Sharon McMahon, America's government teacher, author of the number one New York Times bestseller The Small and the Mighty, and one of the most effective science communicators working right now, just on the government side joins us today. She makes the case for what types of people should run for office.

The bulk of our conversation is about something I see constantly in healthcare comments: learned helplessness, the feeling that the system is too broken and too big and too entrenched to ever get better. Sharon's reframe is the one I needed to hear, this is not a volcano, it's a human-constructed system, and the abolitionists and the suffragists and the civil rights organizers all felt exactly as hopeless as we do, and they kept working anyway.

We get into the Overton window, the range of what's currently politically possible, and why universal healthcare isn't in it federally right now, but state-by-state Medicaid expansion absolutely is, and why states function as "democracy laboratories" that can shift the national window over time. Sharon walks me through how to actually get a meeting with your representative, why joining your state medical society or specialty organization matters more than being one annoyed person on the internet, and how Emily Calandrelli got a federal law passed protecting nursing mothers at airport security just by having a big platform and a specific senator. We also cover the filibuster, the Electoral College (winner-take-all was never in the Constitution), the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, gerrymandering's embarrassing etymological origin, and Great Lakes shipping facts that Sharon would absolutely use to fill 24 hours on the Senate floor. My government teacher was a football coach. I am now remediated.

Takeaways:

• Learned helplessness is the biggest obstacle to healthcare reform.

• The Overton window explains why federal universal healthcare feels impossible right now, but state-level progress doesn't .

• The most effective way to get a meeting with your representative is to call their district office, not their DC office.

• Joining a professional advocacy organization multiplies your impact dramatically.

• The filibuster is a Senate-only procedural rule that started as an accident.

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Want more Sharon McMahon?

@sharonsaysso

http://www.thepreamble.com

http://www.sharonmcmahon.com

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