How Fetterman Won (w/ Joe Calvello)
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This is episode is a little different. Listeners know that Matt and Sam have been following John Fetterman's Senate campaign in Pennsylvania from the start, doing their first episode about him after his primary win in May. After his victory over Dr. Oz earlier this week in the general election, they talked to the Fetterman campaign's Director of Communications, Joe Calvello, for a behind-the-scenes look at how they did it. Topics discussed: Fetterman's strategy of defining Oz early (and, yes, the origins of some of Fetterman's most popular Twitter dunks), left populism, crime, abortion, why voters have a right to be angry, and how the campaign responded to Fetterman's stroke and turned his very public recovery into one more argument about why he'd fight for Pennsylvanians.
To hear Know Your Enemy's full take on the midterm elections, recorded earlier this week, listen and subscribe on Patreon here — you'll also get access to all of our previous bonus episodes!
All right listeners, welcome to a very special bonus episode of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sippen, your podcast co-host. I'm here with my great friend Sam Heather Bell. Hey Matt. Hey Sam, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. I'm glad to be talking to you again so soon after our our last bonus episode on Wednesday. I know it's been a lot of talking to Sam on the phone this week. Tough for both of us. We just wanted to do a quick introduction for this episode which was a really fun, very insightful, at times moving conversation with Joe Covelo who was John Federman's Director of Communications and as he has on his Twitter bio, John's Consigliari. I think Sam we had a lot of fun with this one. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's the very atypical Know Your Enemy episode but it's just us kind of pretty excitedly, you know, talking to someone who helped a candidate win that we were really rooting for. A bit of a softball interview. It was a super softball interview exactly. So if you hate that then don't listen but it was really interesting. We did get to talk about some some interesting stuff about sort of left populism and how John won and about his stroke and how the campaign adjusted and after that happened and about Oz and how they characterized Oz throughout the campaign and about the Twitter feed and all that stuff is in here. We should note that we recorded this interview with Joe while he was on the Federman victory bus. That's right. I said you're coming from the campaign bus. He said no it's a victory bus. So as a result of that the sound quality is maybe not all the way up to snuff in every moment but I'm sure Jesse has done the best that he can to make it listenable and yeah the other thing to mention is that we did record a general and much much longer bonus episode about the midterms where Matt and I offered our takes, hot takes. That's right but we wanted to share this one with all of you. We didn't want to put up behind a pay wall. We thought it was a really important conversation. We had a lot of fun with it but also there was a lot of good stuff on the Federman strategy you know appealing to working people. A lot of good stuff and we just thought it was too important to put behind a pay wall. So if you do want to subscribe to know your enemy listen to the bonus episode Sam just described along with all the other ones you can do that at patreon.com/knowyourenemy and for five dollars a month you get all those bonus episodes and for ten dollars a month you get a free digital subscription to Descent the sponsor of this podcast and our wonderful partners who we love to be associated with. It's a great week to subscribe to the patreon because you get to hear our our takes on the midterms which went a lot better than we thought they would so do that but you won't have to subscribe to listen to this episode as you know because you're listening to it now and we should just get right to it. Here's our conversation with Joe Covelo. All right listeners let's get started we have a very special guest with us Joe Covelo, the communications director and consigliary of the John Federman campaign. He's joining us from the victory bus on his way back to Philadelphia. Joe welcome to Know Your Enemy. It is an honor and a pleasure to be here guys thanks for having me. Joe are you a listener? I am a listener I'm a friend of the pod. I'll give a quick shout out. Jonah Ferman got me on to you guys having a look you know Jonah. I love Jonah. You turn me on to you guys. That is the most important podcast you listen to. For listeners if you want Jonah Ferman content you should definitely subscribe to his newsletter. It's called Who Gets the Bird and it's all about labor conflict in America. Like if you want to know who's about to go on strike at any given day then you can read Jonah's newsletter to find out. Well Joe you know first question just for listeners
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Matt and Sam talk with Joe Calvello, Director of Communications for John Fetterman's victorious Senate campaign in Pennsylvania.