The New York Times can’t get enough of a new study published in Science suggesting door-to-door canvassing can enlighten troglodyte citizens into supporting progressive policies like gay marriage, abortion (alongside Planned Parenthood), and gun control.
The Times had just embraced the study in its news pages a few days before, and now contributing writer Benoit-Denizet Lewis devoted 5,000 words to the study helping liberals push their social issues -- at least this time via persuasion rather than judicial fiat, in “Can We Talk?”
Dave Fleischer -- a short, bald, gay, Jewish 61-year-old with bulging biceps and a distaste for prejudice -- knocked on the front door of a modest home in a middle-class neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles. It was an enthusiastic knuckle-thump, the kind that arouses suspicion from dogs in yards halfway down the block but, crucially, can also be heard by humans watching cable news at high volume.
We soon meet Nancy, whose character arc into tolerance of transgenders will make her the star of the story.
A gray-haired Hispanic woman named Nancy cracked open the front door, though not enough to let her little dog eat our ankles. “We’re out talking to voters about an important issue -- ” Fleischer began, only to have Nancy excuse herself and walk away. I wasn’t sure she would return; the last two voters he’d met pleaded busyness. But after shooing the dog into another room, Nancy appeared in her doorway again. She smiled shyly and asked Fleischer, the Leadership Lab’s director, how she could help him. Had he been completely honest, he might have said, “I’m here to make you less prejudiced. It could take awhile.” But instead he began with a simple question: If she were to vote on whether to “include gay and transgender people in nondiscrimination laws,” would she be in favor or opposed?
“In favor,” she assured him. Fleischer asked her to rate that support on a scale from zero to 10. “A 10,” she said. “I have friends who are gay.”
A typical canvassing conversation might have ended there. Nancy, it seemed, was a supporter -- no need to worry about her. But Fleischer is wary of what he calls the “anti-discrimination declaration.” At the Leadership Lab’s two-hour pre-canvass training that morning, volunteers were warned about “fake 10s,” people who think of themselves as against discrimination -- many of them Democrats -- but who can nonetheless be swayed by emotion-based appeals that provoke prejudice and fear.
Fleischer then did something unusual, exposing Nancy to the opposition argument: “He handed her a small video player, on which she watched a Baptist minister in Houston make the case about bathrooms.”
After relaying controversy over a similar 2014 study, also published in Science, that had been retracted after the lead author couldn’t produce his data and admitted to lying:
The fraudulent study called into question the validity of the Leadership Lab’s deep-canvassing approach. Had it all been wishful thinking? Maybe, as The Wall Street Journal suggested, Fleischer’s efforts merely “flattered the ideological sensibilities of liberals.” But this week, a new study published in Science by David Broockman, an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford, and Joshua Kalla, a graduate student in political science at Berkeley, appears to serve as vindication of Fleischer’s work. Leadership Lab-trained volunteers were found to be successful at reducing transgender prejudice in front-door conversations, the effects persisting months later in follow-up surveys.
It’s not just bathrooms:
Fleischer is planning more interventions. Though he has devoted much of his political and community-organizing career to L.G.B.T. issues, he believes this kind of canvassing could change people’s thinking on everything from abortion and gun rights to race-based prejudice....
The article’s tone was hardly neutral. Pro-gay marriage proposals aren’t merely defeated, but are a “devastating loss.”
It took a devastating loss at the ballot box for Fleischer to see the political wisdom in heart-to-hearts with strangers. In 2008, he was in Ohio mobilizing African-American and Latino voters for Barack Obama when California residents passed Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage in the state...
....
To test whether transphobia could be overcome during a face-to-face encounter, Broockman and Kalla measured a 2015 canvassing effort in Miami by volunteers from the Leadership Lab and SAVE, a local L.G.B.T. organization....
Back to the wavering Nancy:
“Oh, yes,” Nancy said. Over the next few minutes, she recounted several instances of racism after moving to Los Angeles from Central America with her husband. Still, she didn’t appear emotional in retelling the experiences. Fleischer wasn’t surprised; people rarely feel safe enough at first to express deep hurt. It usually isn’t until Fleischer opens up about his own experience -- including feeling different in his small, conservative Ohio town -- that voters feel safe to “get vulnerable, too,” he says. Nancy had mostly dismissed Fleischer’s “how did that make you feel?” questions, but his personal story prompted a shift....She ended a solid 10, a rating he was confident could survive opposition messaging.
Even Lewis’s attempts at balance come off as condescending.
Moments later, Williams reminded the volunteers to be open and nonjudgmental. “We’re asking voters not to discriminate, to be less prejudiced, and we need to walk that walk,” she said. “That means not making assumptions based on the voter’s age, race or their religion. Some folks may have a crucifix on the door. That doesn’t tell you about the person inside.”
....
Though not all voters would engage emotionally, I was surprised by how many did. Canvassers often had to politely extricate themselves after 20 minutes -- voters were sad to see them go. “If only I could have 10 minutes with Ted Cruz,” Fleischer said once. He was only half joking. Fleischer has an unwavering confidence in his ability to persuade most people to be “more empathetic and less prejudiced,” and his optimism is shared by progressive groups who train with him. The day before one canvass, representatives from an animal rights group told me they hoped to better understand how to help people connect emotionally to animal welfare.
The Times lovingly documented Fleischer shilling for Planned Parenthood.
Fleischer is especially interested in learning whether deep canvassing can affect people’s thinking on two issues -- racial prejudice and abortion rights. Beginning in 2014, the Leadership Lab teamed up with Planned Parenthood to canvass in support of pro-choice policies....
Lewis concluded with a “poignant” anecdote about someone who’d voted against gay marriage seeing the light.
Several of Riley’s conversations proved poignant. She told voters about her own transgender child, Jie, now an adult. She recounted that when Jie was 3, the toddler responded to a question about possible Christmas presents by asking: “Could Santa turn a girl into a boy?”
Riley’s devotion to Jie had a visible impact on several voters, including the mother of a 7-year-old girl. The woman eventually told Riley that she had voted against gay marriage in California, but that she now regretted that choice. “I made a mistake,” she said. On the issue of transgender rights, the woman seemed mostly supportive but stopped at a nine. She said she was trying to evolve on the issue, though. As Riley prepared to leave for the next house on the block, the woman called out. “Give me a few years, and I know I’ll be a 10!”
