Reject high conflict to win swing voters

“I love Trump!”  

I felt my heart quicken when I heard the taxi driver say these three words. It was Summer 2022, and my family was en route from Heathrow Airport to the center of London. I immediately started preparing a speech in my head to deliver to this ignorant man about the wrong-doings, moral failures, and dangers posed by the former President.

Fast forward one year. The family was once again on summer vacation, this time on a group river rafting trip in Idaho. Twenty-four of us from all over the country, mostly strangers at the outset, were spending an intimate week together floating, swimming, camping, and eating. On night one, a fellow traveler started bragging about his gun collection which included an AR-15. I could feel my body tense, and a lecture about the dangers of firearms and the need for gun reform started forming on the tip of my tongue.

In both of these situations, just as my argumentative reflexes were about to kick in and harsh judgements were about to spill out of my mouth, I remembered High Conflict by Amanda Ripley. In High Conflict, Ripley highlights the lure and danger of adopting a winner-take-all stance, both in our personal lives and in national and worldwide affairs. 

In High Conflict, Ripley challenges the reader to approach those with whom we instinctively disagree with curiosity rather than combativeness, describing high conflict as a position that is “intolerant of difference, [one] that sorts the world into good and evil.” This zero sum thinking is, according to Ripley, “small and confining.” On the other hand, good conflict acknowledges “the reality that none of us has all the answers to everything all the time, and that we are all connected.” Most conflict is not high conflict, but high conflict tends to pull us in, as Ripley analogizes, like a tar pit.  

When I was faced with both the Trump-loving taxi driver and gun-owning river rafter on my summer vacations, I was able to recognize the emotional lure of high conflict, to take a breath, and to apply the lessons of Ripley’s book. My goal in both cases went from winning an argument, to connecting and understanding. So to both of these men I replied sincerely, “Tell me more.” 

What followed in both situations were personal stories–of the impact of sanctions on the taxi driver’s family in Eritrea and of the rafter’s love of mechanics and collecting. Once I got to know both a little better, I couldn’t reduce either of them to simple stereotypes. They cared about their families and their passions, just as I cared about mine. They were not a “them” to our “us”. By listening and seeking to understand them, I saw their humanity, and because they could tell I was truly listening, they saw mine.

We Democratic political insiders are constantly reading polls and obsessively listening to podcasts that dissect each twist and turn of politics. Deep in our bones, we feel the risk posed by a second Trump presidency, including the threat to global democracy and abortion rights. We know that we must win in 2024, that the stakes are too high to lose. We use war terms when speaking about this election, battle, trenches, rematch, terror, fear, threat, attack, win and lose without a second thought. 

But this is the language of high conflict, and it will not persuade the people we need to reach. In fact, our fervor is likely to repel many of the undecided voters we need to persuade. They are exhausted by the conflict. Inherently independent, these folks are turned off by an “us” vs. “them” mindset. Their steadfast independence, in this age of polarization, is their way of telling us to turn down the volume, to stop yelling at one another, and to try to rediscover our common values and experiences. 

If we wish to win over swing voters, we must reject the lure of high conflict. We must listen more than lecture. We must trade stories about our lives and move beyond simplistic demographic profiles. Not only will we stand a better chance of attracting undecided voters, we will simultaneously remind ourselves of our shared humanity.

While I don’t know what happened to the taxi driver, I think about him often. My fellow river-rafter and I proceeded to have a lot of conversations over the week-long journey, opening up our understanding of each other, finding some areas of common ground and others of stark differences. But at the end of the week, the man’s father, a quiet life-long Texan gun owner who had been listening to our discussions throughout the trip proclaimed, “I didn’t think I would ever like a Democrat from Cal-i-for-ni-a, but I like you.” 

I was sad to say goodbye when we hugged at the end of the trip.

For More on This Subject: “The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students Isn’t on the Syllabus” by Frank Bruni.

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Jen Wolosin is former Mayor, and current City Council member of Menlo Park, CA. In her position she has often found herself in the “tar pits” of high conflict. She works hard everyday to reject high conflict, some days more successfully than others.