Zack Exley

All right, so first we have to get one thing out of the way, which is, let's see, I have to point maybe. Just, we have to get out of the way. There we go. Yeah, I am sorry. And it's kind of my fault because, you know, if Bernie came really close to winning the Democratic nomination and, you know, polls showed that if he had won the nomination, he actually would have won the presidency because Hillary Clinton lost in these three Rust Belt states. You know, she won the popular vote, of course, and Bernie would have totally won those states, and it was pretty clear. So, and, you know, and you might be wondering, let's see, what am I doing wrong here? Ah, okay. So, you know, so Bernie didn't win. Right? So why am I talking to you here? Well, so there's this thing in the United States that, you know, you've been, you've all been subjected to every four years. Our presidential campaigns are kind of like huge startups, and they're really exciting. They go on forever. You know, we really never stop campaigning. Tons of money, lots of talented people join these campaigns, and we get to experiment and invent a lot of new stuff. So the Bernie campaign actually had some really interesting successes. And also, you know, Bernie, of course, nobody knew who he was. He was from a state of Vermont, which in the United States most people have never heard of. And, you know, he was 75 years old. He was this wild-haired Jew, you know, and he was a socialist, which in America, you know, you might as well worship Satan or kick puppies. You know, I mean, it's really how it is. But a lot of stuff happened on the campaign. I came from this background where I had worked on a few other presidential campaigns before Bernie. I thought I had gotten out of campaigning for good. Campaigns are hell to work on. They're just terrible. But I worked on, way back in 2003, this guy Howard Dean. He was kind of the prototype for the Internet campaign. And there was this small group of people that were, you know, using the Internet. And we were saying, hey, this could actually help with organizing people and raising money. And Howard Dean was this incredible story of also a weird guy that nobody had heard about from Vermont. Again, same thing. And he almost won the Democratic nomination. So this is like a repeating cycle. So then after Dean didn't win, we went to go work for John Kerry. None of you remember that he ran for president in 2000. They don't remember it in America either. But it was a pretty exciting campaign. And he almost won. And, you know, we were really, we were really, you know, we were working for Kerry because we were trying to set this precedent that if your name is Bush and you're president and you start a stupid war in Iraq, that you should be thrown out after your first term. And that's what we did with George H.W. Bush. And so we wanted to do that with George W. Bush. And there are other Bushes in the pipeline. You know, there's like Jeb Bush and George P. Bush. And there are cousins and brothers. They're going to keep coming. So, unfortunately, we failed to set this precedent back in 2004. But then, so we developed this stuff. And then, of course, Obama came along. And this same group of people that had been experimenting with the Internet got onto Obama's campaign. And he raised, you know, he would not have been possible, he would not have won without the stuff that he was able to do with the Internet, with fundraising and organizing. And that campaign, you know, it was this beautiful campaign. So many people got involved. It was so exciting. There was only one problem. We forgot to keep organizing all over the country. We forgot to organize in local communities. You know, it was this big show, lots of money on the Internet, TV ads. And because of this weird thing about how our presidential campaigning system works, our campaign is focused on just a handful of states. And they're kind of small states. And so the Democratic Party just ignored the rest of the country for years and years. And what this graph shows, if you can see it, is that the Democratic Party just lost seats everywhere all over the country and just kept losing them and kept losing them. During Obama's presidency, a thousand of the Democrats lost a thousand seats in state legislatures across the country. Another way of looking at that, if you can, if that looks red to you. See all those red states? Those red states are states where the Republican Party is in control of the state legislature and the governor's mansion. There are only six states on that map that are controlled by the Democrats. And so the Republican Party, and I'm not actually a big partisan guy. I live in one of those red states. I live in a really conservative community. The people are awesome. What's happened is that, what's happened is that, this fringe, you know, has taken over. And it's very anti-immigrant, you know, and now anti-Muslim fringe kind of movement. And this might sound familiar. It's happening all over Europe and North America. And so they're out organizing everybody else. And this is what, you know, we really forgot when we were doing all this fancy Internet stuff. I just want to say something about why, this is how I think about why this is happening. This graph is of, the big line that keeps going up is productivity. Our economy, and this graph looks the same, basically whatever industrialized country you look at. This is the United States. Productivity keeps going up. Profits keep going up. But that other line is wages and compensation. And starting in the 1970s, in Europe it started happening a little bit later. Basically workers and middle class people just got left behind. And they're angry about it. And this is another graph of, these are all the income earners across the world chopped up into deciles or something. And you see that part, and this is income growth of everybody in the world over the last 20 years or something. And you see that part there that's not growing? That's the European and North American middle class and working class. So basically we, fancy Internet people, have just left our, our compatriots behind. And they're really angry about it. And this was their answer. Right? And because they said, hey, what about us? And we said, tough. You know, you don't know enough computer languages. You're not a graphic designer. You know, you don't have a university education. What were you thinking? You know, that's why we're leaving you behind. Well this is their answer. Right? And it's not a nice one. And it's not represent, but that was all they could do. And it's not this, you know, people like Trump and their European equivalents are not representative of our people. In the United, you know, Trump basically just campaigned on this anti-immigrant message. But actually the vast majority of Americans are pro-immigrant. Believe it or not, after watching that election. And of course Trump didn't even win the popular vote. So, okay, why am I talking about this? Because when Bernie Sanders, because when Bernie Sanders announced his campaign and said he was going to run, I thought I was done with these hellish campaigns. But right away he started attracting these big crowds. Because he also had an answer for the American working class and the American middle class. And it wasn't an anti-immigrant message. It was let's roll up our sleeves and get to work and rebuild our economy kind of message. And it was awesome. And it was pro-immigrant and pro-everybody. And it was very beautiful. And lots of people started coming to him even though he was so weird. So I went and begged my way onto the campaign. And I basically gave this pitch to the campaign leadership. I made this promise. And by the way, this headline was a year before the primaries. The primaries are like the leadership election for the party. And I know you know this, but I feel like I have to say it anyways. I'm sorry we subject you all to our political... But this was a year before the primaries. Not even before the presidential election. So I went to the campaign leadership and I made them this promise. I said, look, if you let me hang around here... Because this was just like Bernie and his Vermont friends. They were like, who are all these other people from around the country that want to work on our campaign? And I said, using the Internet, we're going to take all these people that are excited about you from all over the country. And we're going to find ways to make them actually productive on the campaign. And to actually win votes. And the thing is, presidential campaigns only care about these first four states. Because of this totally bizarre primary system that we have. So we have to win elections in these first four states. So I said, we're going to mobilize the millions of people around the country who we've been neglecting, who we've been ignoring all these years. Which is why we've been losing everywhere. And we're actually going to put them to work. To win these first four states. And also, after those first four states, then the presidential campaign cares about all these other states on Super Tuesday. When they all vote on the same day. So if you're trying to run for president, you have to win those first four states and then these states. Then you will win the Democratic nomination. So how are we going to put all these people all around the country... This is a map of... This is a map of actual events that were happening later on in the campaign. How can we put all these people to work? In a way that will actually help you win. Okay, so they took a chance and they let me hang around and let me build a little team to do this. And... I just want to say that none of... It wasn't that... What do I have to do here? Let's see. Okay. It wasn't just... It wasn't the internet and it wasn't any organizing that my team did or any other team did. That gave Bernie his success. Bernie had a great message and he was an incredible messenger. And this was a meme that went around... You know... Well... Very late in the campaign. Bernie should have had his own jet. You know, like normally campaigns get their own planes. You know, and they fly around on their own planes. But Bernie was very cheap. And he said, no, why would we do that? And so he kept flying economy. And he... You know, some regular person took a picture of him stuck in the middle seat. And... You know, on a plane. On a plane when all the other candidates were flying around in their own jets. And he was so authentic. Right? People just loved him. Right? And then, you know, he was just great. I don't know if any... I don't know if this was big news over here. But there was this wonderful rally where this little bird came down. You know, it was like the dove descending from heaven. And everybody went wild. And he just... He was just so great. Right? And Bernie was Bernie. Like, Bernie had this very authentic message. And he was like, I'm going to take this message to the American people. And so one day he came to our Internet team. And he said to the email team, look, I want to send this email. And he had written this, like, very long email. And we said, no, that's... Senator, that's not how the Internet works. We got to write a short, snappy email. You know? And, look, we've tested it. We've A-B tested it. You know, we know. And he's like, well, why don't you test some short, snappy version against my email? So we did that. And... But it was a very long email. This is the second page. Here's some more of the email. And... And that's the rest of the email. But... And... And we did test it against a shorter version. And Bernie's won. And, you know, more people donated. More people signed whatever we were asking them to sign. The most clicked on link was the link at the very bottom of the email. So people read it. didn't know why he was running and what he was really all about. So it was amazing working for Bernie. So we had this big email list of millions of people. We had, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who were begging us to get to work. And I had made this promise to the campaign leadership that we were going to put them to work in a way that would actually work, right? And that would make a difference in these early states and then the Super Tuesday states. So what we had figured out is that we could get, we built this system, this phone banking system, lots of cool technology went into it to enable voters in all those later states to call the earlier primary states and to talk to a voter. So volunteers that were excited about Bernie were going to call voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and tell them, you know, we'll ask them, who are you supporting? And if they said Bernie, or if they said they weren't sure, they would try to convince them. And then they had, then we had identified a voter that our staff on the ground in those early states was going to go turn out to the polls. Does that make sense? It's so weird. And like, why can't we just go vote? But that's not how it works in the United States. We have to do all this crazy stuff. So, you know, so we said, you know, we wanted people to get together in front of their computers and use our fancy technology, which was very user tested and easy to use to call voters in the early states. And it was the first time in an American election that we had like an auto dialer. predictive dialer and everything that volunteers could use from anywhere. You know, we sold this idea, you know, you could do it on your couch alone, or you can get together with others. And we really said, this is it. There is no alternative. This is the work you have to do to help us win, you know, and we weren't going to let them out of it. So we sent an email out to our millions of people. How many people, and there was a link in the email, click here and start calling. How many people do you think out of a million people per million people on our list? How many people do you think clicked and made a few calls? Somebody take a guess. 10%? Any other guesses? Five. You're way closer. It was like dozens of people out of a million. Dozens of people clicked and, you know, read the instructions. And I mean, any of you that do, like, you know, try to get people to do stuff on the internet, you know that they really don't want to do it, right? I mean, all the stuff we want them to do on the internet, they don't want to do it. And phone banking on a political campaign, calling up strangers, right, and talking to them about politics, I mean, that's the worst thing to ask people to do. Because it's scary, and it's boring, right? It's the worst combination of things you would, you know, you could possibly ask for. So, okay, so here's, the whole point of this story is what we did is we said, okay, forget this internet thing. We need something, we need to use the internet to get people into some configuration in their living rooms, right? We need to figure out how to use the internet to get people together in groups in their living rooms in a way where they actually motivate each other to do this work. But how do we do that? Well, we need to get people into, you know, we need to get, let's try getting people into a room. This is good old-fashioned organizing. So we got people into rooms like this. We called them barnstorms, and we found that our email list was very effective at getting people together because it's exciting, right? They're excited about Bernie. Hey, come to this meeting. You'll meet a Bernie organizer. You'll meet other Bernie supporters. And so we found that we could do that very effectively. But, so here's another meeting. There's a huge meeting in Oklahoma, right? Oklahoma City, very conservative place. And we had like 600 people come out, not to hear Bernie, but to hear how they could get involved in the campaign. Why wouldn't they just click and make calls? I don't know. But they won't do it, but they would come and let me or another organizer talk to them about why it was important that they do that. And then we worked out a technology in these meetings because there was no staff, there were no organizers to do the follow-up. You know, normally what happens on a campaign is, people show up to a meeting like this, and then the, you know, and then the organizer says, great, you know, raise your hand if you want to do this. Okay, we're passing around a sign-up sheet. Our organizers, our staff will call you and schedule you for a phone banking shift, right? But then that takes weeks to call everybody, right? It doesn't, we didn't have staff to do that. We had all these states like California with thousands and thousands of people that wanted to work for Bernie, but no staff to make it happen. So we had to use technology and the internet to, to organize. a system that would make it effective, that would allow them to do that. Okay, so we, so we had a trick. Back here, see, I was right there, I was asking people, okay, I made a pitch about how this phone banking thing was gonna make Bernie win in Iowa and New Hampshire and on Super Tuesday, if they would just phone bank. So he said, so who wants to phone bank? And everybody raised their hands because they all wanted to phone bank, but we knew they weren't going to, right? So, so he said, great, okay, now who, raise your hand now if you want to lead a phone banking event where these folks will come to your house and, and do you want to lead an event like that? And, and a bunch of hands went up because they said, sure, I want to do that, but I knew that they weren't going to do it. So, so then I said, okay, now stand up. And then they got a little nervous, right? But they stood up. And then I said, come up to the front of the room. Come on up, come on up here. And then we gave them a, um, sign up forms. We gave them these special sign up sheets on clipboards. And that's these people. And I don't know if you can see the looks on their faces, but can you can, okay, good. So, uh, you know, they're like, wait, wait, I said I wanted to do this, but I wasn't going to do it. And so, so see, think about this though. I mean, imagine, you know, with your customers and the people that you're trying to get to do stuff on the internet. Imagine if you could sort of trick them into getting into a room and, you know, I mean, in the US there's like all these, uh, multi-level marketing schemes where they do get people into rooms together and get them to do this stuff. And so we were kind of creating a massive multi-level, you know, uh, pyramid marketing scheme, um, except without the whole organization, just with, uh, just with tools on the internet. Um, all right. So they've, but there was technology to this and, and I'm, I'm basically closing up here. Uh, there, there were all these little tools that we created. And here's one little, uh, one little tool was see at first we had a box on the signup form that said, I would like to make my phone bank a weekly recurring event. Um, and, and some people checked it. We were surprised that some people checked it, but not that many people checked that box. Uh, and, and, but some people said, well, I'd love to do it weekly, but. I'm coming in town on, you know, this one Tuesday, so I can't do it that one Tuesday. So how do we work that out? And we couldn't work that out because we didn't have any staff. It all had to be automatic. Well, we figured out that if we made a calendar on the signup sheet, that they could just circle the days. It made all the difference in the world. Now, now I had a bunch of young organizers on my team. And when I would try to talk about working out the details of organizing meetings, they kind of looked at me like, what are you talking about? And so then I said, okay, it's. Okay. And then they're like, oh, I said, this is like the user interface of the, of the app that we're building. You know, this paper signup sheet. And then they're like, ah, now I get it. So, um, so that's what we did with, and there was a whole bunch of techniques like this, but now I didn't have the time to do the data entry from all these forms. I couldn't do that. We had stacks of like a hundred forms from a lot of our events and then I, but I was running to the next city. So, um, so we had a distributed volunteer team. They were volunteers. They were working together on slack. They were using Google sheets to coordinate and keep track of everything. And they would do the data entry. I just sat there and took pictures of when everybody was coming up with their manifestos that they wanted to give to Bernie. I was like, uh, yeah, okay, just put it there. And I was taking pictures of the signup sheets and after every event, and then I would just hit a button and it would send all the images. And then our volunteer team would divide up all the forms. And they would input and they would not just input the data. They would create events. Remember that map I kept showing you, they were inputting events into our event tool so that they would show up on that map so that everybody could sign up. And we experimented with lots of different ways. Like there was the sticky system we were trying to use. Didn't work. Constantly innovating. Um, so yeah, there we go. So, uh, so that's, so there were a whole bunch of other little details and techniques. And technologies that we developed. But the point that I wanted to get across was that, um, we had to not only get away from our computers and talk to our users. But we actually had to go out and build other systems and structures in the, in the flesh and blood world. Um, to, to make this thing really go big. And it, it was pretty amazing. In the end, we had a hundred thousand, uh, of those phone banking parties happen at people's houses. And those. Phone bankers made 81 million calls, uh, to voters in those early states. Those early four states and then the super Tuesday states and then the other states. And it was one of the reasons why Bernie, uh, had a chance. And, and he won, uh, he won 23 out of 50 states, uh, in, in our primary and almost won. So it was another one of those almost won stories. But I think the stuff that we learned is going to be, um, you know, useful in, in, in the future. And I think it's going to be useful in fighting some of, fighting back, uh, some of these, this, this movement that's rising in America that is pretty scary. And I think it holds a lot of promise. So thank you.