Messaging Without Emotion or Risk = Political Failure — Saeed Mousavi

Pollster and strategist Saeed Mousavi joins The Campaign Strategist to explain why Democrats are losing emotional traction—and what it takes to reconnect. From risk-averse messaging to outdated research models, Saeed makes the case for a new, emotionally resonant strategy built for today’s media landscape.

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Transcript

Saeed Mousavi

Pete: [00:00:00] hello and welcome back to the Campaign strategist. My guest today is Saeed Moussavi, a data scientist, pollster, and communication strategist whose work sits at the intersection of analytics, public opinion, and political influence.

Saeed helps shape campaign strategy by translating data into actionable insight he led integrated analytics at the award-winning Zeno group, working with Fortune 500 brands and issue advocacy campaigns alike to refine their message and reach.

He's also taught international politics and he brings a global perspective. Informed by fluency in several languages and a background in both international relations and engineering. Today we're digging into the changing communications environment, how it's reshaping campaigns, why traditional outreach is falling short, and what it takes to connect with voters who aren't tuning into the news, but are definitely hearing from the right.

Saeed. Welcome to the campaign strategist.

Saeed: introduction I've ever been given in my life. How are you, my friend?

Pete: We aim for a high [00:01:00] degree of professionalism on this show. I'm doing pretty well, doing well. That's a question you have to answer with a high degree of compartmentalization these days. So yeah, aside from everything going on in the sphere of politics and Trump,

Saeed: in

Pete: yeah, things are good.

Saeed: summit. How was that?

Pete: Yeah. It was great. Lots of fascinating discussions, some of which have fueled my thinking and part of the, some of the stuff that I wanted to talk to you about and get your reaction to some of what we heard. How are you?

Saeed: I think it's been very busy few months. Just try to figure out the new political environment and landscape and and actually I've done on professional side and personal side, a lot of, recent research public opinion and where we stand and have been doing a lot of thinking since November. And yeah I'm having very honest and raw conversations on our side [00:02:00] and in general with a lot of different people. And I, I was excited about this conversation.

Pete: Great. Before we jump into that, tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got into this work.

Saeed: Along the story I actually think this is an important part of my story. I. I, I was I was born and raised in, in a country that right now we as Americans don't have a good relationship with, that's a country Iran, and under very authoritarian regime. And people are using the word fascism and authoritarian very liberally right now.

But actually as someone who has seen, 22 plus years of an authoritarian regime firsthand it's just. An important part of my story. I wasn't really that political back in Iran because being political under that system means you are you are prosecuted, you are probably spending time in jail.

And [00:03:00] there are no toler, there's no tolerating dissenting voices basically. But I, I came like at towards the end back in 2009, for those people who remember there was an election that many Iranian people thought that it was it was basically rigged to install a president who who claimed to be a populist president. Am which for those people who have been following international news, they know his name. It was a populist person with the right type of grievances and no agenda no rational agenda to fix the economy. And, it sounds really familiar for people who are

Pete: Wow.

Saeed: politics that 

Pete: yeah, I was gonna ask about the parallels, and

Saeed: Yeah I think

Pete: a big one right there.

Saeed: was talking about it it's the the parallels are really weird because he was speaking of taking care of workers and working class in Iran. He was always talking about the people who have been in economic terms, they have been [00:04:00] neglected and ignored for so many years in, in economy, in the Iranian economy at that point. But when he was given four years of opportunity he was dismantling part of government that were making this decisions about macroeconomic policy policy in Iran. So I remember we have. We have a, we had a, an office back home. It was like, about management and budget like this. They provided advice to president in that country.

And he effectively dismantled that and he made a lot of that type of decision. That basically middle class in that country disappeared over his four, four years. And then when he was up for reelection, there was a reformist, actually president that that had a lot of support and brought a lot of people together and and a lot of people to this day I think the election was. Rigged at best and was stolen at worst. So you can [00:05:00] get different narratives, but that was my introduction to politics. I was an engineer actually, speaking of data science, I was engineering in engineering world and mathematics. But that was the moment that I just completed lost interest in engineering as a field.

And I, I remember I, I took a leave of absence for six months. My university Sheriff University was a completely technical university. We had a bunch of philosophy of science classes, but that was, there was no political science. I took a leave of absence. I spent 6, 5, 6 months in University of Tehran, which had a political science department.

And I was auditing classes and I was writing papers about the green movement. And it was really intellectually stimulating and interesting. And I was. I was participating in the protest against the regime, and I was actually doing kind of a field work talking to people. It wasn't any scientific field work, but that was my introduction to politics.

I came to us to [00:06:00] study international politics. Two masters later, I decided I don't want to be an academic. So I, I

Pete: Wow.

Saeed: with my wife, actually to Washington, DC and with the skillset I had I was really good at data science, mathematics, like making like a statistical models, but also had a few years studying a studying survey methodology, studying political science or also in this international politics. I landed in a communications firm in DC and for more than four, almost five years doing data science, data engineering,

Research. I decided to get back into politics and, and and yeah, I've been I've been in my current organization the past two, more or less two years doing polling data and all that stuff.

And actually I get that question people think I'm crazy to have left that country come to us, which is like a economically so successful, especially with the skillset that if you have mathematics, you or [00:07:00] statistics, you can go to finance and people say, I'm crazy, but I love it so far.

Pete: Good. That I was wondering like which people, because I assume that in the US it seems natural to people that like Yeah. People who want to come here from elsewhere, although maybe not as much anymore, but so you had a very. Secure and promising future in Iran. But you wanted to come

Saeed: want to 

Pete: to the us

Saeed: and promising, because to be completely honest, Pete, and this is one thing that really worries me about the state of us economy right now, is for so many like prosperity, like you need, like the, there's, there are basics to e economy, right? If you want to have a prosperous country, you need to make sure that economy is growing and one e econ 1 0 1 one way that you make sure that eco economy, your economy is growing by doing trade, by expanding trade and putting a wall around the

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: [00:08:00] I think I saw I saw devastation and just the damage that the economy in my country took. And many Iranians got away and actually we have a lot, I have a lot of friends living in Canada, in Germany, brilliant people. They do ai, they're in engineers, they do materials engineering. But it's just that putting a wall around the country did a lot of damage to that country for many years.

Pete: Yeah. That seems like a parallel of right now the US is putting up different kinds of walls, but isolating itself pretty effectively are just outta curiosity. Are there other parallels that you are noticing with, like steps that Trump administration is taking that, that you recognize as part of the authoritarian.

Sort of playbook in terms of managing control over the debate and the discussion

Saeed: Yeah. I

Pete: the politics.

Saeed: like to use the authoritarian [00:09:00] label as, as freely as a lot of people use. I just think there needs to be a precision in conversations when we talk about the dynamics that we say and that's one thing I'm very. Very, I, if you follow polls, especially, one, I just think that people get desensitized if you are not precise with your language.

And look, I do a lot of focus groups and one

Pete: I,

Saeed: for people who do focus groups, especially in politics, one element that really stands out is when someone in focus group, speak when someone speaks up and say, Hey I get the argument here, but this message that you're showing me is overly political.

It feels like it's propaganda. I just feel like we are in this moment that American people honestly, they want to have conversations. And that's why I am

I want to give credit to the administration because when they got elected, even before that, I was telling everyone, it's these are right [00:10:00] grievances.

Like these are like, if you want it, make America healthy again. It's just an organic voice among many people that they feel like something is not right. You can take your argument. It's corporations have too much power, or they are comfortable with the regulation around what, what they're putting on our table.

You can pick any part of that conversation, but I would say these are right grievances. But there is a second part to right. Grievances are these right people with the, with rational with well thought out solutions to that problem. So to me,

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: just calling out grievances, just being populism.

And if you follow, like Patrick Rini, he talks about vibes, populism versus programmatic populism, right? So you just write the grievances, okay, great. is the plan? are those plan well thought out? Are they based on a [00:11:00] true understanding of the economic or global political dynamics?

Or is it just an instinct or a or something that you are projecting as your common sense? So that is one thing that you talk about parallel. I think there are a lot of people in my previous country that I was living there are a lot of people that also had right grievances, but the mismanagement that was like cure was worse

The disease itself basically.

Pete: Yeah. So that's interesting because, in terms of identifying that. Yes, there are valid grievances that exist that I think Trump is particularly adept at latching onto.

And then of course, he either blows them wildly out of proportion or leads to, uses those [00:12:00] grievances to drive some hateful or ill thought out part of his agenda. But I think it's becoming really clear that he is effectiveness in tapping into these grievances has benefited from, and helped to drive the widespread.

Growth of the right-wing media ecosystem. Because it, it taps into things that people feel like there's something to that. And and and maybe this guy is onto something and I think that's, it's he's been really good at that. We just have to admit how do you look at this in the context of how the right has been able to reach so many people in so many different ways?

Saeed: good question. I want to take a step back and everybody talks about the

Pete: Okay.

Saeed: media, but I [00:13:00] want to a little bit talk about also how the left and democratic party has been approaching media and my area of expertise, the public opinion research and polling and data and RCTs.

We can talk about that. I want to

One, one, I just a little bit, a few data points I want to give you That's very interesting. I was looking at some estimate of how many hours people listen. To this independent, decentralized media outlet versus, your New York Times and Washington, M-S-N-B-C, even Fox, right? There like conservative estimates, there are people listen between seven to 10 hours per week. Active users. If you look at the Spotify or Apple Podcast, those are, depending on what type of study you look, you have more hours or less hours. But I want people to multiply that to by 52, 52 weeks in a year, and [00:14:00] you get the range

It's between 370 ish to far more than 500 hours of listening time in a year. So I want you to think about it. you write a message, if you're a political candidate or a campaign or a PAC or an advocacy group, when you write your message, your talking points, your top line, you are presenting to audiences that they have been socialized for more than 500 hours of content listening weekly, sometimes day in, day out. What has been our model of messaging and talking to American voters? I give you, I don't say that this is everyone and there are there groups, there are organizations that are thinking about it or even they're doing like different and exciting stuff. But one thing, the model, our model has [00:15:00] been working or has not been working is we do a sort of focus group, right?

Or qualitative message out of that qualitative message, and based on some traditional headline where the political environment is. We translate it to some polls we get some top lines on big frames, how we should frame issues. We get some even message messaging poll, right? What are, what is the most effective way to talk about an issue?

And then if we are sophisticated, we

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: Through this randomized controlled trials or cts, right? The AB testing message, some fan stuff that's not that fancy. I think it's more pseudoscientific than scientific, but we can talk about it. And then what happens is that you produce talking points, you produce a memo and you blast it to everyone that talks about these issues. I want you to

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: that the products that you put out there, that one page memo, it just won't work because the [00:16:00] pressure on a political researcher and public opinion researcher is to be as simple as possible and to give me five bullet points. And I use these five bullet points in an interview in showing up in a TV on CNN or whatever, Fox, right?

And I repeat those five points, but remember, your audience is sitting there. They have been so good at picking up your, the in authentic moments. Again, remember we have 500 plus hours of getting educated when people are lying to you, when they're of, I'm sorry, explicit

Of shit or where they're being authentic. yeah, so

Pete: language is fine.

Saeed: obviously is not working. What we are seeing on the right, and I think this is a teachable moment for of us, because you ask about there is a

There is a virtuous cycle that I. You have [00:17:00] politicians that talk about certain issues that they have been picking up from the online communities that they're engaging with. They're blasting and showing up, not just on Fox News, but they're showing up on anyone that gives them a platform. They don't, they're not afraid to take risks. So they go, they make mistakes, right?

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: talk something it, they have a backlash. Someone in treater attacks them, but they take that risk. And then organically they observe what is being picked up and amplified in this ecosystem. So you have this loop of positive feedback, loop of what is working and what's not working. And I want to tell you

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: thing, Pete. They still pull, you look at 20 24, 1 of the, one of the people that have been his briefs. And reading all the polls was Donald Trump himself. You could see [00:18:00] based on what he was paying attention to and what he was highlighting, this guy is reading the polls because guess what, Pete, I was reading those polls. I was doing some of those polls myself, and I was like, yep, these are all poll tested. it was never talking point, it was never messaging. It was organic.

Pete: Right.

Saeed: connected to that virtual cycle of taking risk on media channels and not sounding like a robot. But I don't know, does answer your question.

Pete: I mean there is so much that just sprouts from the whole question of what has happened to the communications environment and why does the right seem to be succeeding and the left is behind. And there was a lot of talk about that at the America Votes Summit. I do just want to go back to I.

The way your brain is wired, just given your engineering and mathematics background, I get like precision really matters. And so for what it's [00:19:00] worth saying the media landscape or the right wing media right, is a massive simplification of what's actually the reality. And I actually find it really helpful to think about this in an ecosystem terms.

There is a right wing ecosystem that is if you think about the range of different kinds of species that make their living in a variety of different ways out in the real world, it's an apt metaphor for the right wing media landscape where, sure, there's some traditional outlets like Fox and the radio show people, but then there's.

Almost an endless array of podcasts and YouTube shows and content driven through a variety of channels in a whole bunch of ways. And a huge amount of it is not even geared for people who are looking for news or information. I think that's one of the huge things, the right and people on the right heavily [00:20:00] grasped is figuring out how to make cultural connections with people.

Because people have lost trust in institutions. They're much more responsive to other people, and they're particularly responsive to people that they think share their values are coming from the same perspective as them. And I was just looking at the Media Matters report that came out last month that had this bubble chart of basically right wing media sphere versus left wing and the.

On the right, there's almost five times as many followers of programs like Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn, and the whole constellation. It's not just them compared to what's on the left. And that seems to have a lot to do with the traction that they've gotten and what they're talking about. 15 or 20% of content on the right is actually characterized as comedy stuff like Joe Rogan is considered a comedy, or at least they self describe as a comedy program.

So they've found lots of ways to get in. [00:21:00] And I think that certainly the election was a huge shock for Democrats in recognizing, holy crap, we are way behind. And the, to continue the sort of ecological metaphor. To me, it's like the election in the aftermath was like the comet that hit the earth, whatever, 60 million years ago, wiped out the dinosaurs and created a huge number of niches for radiative evolution, for all kinds of new critters.

To find their place and find their niche. And some of 'em made it, some of 'em didn't, but they flourished and that, that's what dominates. Now I feel like in the media space, we're in that moment as well for Democrats and progressives on the left of having to figure out how do we survive, how do we evolve because the environment has changed so significantly.

Saeed: I was looking at

Pete: do. [00:22:00] Yes.

Saeed: there was a study, I think Lex Digital posted they, there was they did a research and I was looking at what people are actually listening on this independent, more decentralized like podcast, like Spotify and YouTube channels. 60% entertainment. They're looking for entertainment. 55% is to learn something.

52%. Listen, while they're doing something else, just, as a like auxiliary entertainment. And then

Pete: yeah, of course.

Saeed: they're listening to hear other people's opinion. I just think that just gives some color to it. I want to talk about ecosystem, I have a little bit of a hot take here. I think labeling, I understand the value of labeling a media outlet or a channel as this is a right wing. This is a left wing. If you are, generous, some of them are in, there's, their reports say they're independent, they're center. I just think some of those labels have political consequences for Democrats. is that? Why is

If I tell [00:23:00] you as a political candidate that a Joe Rogan is a right-wing media or media channel, or media outlet. Versus B Jro is a mainstream independent media. The way that I have framed it for you of what is my risk to show up in this channel has, is completely now changing. And I think this is one thing

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: I found really this, I don't know if you remember the two, three months after the election, everybody was like talking about the, who is the Joe Rogan on the left. And I always told my team and my

who I work with, whoever ask you who is the Joe Rogan of the left, they do not understand this media dynamic because

Pete: right.

Saeed: just tells

Pete: Exactly.

Saeed: they, they haven't followed the evolution of these media channels. To this day, Joe Rogan remains independence. And I want to add one more thing. Lex Friedman, [00:24:00] I'm don't quote me on the exact date. I think it was January or February, I think it was January, he puts. A LinkedIn post begging people on the left to show up on his podcast. And I have, you can't believe how many times Pete, I have posted that Lex Friedman has screenshotted and I have sent to people.

It's oh, we don't know how to engage with this media. showing you side, have you

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: comms director to reach out to this guy and whoever follows the Their center. Center right. The media ecosystem. Again, I think we should get away from the labeling. This is right. Yes, there are hostile environments and there are more friendly environments.

Great, but I think we should get away from those labels. But first action you need to take, the first step is to engage and you don't choose

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: media to engage. You go to the media that is mainstream. That people follow, not [00:25:00] necessarily for politics, but they get their entertainment. They want to learn something. So that's number one. I want to give picture the second one, I want to come back to these craziness that we call public opinion research on the left and in democratic circles. That is just completely out of touch, completely out of touch with the media and landscape. And it's I argue and I debate with everyone, if you want to invite another guest, we can debate this, that it's more set up to misdirect and misinform us than actually show us how to engage meaningfully with Americans, American voters.

I don't talk about DC politics and like elite audiences. I'm talking about like ordinary, everyday American. I think that public opinion research set up we have is craziness right now, and this is why the incentive. And the way that you have set up this beyond just the methodology is [00:26:00] get 50 word messages. And if you actually listen to Senator Shutz, I think he showed up in a podcast, I think I forgot it was Choice Words Choice, podcast that he, he showed up, he mentioned that it's just set up a way that makes you talk in a least harmful way to the most number of people.

Exactly. A common

Pete: The common denominator. The least common denominator. Yeah.

Saeed: exactly. So what happens is that it just ignores the fact that the reality of Americans live is. Many of these podcasts on the center and center, right. if you listen to them, they get very textured and detailed. there are a lot of

Out there. I don't want to say that. Oh, I'm talking about the accuracy. It's not about the accuracy of arguments, it's about the texture of the argument.

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: I think you are losing a [00:27:00] lot of arguments in, in giving texture to American voters. Again, I go back to the beginning when you give that one beautiful sentence that you think it's amazing, perfectly polished.

Pete: polished message. Yep.

Saeed: center and right coded by hours of listening to this new media environments and people just, it doesn't work. But we can talk beyond that media environment element, Pete. Beyond that the, our city, the way that our cities are set up, we can talk about it.

I just think it's the most pseudoscientific

That we are doing it right now.

Pete: let, lemme make sure I understand that this the current point, which is that because that's a really interesting observation about texture and I it ties into that the conversa just for convenience so we don't have to have like long descriptive paragraphs. I'll say, when I say like right wing stuff, [00:28:00] it's not even about whether they intend to be or not.

I don't think Joe Rogan identifies himself as a right winger.

Saeed: Yep.

Pete: he's just

Saeed: I.

Pete: being him. But the sort of net effect is that there's been a greater balance of and I hate to keep talking about 'em 'cause I also agree with the point that's the answer is not who is the left Joe Rogan. The answer is how do we build the ecosystem that helps a lot of different channels sprout up and carry messages in a variety of different ways and literally let evolution take its course and figure out which ones actually work and which ones don't.

But anyway now trying to remember what the point was. Oh, the texture. I think that's a really interesting insight. And I'm. And I, so I wanna hear more about it. Is the issue, like you get a Democratic politician or somebody from a, an environmental group, like on a pod and they've just got their polished talking points, but they're not comfortable going into [00:29:00] greater depth in a, like a in an interpersonal way.

Like the way you would have, I think this medium is really, it's like having a conversation with somebody at a bar over a beer where it's much more relaxed. It's informal. Is that what you mean? By the texture. It just, it feels too polished, too canned, too inauthentic and turns people off.

Saeed: is one form of it. I call it socialization because okay I give you, I want to give you an example, right? And this is something that I'm struggling with. Look again, very high level, when you ask people in polls that look we want do you agree that we need to have a long-term plan for energy production?

Is it personally important to you to have, for the US to have a long-term energy pro production plan? 70% plus say, yeah, it's very important. It. I think you can interpret why it's important for people. I just think that it signals [00:30:00] that things are on track. There is a plan, like they, they are living in a growing economy. You can interpret however you want, but 70% plus they say, yes, it's good. And then you can ask again, relevant to energy, clean energy. It's do you think we need to increase clean energy production? And it's a high priority for you, 60 plus percent. There's a little bit less, but 60% plus is, yeah it's important Personally to me now in current mainstream fights, peak, what is, if you tune into a right and center media, when they talk about tariffs, right?

Remember those two, we get back to them, but when you talk about tariffs,

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: how they're going, how are they selling the economic pain, how they are messaging it, they're saying. Look, your country's on the wrong track. We have to swallow like like Trump said, like it's sometimes you should take the medicine, [00:31:00] right?

We have to swallow this.

Pete: Right.

Saeed: Pete, this is not one sentence. I want people to think about it when they, when you tell American people that we are on the wrong track economically, is not a perfect plan. And we have a plan that's administration says, it's trust me, we have a plan. There's a short term pay.

This is not a one sentence, this is a two hour podcast on Ruthless. is a one hour and a half podcast on All In podcasts, which is Elon Musk circles. These are hours and hours of looking at this argument from every single angle, debunking the attacks that, that they sometimes the debunking is not really in a good faith, argument.

I, I don't want people to think that, oh my God, I think all the arguments are correct, or this is the right argument. That's besides the point. But your listener has [00:32:00] been

Looking at a simulation of one line that we need to go through this pain to bring

And they have been socialized for hours of they are being inoculated against attacks against this.

So a headline on New York Times,

Pete: yep.

Saeed: it might sound good to you as a campaign strategist, but. How does it land in terms of credibility and believability with

Pete: Right. I.

Saeed: I would argue that those media environments are actually doing something more fundamental than awareness that we have to pay attention to. they're impacting the believability and credibility and how do your headline lands with people. And that's such a more important fight than just awareness. And I don't know if our democratic strategists on our side, they understand this dynamic that we are losing those credibility because exactly what you're saying, Pete, because we are not paying enough attention to those undercurrents, to those [00:33:00] media dynamics there. Going back to my point and I wrap it up. always say, I, yeah,

Pete: No, that's,

Saeed: always

Pete: is why. This is why you're here. 'cause you've got.

Saeed: Let's talk about manufacturing. The part of argument that says, look, we need to have tariffs because we need to have some type of protection. And then, what Trump administration says is look, you will see companies in order to avoid tariffs.

Companies will say, oh, they will announce jobs and investments. Amazing. Great. Okay. we can agree with that. We need to take care of our working class and manufacturing. Great. my problem, Pete, at those two numbers that people want a long-term plan. People want to have production. We have an argument here that, look, we already have investments like the IRA, we don't need to say IRA, but technically we have investments and there are

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: many states that are using these investments to open clean energy manufacturing. If there is [00:34:00] battery storage or a solar farm, whatever, you have a geothermal technology. So we are having this investment and we are investing in innovation. We are investing to stay competitive with China, which by the way, I have a crazy number in 2020, I think China introduced more solar capacity than the entire the entire world, the other, everyone in combined, but we can talk about it.

So we are losing that

China, we are investing and we are bringing these clean energy manufacturing and manufacturing jobs to the states. So I have a question for Trump administration. If you truly believe, and you say that you want to bring manufacturing back, great. I agree with you.

Let's bring manufacturing back, but tell me does it make sense to take those investments away if that's truly your intent? Is it what is it? I do not have any answer honestly, Pete, from this is an ideological position, they get [00:35:00] against clean energy. So what I'm saying is like now

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: Yeah 

Pete: I do think that's the answer,

Saeed: if I, if, yeah.

Pete: but it doesn't make any sense because they're great jobs and if his act, he doesn't just want manufacturing for the sake of manufacturer. Look, I don't, I actually don't think he gives a crap about any of it. I think this is actually about. He likes to be the center of attention and tariffs.

He can wield single-handedly. And I imagine that every country that calls him up, he's cutting some kind of a deal for a Trump resort or for a sovereign wealth fund to go to his brother-in-law, his son-in-law, or it's really about personal gain and grift. But I take your point, it doesn't have internal logic to it.

Saeed: back to the texture. This is, everything comes back together.

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: If I just want to put a poll out there, give me 10 words. What is your manufacturing argument? I. There's no way that any democratic strategist will say, oh, this is a [00:36:00] simple enough message that manufacturing the way I articulated here people to see. But guess what, Pete, mean that we shouldn't make this argument in this long form content and podcast. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: credit to Americans and American voters, that they can listen to these more sophisticated arguments and we can talk to them in this more nuanced and textured way, and we can talk to them why this makes sense.

And we can make our case for American voters and Americans in general, I think we have a case, why it's good for the future of economy, for the future of our energy independence and for the future of this country. I think that that is the tension that I see. It's not, it's 10 word versus hours of arguments.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. This is bringing so many things to mind. [00:37:00] One is that during the fall campaign when I was door knocking and I've door knocked in several presidentials going back, but this is the first time where almost. Yeah, other than enthusiastic Democrats, almost everybody I talked to, their eyes were dead.

It's usually when you talk to somebody, there's some kind of reaction. Either they, really don't like what you're saying or they do what you're saying. And I, it left me with the impression of when I would, walk away from the door. Holy crap. They have been taking in thousands of hours of content from other sources and like one, two minute conversation at the door is not gonna puncture the sort of the force field of information that they are now surrounded by.

And I just, I think that's another angle on the point that like. [00:38:00] One of the points you're, I'm hearing you make also is you can't just say something once at a top line level and think it's going to sink in. And that's also a sentiment that I heard at the the summit this week was the several people talked about, we can't just show up and start trying to reach voters three months before election day because they've been getting primed in a certain way throughout the year with the hundreds of hours of content.

And so much of it is not even explicitly political. It's just an overarching mindset that then can be added onto or then steered in a given direction, make America healthy again. And one of the examples was, people who are into natural juicing and that, that stuff and we all like juice.

We all like smoothies. But that sort of primes someone to be more receptive to an RFK kind of a message, which might, get slipped in here and [00:39:00] there every now and then. But here's, I can hear me talk whenever I want. What do you think are the most important things we need to do a, about this?

And I'll diviv subdivide that, like one, how should our public opinion research polling focus groups, how does that need to evolve do you think, in order to better guide what we're talking about? What are the other changes that you think we need to make? And I'm gonna preload one 'cause you and I have talked about this a lot, which is I.

Having the right message is only now a small piece of the puzzle or but it doesn't do you any good if you can't actually get it to voters. So the other challenge is how do we actually reach people who don't wanna read fact sheets reports, or aren't necessarily looking for the news? But anyway, that's a long setup.

Saeed: on two tracks. Number one, what should we [00:40:00] do? I just show up at 80% of the battle. I just think that right now we have, we are coming from a very scared risk averse political culture on democratic side. Like it's, it has become too complicated now, when we are talking about, we are talking about the audiences we are breaking down by income.

I don't say those are wrong. As a data scientist, I appreciate it to look at the data at that level of resolution. But one magic that I think, like one thing that Donald Trump has worked for Donald Trump is like, they have seen all of that, but the product, it's so simple and it hits you on such an instinctual level that, that it just has a staying power in Republican party.

And I think in American politics, whether we like it or not. So the first one,

Pete: And what, wait, what is that product that hits us that way?

Saeed: I think Mark Cuban correctly [00:41:00] I borrowed from Mark Cuban. But Mark Cuban correctly says Democrats have policy proposals. They don't have a sales pitch to American people. So the sales pitch is not a

50 slide deck that goes through your, what is our Q1 plan?

What is the year two plan? The sales pitch is the slide number one. Tell me in five words, what is the vision? And Pete, what was our vision last election cycle? So

Pete: got no idea,

Saeed: sales pitch. Yeah. 

Pete: I know Donald Trump's vision

Saeed: yep.

Pete: Make America great again. That is a vision. That's a forward

Saeed: Look, Donald Trump doesn't tell

Pete: drill. Baby drill. Yeah,

Saeed: we do with polluters?

He doesn't talk about,

Pete: I,

Saeed: my God, coal is he doesn't get into the nuances. I don't say his administration will have to take, to deal with the reality of those nuances. Because if they really want to jump and start coal, they have a serious [00:42:00] pollution problem on their hand. And that's why they try to talk about coal as clean coal, which by the way, it, nobody's that stupid to buy that.

But whatever I, what I'm trying to say is that it's a sales pitch and it doesn't argue.

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: It's, it uses the brand equity that Republican party and Donald Trump has built, but it sells you, it hits you at a very instinctual level. We don't have that approach. We still think in paragraphs of arguments.

We still think that people are a hundred percent rational. People are emotional being, and 

Pete: yeah.

Saeed: they want to be hopeful and they have fears. if your sales pitch don't talk to their hopes and don't talk, don't address their fears, it's game over. You are not there. You are not on their radar.

You are not in mainstream fights. So the first [00:43:00] one, Pete, to answer your questions show up in mainstream fights, get out of your corner and see what actually people want. And Pete, once you look at the polls and the data, it's just, you realize some really interesting stuff. It's I. The things that American people want are simple. They want energy independence. They want like on our issue. They want to have cheap access to cheap energy. And once we give them cheap energy, they want that energy to be clean. So they have this strong preference for clean energy when we give them cheap source of energy, right?

It's simple. It's not a paragraph long. It's not, this 3D chess puzzle that democratic strategists play and they look at 50 a slight deck and how to it's simpler than that on public opinion. And this is what, it's my passion and it's my, it's what I'm working on. Actually. I think the linear model of focus group poll RCT is broken [00:44:00] and it's broken because we have decoupled the media research from our public opinion research. Our public opinion research is very much informed by traditional media and informed by DC fights. The real conversation is happening somewhere else, and the public opinion research is not paying attention to that mainstream fight and mainstream socialization of American voter.

Pete: That sounds right to me. I was thinking about it in a little bit of a different way a few minutes ago that. Democrats have become trained on figuring out the perfect soundbite, right? And then you repeat it on every network you go onto and you give the same soundbite to the right, the post in the New York Times.

And that used to set the overall narrative, which of course is what got drove conservatives nuts and caused them to create their own ecosystem of news and information. Um, How do you reshape the [00:45:00] research in order to fit what the modern communications landscape looks like?

Saeed: architectures that we're working. The difficulty, Pete is the people who have access to power, the centers of power and access to money. It, I haven't seen a serious conversation. People questioning the public opinion research and our cities and focus group

That we do things. don't say there are no conversation. I'm sure people have conversations, so I don't want to project that there's no conversation. But

Pete: Sure.

Saeed: you talk about them, about more like newer research paradigms community focus groups like World Cafe Method continuous online marketing online panels, like these other forms of stuff that helps us to be engaged at a more direct level with voters.

I haven't seen any serious conversation out there. 

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: I have been working myself, like I plug in myself. I have been working on what is the architecture that gets us closer to voters and [00:46:00] they take us from this reactionary research, which means by the time you hear a message from a voter. In focus group or you see something pops up, shows up in the data, in the cross tabs from your poll. It's already too late. You have, like that message has been talked about in the media and people have been socialized with people. So you get into this reactionary cycle of responding to instead of proactively campaigning

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: issue. And that's the one you will see our research infrastructure in 2024 put us in a reactionary cycle and we didn't even react to that reactionary cycle very well. So you can make that case, but even the research itself was in, always in this reactionary cycle. So need new research forms to detect signals early and you need to democratize

Is what I call monopoly of interpretation, which you get all this information, but all of them [00:47:00] are interpreted by a very few number of people in Washington, DC.

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: need to democratize that to take those early signals more seriously, Pete, because if you are all the time paying attention to C-N-N-M-S-N-B-C, read New York Times. Read political Morning Edition. Listen to punch ball. It's so easy, Pete to ignore those early signals. The MAHA movement

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: was an early signal that you could detect years before the housing crisis peak. It didn't happen in the year of election. People were talking about housing three or

Before that. There is a reason we detect those signals not early enough, and I want to push people to question the way that we do public opinion research, message testing, R ct keeps us in a reactionary cycle.

Pete: I, so I think that's a [00:48:00] great insight. What I'm hearing is that we need to shift how our opinion research works to not be looking for the perfect combination of words for a given topic, but instead make it more sort of sentiment and value based to pick up on what are people talking about in general.

Because the wave to be effective in into today's environment is, again, not thinking, just you can rattle off the same soundbite over and over again, but to understand. What are people's hopes and fears? So you can talk about here's our plans for how we're going to help with those things. And I think people forgive if you don't if you're in a conversation and you don't say something exactly right the first time, people generally, you've got an opportunity to come back and try again and rephrase it and [00:49:00] maybe try to articulate the same thing on the same topic in a few different ways.

And to me, that's like the shift that we've gotta make that goes along with there's more and more places to have these conversations and there's it is weird, right? Given that we're in what people call the attention economy, that people actually are listening to 30 minute podcasts or an, or, in some cases three hour long podcasts.

And it's because it's not just. Beaming facts and figures and polished phrases at them. It's because it's real. People talking and stumbling and, misspeaking some, but they keep trying and coming back to the main point to try to capture what do they mean, what they wanna say. That to me that's, part of why it's about authenticity, not authority.

It's like what's gonna make someone [00:50:00] want to keep listening or watching is the bottom line.

Saeed: comes from my own experience 2000. The year is 2019. I'm doing some, the context doesn't matter. I'm doing some in-depth interviews in Florida. I'm traveling up and down from, I think it was from September till November. I was up going up and down the state and I was doing interviews with business leaders, with religious leaders, with all type of minority leaders in Florida. I came to dc I remember I had this this I had this meeting with my future employer, with my future boss. And he was asking me, hi, how was your research down in Florida? And I was like, we leave a, I told him, I was like, Hey we leave, I think I got the signal that we live in a post identity America. And by the way, this is not 2020, this is not 2020. This is 2019. it didn't come from a fancy poll or a fancy focus group. It was saved [00:51:00] traveling up and down. And the total budget peak for that research that I had was $8,000. That's it. That, that had to feed me. Put me in hotels, by the way, very bad ones.

Some of the not really luxury one. Luxurious ones. And yeah. 

Pete: Super eights.

Saeed: To rent a car. To travel, but I was like this, it was ahead of its time, actually. 2020 happened and I was like, oh, maybe I, that was the wrong signal. Maybe I overread into that signal over interpreted it.

But 2024 came with a vengeance. So what I'm saying, Pete is sometimes we are more obsessed with the shiny data science stuff. And as someone who can sell data science stuff, it sells right. But good grasp of research that's timeless and I think. As a party. Democrats have lost that that, that art of being connected to people in more [00:52:00] organic type of researchers, by the way, which academia, ethnographic research.

These are way mainstream, but like in depth interviews. All of those stuff, we need to bring them up. We need to de-emphasize the obsession with data like, which is not serving us, has not served us. Like it can give us some, some sort of where the country's headed, some long-term thinking.

There's a value to that, Pete. I don't say throw it away. That's not the point. My point is have that, but remember that should inform a vision and a strategy and that should, shouldn't be an excuse not to get closer to American voters through this other types of research. I tell you one last thing, it's really tough. When you pitch these ideas to donors, because some of them are not as shiny, some of them

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: complicated, like the architecture that I told you from focus group to opposed to our cts to decision. [00:53:00] It's so simple, right? so simple to package and sell it,

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: it doesn't serve, it doesn't serve us completely. So you need a more complicated architecture. But when I put this in front of people, this more, more sophisticated architecture that give us early signals of early ones that don't show up in your RCTs, don't show up in your polling, your focus group. too complicated to say, oh, this is sexy. Let's fund it.

It's not that. So that's part of the challenge we have is I always ask this question from Don from donors of people who I show these ideas. It's does it speak to a true need Dancer is always yes. why aren't you funding it? So that's way of my way of saying another layer of challenge that we have in bringing this newer approaches to research.

Pete: I and that's another theme I've been hearing a lot about, the need for investment, the uncertainty among donors. Who I think, are still shellshocked [00:54:00] by the election and these drastic changes. And I think as anybody in the progressive sector knows a lot of the money is moving very slowly right now.

And my sense is because people wanna feel like they know what's gonna work, right? But the only way to find out what's gonna work is to invest in a whole bunch of different things and try them out. And that and see what's sticking. And then do you know more of that? Can you talk, so what is that more complex infrastructure or architecture look like?

I have a vision of and by the way

Saeed: we can

Pete: do you have a hard stop? I don't wanna take up, I don't wanna go too far over the hour. But at, okay. A few more minutes. Okay. Because my sense is yeah, like monitoring, what are the big topics like that are being discussed on social media, on the various social media channels.

And I'm sure there's some matching that up with traditional polling and so on to try to figure out, okay, what are, what is [00:55:00] it people are really worried about? But is that right? Is that's just the starting point? Where does it go from there? What does this more complex architecture look like?

Saeed: one thing and I want to be very clear because this is intellectually honest conversation. Look some, many of the methods that we have in corporate world doesn't translate to politics. Why? Because in corporate world you have quarterly performance data. You have even, if you have a good analytics infrastructure. You have daily data, you have hourly data, even depending on how well thought out your infrastructures are, right? In politics, you have what, every four years, general election, two years, midterm. Some states every year you have, but it doesn't get, and sometimes you have a special election that you can hear, and there you can try things

Pete: But in terms of the real feedback,

Saeed: exactly. So

Pete: few and far between.

Saeed: and I want to

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: that. Yes, that's true. But here's the thing this is coming me from the corporate world. I was, my mind was blown, Pete, that we [00:56:00] don't have a proper branding research in politics. I was like, I thought that politics, like in US at least, politics, 80% of politics is communications. And then. The most important element in communication is a branding research and branding research. Pete is not messaging, research is not a baseline tracker. Branding research talks about values, aspirations, fears, and how they change by time. It's a pulse shake of what, where Americans are, and for sure there's no freaking policy question there. This is for our democratic friends that they think policy questions are branding. That's not, so the branding research is one of them. The second one p is there are more decentralized qualitative research in corporate world that I have shaped. Some of them I have participated and the [00:57:00] main. Goal of those more decentralized qualitative research. Some of them are like now well documented like World Cafe that I talk about with a lot of people. It's a method. It's really well documented is to decentralize and disempower the moderator to introduce the bias of the moderator in the conversation. The first thing in the focus group is that the moderator, first of all it, he or she manages the focus group, that moderator will

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: what will be discussing this session and disincentivizes what we are going to stay away from this conversation. Corporations, I think they have been going through more this moderator less, more decentralized qualitative research.

That's the second one that I want to get. And then the third one, which I think it's so important, by the way, Pete, there's more elements, but these are the three ones that I think is important. I go back to this

Of interpretation. So [00:58:00] there are a lot of times that we get high quality data from the field, but the reason that it's not communicated because somebody with power in the room doesn't believe that it's important. I'm talking most important

RFK movement for people who are looped in that why we didn't pay attention or why we just ignored it for such a long time, but yeah. Yeah.

Pete: Oh that RFK would actually help Trump win.

Saeed: Or his agenda.

Pete: Which probably would

Saeed: popular

Pete: his agenda. 

Saeed: It was

Pete: And I made exactly the same error. I was like, what the hell is he gonna add? But in the, after the election, it's become more and more evident. Holy crap. There's a significant slice who was brought in by

Saeed: Yeah.

Pete: notwithstanding eating roadkill like that are responding to stuff he's gotta say.

Saeed: Is a huge bottleneck. And it's, you will

Pete: Yeah. Yeah,

Saeed: small, Pete, but

Pete: that's

Saeed: think that it's [00:59:00] not serving anyone when we get all of this data and then are very few people that decide the gatekeeper, gets in front of people and what

Pete: right.

Saeed: And that's a third element I think we should have a solution for.

Pete: Yeah. 'cause we're, it's tuning out an important signal about what people are actually thinking about or responding to. Yeah. By, I love that the term that you coined, the monopoly of interpretation. That's really smart.

We need to be able to talk about the overall topic more and in greater depth and in a lot more places with a lot more different kinds of people than we have before. One of the strategies that people are exploring is, how do we work with creators? Which of course happens a lot on the right, but there's really interesting tension there because typically, this is probably true of any lefty group, [01:00:00] or in fact it was probably true of any organization until some years ago, wanting to very tightly control the message and and I've been there myself, I've worked at a big environmental NGO and I was the pain in the ass who was like, I wanna see every single press release on this before it goes out. And I was, micro editing the crap out of him. And that the desire to both have the message in your brand and then exactly as you want it, because there's all these policy nuances you gotta worry about.

And you, people in DC particularly tend to overthink about how the hill will react and they forget about the fact that this message will only help if regular people can latch onto it. And so there's a tension between wanting to tightly control the message versus these days you've gotta be willing to let go and let people talk about [01:01:00] your thing in the ways that.

It is true to their experience that is authentic to them and is authentic to their audience, which means they're not, if you try to tell them, you have to say it exactly this way, it won't sound authentic and their audience won't pick up on it, and that person's gonna be like, this is not working for me.

How do you think, what do you think about how do we, can we navigate through that tension? How big a deal is it? Is that like one to me, that's one of the big ways that groups are gonna need to adapt is getting comfortable with helping more conversation on the overall topic of there's too much carbon pollution, it hurts our health.

Without getting so detailed about exactly how that has to be characterized,

Saeed: Yeah,

Pete: that a challenge that we can meet?

Saeed: more thing here. And this is something that I've been thinking a lot about. It's, look, at the end of the day, you can have the perfect message. DC you [01:02:00] can talk to people on the hill in a very effective way, but you forget voters, you will lose saliency. And if you lose saliency, good

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: Talking to people in DC for a long time. And this is not only our issue, this is any issue if you do saliency, it's game

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: because there's a time that it's like, what issue is that? Why should I care? That becomes an important, so if you don't have long game with voters, it just doesn't matter how much you put energy there, you will lose the long game.

You will, you can win the battle, but you lose the war, right? That's number one. Number two,

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: we can navigate it because we have the arguments we have, I think we have winning arguments on our side. look, you put anyone like you, you poll anyone, it's Hey, do you want pollution in your water or air?

Everybody hates it. We always

Our poll, 80, 75% plus of people say, I hate it. I don't want pollution.

Pete: Yep.

Saeed: And then [01:03:00] talk about it and we talk about it. Look, you have an administration that doesn't have any problem with. their, in, in name of deregulating. They're just letting bunch of polluters to do whatever they want without paying attention to your health.

So that's the negative messaging, but the positive messaging, Pete, who doesn't want to compete effectively against China, who doesn't want to win a race against Russia? This is America. We are competitive. NA nation by nature. We want to always win. Who doesn't want to win on every dimension against China?

And this is what AI folks are working on. They just frame everything at this is competition with China. If you don't give us resources, good luck

The same argument we need to make on

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: It's you just rely on coal and oil and gas, good luck. See you in 20 years when China is completely outclass our energy production and manufacturing and we have completely lost the energy game to them. That's a winning argument. [01:04:00] Investments in United States to do energy manifest and winning argument. My point is that when you have bunch of winning arguments that you know, it speaks to the values that Americans, carry, it speaks to their aspiration. We want to be an energy abundant com country. You

Let it go a little bit. You can make mistakes, but if you don't show up because you are scared, you are you have

Pete: Yeah. Yeah.

Saeed: the war before even showing up to it. So to me, one part of it is de-risking media environments and this de-risking is a work of a democratic strategist to say that, look, if you show up 50 times and make mistake in three of them, what is it?

That 6% failure rate, it's totally fine. But if you show

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: time. talking about that infamous CNN

Pete: Right.

Saeed: If [01:05:00] you remember, 2024, if you show up one

Pete: Yeah. What's the difference between you and,

Saeed: one time, that's a hundred percent failure rate. But if you show one time and you're succeeding one time, it's one time. 

Pete: Right. It's only one time. It's not enough to penetrate anyway,

Saeed: up. But

Pete: right?

Saeed: as long as you get those big tents, right? Maybe big tent is a bad frame because it

Pete: Yeah.

Saeed: in pulling. I'm not talking about big tents in terms of reaching to everyone, but big tents, there's this big frames. So look, everybody hates pollution.

Pete: Yes.

Saeed: to win a energy competition with China.

If you have this winning tense, your only work is letting it go. Let people make those arguments and show up and defend your position. Don't be scared. Everything will be fine in the long term, and if you win the saliency game. You are micromanaging your messaging to the hill. It's important.

I don't say it's not important, but in the long [01:06:00] term, it's not as important as winning the Saliency game.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah.

Saeed: Yeah,

Pete: And it's definitely not enough. Yeah.

Saeed: I

Pete: I think that's a great place to, to wrap the main conversation. So I like to close up with what is some advice that you got from a mentor maybe early on in your career that you'd like to share? That will be helpful. To younger people coming into this kind of work.

Yeah.

Saeed: I just think, look, I, by, I, I think it's my personality. I speak up I have I really like when I. People speak to the truth, and they are, they're fighting the real fights versus wasting their energy. That means that sometimes I just bump heads with people. The biggest advice is just the simplest and the oldest advice ever.

Choose your battle, when know when to when you are [01:07:00] most effective.

And I think one of the biggest thing I learned from actually someone in my current organization who left the organization a while ago was remember change change in a relational basis. When you have relationship with someone, eh, it's easier to effect change to bring change.

So don't underestimate the friendships you make and don't underestimate the, this, these simple conversations that we have. It's part of the battle. It's part of the war that, that we want to course correct things in a way that works. This country works for everyone. Yep.

Pete: Awesome. Saeed, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this has been a great conversation. And I look forward to more even with the camera off. So thank you so much.

All right.