The Purple Principle

Happy Thanksgiving from The Purple Principle team! This week we’re revisiting an episode from November 2021.  In the aftermath of another fractious election season, and heading into the holiday season, it feels appropriate to bring psychologist Tania Israel back into the feed. She explains the active listening methods we need to have genuine conversations across the political divide and across the...

The 2022 election will consume us over the coming days, weeks, and months. There will likely be recounts, runoffs and court challenges before a new Congress takes shape.  This Purple Principle episode highlights concerns surrounding this election, with many GOP candidates questioning election integrity, while providing context and perspective from a variety of guests.  For Sarah Longwell of the Re...

Alaska will soon be the first state in the country to hold a ranked choice voting election for all representatives, state and federal. But can RCV moderate our severely polarized politics? If the August special election and current congressional campaign are any guide, the answer is a hearty, “Maybe.”  That’s according to Matt Buxton, editor of the Alaskan political blog The Midnight Sun and co-ho...

TPP wraps up its series on Hispanic American Swing Voters with three very different yet highly insightful guests. Northwestern University historian Geraldo Cadava tells us that both parties have spun overly-simplistic narratives of the Hispanic voter – a mythical concept in his view.  Carlos Mencia has always been an iconoclast aiming satire in all directions. He reflects on his immigrant childhoo...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey How large a role will Hispanic voters play in 2022 elections? (Hint: It’s big.)  How are the major parties appealing to this diverse voting bloc? (Not so effectively.) Can Latino candidates turn down the heat on our political rhetoric? (No sign of that yet.) In the 2nd ep...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Today, we're re-podcasting the first episode of our 3-part mini-series on Hispanic American swing voters. The series continues into October for National Hispanic Heritage Month. Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That’s the...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here for our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Massachusetts has long been a bipartisan enigma at the state level, electing moderate GOP governors for 30 of the past 60 years while seating a Democratic legislature. But the governor’s office is expected to revert to Democrats in 2022 and beyond. In our second MA episode, we...

“There are all kinds of ways in which we, as a community, enable the American story,” says Deval Patrick, implying that our success stories overemphasize the individual.   Patrick’s own American story is a remarkable one, starting in a tough South Chicago neighborhood, journeying to a planet called boarding school, then onto Harvard and a distinguished legal career, before two terms as Governor. ...

Fluent Knowledge, producers of The Purple Principle (TPP), have a new podcast in the health, wellness and medicine realm, My Body Odyssey (MBO). With TPP staff on summer break, we’re introducing TPP listeners to MBO with our second episode, featuring IronWoman Diane.  Imagine taking on a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile cycle, and then a 26.2 mile run. And in a single day, not a week or a mon...

In our continuing state series, TPP visits the state with the highest percentage of non-partisan voters (58%): vast and varied Alaska. On August 16, 2022, for the first time in the US, Alaskans will use the final four voting system, which combines a unified open primary with ranked choice voting in the general election. Our special guests for this episode, each interviewed by TPP Reporter Dylan Ni...

This week we revisit an episode from 2020, adding some fresh questions and analysis on its lessons in GOP history from a 2022 perspective. Is Donald Trump losing his populist grip on the Republican Party after 6 long years, a failed re-election, a failed campaign to reverse that result, and the January 6 insurrection?  According to recent polls, critical editorials from The New York Post and Wall...

On this second episode featuring great American independents, The Purple Principle sits down with Andrew Heaton, political satirist, author, podcast host and small “l” libertarian. “I’m a temperamental moderate who wants to help people,” Heaton confides, “but thinks government is not very effective at it.”  Heaton also describes the origins of his dual career track, working as a Capitol Hill Staff...

The Purple Principle celebrates July 4th with its first episode in a miniseries on America’s great independent voices. Amy Chua, known for her bestselling Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is a Yale law professor and author of Political Tribes. “Every group feels attacked, pitted against other groups not just for jobs and spoils, but for the right to define the nation’s identity. In these condition...

The Purple Principle completes its three-episode tour of the great state of California with three uniquely positioned viewpoints on the Golden State. First, Leon Panetta, former Cabinet Secretary and nine-term US Congress member, who questions the one party mindset of Democratic governance in Sacramento and the rightward populist tilt of the California GOP.  Our second guest, former State Assembly...

If California progressives were tortillas, they’d be delicious but expensive and inaccessible; establishment Democratic tortillas would be ubiquitous, if not so tasty; and Republican tortillas would be pretty tasteless…  Is this any way to understand California politics? It is when speaking with LA Times columnist, author and frequent tortilla contest judge, Gustavo Arellano. In discussion with ho...

“I always point out to people that California is still a two-party state,” says Dan Schnur, former independent candidate for Secretary of State. “It just so happens they're both Democratic parties.” So starts a series of TPP episodes on our largest and bluest of states this primary season. Schnur’s outline of factions within Democratic Party are all the more vital, as are the economic insights of...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey All political roads lead to Georgia these days. The Peach State was so pivotal in the 2020 election of Joe Biden and the 2021 runoff election of two Democratic senators. Georgia’s again on our minds in 2022 as Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That’s the operative question in this first episode on Hispanic swing voters, featuring three noted experts: former Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo, UT San Antonio political scientist D...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Our TPP guest this episode, Mónica Guzmán of Braver Angels, is a fascinating conversationalist who knows how to stop a conversation, particularly among blue-leaning Seattle friends discussing politics. Guzmán merely mentions that her Mexican immigrant parents avidly suppo...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle?: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey The Purple Principle brings its seven-part series on politics and identity in the already huge, yet fast-growing Lone Star State to conclusion with a guided tour of key insights from our notable “Texperts” in all six episodes.  Is our nation’s red vs blue infighting eroding what was once a more distinctive, cohesive...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Purple Principle listeners know these not so United States need a new political operating system. But who’s going to code it? Based on a great new book, American Reboot (just out from Simon & Schuster), and our TPP conversation, it’s clear former three-term, centrist Tex...

Our special guests for this fifth episode on Lone Star State identity are two authors with Texas-sized reputations: Lawrence Wright (The Looming Tower, God Save Texas) and Stephen Harrigan (The Gates of the Alamo, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas).   Wright, a New Yorker staff writer, wastes no time in spinning around our hypothesis that polarized national politics might erode that rather f...

The Purple Principle is visiting the Lone Star State throughout the month of March 2022 and wondering if the famously strong Texas identity is holding up under the powerful forces of red vs. blue throughout our nation. In Polarized Politics & Hispanic Identity, we focus the discussion on Hispanic Texans and, particularly, the large Tejano community (Texans of Mexican descent) in South Texas.   Two...

Is democracy still democracy when one party wins all the elections? That’s a question we’ll be asking around the country on our state-level identity and polarization series, since 37 state “trifectas,” or one-party governments, are now in office. It’s also a major point of discussion with Dr. James Henson, Director of The Texas Politics Project, in our third episode on the biggest and proudest of...

Texas has long had one of the most powerful and vocal identities of any American state. But how’s that unique Texas pride faring under the homogenizing power of polarization? In this TPP episode, Strongest Identity of Them Y’all, Texas Monthly Editor-in-Chief Dan Goodgame argues that the social and cultural identities of Texans writ large remain intact despite zero-sum maneuverings of Texas politi...