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Ep. 15: Progress Texas and How Media Can Help Flip Texas
61 Plays4 days ago
On this episode of Mission: Texas, Kate and Alex sit down with Chris and Kathleen from Progress Texas—a 15-year-old progressive media organization (and podcast network) built to fight disinformation, keep attention on the long game, and help Texans stay engaged before, during, and after campaigns.
And we even play “Obsessed,” a game from our friends at "Pod Bless Texas," for a little holiday fun.
In this episode, we also talk about:
- What Progress Texas is (and why “campaigns come and go”)
- The Daily Dispatch: a 7–10 minute weekday show designed for real life (aka “one shower long”)
- Why digital video is exploding for them—and why most views come from non-followers
- The difference between being good at messaging vs. investing in messaging
- How to be a political communicator without turning into a boring lecture
- Whether Democrats are disadvantaged by truth/accuracy—and how to make facts compelling
- Why talking to your neighbors still matters as much as TikTok
- Texas as a voter-suppressed state, and why “state-of-the-art circa 1980” voter registration hurts turnout
- A practical challenge: be loud, be human, commit the “faux pas” of talking politics
Follow Mission: Texas on all socials: @MissionTexasPodcast
Support and follow Progress Texas: ProgressTexas.org (and search “Progress Texas” on your podcast app)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Mission Texas'
00:00:00
Speaker
Howdy. This is Mission Texas. A political podcast about winning Texas by 2032 or else we may lose the White House for a generation. I'm one of your hosts, Alex Clark.
00:00:13
Speaker
And I am Kate Rumsey. Other podcasts may focus on the day-to-day the next election. But we are keeping the eyes of Texas on the bigger prize.
Meet Chris and Kathleen from Progress Texas
00:00:23
Speaker
What happens after the next census?
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast, two people who host their own podcast. The interviewers are now the interviewees from Progress, Texas. Welcome to the podcast, Chris and Kathleen.
00:00:38
Speaker
We're so thankful you're here, especially around the holiday season. All right, I got to ask. um So now you're on our podcast. How does it feel to be interviewed? It's great. um We are all in this together. And we went back on Kendall's podcast way back when, when Chair Kendall Scudder was ah the host of PodLess Texas. So it's good to be back on somebody else's feed.
00:01:03
Speaker
Thanks for having us. Yeah, maybe we can play ah play a PodBus Texas game for old time's sake. Sure. I really enjoy talking to other podcasters because we figure out things that we're doing wrong that we can do better. And it's always an interesting and fun learning experience. Just just with just what people doing pod of any type, much less political. It's even more so with that.
00:01:25
Speaker
All right. So tell us a little bit about Progress Texas. It's not just a podcast, is it? No, it's not. Progress Texas is 15 years old. We are old enough to have our learner's permit. We became 15 years old this year. Progress Texas was started 15 years ago by folks who wanted to push back daily on the disinformation that's well paid for here in Texas.
00:01:52
Speaker
Unfortunately, there's a lot of really good journalism that's behind paywalls, but the lies are free. So Progress Texas is in the digital space with website and social media
Challenges in Progressive Media
00:02:02
Speaker
channels. And now with a globally top rated podcast, we have multiple podcast shows and we are the permanent home for progressive media here in Texas. Our tagline is about campaigns coming and going. A lot of people can understand campaigns. You get really excited about a race or a specific statewide race or something happening with a county commissioner or county judge, but those campaigns tend to end on a Tuesday in November, right?
00:02:32
Speaker
So where do all those people go? Where does the infrastructure go? it all can go away if that person doesn't run again. So we wanna be a voice for what's truly happening in Texas and why, and then what people can do about it.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, and honestly, that was ah that piece of it, the campaigns come and go, was a part of our own origin story. we We wanted to make sure that we were talking about the issues that were coming down the pike, coming to 2030 and beyond, not just, hey, what's going on right now? Did you see what Trump just said? you know um We want to make sure that before the campaign, after the campaign, for the next campaign, right we're we're keeping the eyes of Texas on the bigger price.
00:03:15
Speaker
Absolutely. the The founders, one of whom was former Austin Mayor Steve Adler, i've talked to him a little bit about when it when it first fired up back in the day. And that was very much like Kathleen said about having some sort of a you know a well-crafted progressive answer to a lot of the you know disinformation that was coming from the from conservative spheres. And that was all the way you know Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones and people on the radio and people with you know enormous, gigantic mainstream reach.
00:03:43
Speaker
And you know we're still ah far outpaced in those areas you know by the conservative side because so much money and time and and frankly, a lot of brains. I mean, those people, you know that's not built out of just ah naturally.
Backgrounds of Chris and Kathleen
00:03:57
Speaker
That's built through a lot of investment and a lot of you know a lot of people with a lot of strategy involved to build this you know, ah juggernaut of bad information that's designed to to persuade people to vote a certain way. So, you know, where that's that's the the initial idea from what I've been told was to be able to play defense against that ah to a certain degree. But hopefully, I'd love to see it. And I think it's coming where we we can kind of go on offense a little bit because people have started to pay attention more so.
00:04:27
Speaker
I guess you guys have been with progress Texas or it's been in existence for 15 years, which makes me feel good. I mean, we just started, right. Uh, but what were you doing before that? How did you get into this gig? Well, I've been a part of progress Texas for years. Um, way back when the OG staff, um, one of the, um, deputy, one of them as a deputy director told me that I was the longest, um, small dollar donor, like, and it was truly like five bucks a month, uh, um,
00:04:57
Speaker
you know I have a history of growing up in the church, and you know um we tithe um on Sundays, but also how about better public policy outcomes so churches aren't raising money to help fix the problems? So um I became a board member under the...
00:05:17
Speaker
direction of Ed Espinoza years ago. And then when Ed wanted to leave the nonprofit world for the for-profit world, make a little money perhaps, buy some new Adidas. Hey, Ed, if you're listening, um then I thought I would love to do this because um i had a broadcast news background and then went on to work for some candidates and um nonprofits.
00:05:48
Speaker
And now instead of doing a comm shop like at a county party or doing some comms here and there, this is just a comm shop. It's a statewide comm shop that I have the pleasure of leading communications professionals across the state.
Introducing 'Daily Dispatch'
00:06:04
Speaker
I come from a radio background. So similarly a, you know, a toehold from back in the day and in traditional media, ah similar to Kathleen. um when, when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, uh, I decided that I wanted to do whatever I could to use my skills as both a broadcaster and also as a musician. I played in rock band since I was a teenager, so I knew how to run PA systems. So I started providing ah PA amplification and web streaming to my local clubs, which is something I still occasionally do on evenings and weekends.
00:06:41
Speaker
ah And ah joined a podcast called Left in Texas back in the day with a couple of ah ah Dudes who were way more ah inclined and experienced in politics than I was. I was really just an and interested, concerned citizen at that point. J.D. Gins and ah Joe Desotel were the the two guys that I joined on that. Later on, we added Kerry Collier-Brown, who was one of the founders of Texas Blue Action.
00:07:04
Speaker
um That thing basically died when the pandemic came along because we could no longer gather and drink beer to record our podcast as we had gotten used to doing. We could never get used to this whole remote thing. ah But that was how I met Ed and started doing podcast production for Progress Texas.
00:07:20
Speaker
um About the point when Ed handed things off to Kathleen, we really leaned into the the broadcast or the the podcasting arena and also the digital video arena. And that's kind of where we've, that's been, those have been our growth lanes for the last couple of years now.
00:07:37
Speaker
I was going to ask Chris to say a little bit more about um the Daily Dispatch. The Daily Dispatch is something that we are so proud of. And it's a Monday through fridayly Friday daily, which it's it's hard to do a weekly podcast. Y'all tell me if it's hard um ah around your other work. And Chris came to me and said, I really think we can do a
Podcasts as Political Platforms
00:08:00
Speaker
daily. And i said, that's a huge commitment. You know, we're averaging one, sometimes two pods a week with the Progress Success Happy Hour. um
00:08:09
Speaker
i would i would love to do that, though, because there are some daily podcasts that are too long for me. Like I have three kids. I work full time. i have to write errands. I'm busy. the executive director of my home and my my office. um i i don't have 30 minutes for a morning podcast. I need something in like, don't even give me 15 minutes. I want like 10 minutes or less. Seven would be ideal. Like go to the post office, like walk the dog, wash the dishes. um Chris, would you say a little bit about daily dispatch and and what it's led to?
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, that that kind of came from also my radio background, ah occasionally filling in ah People who are listening here in Austin anyway will remember the Sammy and Bob morning show on KVET radio. I was working there at the time and would occasionally fill in for their news director, whose job but basically it was was to once an hour pop in there and talk for about five or 10 minutes about the current news.
00:09:07
Speaker
And so I you know developed a kind of ah a system for that and ah and a role for that. I did a little podcast about Austin during the pandemic, pandemic ah the Austin ah Daily Drop was what that was called, and so and refined that those skills into the podcast realm. And then we basically were able to modify you know just the systems I had in place for that to plug in as the Daily Dispatch, but with more of a statewide and political sort of focus, which is what that is now.
00:09:32
Speaker
It's basically, i you know, I wake up at 5.30 in the morning and doom scrolls so you don't have to and um and develop a, you know, seven to 10 minute ah role on what's happening right now.
00:09:45
Speaker
Of course, doing this daily, it turns into a narrative. It turns into an ongoing narrative and there are certain, you know, areas, you know, that we'll all be familiar with as people who follow politics. um you know, different people and different issues. And, you especially during, during the legislature, clearly covering covering that during elections, clearing up, you know, covering all of that stuff um that turned into kind of a daily update. And so I like to think of it, you know, perhaps vicariously, it's just long enough to listen to in the shower.
00:10:11
Speaker
It's about one shower's length. And so I really, I love the idea of people listening to me as they shower. And so, so that's a, that's, you know, part of it for me.
Expanding Reach Through Digital Media
00:10:22
Speaker
but these curs fellas we can get We can get a shower done in that much time, right? Sure. Sure. i was going to say earlier, when you mentioned your your experience in the rock band, it made me think of probably the most fun job I ever had was in high school. I was the manager of a hardcore metal band called In Times of Trial.
00:10:41
Speaker
I, too, am from the metal world. My thing was metal as well. In Times of Trial? Okay, I'll write it down. If you want, later i'll I'll send you the music video I helped fundraise for. Please do. Yeah. The, the singer of that band is actually like a signed recording artist with a band called Kubla Khan, Texas TX. Okay. Cool. and they And they travel internationally and have record deals and the whole thing. Yeah.
00:11:03
Speaker
I still keep in touch with those guys. my My metal thing was a band. We were out actually out Lubbock was where we started our band. We moved it to Austin in 93. It was called Human, which is far too simplistic a name to have really ever taken off. And we we were doing kind of like ah ah unnecessarily complicated math metal is what we decided to call it.
00:11:22
Speaker
And we did pretty well. We we went for about, ah but I guess I was in that band from what, 99 until 2003. Yeah. nine until two thousand and three No, no, no.
00:11:34
Speaker
ah Longer than that. 2013. Anyway, the the it went really well. We moved it to Austin. We played, i guess our coolest gig was we opened for Clutch at Liberty Lunch one time.
00:11:46
Speaker
My guys were in high school and they were in like the Sherman Denison, Texoma, Sadler, South Made type area. And for that area, you know rural North Texas, they were they were huge. but ah Very cool. Very cool.
00:11:59
Speaker
met Metal is a small world, you know. That's right. But the skills are not as as as applicable to the podcasting world, I'll tell you. i'm hoping I can use the kind of ingenuity to fundraise and be able to pay our editor going into the new year. But other than that. Shout out to Juan Jose.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I had a question hearing y'all. I mean, it sounds like I'm guessing over 15 years, the the way in which you're messaging, maybe the content is not changing, but the way you do.
00:12:31
Speaker
And I heard you talk about getting into video. Like, can you speak a little bit more about that? Like, where has it been? Where is it going? And I guess I i asked this in the context of, i heard an ah interview with some podcasters with the Hollywood Reporter and Ben Shapiro and Jon Favreau and a bunch of people were on it. And Ben Shapiro was making the case that traditionally he believes Republicans have been better at embracing things over time historically with new media. And so I'm wondering, like, what are your thoughts, especially given your experience here Progress, Texas? Yeah. um Kate, we have changed the way that we do our work. When I was on the board, um the staff would spend a lot of time um sending out a press release, chasing producers, reporters, you know, by phone saying, did you get out our release? Can you come to our ah can you come to our
00:13:24
Speaker
presser? Can you come to our event on the Capitol Steps? um This is really important. We need you there. um So we still do that. We still send the press releases. We still chase producers and reporters. But in today's day and age, if our so small staff is working really hard to get a story in tomorrow's newspaper, by tomorrow, that story is old news.
00:13:53
Speaker
Right? So what we have done is start our mornings with Chris's daily dispatch. That's the news that broke overnight. It's the news that that is still making headlines um the evening
Importance of Storytelling in Media
00:14:07
Speaker
before. It's stories that we think are not being reported. And let me give you an example of of one of them. There was a huge story that was so underreported this year that we leaned heavily on to great success, I think. But um so we have the podcast and then our staff members record direct to camera videos that go out on Blue Sky, Instagram, Twitter, Instagram.
00:14:33
Speaker
all all the places. And then those are shared widely, which is wonderful. But also we can see on the analytics that for our hugely performing one video on one platform, maybe of all the people who saw it, it's about 20 or 30% of our own followers, meaning so many more people who are new to us, who haven't taken the time to go back to our profile and read our bio and hit subscribe. Um,
00:15:02
Speaker
that that they're getting the news that we think is important to them. And that's really working for us. Our digital numbers have exploded this year. We have more than 15 million um views online on just our digital platform. Like we can take an in-person rally of a really good size rally that says 2000 people, but share that with 800,000 on on one but one platform alone, that's TikTok online. um And the reason that that's so important is because um that we're fighting for people's attention.
00:15:38
Speaker
It's hard to break through, but the way that we're doing it that's concise and easy to understand, but also easy to share is really paying off. And I think that one of those underreported stories is the push for some zombie legislation in the first regular session. And that means it comes up session after session and Democrats kill it.
00:16:02
Speaker
and It comes back and it comes back. And I do as many in-person club talks as I can and community events as I can. And a a lady came up to me afterwards and said, okay, but I'm a subscriber to the news. I i pay for the Dallas Morning News subscription and I do watch my evening news. so I'm not one of the people that you're talking about that that is kind of tuned out. And why have I not heard about the use it or lose it attempt at voter purge?
00:16:33
Speaker
of 4 million qualified Texans. But I do know that there was a push to rename the New York strip stake, the Texas strip stake. And I heard about that on the evening news. And I heard about that in the Dallas Morning News. And I'm a subscriber and I pay for that news.
00:16:52
Speaker
well, you're subscribing to corporate media that that is beholden to the shareholders, but also some of the folks who are their paid advertisers. And we're not. We're a progressive media outlet that really thinks it's important to deliver honest, accurate, timely news and um some of the stories that you you may have been missing. So we do do things differently than when I started, but we keep those relationships with the legacy media.
Engaging Democratic Primary Voters
00:17:24
Speaker
Like the day that um Jasmine Crockett announces that she's gonna jump into the Senate race.
00:17:32
Speaker
um I get a request from the Dallas Morning News, do you wanna weigh in here? Some people are getting their feelings hurt. you know what what What do you have to say? Two very powerful progressives are gonna go head to head. Give us your take and we talked to the staff about it briefly and sent back an answer. that we think it's a good thing that two of the most effective communicators in the state party who are talking to different people are going to bring a lot of attention to the primary and therefore a lot of attention to the general. It's going to take so many more people to know that there is an election happening
00:18:10
Speaker
And that's working people, that's young people, and that's a millions of people that stayed home in 2024. So we're doing the traditional media, we're doing that the new media of digital, and we're in the podcast space. And we're doing as much as we can with our limited staff and our limited budget as we can.
00:18:30
Speaker
I think that there's a really ah powerful analogy there between what you're talking about, where 20% maybe of the views that you're getting are from your actual followers and the Democratic primary. And what I mean by that is most Democratic voters who show up in November and and vote for a Democratic candidate in November don't.
Contrasting Political Messaging
00:18:51
Speaker
think of themselves first and foremost as like die in the wool democrats you know card carrying members wearing the blue jersey with the d on the back right if you are one of those people you vote in the primary you show up to the primary and we just know objectively that in a midterm that's like maybe five percent of the state voting population and in a general and and like a presidential maybe it's 10. like Honestly, we are kind of not that big of a group.
00:19:21
Speaker
You, me, ah Chris, ah Kate, right? Like we are kind of objectively smaller in number, but whenever the 20% of the followers can do the sharing,
00:19:35
Speaker
We can get the message out to the people who are going to show up in the general election. Right. The people who have jobs and hobbies that have nothing to do with politics. but The key to the key to all that is to make it interesting. and And that that goes back to something that Kate said a second ago about the idea that conservatives or Republicans are somehow better at this.
00:19:56
Speaker
than we are. I would say that it's all tied into the fact that the, you know, the Republican Party and conservatives tend to be a lot more kind of monochromatic in terms of who they are and what they're after. They're they're kind of more in lockstep with each other culturally and economically and whatever else.
00:20:13
Speaker
um There are some lanes there, but it's there, they kind of have a nice little system going on there. And so over here on our side, on the progressive side, we're trying to do everything good for everybody. We have the the old big tent as it were. And I think that ah our folks ah definitely, you know, are more interested in facts and science and what it really is. We don't think of ourselves, ah you know, as was said, we don't think of ourselves so much as some kind of a club or a cult or whatever you want to say, like ah I would say that many of us have started to think of ourselves as a movement, but we're not necessarily in lockstep with each other just because out of some form of loyalty or whatever it might be. We're all kind of after what's best for the country, what's what's real with science, you know, what's real with freedom and all these other things.
Ethical Media Challenges
00:21:02
Speaker
And so we're at a bit of a disadvantage in terms of not only ah having more people that we have to try to accommodate to get the ship going in one particular direction, as opposed to the other side, which is much more in lockstep. But I think that that dedication to truth and that dedication to accuracy is much more, um is much harder to meet. It's a higher standard on our side than it is on the other side.
00:21:27
Speaker
And this makes me think of, if we're going back to Rush Limbaugh, I would go back to, there was a guy named Art Bell who was on AM radio back in the day and his show might still be around. He was UFOs and alien abductions and paranormal and all this other stuff. Very, very successful guy who had a show on all over the country on AM radio.
00:21:46
Speaker
um It's not a super big leap from that to what Alex Jones is known for doing. Yeah, he walks so Alex Jones could run. Yeah, absolutely. yeah so So that's the difference is, you know, we could step out there and do a bunch of conspiratorial stuff. I don't guess we can cuss on this show, can we?
00:22:02
Speaker
Go for it. Let's put an explicit label. Yeah. Well, bullshit is the is the word that I would try to out there. And that's, you know, I think that's a pretty accurate statement. where where Progress Texas um is a bullshit free zone. We're we're going for accuracy.
00:22:16
Speaker
ah we areing We are crafting a narrative, but our narrative is that science works and that freedom works and that, you know, fairness works and equity works and diversity works and all the things that we believe in. um We're not trying to ah we're actually if we're doing anything in the information versus disinformation space, we're trying to squish disinformation.
00:22:39
Speaker
And and that frequently is not as, you know, titillating or, ah you know, ah sensational as creating the disinformation itself. So there's a basic difference between the two audiences that makes our lift harder. Because we're trying to stick to what's real, whereas the other side can say
Influencers in Political Messaging
00:22:58
Speaker
whatever they want. And if it fires up their base, it works for them.
00:23:01
Speaker
um There's an ethical ah difference between the two sides. What you're saying, though, I feel like it it goes to the adage. Maybe you've heard that Democrats want to win an argument. Republicans want to win an election.
00:23:12
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. And so and and that's that's a real thing. And so ah the way we've tried to kind of scale against that idea is to make our stuff interesting and make our stuff relevant and make our stuff. You know, we we want to make sure that people understand how ah Republican policies are hurting them personally and and keep that, again, grounded in fact, and also, you know, put it through the lens of there's a better alternative. We can do things differently. We can do things much better for many more of us.
00:23:44
Speaker
ah But the people who are in control you know have managed to convince too many people in general that what they want to do is okay based on you know playing on their hatreds and playing on their biases and playing on their religion and playing on their economic biases and whatever else it might be. So it's difficult. We're it we're in a a tough spot, but I think our growth shows that there's definitely an audience there and and I think we're on to a good thing.
00:24:08
Speaker
Well, on that though, do you think that the answer to Breakthrough... is not just growth and progress, Texas, but also more influencers. And I know that that's self-serving since we are, ah I guess you could say we're media now on our podcast, but like do would you encourage more people to take to TikTok or other forms of communication? And like, what kind of advice would you give them to start out? Because it can be frustrating.
00:24:34
Speaker
I think absolutely, the more voices the better. you know Coming from a broadcast background, you know I have in mind, you know are you good at it? are you you know can can you get a Can you get a message across?
00:24:47
Speaker
ah Can you come across decent in video? can you you know Can you put your thoughts together in a cogent and brief way that that's ah that resonates? Not everybody can do that.
00:24:58
Speaker
There are going to be many people who will try to
Advice for Political Communication
00:25:01
Speaker
do it. And I, hey, I think the try is, up I'm all about the try for sure for anybody who wants to to try to become a messenger for for what they believe in, I would say for sure.
00:25:10
Speaker
um You know, but there are going to be some that are going to, that are going to break through and and are going to have some lasting power. um There are definitely plenty of and influencers in the political space that ah that i'm I'm occasionally not super ah in lockstep with what they're saying necessarily to their hundreds of thousands of followers. and something I was actually just about to ask you that, Chris, because I feel like there are some where I'll see them and I see their huge platform and all the people following like, wish they weren't speaking for the Democratic Party right now. Yeah, well, there's there's chaos for sure. Absolutely, there's chaos. And that's that's another you know that's another part of all of this. It's a chaotic landscape in general. To answer your question, I i think the more voices, the better.
00:25:52
Speaker
I also think the more better the voices, the better. You know, that if we can get people out there who can who can actually, you know, do a good job with this, I'm all about it. And we're, you know, we're we're looking to expand in some other ways that we may we may come up with too. But we've we've developed, you know, um the different people who have come to work for Progress Texas, both currently and past, were not influencer type people. They were mainly either policy people or they were digital people or whatever. And so we've been really quite lucky to to have a pretty solid bunch of people who can do what we're talking about, who can get on the camera and get an idea across quickly and, you know, and in a way that's relevant, in a way that resonates. So so this is not something that, you know, you don't have to have years in radio or years in TV like we do in order to do this. This is something that if you've got the if you've got the will and you've got the brains, then do it.
00:26:42
Speaker
That's reassuring because Kate and I don't know how to be influencers. Yes, you can. Yes, you do. Tell us your way. lawyers and And to talk about things from our perspective. Well, the the I think the legal field is, you know, that's that's rich with ah with with perspective and with expertise. that's That's something that's needed. You know, the trick becomes don't make it boring. The trick becomes make it, you know, make it don't be dry about it. And that's that's difficult. it's that And if you think about that, you know, being in kind of a ah academic sort of of, you know, professional space.
00:27:15
Speaker
And then being over here in this entertainment space, there's, there's some gray area between, and that's kind of what we shoot for. We're looking to be solid with our information, solid with our, with our integrity, with policy and things like that, but also be interesting and be entertaining at least to a certain degree to where, you know, just don't be boring, you know? And I think that's, I think that's the ah big problem also that's a kind of ah ah endemic to our side is you know, kind trying to do the college professor routine. Most people just don't want to see that.
00:27:49
Speaker
um So we have had young folks who have started with us, who started as interns and have gone on, you know, to become communications directors for city members of Congress. And our digital associate Haley right now is being stopped on her college campus frequently and saying, I know you, I see you
Personal Touch: Obsessions and Holidays
00:28:08
Speaker
in the videos. And it's it's practice, practice, practice, just like if ah you know you're picking up piano or some other some other um hobby or tasks that you really like that you want to improve at. But I think it's absolutely better, Kate, that that more people are communicating what they think about
00:28:27
Speaker
what's happening in our country and the literal crisis that our state and our country are in Because back in the day, we didn't all have like small communications devices in our purses or pockets.
00:28:44
Speaker
And the people who are in your phone contacts, either if you're on social media or on your texts, care about you and care about what you have to say.
00:28:55
Speaker
so whether you're sharing this podcast or you're sharing Progress Texas content or you're sharing a post from a candidate that you like, That is a way to communicate your values with the people in your universe. Republicans, i don't think are better at messaging. I think they're better at investing in messaging, which is totally different.
00:29:20
Speaker
Fox News and far right media have been around for 40 years. And like, look at how it's paid off in election after election after election. They've nationalized media.
00:29:34
Speaker
ah like a county judge race or a state house race. So a Democratic candidate is going to have to answer about some national issue as they don't as ah they don't represent somebody in Austin or Dallas or Grapevine, Texas. so i think I think they're better at investing and I think they're less shy about sharing.
00:29:57
Speaker
I've tried to make this point. Like I think Republicans are naturally better evangelicals, right? They're better at spreading their word. Democrats seem to get a lot more comfortable with ah being loud and proud and and sharing our word. um And shout out to Haley. She is excellent. we need We need to recruit our own army of Haley's for Mission Texas. I think that'd be great. we yeah Yeah, an army of Haley's would be absolutely great for sure.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, shout out to your TikTok and Instagram and your video content. So I just want to say people should be following that. If you have not already, you've probably seen one if you've been doing your For You page on TikTok because I know it comes up online.
00:30:37
Speaker
Kate, do you think we could do, since Chris says we got to be interesting, I think. Oh, no. Jesus at the beginning of the episode. Maybe maybe we should play Obsessed.
00:30:48
Speaker
Oh, I don't even know what that it is. What is the one thing in the news, the the media, the entertainment that you're completely obsessed with? That's not my best Kindle impression. I could try again, but Oh, Kendall's Kendall is like, you know, when he's gets done doing what he's doing with the Democratic Party, he's total game show host material. i mean, I think Kendall would have would be a terrific TV host on the game. show and the stars Not dancing with the stars, of course. Exactly. the Episode would start with. Hi, how are you?
00:31:18
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly.
Political Implications of the Nativity Story
00:31:20
Speaker
So. ah So, Kate, what are you obsessed with right now? ah Well, it's the holidays. Is this supposed to be political or non-political? Anything. Yeah, um yeah i I'm obsessed with, well, i did Christmas markets last year, is the holiday season right now, and so I'm about to host a a thing for my family, and it's sort of Christmas market themed, so I'm a little...
00:31:46
Speaker
obsessed with that theme at the moment, which is maybe weird. I don't know, but I'm really excited for it. And I'm really excited for the holidays because um I love Christmas and, and also Christmas movies. um Yeah, some ladies on this, we're listening might appreciate.
00:32:01
Speaker
How are y'all? ah Kathleen, you're next. What are you obsessed with? I was sharing with my staff that we were singing Christmas carols or I was singing Christmas carols um in our car last night and I was invited to stop and I invited the children to get out and walk. I really enjoy holidays. i love Christmas time. I love Christmas.
00:32:24
Speaker
trying to get offline a little bit and just spend time with my family and try to get some some peace back and some community back and you know parties in the neighborhood and the lights in the neighborhood. um it's It's really special to me. So that's something that I've really enjoyed this week.
00:32:41
Speaker
I'll go next. ah I'm obsessed with a Muppet Christmas Carol. It is just completely held up over the years. Best Christmas movie. Have you shown your kids that? Josh and I were just talking. Is Becca old enough to see that? Would she get it? So it's it's funny you say that. Yeah. I watched it with with Hattie, my three and a half year old. And there's a moment where they're about to introduce the the ghost of Christmas Future. You know, the scariest of the ghosts. Yeah.
00:33:07
Speaker
yeah And ah Gonzo, ah who is Charles Dickens, is talking to Rizzo the rat. And he's like, oh, this is kind of scary. is it ah is it ah Is this okay for kids? And he's like, ah, it's culture. It's fine.
00:33:20
Speaker
i love it. thought I didn't realize future was the scariest of the ghosts. I didn't know didn't i guess I'm not familiar enough with the Christmas Carol. Well, so you got like the little kid ghost who's the ghost of Christmas past who takes him back to his childhood. and and and the ghost of Christmas present is this jolly Santa type figure. And then the ghost of Christmas future is basically the Grim Reaper. He's like representing death. Yeah. The the cloak and all. I remember that now. Yeah. It just so happens, and this is a clean sweep, my obsession also has to do with Christmas, but it but I kind of went into a little bit of a deep nerdy dive about the political implications of the nativity, which has has to do with the fact that Joseph and Mary...
00:34:04
Speaker
ah were forced by the Roman Empire, which was not their local government. It was ah it was a superpower that had taken over the area where they lived. They were forced to take an expensive and difficult journey while Mary was very advanced pregnant in order to be counted for a census, which itself was about taxation and about ah military military conscription. So it wasn't anything that was going to help anybody. Um, the idea that they ended up having to crash in a stable, ah speaks to the idea that they were of an economic sort that had no means. Uh, it wasn't that there wasn't any room at the end. It was that they couldn't afford a room at the end.
00:34:41
Speaker
Uh, and so there are a lot, a lot of different things about the Christmas story. And of course, as we're talking lefty politics here, uh, we're in a moment where we're reminded that you have to say, Merry Christmas. Don't say happy holidays, say Merry Christmas. And there's this, the, the, the other side has politicized Christmas to a certain degree and the holiday in general. It's interesting to see that if you really dive it. Because you need to be aggrieved at the holidays. Just committed to taking offense for anything, right? They want to call liberal snowflakes bejesus, Pete. Yeah, there's plenty of historical and political nerdiness to be found in the nativity if you look for it.
Final Thoughts on Political Engagement
00:35:14
Speaker
There are some people who will get upset if you like refer to Christmas as Xmas. Like setting aside that the X is Kai and stands for Christ. Oh, this I never knew. And Happy Holidays is Happy Holy Days, if you think about it. That's right. Yeah. right yeah So give us a break, please.
00:35:31
Speaker
Well, we have a few minutes till we end, but we give all our guests the last word because this is a podcast about flipping Texas. So we ultimately, i think if I'm hearing y'all, part of the solution is obviously a new media and and how we communicate, what we communicate, breaking through. But I'm wondering both of y'all's thoughts before we leave on what it is that we need to do. What have you heard, especially from your guests, from what you're seeing that what we need to be doing here in Texas to really flip it?
00:36:02
Speaker
ah Yeah, i think I think new media, of course, we work in that space, so clearly we believe in it. But I would say there's a lot of value in the old school, which is just talking to your neighbors. ah And ah something that Alex briefly alluded to back there was don't be don't be shy about you know sharing what you think, especially at this time. I mean, you know a lot of us consider ah us to be in what could possibly amount to an existential crisis for our democracy. you know This is the wrong time, the absolute wrong time to be quiet.
00:36:31
Speaker
Um, so I would encourage anybody of progressive proclivities, uh, to, uh, to be loud and proud, not only on your Facebook or your Twitter or whatever, but in your neighborhood and, you know, hell at the grocery store at the bar or whatever. Um, the, the idea that you're not supposed to talk about politics or religion, I think has done huge damage.
00:36:49
Speaker
Um, uh, you know, real religion religion is, is something to the side that is not really my bag too much, but, uh, but politics I think is, is something that, You know, we have stolen and use all the time a line from Congresswoman Julie Johnson, which is, if you don't do politics, politics will do you.
00:37:08
Speaker
um And so ah we are all involved in politics, whether we like it or not. And the idea that we would not want to talk about it or we would take offense to someone else wanting to talk about it. is is extremely, shame it's it's it's ah it's a shame, you know, because we should all be engaged in in what's right around where we live and the conditions in which we live and our economic conditions and those of our kids and our families should be of utmost importance to all of us. And ah too many of us have been taught that that it's a faux pas to bring those things up. So commit faux pas is what I would say.
00:37:42
Speaker
Chris, I think that that quote is a, it's an adaptation of a Barbara Jordan quote, which is if you're not at the table. You're on the menu, right? Sure, sure, sure, sure. Absolutely.
00:37:53
Speaker
Both are good. Kathleen, what's your last word? I'm doing plus one whenever I can. Like I'm talking to my neighbors about elections. I'm talking to folks who helped me at the grocery store or at the bookstore about um raising the minimum wage. I'm talking about, um, healthcare policy wherever I can. and and i And I do, and I have for years carried voter registration cards in my purse and in my car, because we need so many more people to participate. And I truly think that Texas is a voter suppressed state. I don't think it's a red state or a less of a non-voting state, it's a voter-suppressed state.
00:38:34
Speaker
ah Ross Ramsey, who formerly worked at the Texas Tribune, talked about how our voter registration system is state-of-the-art circa 1980. Yeah. yeah like yeah you take a pi You go and get a piece of paper. You go and find a pen. You write out your name and some and like guess. like Okay, you're going to put on your Social Security. You're going to put on your your um driver's license.
Support for Progressive Media
00:38:59
Speaker
You're going to put it in the mail. It's going to be delivered via mail to somebody at your county government. whether It's going to be shredded when it gets there, by the way. it's going to be all shredded. Somebody has yeah to read your chicken scratch and guess what you said versus you going online.
00:39:14
Speaker
Like you can register for your fishing license online. We can do so many things online 2025, but we can't register to vote online because that's too much democracy. So it it is so difficult. So I think some people...
00:39:31
Speaker
just pass it up. But also we have so many people who are registered to vote who stayed home last year. And we know from the news stories after the 2024 election that top searches were, did Joe Biden drop out of the election?
00:39:48
Speaker
What is a tariff? right Can I change my vote? yeah So people are not paying attention either because they've tuned out for whatever reason, like Chris is saying, and people don't talk about politics um or they don't know how it affects their daily lives. um I went to a rally, a reproductive rights rally,
00:40:08
Speaker
And I heard um two young men speaking about Roe v. Wade the the day after the decision came down. And the one gentleman was talking to the other young man. He's saying, no, no, no it's the Supreme Court. Well, when do we vote again ah for the Supreme Court again? You don't vote for the Supreme Court, dummy. It's appointed by the president.
00:40:30
Speaker
Well, when do we vote for president again? So I think a lot of people just don't know how the system works. It's by design. It's hard to vote. So whenever you can strike up a conversation with a smile to um somebody out in the world, I think it can only benefit us. And what's the harm to try? Well, thank you both. Where can we support you and ah follow you on the Internet, both of you personally and also with Progress Texas?
00:41:00
Speaker
ProgressTexas.org is our primary website. ah The most recent podcast that we've published, which is we constantly publish, we publish between seven and nine times a week, is posted there. Find us on all the different podcast ah platforms from Apple to Spotify to Podbean to iHeart to who wherever else they are. We're everywhere.
00:41:21
Speaker
Find us and follow us. And, ah you know, one thing I'd say about the Daily Dispatch, our short little, love of you know, morning thing that we do, if you don't happen to listen to it every day, which you should, it posts by about 8.30 every morning, ah you can always cycle back through about two or three of those things and spend, you know, 30 minutes instead of 10 minutes and you're very well caught up on what's happening around you we but in a very complete, comprehensive sort of way.
00:41:45
Speaker
Uh, we also, we haven't even mentioned yet. We're on the radio. Speaking of all this, this, this, uh, mainstream, you know, old school legacy media that we're poo-pooing here. um we've, uh, been, uh, we joined the ah lineup for KPFT radio, community radio station in Houston, uh, obviously the biggest and most diverse city in Texas, uh, notably, and I didn't know this until we kind of had this agreement going with them. KPFT has the distinction of being the only radio station in the United States to have been bombed off the air twice.
00:42:17
Speaker
and it And it was done in the 1970s, the early 1970s, by the Ku Klux Klan. So this is this is a station that has been making waves in Houston for decades and decades. so' We are super, super proud to be part of what they do. If you're in Houston, you can hear us on their HD2 channel, which starts at 11 a.m. on Sundays. And that what we're sending them is our in-progress roundtable show that we do every Friday.
00:42:43
Speaker
Amazing. Well, Kathleen. Yeah. If you're on any social media platform, look for Progress Texas. I'm Kathleen Thompson on social media. And we would love for you to invest in honest um Texas made.
00:43:00
Speaker
nonprofit progressive media. And those five and $10 donations really do add up. We have a lot of folks who give five bucks a month, like for for that less than a latte, right?
00:43:11
Speaker
ah Monthly, it really does add up and it pays for us to go in person to live events. um It pays for us to go to the Capitol. It pays for us to have great content, peerless content on the radio. So if that's something that you'd be able to afford, um please chip in. We'd love to have your support.
00:43:30
Speaker
Alex and Kate, actually, um that's what I was going to say. Sorry to interrupt you, Kate. Alex and Kate both both pitched in for our recent holiday parties. And I want to say to the two of you guys and to everybody listening, we love doing live stuff. We love doing live podcast stuff or happy hour gatherings or whatever it happens to be. We always try to make those things a lot of fun. And so when you hear about us doing something live, please, please too do get involved because we'd love to meet everyone, including you guys in person.
00:44:00
Speaker
And we just, we have a great time where we're very well established with live events in Dallas and Austin. We've gotten started with some stuff in Houston. We had a live podcast, podcast taping there a few weeks ago. We're going to be back in March to cover the Harris County ah Democratic Convention there, which were about the party convention there for the county. We're really, really excited about that. We're working on San Antonio. We've been down there and doing fun stuff with Ron Nirenberg a couple of times. And you know, what what we're missing is cow town. I need me some Fort Worth.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yes. And our schedule. So we're we're coming there, too. Love it. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you, Kathleen and Chris. We will see our listeners next week and we'll say God bless Texas. You can follow us on all socials at Mission Texas Podcast.
00:44:45
Speaker
Email us at MissionTexasPodcast at gmail.com. This episode is edited by Juan Jose Flores. Our music bumper is by Adam Pickerel and our cover art is by Tino Sohn.
00:44:59
Speaker
you