“No One in D.C. Cares What I Think”
In Episode 2, we check in with Lanae Erickson Hatalsky about Third Way’s post-2016 “listening tour” to hear what they found.
After the 2016 presidential election, Lanae Erickson Hatalsky and her colleagues at Third Way committed to getting out of Washington and truly listening to people across the country. That led to a “listening tour” of seven communities in districts that “split their tickets” between either Hillary Clinton and a down-ballot Republican or Donald Trump and a down-ballot Democrat in 2016.
Lanae and her team found Americans of all stripes eager to talk about their lives and their communities. They also realized how different the daily conversation in D.C. is from what people think about every day: uncertainty over paying their bills and the opportunity to earn a good life.
Lanae recaps the big issues on people’s minds—like the “concentration of opportunity” in specific areas and among those with specific credentials—and offers advice for communicating with a broader cross-section of Americans. For example, people are overwhelmingly proud of their communities and love where they live — and resent the suggestion that they abandon those places in search of opportunity.
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