My mother used to tell me you only learn when you listen. I think it was her polite way of getting me to shut up, but it’s good advice even if her ultimate goal was a little quiet in the King family kitchen.
Listening is a lost art in our politics. And, too often, in our political coverage.
Everyday Americans are ignored, or given a quote or soundbite here and there, while most of the attention goes to the ever louder partisan bombast.
Don’t get me wrong – we need to cover what the politicians say. And what their ads say. And fact check it all.
But our All Over the Map project is an attempt to shift the balance a bit. To listen. To learn.
We have been at it 10 months now, and we are learning a ton from voters who are literally all over the map – in every way.
Now, with a presidential debate looming on Thursday and a consequential election heading into the final stretch, we invite you to listen with us – in a way that goes beyond what we can do on television or in written dispatches.
All Over the Map, in podcast form, comes to CNN Audio today, so we can share our voters’ stories in more detail. You can hear people wrestle with their choices and explain the life experiences shaping their politics.
A CNN series that began in Iowa and New Hampshire as the primary season took off now includes voters in South Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Mom was right. You learn when you listen.
My biggest lesson so far: Yes, there are huge differences in polarized America. But voters are not only willing but eager to have the tough conversations many politicians avoid. Most are willing to discuss the compromises politicians refuse to make. Economic anxiety is easy to find, as are doubts about the candidates.
In our first episode, Nikki Haley voters share their thoughts, and their frustrations, with their two choices for president. There are enough supporters of the former South Carolina governor, who ended her GOP primary bid in March, to swing the election – so we wanted to visit a few in battleground Pennsylvania ahead of the first Biden-Trump debate.
You will meet Linda Rooney and Michael Pesce and you will hear the torment of self-identified Reagan Republicans who want their party back from Trump but run afoul of their GOP DNA when they ponder voting to reelect a Democratic president.
It is fascinating to listen to voters who start in the same place but take different turns when staring at the Trump-Biden crossroads.
Rooney, from Media, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs, gives voice to a theme we hear a ton in our travels. She voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
“I’m sad that we only have these two choices honestly,” Rooney told us. “I’m tired of celebrities sort of being in politics. I don’t like Trump, but I have to say we were, for us, personally, we were better off when he was president. I don’t like how he’s so unreliable in some ways. You never know what he’s going to do next. I just want a normal person. Like, I just want someone normal. I don’t want a celebrity, and I don’t have confidence in Biden. So, I feel like I don’t have a choice.”
But she promised to vote, and it is not lost on her that the Pennsylvania winner tends to be the national winner.
Pesce is both part of the generation that changed American politics 40 years ago and the suburban shift that is reshaping our politics today.
He lives in Doylestown, in competitive Bucks County, and, like Rooney, was a Trump voter in 2016 and a Biden voter in 2020.
“I became a Republican when I turned 18 because of Ronald Reagan,” said Pesce, a Coast Guard veteran who works in a meat processing plant. “I’m a Reagan Republican. I like that version of conservatism. I like that version of America. His version of ‘America First.’ That we are the leaders of the free world. We are the leaders of the world military. This is what we stand for. And I’m like, yeah, that’s what I want to be.”
Down the road, we visit one of America’s newest presidential battlegrounds and meet two voters whose 2024 choices – and conversations – are shaped by Biden’s map-changing 2020 win in Georgia.
And we explore the cracks in the Biden coalition that make his reelection math, and map, so challenging. A Palestinian American law school student in Dearborn, Michigan, gives voice to the anger young voters and Arab American voters feel over Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza. A Black entrepreneur in Milwaukee shares his take on the economic decline in neighborhoods that once offered a path to the middle class through factory jobs.
I hope you will consider joining our journey. A few minutes into any voter conversation, you might feel no connection to someone who lives far away from you and perhaps has a very different life experience or political views. My bet, though, is by the end, something will connect you or stir your own thoughts about an issue or the candidates.
We are just a bit over four months to Election Day now, and we know that the race is close, that the third-party candidates make the state-by-state math complicated and that voters who don’t much like either major-party candidate will decide who wins. Maybe you fit in this group. Maybe you are certain about your choice and can’t understand that frustration. I hope you can share a little time with us, and learn by listening.
Episode 1 of the All Over the Map podcast special is now available as part of The Assignment with Audie Cornish, wherever you listen to podcasts.