The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Navigating the Next Four Years with Mike Madrid
Republican political consultant Mike Madrid joins host Eloy Ortiz-Oakley to examine the seismic shifts occurring in American democracy through the unique lens of Latino voter behavior. As co-founder of the Lincoln Project and author of "The Latino Century," Madrid brings data-driven insights that challenge conventional wisdom about minority voting patterns. The conversation delves deep into how Latino voters—now America's largest minority voting bloc—are transforming the political landscape. Madrid reveals compelling evidence that Latinos aren't becoming more conservative but more populist, rejecting both major parties at unprecedented rates. "The Republican Party is winning Latino votes despite their best efforts, not because of them," Madrid explains, detailing how economic concerns consistently outweigh identity politics for this diverse demographic. His analysis of multi-generational shifts within Latino communities offers a fascinating window into America's changing electorate. The discussion takes a particularly thought-provoking turn when examining higher education's precarious position in today's populist moment. Madrid argues that colleges and universities have become deeply vulnerable by institutionalizing ideological frameworks without demonstrating clear economic returns. "The cash-on-cash return on investment of higher education in the digital age isn't really bearing out," he notes, explaining how the college degree has become America's most significant political dividing line—more so than income or geography. Madrid's insights offer essential guidance for higher education leaders navigating these turbulent times. He challenges institutions to strip down to fundamentals and rebuild for a digital age where information flows horizontally rather than through traditional hierarchies. For anyone seeking to understand the forces reshaping American democracy and higher education's place within it, this episode provides illuminating perspectives that transcend conventional political categories.
https://www.amazon.com/Latino-Century-Americas-Transforming-Democracy/dp/1668015269
eloy@4leggedmedia.com
www.4leggedmedia.com
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz-Oakley and welcome back to the Rant Podcast, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, I continue my conversations about navigating the next four years, particularly the impacts on higher education, the workforce and the various policies and programs that support learners throughout the country. I get to sit down with Mike Madrid, a good friend and colleague. Mike is a political consultant, a Republican political consultant. He is also the co-founder of the Lincoln Project and is an author. His new book is called the Latino Century how America's Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy. Minority is transforming democracy and I'm going to talk to Mike about how democracy is being transformed today and what insights we can learn from his research into Latino voters. What are Latino working class voters thinking and saying about what's going on in this country, and how can we in higher education, in the post-secondary education marketplace, learn from those insights? While Mike is a political consultant, he understands what's going on with working-class families. I consider Mike the expert when it comes to better understanding Latino voters in this country and, as many of you know, just saying that word Latino voters means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Here in California, it could mean Mexican-American voters first generation, second generation Mexican-American voters as opposed to the East Coast, where it could be Puerto Rican voters or Cuban voters, and Mike has a keen way of boiling that all down to how it's affecting their attitudes about what's going on in this country. So Mike is going to join me today to talk more about that, to talk about our democracy, to talk about what's going on with the chaos in Washington DC and what we, as leaders in higher education, should be on the lookout for. What can we learn about the dialogue that's happening in this country?
Speaker 1:So, before I jump into that interview, I do want to take a moment to just reflect on the last. I don't know what. It's been just about 90 days since this year started. For some, it feels like this year has taken forever, no doubt, regardless of where you're at, on the left or the right or somewhere in between. There's been a lot going on in this country and in the world, and let me spend a little bit of time focused on higher education. One of our listeners recently left me a message asking me to answer the question. Left me a message asking me to answer the question what's going on with the Department of Education? So, Al J, I want to take this time to respond to your question.
Speaker 1:I've said a lot on this podcast about the Department of Education and there is no doubt that the Department of Education, department of Labor, department of Commerce, any of the agencies that are part of the federal government bureaucracy that touch and support and interact with higher education in this country should be reviewed, should be streamlined in higher education. I can certainly attest to the fact that there is too much bureaucracy and that the regulation does not always make sense to everyday working class families throughout this country. We have overcomplicated our higher education system and so I'm all for reviewing, dismantling, rethinking how the Department of Education does its work and why it exists. I am not one of those people that thinks that somebody should come in with a chainsaw and just eliminate the Department of Education. I think that's wrongheaded. I think it's reckless.
Speaker 1:A lot of institutions, a lot of people, a lot of states all of our states rely on a healthy federal government and for our Department of Education to be able to support the educational pursuits of learners throughout this country. Now there's a whole part of the Department of Education that is focused on K-12 education. I'm not going to get into that, but I will say that the federal government's role in higher education has become critically important, whether you're talking about access to Title V, federal student aid, the support that every low and moderate-income learner gets from the federal government to be able to afford the cost of education, and moderate income learner gets from the federal government to be able to afford the cost of education. Now, I would agree that the federal government has sometimes fueled the increased cost of education throughout this country, but the federal government does have a role in supporting learning, in supporting the pursuit of higher learning for Americans of all backgrounds. So to just say that you're going to eliminate that, I think, is wrong-headed. Now, are there ways to streamline the Department of Education? Yes, is the federal student aid process too complicated? Yes, does it need more streamlining? Yes, is the cost of education too high? Yes, and I think most Americans feel that, which is why they feel this angst.
Speaker 1:But I do not believe the Department of Education should just go away and leave the pieces there on the table for other people to figure out how we're going to reconstruct the work that it does, because the work that it does isn't going away. Managing some of these programs that Congress put into place to make America more competitive cannot go away. So what does this mean going forward? To me, it means finding people on both sides of the aisle to come together to work on solutions that improve the functioning of our government. Okay, only those people that don't need government are the ones claiming that it should be eliminated. But everyday Americans throughout this country rely on well-meaning, efficient government. Rely on well-meaning, efficient government and, to the extent that we can make the Department of Education more efficient by making it focus on things that matter to states, things that matter to learners and I think there is a way forward there. Certainly, the bipartisan policy centers, efforts to create the Commission on the American Workforce, are working on solutions.
Speaker 1:So I don't dismiss everything that's been said about the Department of Education.
Speaker 1:I could argue all day long that this whole DOJA effort is more theater than reality.
Speaker 1:But hopefully, hopefully, there will be people on both sides of the aisle that can come together to come up with common sense solutions that help more Americans of all backgrounds gain the skills and competencies they need in order to better participate in the economy of today and the economy that AI is transforming, going forward and if you listen to this podcast, you know that I've had many guests who've come up with many solutions, whether it's the work that they're doing, the practices that they are supporting, the transparency that they're fighting for all of those issues, this is the time for them to come together to create a better Department of Education, a better Department of Labor and a better Department of Commerce that together work to ensure that we have the most talented workforce and the most resilient workforce and that it's working for working class families. All right, I will jump off my rant, jump off my soapbox. All right, I will jump off my rant, jump off my soapbox and with that, please enjoy my conversation with my good friend, mike Madrid. Mike, welcome to the Rant Podcast.
Speaker 2:It's great to be with you again. I've done it before. It's been a while, but always great. If you ask me back, it means it must have gone okay the first time.
Speaker 1:It went okay the first time. It's going to even better the second time. So thanks for visiting with us. I know you've got a lot going on, a lot going on in your world. A lot going on in politics these days, yeah, and your world involves the politics of voters. Let's start with your career. So you've spent much of your career digging into data, digging into voter data, yeah, and you've become, as far as I'm concerned, the expert in Latino voter data and what it's telling us as a society, what it's telling candidates for office office. You've also been critical about the messaging, particularly whether it's on the Republican side, the Democrat side and how you feel Latino voters have sort of been left behind in this conversation.
Speaker 1:That's right, you recently wrote a book called the Latino Century.
Speaker 2:The Latino Century, how America's Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy.
Speaker 1:That's good news for me and my kids. We're looking forward to transforming democracy In the current political environment. I mean, we're sitting here, you know, nearly 100 days into the administration, nearly 100 days into the chaos machine, the administration, the 100 days into the chaos machine. How are you feeling about politics right now and what do you see going forward is going to be the role of Latino voters in statewide elections, in congressional elections coming up? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:It's a big question.
Speaker 2:I'm going to just say broadly, at the national level, I think this is a dark moment.
Speaker 2:I think that's fair to say, because so many of the basic foundational assumptions that we've made about America are being challenged and it seems and feels like there's a growing part of the American population, certainly the electorate, that is moving in a direction opposite of what we have historically known and believed America to be the respect for constitutional law, the norms that have kind of guided us, these guardrails you hear a lot about.
Speaker 2:But in many ways I believe that what is happening again at the very highest levels, the tectonic plates of politics, what is happening is we are transforming into a new type of hybrid democracy that has to be reconstituted for this digital age, that we're in the old checks and balance system, which I think I'm not saying we need to throw it out, but what I am saying is it was perfectly crafted for the industrial age, when all of our human institutions were hierarchical and where everything was top down, including the government that we built, and that doesn't work in the age of information, in this internet era, in this digital age, when information flows are horizontal and unless we adapt our institutions, which are basically those things we agree on as society to to say this are what facts are. This is the institution designed to help us with our health and information and government services. Unless we're able to rethink those for this new age, I think the future will be very, very chaotic.
Speaker 1:I thought about in your book the Latino Century, about the Latino voting block. If you can say that I mean it is Latinos, made up of different ethnicities, different backgrounds, different geographies in America. Yeah, you and I come from a similar geography Mexican-American households.
Speaker 2:Dodger fans. Dodger fans of course. Those doyers. I thought that was the only fans that Mejiano supported, but I guess there's a couple others out there.
Speaker 1:There are other teams out there, but you talk a lot about how the messaging has sort of missed the mark with that voting block. What do you think Latino voters are looking for in?
Speaker 2:messaging from a candidate. What are they?
Speaker 1:looking for for themselves. Looking for in messaging from a candidate what are they looking?
Speaker 2:for for themselves, for their families, for their children, going forward. So the data on this has been very, very clear for 30 years. It's economics, and I'll talk about that specifically, but a lot of people might say, well, duh, but the political construct that we've allowed to develop in this country, for very good reasons, casts this need to have non-white voters and white voters being in bipolar opposites with one another. That's important because that has restricted both sides of the aisle from speaking to a multi-ethnic working class issue about the economy. And as long as we have had these notions of what a minority voter is meaning really essentially what we mean by that is the non-white then that establishes a primacy of race and ethnicity for those voters through which they view the world, race and ethnicity for those voters through which they view the world, and the data for Latinos on that has really never borne that out to be true, but it's so deeply etched in our DNA as a country because of our black and white history, because of our original sin of slavery, because of the institutions that we built and the policy solutions that we've addressed to both perpetuate and ameliorate that black-white paradigm. We've always thrown non-white people into this bucket of non-white people and just call them minorities or people of color.
Speaker 2:The term Latino is hardly a useful term because of that diversity. The term people of color is truly not useful because of the experiences and how different they are. It's a long way of saying the through line between all of the latino diasporas cubans, venezuelans, puerto ricans, mexican americans is the blue collar economic through line. It is becoming and replacing ethnic labels and ethnic prioritization for these voters and for our families and the way we perceive the world. Once we understand that that blue-collar ethic as Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the blue-collar worker and the fastest-growing segment of the Republican Party, we start to, I think, understand why we're seeing voting behavior moving to the right, but also this populist anti-establishment sentiment that is really the defining feature, much more than a movement towards conservatism.
Speaker 1:Let me dive into your last point, because I think that's an interesting point. There's this anti-establishment movement versus. Are these voters moving to the right or anywhere else? Correct? These voters moving to the right or anywhere else? Correct? Based on this last presidential election, a lot of people were expressing concern or joy that their message carried Latino voters to the right. Do you see that they were moving to the right because of the political messaging or were they moving toward the new president? Because of something else because of this anti-establishment movement.
Speaker 2:That's a great question and I think it's a foundational question. There's very little evidence, almost no evidence, that Latinos are becoming more conservative. There's overwhelming evidence that Latinos are becoming more populist, more conservative. There's overwhelming evidence that Latinos are becoming more populist, and what I mean by that is we are the fastest growing segment of the no party preference decline to state movement. We are leaving both parties faster than any other group.
Speaker 2:Our voting behavior is manifesting in that by leaving the Democratic Party, and again, not for ideological reasons, but the Democratic Party has historically been at such a high bar for Latinos the only place to kind of come is down right, and so in many ways the Republican Party is winning Latino votes, despite their best efforts. Not because of them and this anti-establishment sentiment interestingly most acutely in our politics Latinos have a higher level of trust and confidence in most social institutions broadly. The one exception, two exceptions the Republican and Democratic Party, and the reason is because neither party has been speaking to our concerns, I would argue, for decades now. It manifested as low voter turnout, which has been plaguing us for decades in places like California. Voter turnout which has been plaguing us for decades in places like California, where the Republican Party was never an option, but the Democratic Party wasn't speaking to or addressing concerns. And that's not Mike Madrid saying that, that's the data saying that.
Speaker 2:And now what you're seeing is the anti-Republican sentiment that was really endemic in the Latino vote for the past 30 years is gone. Vote for the past 30 years. It's gone. And once that is gone, once that sentiment is gone, it opens up a whole new era of opportunities for Latino voters, who are very populist, to listen to the populist party which is the Republican Party at this moment. It's not the conservative party, it's not the traditional jobs, taxes, free trade, you know strong foreign policy. It's protectionist, it's isolationist, it's very um anti-establishment. It's drained the swamp. There's a reason why bernie sanders did as well as he did with latinos and donald trump is doing as well is the anti-establishment sentiment is really pervasive in the community now in in your book and, by the way, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:It really resonated with me. Now I think you're a third generation Mexican-American a second generation, yeah. But the changes that you see happening in and I'll just focus on the Mexican-American community, I'm sure it's similar to other second, third generation Latino communities is the way that second and third generation voters feel versus how their parents who may have been that first generation. That certainly manifested itself, certainly when I was growing up. Ronald Reagan captured the imagination of a lot of Mexican-Americans in my community.
Speaker 1:I wound up voting that direction. I joined the army because of him. It's a very different dynamic today. How do you see the evolution happening? Over time now that there are so many young Latinos in America and they're second, third, some fourth generation, yeah, and that's really important.
Speaker 2:What you're getting at and again this is the crux of the book is the reason why Latino voters, latino voting patterns, are shifting is because Latino voters themselves are shifting. Latino voting patterns are shifting is because Latino voters themselves are shifting. The explosion of the Latino voters and we've just passed African Americans, passed black voters in 2020. The numbers are going to start growing exponentially now. In the voter rolls nationwide, 80% of it is US born and now, as I'm studying this stuff, in my 50s, when I was studying this in my 20s, there was no fourth generation cohort big enough to study. Now we can look at fourth generation Latinos and say what do fourth generation Latinos have in common with third and second and first recently naturalized? And what we've realized is they're tectonically different. They're massively different. Different, and that you know it's kind of commonsensical now, but the the presupposition, the premise of both major parties up until two years ago was that non-white voters vote like non-white voters, as a block. Because of the only example we've had, which is black voters for 250 years that have voted as a block, or at least 150 years after the after suffrage and, you know, the civil war, black voters have voted 75 8080% as a true bloc. Latinos have never met those metrics and now, as we're at 47-53, I mean, even as somebody who's been studying this, I never thought we'd be at almost 50-50.
Speaker 2:And I would argue Trump is not bringing Latinos into the Republican Party. He's actually restricting further growth. Candidates in California like Steve Garvey, outperformed Donald Trump In every House swing district. Republicans did better than Trump nationwide. So there's over. Ron DeSantis, greg Abbott, all these governors of of these states that are doing well with latino voters have either met or exceeded where donald trump's numbers were. All of those just mountains of evidence saying if donald trump had not been the nominee, if it had been like a nicki haley type candidate, right then republicans would have won the hispanic vote, the latino vote, which again is, is tectonic, but it reminds. It reminds us. We're not witnessing a political moment, we're witnessing a demographic transformation.
Speaker 1:Right. How do you see religion playing into this? So many Latino immigrants certainly Mexican-American immigrants first, second generation came here as Catholics and that was a big part of the way that families thought they voted. That seems to be changing a lot more today. Is there a split based on religion, or do you think the economic issues continue to overwhelm any of the underlying issues of religion?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question, and in many ways, the answer to that latter part of your question is no different than everybody else. If you're a practicing faith-based person, regardless of what your faith base is, you're much more likely to vote for Republicans, including being Jewish or a Protestant or a Catholic. If you're going every Sunday or Saturday to services and you're observant, your politics are naturally more conservative. But let's talk about religion as part of the Latino culture. Your politics are naturally more conservative, but let's talk about religion as part of the Latino culture.
Speaker 2:In 1980, when I was eight or nine years old, 80% of Latinos in this country were Catholic. Now that number's under 50%. That's how fast the decline of Catholicism has happened, and there has been an increase in evangelical movements, particularly amongst the first generation, but not exclusively. It's pretty broad, but and this is really important for every one Latino that leaves Catholicism and becomes an evangelical or Protestant to leave religion altogether. So Latinos in their spiritual trajectory are starting to resemble the overall electorate also, and so in many ways, while assimilation is benefiting Republicans on economic issues, it is also benefiting Democrats on cultural issues. So where we used to be this kind of nominally or marginally pro-life constituency 25 years ago. We are now strongly a pro-choice community because of the explosion of us born latinas primarily, but latinos also as well. So we are becoming less faith-based, but where we are maintaining those levels, it is a much more conservative, orthodox, republican-ish type of religion so let's, so let's switch tracks a little bit.
Speaker 1:You've sort of laid out what's going on in the Latino voter bloc, the changes that we've seen happening a lot we can see in, certainly, the last election and the election before that coming into this last one, the last election and the election before that coming into this last one, the audience that.
Speaker 1:I talked to is primarily higher education, leaders, policymakers, and higher education right now is really struggling with a somewhat of an identity crisis. A lot of people questioning the institution as a whole, the leadership, the value proposition, and now you've got an administration who is definitely seeing an opportunity to dismantle the framework that we have lived with for a couple hundred years.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:A lot of it relates to how the public thinks about the value that they're getting from their college or university and the concern about the cost. In my day job at College Futures, we publish a lot of studies in California and nationwide about how people feel about higher education and time and time again when they express their number one concern, it's cost. And although they have concerns about the institutions, they still believe that their sons and daughters need to go get some sort of higher education. So there's still this belief that they want their sons and daughters to have greater opportunity, but more and more they are questioning the value of a higher education. And so how should higher education leaders think about talking to underserved communities? And I say that broadly because whether it's a poor, rural white community, whether it's an African American community, a Latino community, low and moderate income families are really struggling with this, with their belief in higher education. How would you recommend, based on what you're seeing from voter sentiment, what would your recommendation be to leaders about how to speak to prospective students and their families?
Speaker 2:This is a great question, as always, I will say this At a time, at this very populist moment in American history.
Speaker 2:Perhaps the institution that I think is the most vulnerable, exposed and enabled to make adjustments is the academy. I think higher education has very, very particularly unique problems, which is going to make it vulnerable because of its inability to adjust, and what I mean by that is in the intro. You said you know changing the norms and the structures of what we've lived with for 250 years. I'm not too sure that's right. I would say since the post-World War II era, the way we have viewed the idea, as John Henry Newman would say, the idea of a university and the purpose of higher education really changed in the post-World War II era. As we reached the American century and we started to industrialize at a much more modern, faster pace than the rest of the world, the focus of higher education became about a return on investment. Prior to that it was, you know, learning to learn and philosophizing and becoming a better human and a true, classically liberal arts education well, and it was only for a very few very select, elite few, overwhelmingly men, white men, of course.
Speaker 2:but when we did make those adjustments, we again focused and started to focus, and I'm not saying right or wrong. I'm saying we started to focus on the return on investment, which is kind of where we're really heading now, and this is now with that long Mike Madrid windup. This is the particular problem that higher education faces. The cash on cash return on investment of a higher education in the digital age isn't really bearing out. But and this is very important too the single largest demarcation point in this country is whether or not you have a college degree, and when I was a younger political consultant, that used to be income. But those are not the same. And the mistake that I think a lot of people are making is that, well, we're just talking about college educated people, meaning we're higher education people. That is not true.
Speaker 2:The political decision-making that is happening is based off of what happens to an individual when they have the benefit of a higher education, which is a changing cultural and life perception of their humanity. It is not based off of whether or not you're earning more or less. Let me give you a real-life example. It is not based off of whether or not you're earning more or less. So let me give you a real life example. It is far more likely that you will be progressive or on the left if you go to college and become a teacher making $55,000 or $60,000 a year than if you are a high school graduate who is a contractor who makes $120,000 a year. You're much more likely to be a Republican. So, even though you're making more right as a republican, it's the differential is the college degree is what makes the difference, and it's why you're hearing the american right actively saying don't go to college, do not go to college. And the reason is because what is manifesting on the right and there is some truth to this college is really a lot of what university and higher education are about now is changing those perceptions of cultural norms, prioritizing that as opposed to getting a return on the investment of going to get a degree and developing a skill that you can monetize. Does that make sense? Yeah, and as the party's coalitions change, as the republicans become more working class, their messaging is valorizing that return on investment and not going to go get a woke mind virus on a higher education campus, like literally, that's the language that they'll use. What we're hearing from the higher education community in response is well, we're kind of the gatekeepers to enlightenment and in many ways, yeah, you will, in the long run, get more money if you get a college degree. We don't exactly know that in the digital age yet there hasn't been a long-term run at earnings capacity. It suggests that there probably is, is, but certainly not for a while.
Speaker 2:And the second is again, this changed political perspective has become a truly defining feature of the politics of this voter. And in a country where only 40 percent of americans have a college degree, voters, right, you're already naturally speaking to a minority, anyway, a pretty considerable minority. And so higher education is is going to continue to keep talking to itself, reasserting its own bias and unable to communicate to the broader audience that it needs to in order to allow belief in its own system. Belief in its own system, belief in its own value, both economically, morally, spiritually however you want to define it and certainly politically. These are becoming really limiting and rather than, I think, expanding that messaging, the likelihood of it contracting is far, far greater. Right, which is why it will become a point of attack very soon.
Speaker 2:Right, federal funding we're going to get into everything from Title IX on sports to how much money we're giving the UC system, based off of research dollars that it's incredibly reliant on, if it continues to practice or teach these ideologies that are not giving us a return on investment but are pushing a Marxist agenda, or whatever the right wing says that it is, and the academy is not going to. The academy is going to dig in and fight on that. You have entire professors and departments built on that. They're not just going to be like, okay, I'll go do something else with my whatever degree. They're going to dig in and fight and they're going to lose that fight in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I have this conversation a lot. I used to have this conversation a lot. I used to have this conversation a lot with our former governor, jerry Brown, who, interestingly enough, never liked the notion of DEI. So my conversation with him would usually go Governor DEI isn't in my mind, isn't an academic issue, it isn't a philosophical issue, it is an economic issue. I need, when I was chancellor, our colleges to ensure that they are reaching a broad base members in their community, which naturally, in California, means that they're going to be diverse, that they're providing equal footing, giving them opportunity and making sure that they're inclusive. Now, those three words have been hijacked over time.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:And I would agree that in many cases there's been sort of an echo chamber conversation going on campus about those three words and we've lost the notion that we need to continue to show the public what kind of return on investment they're getting from the education that their sons and daughters and neighbors and cousins and aunts and uncles are getting on a college campus. Colleges and universities should be open to a variety of thought. They should question our history. That doesn't make us un-American. That makes us more educated, yes, but we fell into the trap of only highlighting that piece and gave the loudest microphones to individuals on campuses, whether they be student groups, outside groups, faculty groups, who just wanted to go back and forth on this question of DEI or find everything that's wrong with the way that we think about things and pick on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you didn't just fall into the trap. I don't mean you. Higher education didn't just fall into the trap. It institutionalized that right and it incentivized that as an end unto itself. You're saying something really important, which is there's got to be a market-based solution to this. Every company, every major company in America, should be looking at an increasingly diverse consumer base, increasingly diverse workforce, increasingly diverse leadership. Not because it's the morally right things do. Because there's money, it's good business. And if history is a guide, once the market forces change to accommodate that, social change follows very quickly. A couple of examples well, everything from martin luther king's boycott right in the 60s, let's shut down the buses. Once there's a market imperative and we show you the market, you're going to come back and use the bus, right, if not, we'll walk one. Two gay marriage once united airlines, which had a hub in san francisco, started saying we're going to have domestic partnership benefits. I don't care what the law says, these are our employees, we're going to protect them.
Speaker 2:Everything in corporate america changed and hasn't come back. Dave roberts, from the dodgers during the george floyd, you know, after the george floyd murder, says I'm not going to atlanta to manage the all-star team. So what do they do? Mlb is like we got a big problem. Our employees are saying, no, they moved it to Denver at the drop of a hat. That's what moves these things. It's not going to be the end-all, be-all of the curriculum that we're trying to teach. Does that make sense? Right, and because it has been so calcified and structured in the academy, you can't just extricate it or change it next semester. People's entire careers and doctorate work and research work has been predicated on going down these roads and becoming teachers and and and research assistants and and and furthering on their careers in the academy. You can't reform that. You can't. And that was like I said. It wasn't just falling into the trap, it was institutionalizing it. And so when those attacks come and they will from the federal government the only people that are going to be defending those people will be the people in the ivory tower.
Speaker 2:I don't mean that disparagingly, maybe it is, apologize if it is, but they will be isolated where people are going. Why are we teaching that? Why are? What is the value of that? There's a course of study, and not just because you need to have go to college step to be more prepared economically although you should.
Speaker 2:But are we really teaching the idea of the university? Are we teaching people to learn or are we teaching them a new history or a yeah, a history? It doesn't mean that it isn't complimentary. I think it is. It is an accurate history, it is an accurate perspective, but at what point are we doing that to the detriment of getting a degree for the society that we've created economically? And that's where it's happening is. We're graduating students that do have a different perspective of the world, but they're not able to work in the economy that we're providing, and so, yeah, you end up with tons of I'm not saying this is the only reason, but there's a lot of student debt with the inability to get a job in the economy that we have, and so then you've got a hopeless generation. That's kind of like I, and again, I'm not saying that I'm oversimplifying. There's a lot of reasons as to why there's college debt, but that is no doubt one of them is we're not graduating a whole lot of people that are getting jobs immediately with that return on investment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and I think this is where leaders in higher education, whether they're on campuses or in system offices this is the conversation I think they need to be having is asking the question about how have we positioned ourselves? How do we defend what is most important about a university or college campus? But think about how we've sort of created our own target on our back. Yeah, our own target on our back. Yeah, you know we've gotten so wrapped up in is the right nomenclature? Latinx Is the right nomenclature, bipoc Is the right nomenclature, and only people in the small circle of the academy engage and understand that conversation. I get why they're having it. Yeah, I do too. They want to give voice to different perspectives and different people. But at the end of the day I mean in your book you talk about the different names that you know we've been called and growing up myself, I could never understand who I was.
Speaker 2:Was I Mexican-American, was I Chicano? Was.
Speaker 1:I Latino.
Speaker 2:Whatever Exactly?
Speaker 1:And it's confusing.
Speaker 2:It is confusing and I do understand and I respect the whole process of all of that and I frankly enjoy the intellectual discussion of it, but we're literally creating new languages for people who don't match that experience. And when you're that far removed, you need to take some self-inventory in saying what are we doing other than having these discussions amongst academics? Because we're not solving the world's problems. In fact, we're getting further removed from them, and I'm not suggesting that solving the world's problems is what the job of the academy is either. There's some virtue and, frankly, being in an ivory tower because it does lead to different.
Speaker 2:You know schools of thought and I appreciate all of that, but what I will say is we have so focused on it, we have so lost a sense of priority in all of our institutions, that the revolt that we're seeing in American politics today is really that this populist sentiment I've been talking about is a revolt against institutions.
Speaker 2:And so people will say, mike, how can that be when the broligarics and these high-tech billionaires are working with poor people and working class people Like, how does that coalition work? To me it's very easily explainable. It's a revolt against the professional class. It's against the people that actually run these institutions which are less and less relevant, which exist to perpetuate themselves, to get more and more money, more and more credential degrees, more and more tenure, more and more whatever it is to protect yourself, to keep doing things that aren't the job of a plumber who's got to go and actually fix a leak, like there's actual, real, real world value to that immediately.
Speaker 2:Now right, everybody needs a plumber, and this plumber doesn't get the benefit of saying you know, I've got a system that I can rig, where I don't have to go, kind of do that, and then it's a crass term, rigging the system, but but not really. And that's definitely the sentiment of the working class. They don't begrudge the wealthy we never have in this country, but what we do begrudge is the people that are perpetuating a system that they believe is rigged to their own advantage or to be self-perpetuating to no ends. And that's what most of our institutions have become, especially the academy.
Speaker 1:So, mike, you've spent a lot of time thinking about this. When higher education leaders think about how to deal with different communities, what is in your mind? What is the mega community? If I'm a higher ed leader and I'm having to confront more and more people who consider themselves to be part of the MAGA movement, whether on campus students, faculty community members how do you explain that, and what should people know about how to communicate?
Speaker 2:I think the one common thread of kind of the MAGA movement is understanding that it is defined not by what it's for but by what it's against. And in a time when, again, we are literally, as a species, communicating and processing information differently than we ever have before, our communication channels are much more horizontal. When we used to get the experts at the national institute of health or, you know, the pope from the church or the president of united states top down, we now have a million different experts that you can choose from right your experts yeah, we've.
Speaker 2:That has never been the case in human history. All of our species, since we crawled out of the cave and the guy with the biggest club. We all follow this strong leader, all of our institutions, from the monarchy to you name it the corporation. It's all top down. We are now learning as a species to learn horizontally the world, because krugman would say the world is flat, right and it's now just hitting the last of our institutions. And as that happens, we have to recognize that ultimately, maga is animated by that push.
Speaker 2:They may not articulate it that way, but basically what they're saying is I'm against the institutions, whichever it is that I feel is somehow not allowed me to be all that. I can be right. And that may be the college university system, because it's just producing a bunch of woke people. Maybe I didn't go to college, maybe I did. I got a bunch of debt. I don't care about it. Maybe it's the job market, because it's just producing a bunch of woke people. Maybe I didn't go to college, maybe I did and I got a bunch of debt and I don't care about it. Maybe it's the job market, because it's terrible because people are outsourcing to other places and other countries. Maybe it's the media, because what CNN is saying is not the same thing as what the Daily Stormer whatever the hell it is you're listening to says. All of these things are a reaction to a breaking down and siloing, and we believe, really, what has become a cultural value in Silicon Valley, which is disruption for disruption's sake, and in that disruption, what I think we're going to learn in very short order is there's a value to social institutions, and that value, first and foremost, is a common agreement on whatever it is, however unjust they are and may be. I'm not saying that they don't need to be fixed, they do. But as a human species, as a political not in the republican democratic, but in the in the human need to interact with one another species, as a political animal, human beings need to have common sets of agreement. This is the way. Red means stop, green means go like. We have to agree on some basic things, right.
Speaker 2:And so when we're talking to this increasing MAGA movement, we have to understand that it ultimately emanates from this loss of confidence and this deep and growing belief that the more hierarchical the institution, the more damaging and, frankly, more threatening it is to my life, and it's not particular to MAGA. This is the language you hear from Elizabeth Warren, bernie Sanders. It's the populist elements of the left where they say if you put the adjective big in front of everything, it's automatically evil. Big plastic, big oil, big banks it's this libertarian movement. It's this populist left Bernie Sanders movement. It's Donald Trump. Libertarian movement. It's this populist left Bernie Sanders movement, it's Donald Trump.
Speaker 2:And so what's happening is the Democrats have de facto become the defenders of institutions broadly at a time when they're becoming indefensible. So if you're in California and these fires go up suddenly, we're really talking about water conveyance system and the mismanagement of that. We're talking about the Delta smelt. We're talking about CEQA. We're talking about the Coastal Commission. We're talking about everything except for what is really going on, and it's getting.
Speaker 2:You can feel this palpable sentiment amongst Californians going. These institutions are so broken, so deeply, so broadly, that we can't keep homeless people off the street. We can't stop megafires from coming through. We can't stop the Employment Development Department from being ripped off by $800 billion and not knowing where it's going. We can't stop an $11 billion high-speed rail train to nowhere Like. Our priorities are completely out of whack and the Democrats find themselves defending all of these things when, candidly, a lot of these are just not defensible.
Speaker 2:And so what's going to happen through this process, through this? In many ways, it's like a prairie fire that burns off all of this brush. It's going to strip us down to the basics of what is important USAID do we really need a Department of Education? And we just do it with block grants? I'm not an advocate for what Trump's doing. You know who I am. You know my story. I burned down my career fighting this guy. I think this is a very bad, dark moment, but I'm also not fooling myself to say this isn't happening for a reason. There's a growing sentiment for it for a reason, and unless we pay attention and understand, it will consume us.
Speaker 1:Right? No, I mean, I think those of us who identify as Democrats and who have worked in higher education, we all know, we all know we've complained about the Department of Education for years. There are things there, there are things in many institutions, that year after year we ask ourselves why do we do things this way? So and I get that we're in a moment where it just seems like everything's threatened. So we want to defend it Correct and I'm not saying that we shouldn't defend it Correct. But as we're defending it, we should also be looking to see how we can really change what needs to be changed.
Speaker 2:Let's look for the opportunities in this really scary time because they are there, by the way and when the political reality does come crashing down and it will. Economically, we're already seeing prices starting to rise. We're seeing the world order dissolving when we're threatening military action in Panama and Greenland and NATO is dissolving, there is going to be an emergent need, a human need, it's not even an American need a human need to start saying wait a second, we need these things to work and when they do, the opportunity is there to say let me, in my role in this institution, strip this down to the basic elements. What should we be talking about?
Speaker 2:This may offend people, but is Chicano studies as important as electrical engineering? And I I say that specifically for a reason. These chicano professors have been fighting me all the time, saying no, this is about race and ethnicity. I'm like no, it's about the economy, and I think history has proven me right. The democrats hired a bunch of academics to do their polling and that's where you got latinx. That's where you get this. These, these messages, these political messages that are not speaking to blue collar working class people right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it was interesting to me is watching the oval office scene where elon musk explaining what he was doing and he said something that was really intriguing to me. He said we are becoming a bureaucracy, not a democracy, and I had to step back and think to somebody like Elon Musk, he doesn't need the bureaucracy, he's well taken care of, but that bureaucracy serves a lot of people and you need a bureaucracy to have a healthy democracy. I agree we may have gone too far, but I hope people take notice while we're tearing all this stuff down. It's really about what do we keep, how do we make it better and how do we ensure that it is serving the people that it needs to serve?
Speaker 2:and if we do that, I think we're going to be okay. The problem is and again, I'm not justifying this at all I've fought against this. I've been very public, as many or more than most Americans, about what's going on. But we have a civil service for a reason. We have a bureaucracy, for a reason. You don't want government run like a startup. You want it protected from those sentiments. It's not a startup, it's not allowed to fail and you just create another LLC, another government, try again.
Speaker 2:And that is the ethic of the technocrat, the technologists, the Thiels, the Musks, those folks, and I get that. I disagree with it as a way of running a government, running a government, but I also understand it, because institutions have proven over history they are extremely incapable of reforming themselves. And so that's your last point is really important what can we literally not do without? What are the critical, essential features? And that may give us the tools to understand how to build institutions for the digital age, not for the industrial age. And that's where the academy is going to have to do some really tough decision making, because a lot of what it's doing is not built for this age.
Speaker 1:Well, it was built to resist change. That was intentionally built that way for many good reasons, but we're in a moment now where things are changing so fast that it's going to have to relearn how it responds. Let me ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up what's next for Mike Maduro? What are you looking forward to doing now that? You are off the presidential campaign trail. What are you looking forward to? What does the next year?
Speaker 2:hold for you. It's a great question, this many, many months long look at where I can be most effective in helping what is emerging from this era of what I call the great transformation. I write on my sub stack. If anybody follows on sub stack, I write on these topics weekly. We are entering the digital age. We are transforming our institutions. Some are collapsing, some are emerging, some are transforming. What occurred to me was, in an age of horizontal information flows, when lies move faster than facts, the only thing that matters at this moment is story, the narrative, and so I'm working a lot more on storytelling right now, and what that means is I'm working on a historical novel that talks about. The story is actually about the family rivalry between the Cuervos and the Salsas that created the tequila industry, because I want to tell Mexican history in a way that is not about gangbangers, drug dealers and undocumented immigrants. I want to talk about the entrepreneurs, the titans of industry, the captains of industry and the human stories that created the largest spirits empire in the world.
Speaker 1:Well, that'll be an interesting read.
Speaker 2:Hopefully I can come back on the rant and talk about it.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, Mike, I know you've got a lot going on. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for launching into some of these questions. We really appreciate it. I think it gives our listeners something to think about as they begin to think about how they're going to react over the next several years and how to lead their institutions through this period of uncertainty. All right, well, well, thanks for joining us everybody. You've been listening to my conversation with mike madrid. He's an author, he's a political consultant. Soon he'll be writing his next book, yeah, but in the meantime, check out the latino century. I'll make sure and put information on how to get a hold of the book in the description section of this podcast. If you're watching us on YouTube, hit subscribe, continue to follow us, and if you're listening to us on audio, continue to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining us everybody.
Speaker 2:We'll see you soon, thank you.
