Searching for Common Ground in a Fractured Political Landscape

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In the first episode of “The Run-Up,” a podcast focused on the 2022 midterm elections, the host Astead Herndon calls a voter and asks how she’s feeling about the political climate.

“I’m not expecting a whole lot from this conversation,” she says, “but I’ll give it a shot.” By later in the episode, she has opened up about her beliefs, and her doubts of whether her vote will actually matter.

“The Run-Up” — which began in August 2016, three months before Donald J. Trump was elected president, and returned this month — can dig deep into the heart of the issues that shape American democracy. In early 2020, Mr. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times, traveled through Iowa to take the temperature of Democratic caucusgoers, sharing his findings as a guest on “The Field” podcast, an offshoot of “The Daily.” The experience helped him understand the power of audio in journalism. Now, through frank conversations with Times colleagues, political insiders and voters of different parties, Mr. Herndon will explore shifting politics and what they mean for the country.

As “The Run-Up” kicks off and the midterms approach, Mr. Herndon spoke about the reboot of the podcast and how he’s tackling fraught topics. This interview has been edited.

What’s your philosophy for this podcast?

Sometimes, the way that political reporting talks to voters presumes that parties and insiders have all the knowledge, where I often think that what we have learned, particularly in this current political era, is that party insiders often have missed core things about the country and are surprised come Election Day.

Good political journalism can do both at the same time: We both get a better understanding about how Washington and parties and candidates are coming to an election, and you also have a good understanding of where the country and constituents are.

We’re trying to come from a place that does not lecture down to voters, but actually affirms how they feel through connecting dots.

What’s the process for reaching out to voters for interviews on the podcast?

I did not want to make a midterm show where only people who already understood the midterms’ importance would listen. I think that there are a lot of podcasts and a lot of political media that already exists for those people.

We are trying to do something that is not just for those people, but that is for everyone else who doesn’t know if it matters. This is a podcast for everyone involved — we are not coming from a place that assumes language or assumes knowledge.

That’s informed by my own experiences. I come from communities that were ignored by parties. I know what it’s like to live in places that feel neglected. And I know what it’s like when political media is not reflecting your concerns.

What can listeners expect in future episodes?

We want to deal with: How did we get here? How deep do these fractures go? And what is our commitment to democracy, really? Every one of the episodes will ask one of those questions.

People deserve an answer about whether the system might hold, and what real cracks are there. I think that voters actually respond when political media is honest and transparent. When I am at a Trump rally versus when I am at a Bernie Sanders rally, that sentiment is universal — concern and anxiety about what democracy means, and whether it’s going to hold. They’re not coming from a universal agreement about the why, but it is a universal feeling that somebody is taking democracy from you.

In that moment, to ask any question besides those core, fundamental ones is missing the point. The central question here has to be one that wrestles with democracy’s meaning and value for voters. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that those things are being more defined right now.

I think we have a democracy that has frequently had crossroads moments that forced the country to decide what it really means by that word. I think this election is another one of those moments.

How do you cut through the noise in political media and get to the core of an issue?

In some ways, I disagree with the premise — there is a lot of political media and noise out there, but there’s not a lot out there that is framed from the basis of voters’ concerns being justified. There’s not actually a lot out there that deals with whether our commitment to democracy is real. The reason that a lot of politics journalism has skirted from these questions is because they’re hard questions that have messy and nonlinear answers. The power of this podcast and the power of audio is that you can deal with messy, nonlinear stuff in a better way.