Is The Party System Broken?

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Richard Helppie

Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge, most popular on substack.com, please look us up there. Also on Mission Control Radio, most social media outlets, podcast places of your choice, and YouTube TV channel. Today we've got a very broad topic and it's a very important one. As listeners or viewers, readers, and contributors to The Common Bridge know, United States politics are dominated by two political parties and then reporting's undergone a significant transformation. Well, to talk about that today, our guest, Justin Higgins, is going to cover the polarization in America, his view on the state of reporting, and, frankly, whether our future is one of further despair and strife, or perhaps one of finding solutions. Mr. Higgins has been up close and personal as a very active member of both major political parties - not at the same time - but both as a Republican and Democrat. We're going to dive into that a little bit too. He is host of Politics + Media 101. He draws a distinguished series of guests and has live interviews. We're going to hear about that, too. So speaking to us today from Washington, DC, Mr. Justin Higgins. Justin, welcome to The Common Bridge. So happy you can spend some time with us.

Justin Higgins

Thank you for having me, Richard, I'm very pleased to be here. I love what you're doing in trying to create a common bridge. I think that our country could use more of this and more of you.

Richard Helppie

Well, that's kind of you to say so, let's all work on this together. Our audience likes to know a little bit about our guests. So where did you grow up? And maybe what your education was and your career arc and a little personal insight?

Justin Higgins

Yes. So today, I'm a consultant in Washington, DC in the heart of the swamp. [Laughter] But I grew up, back in the day, in New Hampshire and my family was a blue collar working class family. My dad was a Vietnam veteran. My mom was working for the State of Massachusetts. And they instilled a lot of love for America, obviously, my dad fought for the country, and also giving back to your community. So we were going to the soup kitchen every month with my mom and doing toy drives and wrapping gifts. And that kind of got me interested in giving back to the community. And then Rich, as you know, for no reason at all, every four years, New Hampshire becomes the center of the political universe. (Richard Helppie: It does, can't even imagine what it's like up there.) There's a million people. But you have everyone from President Barack Obama, to Mike Huckabee, to anybody who's running for office, they come to New Hampshire, and they shake hands with us, they meet the voters, they answer our questions. And that really impacted me growing up. So then I took all of that experience and switched over and studied some political philosophy at Tufts University, which is a liberal undergraduate school and melded nicely with my conservative upbringing. But [with] that interaction with all these politicians, I was hooked, so I immediately moved to Washington, DC. And it's really the foundation of what we do on our show as well, trying to create - similar to The Common Bridge - but bringing these prominent guests to the audience themselves.

Richard Helppie

I love that arc coming out of New Hampshire - a hotbed of political activity over-running the state, it seems, every four years. Then down to DC and being hooked on politics. Now Politics + Media 101, tell our audience what it is, why you're doing it, where to find it, and maybe what your role is along with Jeff Browning.

Justin Higgins

Yes, so they can find it on any podcast app, our website is pm101.live, and then type in "Politics + Media 101". And what we are doing is, similar to you, we are bringing on voices from the left, we are bringing on voices from the right. It's not going to be screaming, it's going to be an intelligent conversation about the most pressing political issues today, but also 10 years from now. And what makes our podcast unique is I'm a DC insider, Jeff Browning worked for ten years in the House and in committees. And he's kind of like your Brian (Kruger). He's our podcast producer, music and really makes the trains run on time. What we're doing that is unique though, in addition to getting all of these big name guests like John Dickerson, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Erick Erickson from the right and Ana Kasparian from the left is...I mentioned New Hampshire. So in New Hampshire, when I was a kid, I listened to President Obama speak in a room filled [with] 200 people. It was a small room, no bigger than the size of a first floor house, everyone was jam packed, he was running for president. And he gave this thunderous speech where you could just feel the emotion building - his energy from the stage. And I was Republican at the time, and everybody was captivated. And then he answered questions from the audience, from everyday citizens. So our show is different in that we give that 400 level political class in the interview for 30 minutes, and then we open it up to the audience for two reasons: to build civic engagement but also to check for our own bias. We get Republicans and Democrats asking guests questions that they want to hear. So I think it's a unique atmosphere. We're really trying to just bring people together to listen to the same source of news.

Richard Helppie

I applaud your efforts on this. What's your business model? How are you getting funding to do this? And what do you hope for the show to become?

Justin Higgins

Yes, so we are in partnership with Clubhouse. And that definitely helps and they're a great partner. We want our show to become something similar to yours, where it's a YouTube TV, Substack, across all the different channels, and also a political newsletter, which will be the heart of it. We are giving that nonpartisan...we are using our insider information, the way we can understand the information, and just to distill it to people in quick bites, so that they can - if they're waiting tables, if they're working in the corporate world - just read it real quick and then forget about DC.

Richard Helppie

Well, look, I think there's a great opportunity in the marketplace there. So are you on a subscription model, advertising model, corporate sponsors? How are you going about funding your venture?