimes actively have harmed the communities they're intended to serve.
Overall, there's good stuff in here. But I found the execution lacking.
But there is a great deal of both-sides-ism throughout these chapters. Hersh never adequately reckons with the fact that while both parties have ideological extremes, one of those extremes is white nationalism.
As an example, Hersh draws a parallel between the decline of boots-on-the-ground political involvement with the ascendancy of "spiritual but not religious" philosophy. There is a point here, about the move away from community and what that splintering has done to us. But he refuses to acknowledge the valid reasons — not just the primacy of individualism he discusses — that people have left organized religion. Those institutions, like political machines, often have failed to live up to their espoused views and sometimes actively have harmed the communities they're intended to serve.
Overall, there's good stuff in here. But I found the execution lacking.
December 19, 2020
criticizes "political hobbyism," i.e., reading about politics but not taking part in political action. for people like me who fall in this category of political hobbyist, this book will make you reflect on ways to be more politically involved.
the suggestion at the end of the book for local political organizations to provide services to the community is odd to me—is that the role of political organizations?—but I like the book's overall message
the suggestion at the end of the book for local political organizations to provide services to the community is odd to me—is that the role of political organizations?—but I like the book's overall message
April 20, 2021
2.5 stars. I am not the audience for this book, which only references radicals as a means to encourage participation within the confines of electoral politics, prefaced early on by a condemnation of polarization and a call for moderate deal making. Yeah local engagement matters, but I'm a bit past needing to be told "maybe to get people on your side you need to do things to improve material conditions."
February 3, 2022
I would give this 3.5 but I'm rounding up to 4 stars because I think it's worth a read. It does get a bit repetitive and I wish it gave more practical advice on how to productively spend time in politics but I enjoyed a lot of the discussion and points made.
July 4, 2022
Hersh makes really compelling arguments and I found the book to be motivating. I wish the last chapter was longer with more actionable things to do; however, he did show by example throughout the book.
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