843: A Little Bit of Power

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

So much of the fight for the presidency is coming down to battles for small slices of voters who can help throw swing states to one candidate or another. Abbas Alawieh, a leader in the Uncommitted movement, grapples with how to get his voters the thing they want.

Prologue: When you have some power, but not a lot, how do you wield it when you’re suddenly cast into the spotlight? (4 minutes)
Act One: Zoe Chace and Ben Terris follow Abbas Alawieh as he fights to broker a deal at the DNC – a way to potentially satisfy the people who voted “Uncommitted” in the primaries as a protest vote against Biden’s handling of the war in Israel and Gaza. (33 minutes)
Act Two: Three weeks after the Democratic National Convention, Abbas speaks at a tense community meeting in Michigan about the Uncommitted organizers’ general election recommendation and hears back from voters on how they feel about the Democratic nominee at this point. (15 minutes)

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0:00.0	This message comes from Organic Valley, a dairy cooperative of small organic family farms that is dedicated to protecting the land and all the plants and animals that live there.
0:09.0	Learn more at ov. OV dot C-O-O-P.
0:14.6	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
0:19.0	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website this American Life.org.
0:24.0	Maybe you saw this video this past week
0:27.0	a veteran meteorologist in Florida
0:30.0	John Morales on live TV talking about the power of Hurricane Milton
0:34.4	as it was still approaching the state.
0:36.6	He was reading the barometric pressure numbers.
0:39.4	And he just got to him.
0:41.6	He choked up. It has dropped.
0:48.5	It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours. I apologize. This is just horrific. He was the only
0:59.4	meteorologist who seemed pushed to the limits trying to communicate the scale and intensity of Hurricane
1:04.5	Milton.
1:05.5	Nowa Bergren, who's on TV in Orlando, declared in a tweet, this is nothing short of
1:10.3	astronomical.
1:11.3	I'm at a loss for words to meteorologically describe to you the
1:14.6	storm's small eye and intensity. This is now the fourth strongest hurricane ever
1:19.3	recorded by pressure on this side of the world. He later corrected that to the fist strongest.
1:24.4	This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth's atmosphere over this ocean
1:28.8	water can produce. Reading that, you get the feeling of somebody trying their hardest to summon words that
1:35.8	would do the job to fully warn people, evacuate, get to safety.
	...

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