Welcome to the HoosLeft podcast, a show about Indiana politics, history, and culture from the unapologetic perspective of the Hoosier left. My name is Scott Aaron Rogers and I’m recording from Bloomington.
It is my honor to welcome to the podcast today a man who, I believe, has best documented the playbook the far-right used to undermine American democracy, especially at the state level, AND the path forward - in an accessible, gripping, and compelling way - David Pepper.
Pepper is a lawyer, prolific author, professor, former elected official, pro-democracy activist, and former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party between 2015 and 2021.
His 2021 book, Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wakeup call From Behind the Lines is a meticulous look at the way Republicans and their billionaire benefactors have exploited the minoritarian institutions baked into our system to corrupt our government and use it to their own ends. The follow-up, Saving Democracy: A Users Manual for Every American, was published in 2023 and provides a roadmap for us, everyday Americans, to take power back from the wealth class.
In addition to these two critical works of non-fiction, Pepper has also written four novels that bridge real-world politics and fiction—including A Simple Choice, published in 2022. His first novel, The People’s House, earned praise for having predicted Russian interference in US elections. The Wall Street Journal named Pepper “one of the best political-thriller writers on the scene.” In addition to all of this, he publishes on Substack where the ongoing series, “2025: A Novel”, is an intimate, chilling look at what a 2nd Trump administration powered by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan, could look like at a personal level. It is must-read and needs to be shared with everybody you know.
Born and raised in Cincinnati, David is a fifth-generation Cincinnatian. David earned his B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa, and later earned his J.D. from Yale Law School.
Yes, that does in fact make him Dr. Pepper.
David served on Cincinnati City Council from 2001-2005. In 2006, he flipped Hamilton County blue for the first time in 40 years when he ousted the incumbent commissioner; he then served on the Commission from 2007-2010, including as its president in 2009-2010. David was the Democratic candidate for Ohio Auditor in 2010 and Ohio Attorney General in 2014. He was elected chair of the Ohio Democratic Party in December 2014.
In 1999, David clerked for the Honorable Nathaniel Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. After 2000, David also worked in the Cincinnati offices of major law firms Squire Sanders and Blank Rome, focusing his practice on commercial and business litigation, and appellate litigation. David also teaches election and voting rights law as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
Hey buddy, save some talent for the rest us.
but seriously , before we return to the interview, DO please consider supporting HoosLeft financially. I currently work as an independent craftsman during the day and work on this project whenever I can. There are so many more things I want to do here at HoosLeft, like a daily episode if we can get there, but I need your help. If you can, help me out with a paid subscription at scottaaronrogers.substack.com. For five dollars a month or $50 a year, you can help me push our state in a better direction, and maybe if we reach critical mass, I can put down my tool belt and devote my full time to you, to this project, and to Indiana’s future. So, if you have the means, pause right now, go to scottaaronrogers.substack.com and subscribe at the paid level.
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Now, here’s my interview with David Pepper.
Once again, that was lawyer, author, professor, activist, former elected official, and all-around champion of democracy, David Pepper.
In summary:
Our founding fathers may have unshackled themselves from royalty, but they did not establish a government immune to the concentration of power in the hands of a concentrated aristocracy. Fearful of true democracy, they built several minoritarian features into the system to check the power of the people. I mean, first of all, at that time “the people” meant white men. But, even then, the wealthy merchants and slave-owning planters who gathered in a sweaty, stuffy, sweltering old Pennsylvania Statehouse in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to - without a mandate to so, mind you - created a new form of government that allowed a fair amount of democratic input - legitimately a novel concept at the time - but constrained the will of the people with manufactured checkpoints - the Senate, the electoral college, the Supreme Court - any of which could shut down progress. And those are just the ones codified into law. First past the post voting, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the drawing of state lines themselves - more artificial mechanisms used to corral the populace into units more easily controlled by elites.
This is the creation called liberal democracy. Liberalism IS centrism. It has always been a hedge, a balancing act between democracy and authoritarian oligarchy. Remember this whenever the right attacks liberalism - they don’t want ANY democracy.
The history of our country has been a contest between these two forces. Really, I think the human condition is a contest between these two forces. Anyway, contrary to popular belief, the Constitution was not handed down by God, but fought over, haggled, and hashed out by men. The original Constitution that came out of that convention received so much pushback, that the Bill of Rights was added. Progress. Backlash. Progress. Backlash. Civil War and Reconstruction. Southern white backlash. Immigration. Nativist backlash. The labor movement and progressive era. Business backlash. The New Deal. More business backlash. Civil Rights. More white backlash. Obama. Still more white backlash.
Republicans, and their billionaire owners, have spent the last 50 years chipping away, bit by bit, at the foundation of democracy in our country. They have perfected the art of exploiting all of those anti-democratic mechanisms built into this buggy, beta version of liberal democracy we’re still running in 2024. The overuse of these tools, the de-democratization of America, leads to perverse incentives for our lawmakers and poor public outcomes for the rest of us. Look at gerrymandering, which leads to uncontested districts, resulting in extremism when the only challenge incumbents face is in the primary. And contrary to popular belief, I assert this does not result in both parties moving toward their ideological extremes - it results in both parties moving right, toward the money.
What are we, the people, to do about it? First, we recognize that the authoritarian team has been playing a different game than us - consolidating power at the state level. We need to get in that game, and go on offense. Run everywhere. Register voters everywhere, make saving democracy part of your daily life.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We all must vote. Voting is necessary, but it is not sufficient. We have to make sure our friends and family also vote. Donate to candidates if you’re able. Volunteer for campaigns. Make phone calls. Send texts. Write postcards. Talk to every single one of your friends and neighbors. The stakes have never been higher.
We are in the middle of incredibly trying times. There will be losses and setbacks, but democracy has quietly been on a winning streak. It took the oligarch class 50 years to dismantle the foundation of a robust democracry built from the 1930’s through 60’s - death by 1000 blows - and may very well take another 50 years to rebuild- brick by brick by brick.
Just like laying a foundation, democracy is built from the bottom up. David Pepper is out there laying bricks every day. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?
Thank you for listening and thanks again to my guest, David Pepper, for my money, the best political communicator in the business. Again, the books Laboratories of Autocracy and Saving Democracy are essential reading. I’ll link to his author page at bookshop.org in the show notes. Visit his website, www.savedemocracy.us, a one-stop shop for all the resources you’ll need to start making the act of saving democracy part of everything you do. Also, subscribe to his Pepperspectives Substack at davidpepper.substack.com. Finally, if you can afford to support this project financially, a paid subscription at scottaaronrogers.substack.com goes a long way toward helping me expand my pro-democracy footprint. Thats’s where you’ll find everything I publish. You can also find me on Facebook, Bluesky, YouTube and TikTok at hoosleft and on most other social media sites at scottrog78. If you want send me a message, my DMs are open on social media or email me at scottrog78@gmail.com. Forward the show to a friend and have them to forward it to another friend. Let’s keep building this project - and democracy - brick by brick. Until next time, this has been the HoosLeft podcast. I’m Scott Aaron Rogers. Love each other, Indiana.
Episode 44: Wouldn’t You Like To Be a Pepper, Too?
Guest: David Pepper - author, activist, Former Chairman - Ohio Democratic Party
https://scottaaronrogers.substack.com/subscribe
https://davidpepper.com
https://savedemocracy.us
Progress and backlash: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/white-backlash-nothing-new/611914/
Dems state-level collapse: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/10/14211994/obama-democrats-downballot
Exploitation of minoritarian institutions: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/public-policy-journal/in-print-2/volume-22-1-winter-2024/the-crisis-of-minority-rule-in-american-democracy/
Dr. Oz’s awful abortion answer: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/politics/oz-abortion-debate-pennsylvania-senate/index.html
Republicans project REDMAP: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting
Indiana the OG of voter ID laws: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-disappointed-supreme-courts-voter-id-decision
Shelby v. Holder 2013: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/shelby-county-v-holder
Swiss cheese model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
Article IV Section 4: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-4/section-4/
Alabama seat flips after IVF ruling: https://apnews.com/article/alabama-ivf-abortion-legislature-378c3fa32dcfc2d0401f3893828482af
“Motor Voter” Act: https://www.justice.gov/crt/about-national-voter-registration-act
Biden admin using VA to register voters: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/30/nx-s1-5005001/biden-voter-registration-executive-order
Democracy winning streak: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/24/2248335/-The-Greatest-Story-Never-Told-The-Democratic-Winning-Streak
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