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Some thoughts on trust and politics [1]

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Date: 2025-03-20

This diary is an expansion of a comment under "Will the Dem Establishment Ever Get It?" regarding the current lack of trust in the Democrats by the voting population, including a significant portion of their own “base” voters. Specifically, it is my personal take on what would be needed in order to rebuild that trust, which is the only way that they are ever going to wield power more than four years in a row (and quite probably the only way to get more than two, given how midterms have traditionally swung against whomever holds the Presidency at the time). Because my experience in talking to voters of a variety of stripes lines up pretty much perfectly with what polling has said for years now: voters not only don’t trust politicians, they are actively and energetically angry at them.

If you want proof of this, I offer you the evidence of your own eyes, twofold: the levels of rage displayed at recent town halls held by the R party and the levels of anger expressed both in the media and here on DKos about Schumer’s choices around the CR. On the latter, you don’t have to agree that he was wrong, or even think that the anger is justified, to be able to observe that it exists — which is the only aspect that I’m leaning on here.

So, on to the meat of the subject…

My experience in dealing with customers across multiple different industries, who were pretty much invariably in a very upset state at the time (due to the nature of “when I get called in” this is almost guaranteed to be true) is that what they really want is almost universally the same three things:

First, they want to feel heard. This does first mean being heard — they can tell when you aren’t listening — but that alone isn’t enough. You have to be reactive while listening, and ideally demonstrate (hell, for that matter check) that you are correctly hearing their concerns. “Okay, so I think I have a handle on what is going on, but can I say it back to you just to be sure I’m not missing parts of it?” and similar techniques come into play here. If you think this is silly or pointless, I will simply direct you to the current work being done by AOC and Bernie. Thousands of people, each time, care enough about feeling heard that they’re showing up. And to anyone even remotely familiar with human psychology, this should really be on the “well, duh” level. But it bears saying, because statements like “they’re listening to their corporate donors” are saying something else implicitly: “they aren’t listening to me”.

Second, they want to be reassured that you can fix it… or at the very least that you can contribute concretely to getting it fixed. There is a delicate balance here, though — if already upset, they are going to be hyper-alert for any signs that you might not be competent / capable of doing so, and it is actually fairly crucial that this be handled delicately and potential escalations defused at this point. Setting expectations is crucial, and this is going to be harder in politics than it is in a technical context. This is actually a place where either social skills (on a person-to-person level) or rhetorical skills (on a person-to-group level) come into play heavily. The fact that I have a deep voice and can hit a “firm but not harsh” inflection is incredibly useful here, because humans tend to respond to that as a signal of authority; it takes some practice to get the mix right, but “All right, sir. I want to be up front with you: it may or may not actually be possible to fix this specifically in that way, depending on what we find. What I can promise you is that we can dig through what is happening and figure out what is going on, whether we can fix it that way, and if not why not and what alternatives are available, and we can work through it with you until we get the situation resolved.” But it is absolutely crucial to understand that you are making a promise here, and to have any credibility, you must follow through on it . You need to not promise something that you are not willing to stake your reputation on, because if you fail and offer excuses, they aren’t going to forgive you, they’re going to feel betrayed… and rightfully so, because you weren’t honest with them.

Third, yes, they do want it actually fixed… or at least for the situation to be resolved positively, where “fixed” is normally the hoped-for outcome. Here, I do have the advantage of being senior enough that if someone has called me into play, chances are good that the company executives are already in the loop. More stress for me, yes, but it also means that I know that if I need to call on a resource that we have, chances are extremely good that the resource will be made available as long as I can make a solid case for the need. On the other hand, sometimes it literally isn’t possible to fix something the way that they’re requesting, even if that seems like an absolutely obvious “but it worked yesterday!” thing. They key here is a combination of “actually doing the work” and “a particular form of transparency”. And sometimes the full fix is going to take a while and you need to be able to show them concrete progress in the interim. You need to treat them, in business terms, as invested stakeholders — they have invested their trust in you, and quite probably taken a risk on you being able to help them, and they need to see that was the right risk to take.

There is much more to be said, and I’ve tried four times to expand on this, but it keeps diverging into the myriad of other associated topics. So I think I need to leave it at this, for now. But it can all be boiled down to three things that are profoundly simple, in essence, if not easy: listen and understand, in a way that they perceive; convince them that you can and should be trusted, and fulfill that trust .

Voters are angry because they feel betrayed. Not just by the Democrats, or even just both parties, by by the entire system. And really… is that irrational? We’re told the economy is doing great, yet at the same time we’re told that we get the highest costs and worst health outcomes of any Western country, and that starting after the boomers each successive generation is doing measurably worse, in terms of their economic position, than the one before it. The system never promised paradise, but the idea was that it was supposed to always promise a “fair go” to anyone. I am well aware that it failed to live up to that — but by the same token, is it then a surprise that the bitterness of feeling betrayed by that is now visible across the board, since it doesn’t seem to be delivering on that promise to much of anyone, now?

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/20/2311401/-Some-thoughts-on-trust-and-politics?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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