Primary Elections for All: John Opdycke
MAY 19, 2022
“This country is formed on self-governance.”
John Opdycke is the President of Open Primaries, an organization building a coalition of diverse Americans to enact open primaries in all 50 states. We discuss why it is time to shake up the closed-party primary system.
In an open primary, all voters get to vote on the same ballot and all candidates get to run on the same ballot. The number one growing demographic among voters is independents, and yet, they’re often shut out. Primaries are publicly funded, so every voter no matter their political party affiliation or even without party affiliation–in line with the fundamental core of democracy–should have their vote included. Moreover, in an open system, room is created for new, emerging coalitions and conversations to take place.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: John Opdycke
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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John Opdycke Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Novo for supporting Future Hindsight. Novo is powerfully simple business checking. You're making something new with your business and to support you Novo built a new kind of business checking. Get your free business checking account in just 10 minutes at Novo.co/hopeful.
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Mila Atmos: [00:00:37] And another thing before we get into the meat of the show this month, Future Hindsight is featured in the AAPI Voices category on Stitcher. So I wanted to say a quick thank you to Stitcher and to urge you all to check out some of the other amazing podcasts in the section this month, like the Angry Therapist Podcast and the Unmistakable Creative Podcast.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:03] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos. It's primary season -- and in some places that pretty much means the whole ballgame. We're looking at voting and election reform a lot on the show in this midterm year, and it feels like an opportunity to take stock of the mechanisms of our democracy before the wheels come off. And one of the places we can see the strained mechanisms of our democracy is in the primary system, particularly closed primaries. That's when only registered members of each party can participate in selecting the candidate who will represent them in the general. The system means that somewhere like New York, where I live, the primaries are where the real action is. I live in a blue city, in a big blue state. So deciding who will run on the Democratic ticket is hotly contested and the turnout on Election Day is anemic. So it seems as though close primaries plus dominant party equal less democracy. Today's guest is going to help us look at the opportunities for reform in the primary system by lifting the lid on closed primaries and figuring out what open primaries could mean for how and when you vote. John Opdycke is the president of Open Primaries, which is building a coalition of diverse Americans to enact open primaries in all 50 states. John, thank you for joining us.
John Opdycke: [00:02:34] Hi, Mila. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:37] You're welcome. So to start, I'm wondering if we can talk about the history of closed primaries. Why do we have them? And, you know, where do they come from?
John Opdycke: [00:02:46] Well, primaries themselves were a reform that were enacted mostly during the progressive era 100 years ago, where there was a lot of concern that all the decisions were being made in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms by party bosses, and they would completely control the candidate selection process and the voters. They just came in at the back end and kind of rubber stamped whoever the party leaders had chosen. So primaries were created as a way to get voters involved in the first round, not just the second round. But one of the interesting things is that the parties themselves have actually adapted to the primary system and have used it to keep voters out. So something that was designed to bring the voters in has morphed into something that's designed to silo and control and exclude voters. The history of primaries comes from a real populist upsurge a hundred years ago, and now we need that again.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:50] So basically it was a perversion of the initial reform. And so in what way is it now siloed and essentially preventing people from participating today?
John Opdycke: [00:04:02] Independent voters, voters who don't want to be in any political party, are the largest group of voters in the country. That wasn't true 50 years ago or a hundred years ago. You know, it used to be 90% of Americans felt comfortable being a Democrat or Republican. So the system as currently set up has two main problems. One, it excludes Independents in many states. If you're an independent voter, you're out of luck. You just simply don't get to participate. Two, in other states, it forces voters into a party framework. In that first round of election, they allow Independents to participate, but they still have to choose a party ballot they can only choose from among the Democratic candidates or the Republican candidates. And a lot of independents and a lot of voters don't like that because they want to choose from all the candidates. They might like a Democrat for this office, a third party candidate for another office, a Republican for a different office. So even if they do participate, they're involved in a
party contest as opposed to, "hey, let's look at all the candidates, see which ones I like, and I want to move from round one to round two."
Mila Atmos: [00:05:11] Right. Right. First of all, I think one thing is basically voter suppression, because if you're an Independent, for example, in New York, it's very clear you're not even participating. You're not showing up at all. Right. You know, basically, if you're a Democrat, you can vote in the primary. And like I said in the introduction, that's where the race really is. And then come Election Day, nobody shows up. And that's no surprise. You know, we had Art Chang on a few weeks ago and we went over the voter turnout and it was something like 23% in the general election on Election Day. And it's like it's just an abomination. It's terrible for democracy. When we're talking about having closed primaries, what are the wider implications?
John Opdycke: [00:05:52] Well, it's two fold. Entrenched kind of interparty warfare that really doesn't have much to do with solving the cutting edge problems that people are facing in this country, which are very deep and very severe. So opening things up, it simply creates possibility. Now, does all that possibility get realized? Of course not. Are there squandered opportunities? Are there terrible campaigns in open primary systems? Yes. On the voter side, you get lower and lower turnout, lower and lower participation, and Independents are just excluded. On the governing side, you get elected officials that are more and more attuned to small bands of partisan voters that live in their district, the party faithful, the activists. And that's who they gear their campaign to and that's who they listen to. So when they go to the state legislature or to Congress, they're not really focused on "what are my constituents' need?" They're focused on the 5% of my constituents who vote every year in primaries, which are the only voters that matter to me. What do they want? And that leads to legislators, lawmakers that have a whole crazy set of incentives. And they don't end up governing for the American people. They end up governing four-party factions. That is a recipe for no innovation, no kind of cross- party policymaking. It's a recipe for stagnation. But I really think given so much of what's going on, given the gerrymandering, given the lack of competition in the general election. It's not just New York. I mean, 85% of elected officials in this country digging in, protecting your side, protecting your turf, but not really thinking creatively about how do we move the country forward on so many issues economic, social, cultural, political, you name it.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:59] It also, I think, makes it almost impossible for these politicians to be accountable because they're not thinking about their constituents at all, at large. They're only thinking about the people who will elect them. But what about, you know, you talked about how some of the fringe elements come out and really drive the agenda for those people. What about if you're being, you know, primaried from your extreme flank? So, for example, Ken Paxton right now is being challenged from the right in Texas. Right. And so, you know, these hyper engaged and sometimes pretty extreme bases, they have so much influence. What can open primaries do to help with this issue?
John Opdycke: [00:08:40] Well, you know, I mean, something I like to talk about is that there's no reform, including open primaries, which I work on, which is like flipping a switch. Meaning if you go from closed to open, you go from bad results to good results. All kinds of outcomes are possible in any system good, bad, and ugly. I think the reason that I'm so passionate about changing the primary system is that in an open system you create some breathing room, some oxygen for some new emerging types of coalitions and conversations to take place.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:19] Definitely. I agree. I think it makes working together possible and so it creates this open sphere to talk about the issues in a way that is beyond partisanship, but really about solving the problems. But when we talk about open primaries, define how you understand open primaries. So just everybody's on the same page.
John Opdycke: [00:09:36] Yeah, I purposely like to keep it vague because it gets people to ask that question "What do you mean by an open primary?" So it means a lot of different things. I think the the kind of the gold standard is a primary that is not controlled by the parties. So when we think primary, we're kind of brainwashed into thinking, "oh, that's a Democratic primary or a Republican primary. And what that election is, is to choose which Democrat and which Republican go on to the general election." A nonpartisan primary is not that at all. It's an election in which all the voters get to vote and all the candidates run. Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, you name it, they're all on the same ballot. And the voters, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Third Party, they all get the same ballot. They vote for whoever they want. In California, Washington and Nebraska, the top two vote getters go
from the primary to the general election regardless of party. So sometimes you end up with two Republicans facing off or two Democrats. More often than not, you get a Democrat versus a Republican because they're the two big teams. In Alaska, the top four vote getters go from the primary to the general election and then they use ranked choice voting in the general election to determine the winner. So there's different ways to do a nonpartisan primary. The big change is that they're no longer party primaries, they're public primaries. They're about giving the voters and the candidates maximum freedom, maximal opportunity to vote for who they want, campaign to, who they want, and not be kind of tied into these party silos in the first part of the election season.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:27] I haven't thought about it that way, and it sounds like a lot of states are already doing some innovative work here between California and Alaska. I'm actually really interested in Alaska because it does ranked choice voting at the end with four candidates. Right. I'm really surprised that it's coming out of Alaska of all places, because, you know.
John Opdycke: [00:11:44] Well, I mean, Alaska had a blanket open primary for 50 years and then it got ruled unconstitutional.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:50] What is that? What's a blanket?
John Opdycke: [00:11:51] The blanket open primary was a system they had in California, Washington, and Alaska, and it got ruled unconstitutional. What it was is it kept the party primary system. So there'll still be a Democratic primary and a Republican primary. But voters could flip flop, they could go back and forth. They could vote in the Democratic primary for assembly, the Republican primary for Senate, the Democratic primary for, you know, Congress. And that got ruled unconstitutional.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:20] Why is it unconstitutional?
John Opdycke: [00:12:22] Well, the parties argued all the way to the Supreme Court, and they won that. If the purpose of a primary is to choose the nominee of that party, then the party has the right to determine who can and can't vote in that election. And they won that. Right. That's why we've gone to nonpartisan primaries, because the
purpose of these primaries is no longer to select a party nominee. It's to select who are the most popular candidates.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:50] Right. Yeah, that makes sense. John Opdycke: [00:12:51] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:51] Thanks for explaining that. John Opdycke: [00:12:52] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:52] So if they run in so many different ways in different states, how can we think about that in terms of getting the best results, election to election?
John Opdycke: [00:13:02] Well, I really think that the current system, there is some form of party primary in 46 of the 50 states. The parties, they argue, "hey, these are party elections. Only party members should be eligible to vote in those elections." And there's logic to that. It makes sense if you're having an election at the Elks Club to determine your secretary and president, you only want Elks voting. You don't want Rotarians or Kiwanis coming by. The problem is that the parties, they say these are private elections, but then they ask the taxpayers to fund them and the government to administer them. So this is a is a, it's a design flaw. And I think part of what the impetus is around the country and people are experimenting with different models is these are public elections. The public should be able to vote in them. People that don't want to join a party should be able to vote in them. People that want to join a party but maybe want to vote for a candidate outside their party should be able to do that. And I really think the evidence is out there that if you stick with an old party-oriented system, you're going to continue to get party oriented government. And people have different opinions on this. I think that that might have worked very well 50 years ago. It's not working today.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:31] Right. Yeah, I agree. It's not working today. And I think that's very well put. If you continue to invest in the same system, you're going to get the same outcomes. Like if you're not changing your behavior, you're not going to get new outcomes.
John Opdycke: [00:14:42] Yeah. And look, there's an argument you could make. You could say the parties, the Democrats and Republicans have done a great job at kind of adding some order and some stability to the chaos of American political life. We're a diverse country. We're a big country. You could make the argument that 50 years ago the Democrats and Republicans created a process by which ideas that came from the fringe could be integrated into the mainstream of American political life, and that the parties presided over that process in a healthy and growth full and stable way. I don't happen to agree with that argument, but you could make that argument. But you can't look at American politics today and say the parties are playing a positive, stabilizing, productive role. They're doing the exact opposite. They're turning every issue into a political football designed to divide voters and drive wedges between people. They take issues that are very solvable, like immigration, and they make sure they never get solved because they want to keep raising millions of dollars and ginning up voters against each other. They want to keep these issues like hot button issues. And meanwhile, so much of the business of the country just doesn't get attended to. So I think part of the subtext of reforming the primary system is forcing a conversation about the role the parties play in controlling every aspect of political life in this country. It's a conversation whose time has come.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:19] We're going to take a brief break to thank our sponsors. And when we come back, John is going to tell us about how open primaries can unleash the power of one of the largest, most overlooked groups of people in the U.S... that's after these messages.
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Mila Atmos: [00:20:15] I mean, you're basically saying that this is an opportunity to re- seed democracy right here in the United States?
John Opdycke: [00:20:21] I think so.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:21] You're talking about partisanship here. You're personally a really long way from a so-called hyper engaged base. In fact, you're an Independent. At
the same time, though, you have been engaged in politics for the last 25 years, which is kind of surprising to me, certainly. So I'm really interested in how being an Independent influences your activism.
John Opdycke: [00:20:46] Yeah. I mean, to me, independence is part of the DNA of this country. I mean, we did sign a Declaration of Independence to kind of way back when... I really think that the impulse towards independence that... You know, Independents are the fastest growing segment of the electorate. This is not a handful of people. This is millions of voters are leaving the parties and millions of 18-year olds are registering as Independents. I think first and foremost, it is a statement of non- compliance. It's simply saying, I'm not going to join a team. I'm not going to play politics by this Sharks-versus-Jets set of rules. And you look deeper at that. ASU just did a study, for example, of the social media habits of Independents. They're very different than Democrats and Republicans. Independents build social networks that are more heterodox. They like to have conservatives and liberals and libertarians and Greens and progressive Socialists. They like to have different people in their ears and in their conversations. That's how I think about Independents. It's saying, I want to move the country forward. I want to move the world forward. There's things I care deeply about. I'm not in the middle of the Democrats and Republicans. I'm a citizen who wants to make improvements and deal with some of the things about our country that I find very ugly. And I don't care where those solutions come from, I don't care their pedigree. In fact, the weirder, the better. And I think, unfortunately, the Democrats and Republicans as institutions -- I'm not talking about individuals -- as institutions they are more interested in maintaining their own turf than they are solving the problems of this country.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:43] Yeah, I think there's definitely some truth in that. And of course there's a wide spectrum. I mean, I think there are some people on both sides across the entire spectrum who are really invested in solving problems and some who are really just invested in keeping power and, you know, making the most of that.
John Opdycke: [00:22:58] And it's hard to be an Independent. It's very hard in so many ways. The media and pollsters, they oftentimes say there is no such thing as an Independent. This happens all the time. They'll do a poll and they'll ask voters, "how do you identify Democrat, Republican or Independent?" And the voter will say
"Independent." About 45% will say, I'm an Independent. And then they'll say, "okay, you're an independent. But which party do you lean towards? Do you lean Democrat or lean Republican?" And voters are like, "Well, I guess in the last election I voted Democrat. So I guess I lean Democrat because they're polite, you know." And then the pollsters use this to basically say that 90% of the country is Democrat and Democrat leaners and Republicans and Republican leaners. And there's only this little grouping of irrelevant Independents in the middle. But it's a complete distortion. They force Independents to join a team in order to be included in these poll numbers. Independent candidates are shut out of the presidential debates. Independent voters are not... You know, if you're if you're an Independent in New York, you can't even be a poll worker. It's illegal.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:16] What?
John Opdycke: [00:24:16] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:17] Sorry, explain that.
John Opdycke: [00:24:17] Okay. There's a law in New York and about 30 other states that says if you want to be a poll worker, an election judge, if you want to be on the board of elections, if you want to be a poll watcher, you want to be one of those people that just checks you in at the poll and get paid $200 a day. By law, you have to be a member of the Democratic or Republican Party. That's the law. So you could say, "oh, okay, what's the big deal?" Well, the big deal is that every other democracy in the world, every one has a firewall, a moat between the people who are competing to be elected to run the government and the people that run the elections. Those are not the same people. You can't put the Yankees in charge of hiring the umpires for Yankee Stadium. It just doesn't work that way. It's unfair and Americans inherently get this. But in our democracy, we let the Democrats and Republicans run every aspect of our election process federal, state, local dogcatcher to president. It's completely partisan. And that makes it hard to be someone who isn't in compliance with that framework. And yet 40% of the country is saying, I don't want to be a part of that.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:40] Mm hmm. Yeah. I think it's really fascinating that Independents are an increasing number of people, an increasing number of voters here in America.
And the way that you put it, I guess people are not really familiar with the fact that the parties run the elections.
John Opdycke: [00:25:57] Nobody knows about it.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:57] Right. It's a, it's obscured because we've been doing it for so long and nobody talks about it. So I have a question about your engagement on primaries. Why is this in particular the issue that you've taken up to pursue to reform? Because there are a bunch of other things you could be doing, like campaign finance or voter registration. So why primaries?
John Opdycke: [00:26:18] It is an opportunity to create a conversation about two things that matter to me and that I think are very important. One, is the second class status of independent voters. And two, is the role the political parties play in running our election system. Rather than just talk about it abstractly and in kind of big general terms, when you talk about it like that, people kind of glaze over and it's just too big. But if you talk about publicly funded elections in which people that don't join a private organization can't vote in, people get that. When you talk about how the parties run the primaries, people get that. And so the process of organizing open primaries, campaigns, education efforts, litigation legislation, ballot referendums involving people in those conversations, in my mind, is a developmental opportunity to look at this broader picture and look at these two trends that are crucial. If independence could be more recognized as a force, as a voice, that would be very good for our country. So that's why I work on it. And I also think it's an immediate problem in that it ties the hands of elected officials. To have to get elected in a closed system, most people that run for office, you know, they're not Dr. Evils who want to control the world. They're just people that want to, whether they're liberal or conservative or somewhere in between, they want to make a difference in their community and to have to run in a closed system is just awful. I can't tell you how many politicians and candidates I've spoken to that just described the process of running for office in a closed party primary system as completely antithetical to kind of building a broad coalition for progress. It's just the exact opposite of that.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:26] Right. Right. In a closed primary, of course, you're always going to get pitted to the person who's most extreme in your party. And very often, of course, in these scenarios, it's the most extreme people of your party who turn out to vote. And
then elect the people who are the most extreme, before they get to the general. So but actually, I'm really surprised to hear that people have complained about it, meaning candidates themselves.
John Opdycke: [00:28:53] Oh, yeah. No, I, I, I had this conversation with David Holt just a couple of weeks ago. He's the mayor of Oklahoma City. And Oklahoma City has a nonpartisan system. So he ran for mayor as a Republican in a non-partisan, open primary system and was able to go out and talk to Independents, Democrats, you know, and he won with 65% of the vote. But before he was the mayor, he was a state senator. And Oklahoma has a closed primary system to get elected to the state legislature. So he's run for office in a closed system and an open system. And he said in the closed system, he's like, "the only people I could talk to were Republican primary voters. I couldn't talk to the Independents. I couldn't talk to the Democrats. I have to spend my day making phone calls, going to events only designed to talk to this small group of voters." And he said "it's not right because there's all these people I'm leaving out." And also he's like, "I'm a Republican, but I want to represent all the people in my district. I don't want to ignore them or negate them. And a closed system doesn't allow you to do that." Whereas in Oklahoma City, he's able to run a campaign and reach out to everybody. As a Republican, he's marching with the marchers who are protesting as part of Black Lives Matter because he wants to engage in a productive conversation in Oklahoma City about police brutality and under-development. And he can do that because he's not tied into this kind of party controlled system.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:30] Mm hmm. Fascinating.
John Opdycke: [00:30:31] But it's not just David. A whole lot of politicians, off the
record, will talk very eloquently about how terrible it is to run in a closed primary system. Mila Atmos: [00:30:45] I'm actually so surprised that Oklahoma has both.
John Opdycke: [00:30:49] Oh yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:51] That sounds weird.
John Opdycke: [00:30:51] Most cities in the country have some form of a nonpartisan election. It's only a handful of cities like New York, like Philadelphia, that still use a partisan system for local elected officials. The norm, 85% of the cities in this country, it's some form of nonpartisan system.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:09] Interesting. Well, that's very encouraging. But so I have a question about the problems with open primaries, because one of the things that people say, of course, is that you can manipulate that. Right? Like so they do this in Texas I know, where Democrats will vote for Republicans in the primary so that they get to, quote unquote, influence who's going to end up being the candidate for the opposing team. And so, what do you say to that?
John Opdycke: [00:31:36] Well, I mean, that's a good argument for getting rid of party primaries in some ways. If you just have a public primary, there's no more opportunities for quote unquote manipulation because everybody gets the same ballot and they can vote for whoever they want. I tend to be a bit suspicious of arguments about voter manipulation. Because I think there's no legitimate way to vote. Or illegitimate way to vote. It's your vote. If you want to use your vote to vote against someone you know or do this or do that, what part of the Constitution says you can't use your vote in that way? I think voters should be able to vote in any way they want, either writing in Mickey Mouse or voting against somebody they don't like or voting for their favorite candidate. I don't think one is bad and one is good.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:29] Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So what are two things an everyday citizen can do to advance the cause of open primaries to make sure that it gets adopted in their states and their cities?
John Opdycke: [00:32:39] Well, I have a crazy idea. I mean, there's the easy ideas. Go to our website: Openprimaries.org. Sign up. We're working on state campaigns in about 15 states and we have lots of ways for people to get involved from writing letters to the editor to circulating petitions, to contacting their legislators, lots of things. So go to our website and we'll get you plugged in. But here's my crazy idea. I think something our country needs is a national network of democracy, clubs of local clubs that get together once a month. And they talk about "what can we do to innovate in our political system here in Abilene or here in Burlington or here in.. ?" And you can look at local elections,
state elections, federal elections, the whole thing, not to focus on a specific reform, not to be an open primaries club, but to really look at, "hey, there is a a certain amount of responsibility that comes from self-governance, and this country is formed on self- governance and our muscles are flabby" because and again, I think this is one reason I'm an Independent. I think the Democrats and Republicans make us flabby. They basically say we'll handle politics. All you have to do is show up and vote. I think being a citizen means working a certain type of muscle on a regular basis. And if we had democracy clubs all over the country that were meeting, debating, interacting with politicians and journalists, talking about a wide range of reforms, structural reforms, changes. If we had hundreds of those all over the country, it would dramatically change the conversation about how we're going to reinvent and continue to develop our democracy. So I would hope that a handful of your listeners take this opportunity to say, okay, I'm going to form a democracy club, I'm going to email some friends, we're going to get a couple of bottles of nice Napa cab, and we're going to hang out and we're going to think about what this would mean and create this. That's my challenge to your listeners.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:52] Oh, I like it.
John Opdycke: [00:34:53] Form a democracy club and then email me and let me know
how it's going.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:56] Yeah. I mean, we're hoping, of course, with this podcast that everybody who listens is inspired to get engaged in whatever way possible. And this is a great idea, is to form a club, get together and discuss what's possible, what they want to achieve, band together. I mean, after all, politics is for power, right? It's to make change, to tackle the issues that lie before us, together.
John Opdycke: [00:35:18] Yeah. And there's so much about American politics that's shrouded in myth. Like I was just doing it an analysis. I couldn't believe this was true. It literally was... It's to me... It seems so antithetical to the country, which is looking at Massachusetts. In Massachusetts. 70% of the members of the legislature in 2020 ran unopposed. They had no candidate on the ballot against them. I was just like, "How? How did that happen? How do you get a situation in the cradle of democracy, Massachusetts, where you now have basically these uncontested elections where the
Democrats control this part of the state? The Republicans control this part of the state." And that's that's how it is. I think those are the kind of symptoms of -- it's not corruption - - it's just kind of like rust. It's just brittle. It's old. It hasn't been renewed. And we, the citizens have to do that. The politicians are not going to do that. The parties are not going to do that. We the people have to find ways to say our democracy is our heritage. It's one of our biggest strengths as a country. Let's keep building it and growing it and not rest on our laurels that, "oh, we're better than Russia." That's a pretty low bar in my in my opinion.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:46] Totally agree. I totally agree. So you are an incredibly enthusiastic and hopeful person. As we're closing out this interview, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
John Opdycke: [00:36:58] I mean, a lot. I've seen a huge shift in just the last two years from a variety of people, from billionaires that I talked to, to high school students. Where there is a certain kind of attitude that this thing is not going to fix itself. That the great democracy ship USS America isn't just sailing by itself across the ocean, that it requires some maintenance and some participation. And I think I feel very excited about that. It's not, it hasn't kind of like crested into a full blown democracy populist conversation in the country. But there's been a shift in attitude from, "hey, we're America. I mean, you know, this is the best democracy in the world. What are you talking about" to "Yeah, there are some things here I've got to get educated on. I've got to figure out. I got to talk to people about. I got to do something about this because something seems wrong." And I think my challenge, my colleagues' challenge, other people's challenge is how to work with that in ways that give it the most possibility of having some positive impact. There has been a shift in this country in the last couple of years. That's very exciting.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:23] I agree. I think there is a shift and and I hope it continues to build to your point and that we can reconstruct, rebuild, our democracy and make it stronger. Thanks so much, John, for joining us on Future Hindsight.
John Opdycke: [00:38:35] Thank you, Mila. It was great to be here.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:38] John Opdycke is the president of Open Primaries.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:46] Next week on Future Hindsight, I'll be joined by Andrea Miller. She's the president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health. As we await the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, which if Justice Sam Alito's leaked opinion is anything to go by, will overturn Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion. I'll be asking Andrea how we got here and how we can prepare for the unwelcome reality of a post-Roe America. That's next week on Future Hindsight.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:16] This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sara Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:39:32] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.