theatlantic--2020-01-17--Can You Cure a Domestic Abuser?

Can You Cure a Domestic Abuser?

The photograph above shows Andrew Lisdahl and his fiancée , Theresa , at their home , along with Andrew 's daughter with his ex-wife ( left ) and one of Theresa 's daughters ( right ) .
Andrew Lisdahl was mad .
His wife , Gretchen , had smoked a cigarette , a habit he detested .
They fought , and Gretchen spent the night at a friend ’ s house .
The next day , Andrew drank a bottle of tequila and hitched a ride to the stained-glass studio where Gretchen , an artist , gave lessons .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left hand and tried to remove her wedding ring , but Gretchen fought him off .
As Andrew stumbled away , he took Gretchen ’ s car keys and phone .
After work , Gretchen ’ s father drove her back home to retrieve her things .
Inside , Andrew had been passed out on the couch , but he woke up and yelled at Gretchen , “ Get the fuck out !
” When she didn ’ t , he grabbed her by the hair , dragged her into the living room @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kicked her in the chest , and pinned her to the ground .
As Gretchen ’ s father approached the house , Andrew let her go and she was able to escape .
Gretchen went to a police station near their home in Superior , Wisconsin , and showed an officer on duty the red marks coloring her sternum .
When police arrived at the house and knocked , Andrew announced from inside that he was aiming a shotgun at the officers ’ faces .
A SWAT team was summoned .
Soon after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air , wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms , and surrendered .
Police said they recovered a loaded shotgun next to the door .
( Andrew denies that it was loaded . )
He was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic battery , to which he pleaded guilty .
( Many details of the encounter are contained in a police report .
This abuse incident , and others described in this article , have been corroborated with both Andrew and Gretchen . )
Read : The Particular Cruelty of Domestic Violence After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found himself sitting in an austere conference room in Duluth , Minnesota , with a dozen other men , most convicted of similar crimes .
In the United States , domestic abusers are rarely sent to prison .
More often , as in Andrew ’ s case , they are sent to a special class designed to teach them to refrain from physical violence .
The methods employed by these groups , known formally as “ batterer intervention programs , ” or BIPs , vary—there are 2,500 in the United States alone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instruction on ideas from second-wave feminism , striving to educate men about the ways in which the harm they visit on their romantic partners mimics the larger , repressive structure of patriarchy .
For Andrew , then 34 years old , being court-ordered to attend a class for wife-beaters was a shameful low point .
It signaled to everyone that he had violated an immutable taboo , impressed upon him since childhood : Men do not hit women .
He had been arrested for battering Gretchen five years before , in 2010 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let off , and the charges had been reduced to disorderly conduct .
Since his latest arrest , Andrew hadn ’ t wanted to speak to anyone about the classes , afraid of where the conversation might go .
As he waited for class to start , he stared at the dusty umber carpeting , inwardly vowing to avoid speech or eye contact .
Andrew was horrified when , a few minutes in , the facilitator leading the group asked him to introduce himself to his classmates .
Explain , the man said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here .
Andrew stood up .
“ I ’ m Andrew , ” he said , eyes still fixed on the floor .
“ I ’ m here because I hit my wife , Gretchen.
” Sinking back into his seat , Andrew was suddenly overcome by an unexpected sense of relief .
He still didn ’ t want to be in the room , at all , but speaking his stigma aloud—admitting , in semipublic , the hideous thing he ’ d done—felt , to his surprise , kind of good .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ continued to unburden himself to the men , and they to him .
Soon , Andrew would come to believe—as would Gretchen—that the class was the only thing capable of exorcising the evil pieces of his spirit and making him a decent man .
Considered in aggregate , physically abusive men constitute a catastrophic public-health hazard .
While research suggests that men and women employ violence in relationships at roughly equal rates , the damage inflicted on women is far more severe .
Nearly half of all homicides of women in the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ romantic partner .
Globally , the leading cause of nonfatal injuries to women—ahead of car crashes , falls , and accidental poisonings—is domestic violence .
For most of American history , authorities treated domestic violence with benign neglect .
Legally , the act of assaulting one ’ s spouse was only widely criminalized within the last century or so .
Even then , cops saw fisticuffs between lovers as a private sport they had no business refereeing .
( A 1975 training bulletin issued by the police department in Oakland , California , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrest , officers should “ encourage the parties to reason with each other.
” ) District attorneys , meanwhile , resisted prosecuting abusers , often because victims—many in danger of further attacks—were reluctant to pursue charges .
In general , all but the most egregious cases went unpunished .
An organized effort to take such violence seriously began in the early 1970s , when activists set about publicizing the social problem then known as “ wife battering.
” A flurry of research—epitomized by Erin Pizzey ’ s collection of case studies , Scream @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a network of support groups and women ’ s shelters .
In 1980 , a small band of activists gathered in Duluth with the goal of addressing the justice system ’ s failings .
The creators of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project ( DAIP ) , as it became known , devised a revolutionary plan to help communities respond aggressively to the phenomenon .
To prevent cases from being ignored , relevant municipal agencies , including police , courts , and social workers , would carefully coordinate their actions .
Women would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their legal options and seek orders of protection from their partners .
To make sure cops did their jobs , arrests for certain offenses would become mandatory , and prosecutors would try cases even without cooperation from victims .
After a pilot run of the program in Duluth appeared to reduce assaults , the “ Duluth model ” of responding to domestic violence was adopted by cities across the country .
But there was one aspect of domestic violence for which the Duluth model didn ’ t have a solution : what to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agreed that the threat of arrest and incarceration was an important deterrent to domestic violence , it wasn ’ t a cure .
Batterers couldn ’ t be locked up forever , and the prison environment was hardly conducive to reducing aggression .
Ellen Pence , a cofounder of a Minneapolis women ’ s shelter , was one of DAIP ’ s organizers .
In her experience working with victims , Pence had observed that many men who hit their partners did so repeatedly , over many years .
Such habitual batterers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ punishment , but some form of reeducation .
At the time , little was known about the causes of domestic violence .
Many psychologists viewed abuse as the side effect of some other difficulty—alcoholism , an inability to handle stress or anger , poor communication skills .
Not infrequently , blame was placed on a woman ’ s failure as a wife or girlfriend .
One study , published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1964 , asserted that spouses of abusive men tended to be “ aggressive , efficient , masculine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feminists , Pence saw the phenomenon differently .
Abuse , in her view , wasn ’ t an individual problem , but a social one .
For millennia , men had been taught that it was their right to control women , by force if necessary .
Domestic violence was the means by which a man exercised this power on an interpersonal level .
Far from a dysfunction , it was a rational tactic—a tool for patriarchy .
Yet men had grown so used to this system , into which they ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never thought to question its correctness .
At the front of the room stood the class ’ s facilitators , Jen Rouse , one of DAIP ’ s newest staffers , and Scott Miller , one of its codirectors .
According to DAIP ’ s lengthy instructor manual—the core of the Duluth curriculum—the goal of a facilitator is threefold : to challenge men ’ s patriarchal views , to help them take responsibility for their past violence , and to inculcate a new , more egalitarian set of beliefs .
Each class has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ woman , to habituate abusers to seeing men and women on an even footing .
Many of the men , Rouse told me , publicize their disdain for the female facilitators with theatrical displays of anger , silence , or hostile body language .
“ Some of the men , when they first come in , they can ’ t even look at me , ” said Rouse , a small , cheerful woman in her 30s .
“ But over time they engage.
” Critics have caricatured the Duluth approach as one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into taking on feminist-approved ideas .
In truth , the meetings are free of jargon such as “ patriarchy ” and “ misogyny , ” and DAIP ’ s facilitators seldom lecture or admonish .
Rather , they try , in the words of the facilitation manual , to “ create a process of change.
” This usually takes the form of peppering the men with questions .
The goal is to encourage the men to confront their assumptions about power , gender , and privilege .
The best situation a facilitator can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is to ask a man a question for which he has no answer .
That ’ s when the growth happens .
The class began with a short video illustrating the week ’ s topic : emotional abuse .
It depicted “ Steve , ” a jittery man with a chinstrap beard , accosting his estranged wife , “ Cherie , ” outside her home , as she ’ s taking out the trash .
By visiting the house , Steve , we learn , is violating an order of protection , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him move back in .
“ I just feel like I ’ m starting to change , okay ?
” he huffs .
Unmoved , Cherie threatens to call the police .
“ You ’ re not going to know what to do without me !
” yells Steve .
Cherie starts marching inside .
“ You ’ ve got 10 seconds and I ’ m calling the cops.
” Afterward , Miller—tall and lanky , with a salt-and-pepper goatee and a springy energy that is echt Minnesota—asked the class to describe how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abusive .
Rouse , armed with a dry-erase marker , compiled their responses .
“ He started being nice at first , ” offered a flannel-shirted man—one of many—whom I ’ ll call Liam .
“ But he was just trying to manipulate her.
” The men , Miller explained to me later , arrive in the class with different levels of resistance to its teachings .
At first , many deny having done anything wrong , claiming that it was self-defense , or that it was an accident , or—the most common @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do what they did .
The first step in helping the men , therefore , is to make them fully aware of their abusive behaviors , of which physical violence is only one component .
In the 1980s , DAIP developed a now-famous diagram , the “ Power and Control Wheel , ” to illustrate the variety of tactics abusers use to dominate their partners .
These include more subtle forms of tyranny , including emotional abuse ( “ putting her down ” ; “ making her feel bad about herself ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making all the big decisions ” ; “ acting like ‘ the master of the castle ’ ” ) .
One-third of the Duluth classes were allotted to educating the men about this spectrum of abuse , the rest to teaching them different , more equitable forms of conduct .
An important step in creating change was to help the men become aware of the misogynist judgments that served as justification for their violence .
Once their unconscious thoughts about gender relations ( “ She needs to listen ” ; “ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they could be amended .
Some men , however , required special encouragement to reflect on their actions .
Miller pointed to one of the class ’ s youngest attendees , Jimmy , who had been to three classes but had yet to speak .
“ Jimmy , ” Miller said , “ what ’ s something that you ’ ve done that ’ s emotionally abusive to your partner ?
” “ I can ’ t think of anything , ” Jimmy mumbled , arms folded , chin to his chest .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ m in the woman ’ s spot.
” Miller paused .
It was a common strategy for abusive men to identify as victims .
Whenever an offender sought to minimize or deny his behavior in this way , it was the facilitators ’ job to challenge him .
When facilitators failed to hold a man accountable for patriarchal behavior in class—self-pity , chauvinist jokes , disparaging their partners , and so on—they were , in Ellen Pence 's phrase , said to be “ colluding ” with the abuser and giving him license @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s the thing that you ’ ve done that ’ s emotionally abusive ?
” Miller countered .
Wayne raised his hand .
“ The world I was living in was narcotics and partying , ” he said .
“ I cared about my kids .
I loved Diane ” —in class , men are required to use their partner ’ s given names instead of saying “ my wife ” or “ my girlfriend , ” as a means of reminding them that women are human beings , with individual identities— @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better.
” Gretchen told me that , during their marriage , she could almost set her watch by when her husband would start hurting her .
After a blowup , there ’ d be a honeymoon period lasting a week or two , during which Andrew would be the nicest man she ’ d ever met .
But then tension would rise , and another version of the man—she called him “ Bad Andy ” —would return .
Finally some small frustration—a late meal , a dirty shirt on the floor—would set him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Andrew denied that he regularly hurt Gretchen beyond the two occasions , in 2010 and 2015 , when he was arrested for domestic abuse .
He said , however , that there were instances in which Gretchen attacked him , as well as fights that led to violence on both sides .
Gretchen said she used violence only defensively . )
By the time Andrew was sent to Duluth—a short drive across the Wisconsin-Minnesota border from his home in Superior—he was frightened by his own capacity for violence .
He wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was aggressive with everyone .
He ’ d lost count of the number of bar fights he ’ d started .
He didn ’ t have much confidence , though , in the men ’ s group ’ s ability to help him change .
His experience with the VA , which had once assigned him to what he described as a “ cookie-cutter ” anger-management class , had soured him on the efficacy of “ programs.
” Yet , DAIP felt like his last chance .
After his second arrest , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loved , more than anything , being a father to his 9-year-old daughter , and , while he and Gretchen were sharing custody , he worried that he would lose her .
For the first month of class , Andrew slumped in his seat , arms crossed , glaring at the whiteboard .
He deeply resented having to be there , and he instinctively hated every other man in the class because they ’ d done what he ’ d done .
While Andrew understood , in theory , that he was responsible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pernicious inner voice kept telling him that he ’ d had no choice—that it really wasn ’ t his fault , and he didn ’ t deserve to be there .
In an odd coincidence , Gretchen had started working part-time in a blown-glass gallery that shared a building with DAIP .
She would see Andrew stomp downstairs after class , looking pissed off .
She worried that he was getting worse .
Soon , however , Andrew began recognizing himself in some of his classmates .
When one guy told a story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a shotgun , Andrew found himself nodding along .
He had punched out a girlfriend ’ s TV once .
When he saw the Power and Control Wheel , he recognized , with a lurch in his stomach , most of the behaviors as stuff he ’ d done .
After a few weeks , Andrew worked up the courage to talk .
He shared an anecdote about his day , then glanced up and caught a few guys making eye contact with him .
That was the biggest reassurance : someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gradually , Andrew felt the stirrings of camaraderie .
Some of his classmates clearly weren ’ t ever going to change—an old guy who wouldn ’ t shut up about his wife ’ s spending habits , a young guy who was just biding his time until the final class—but a lot of the men seemed okay .
He ’ d always been most comfortable in all-male environments , where he felt like he could be himself .
The relationships with coworkers and his buddies in the Marines had each created a particular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one—nothing too personal .
In the men ’ s group , though , you could say almost anything and know no one would judge you for it .
Most studies , including two published by the federal National Institute of Justice ( NIJ ) in 2003 , have shown that men ’ s groups modeled on Duluth ’ s have , at best , a minimal effect on whether participants continue to abuse their partners .
At the same time , other types of group-based interventions , including various forms of cognitive behavioral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helping abusers change the thought patterns that lead to violence—have proven little more effective .
Perhaps because better alternatives haven ’ t presented themselves , many state-mandated programs are required to adopt Duluth ’ s philosophical framework .
This has led some domestic-violence researchers to worry that Duluth ’ s dominance has made it difficult to try new approaches .
Carla Stover , a professor at Yale University ’ s School of Medicine who studies domestic-violence interventions and , as a clinical psychologist , has counseled abusive men , told me that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some offenders , many would likely find the lessons inappropriate to their situation .
“ If your problem is , say , emotional dysregulation ” —an inability to appropriately handle overwhelming feelings— “ how is focusing on societal norms about gender roles going to help you ?
” Stover said .
In published rebuttals to its detractors , DAIP has claimed that its men ’ s groups work , but only if correctly implemented .
Virtually all studies , including the NIJ one , were conducted on groups outside of the city of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contends , failed to follow the program ’ s guidelines .
( Paymar and others have questioned the methodology of the NIJ research . )
Though DAIP offers trainings , it has no system of licensing or accreditation , which means that a men ’ s group can claim to abide by its teachings but resemble it in name only .
DAIP also emphasizes that the groups were never intended as a cure-all solution to domestic violence , but only one element of its original Duluth model , requiring a coordinated community response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just the groups .
Like Duluth , ACTV imparts its lesson in small seminars .
When I visited one of its classes , in Des Moines , last July , I watched a program coordinator , Lucas Sampson , and the men discuss the difference between “ away moves ” —things people do to avoid uncomfortable feelings that take them away from their values—and “ towards moves ” —things people do to deal productively with those feelings and take themselves toward their values .
The trick , Sampson explained , was for men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult emotions before they led them to act out in ways they would later regret .
“ You know the ‘ Check Engine ’ light in your car ?
” Sampson asked .
“ When that comes on , what do we do ?
” “ Put a picture over it , ” one man replied .
Everyone laughed .
“ Right , ” Sampson said .
“ And that ’ s okay for a little bit .
But if I ignore it , eventually … ?
” “ Exactly .
Anxiety , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Engine ’ lights .
If you don ’ t deal with them , bad things happen .
You ’ re putting yourself and your family at risk.
” Read : Paid Leave From Work Can Help Domestic-Violence Victims Leave Abusers ACTV seemed less of a strain on the facilitators .
Their primary task is to help the participants act in accordance with their own values and goals , which they are asked to define early in the program— “ Stay out of jail ” ; “ Raise my kids.
” At the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thinking that they were much different than the abusers .
“ We ’ re on the same level as the guys , ” Sampson told me .
“ I use these mindfulness techniques—I think , ‘ Is what I ’ m doing right now an away move or a towards move ?
’ —in my own life , with my wife , my kids.
” Results for ACTV are preliminary but promising , especially given the dearth of effective domestic-violence interventions .
In a pilot study , published in 2017 , men who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 50 percent less likely to be rearrested for domestic violence as participants in Iowa ’ s old program .
The Iowa Department of Corrections believed in ACTV enough to implement it in prisons statewide as part of prerelease programming .
While the program is still relatively new , ACTV-based men ’ s groups have already been introduced in Tennessee , Vermont , and Minnesota .
As far as what , at bottom , causes domestic violence—why some men deploy violence to avoid unpleasant emotions instead of other forms of evasion—ACTV is agnostic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ their own motives , ACTV classes are also designed to help them control their behavior in the moment .
In any case , while it might be satisfying to hear an abuser express regret for the harm he 's caused , there ’ s no empirical evidence that taking responsibility does anything to make him less violent .
Theoretically , a man could go through ACTV never admitting a single fault—could , in fact , believe that he is the victim in the relationship—and yet come through it a less dangerous man .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ trainings say , ‘ Well , how can we even do this if he ’ s saying he ’ s a victim ?
’ And I ’ m like , ‘ Who cares if he says he ’ s a victim ?
’ ” Zarling said .
“ He ’ s still going to learn these skills … Let him believe that.
” Still , even Ellen Pence found it difficult , at times , to square Duluth ’ s single-minded fixation on patriarchy with the infinitely messier reality of men ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ methods , in 1999 , reflecting on DAIP ’ s origins , Pence seemed to cautiously backtrack on her original formulation of violence , in favor of a more expansive understanding of the phenomenon .
“ Many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner , ” she wrote .
“ Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial , the fact that few men ever articulated such a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of my coworkers .
Eventually , we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find.
” By the final weeks of his court-mandated program , Andrew had begun looking forward to class .
One day in 2017 , a few weeks before the end , he stood up and spoke about his greatest fear .
He was scared , he said , that he 'd ruined his daughter ’ s life .
He didn ’ t think she had ever seen him be physically violent , but she ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He worried that she would grow apart from him .
He imagined that , one day , she 'd start dating someone like the man she had grown up with , and that boyfriend would hurt her .
His announcement , which brought him to tears , was met simply , with a round of nods and a little eye contact—but that was enough .
After leaving the program , Andrew finally felt like he had some control over his violence .
The upside of taking responsibility for his mistakes , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his power to fix them .
Gretchen , however , told me that only a few weeks after Andrew finished the program , his blowups returned .
They were less frequent , only once every three months or so , and they didn ’ t culminate in physical violence .
Instead , he ’ d send a threatening text or leave a nasty voicemail message .
While insisting that he ’ d refrained from any physical violence , Andrew admitted that he had , on occasion , returned to other bad habits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after a bad breakup with someone he had been dating , he ’ d gotten drunk and received a DUI .
In February 2019 , Andrew checked himself back into DAIP , this time voluntarily .
He ’ d heard all the lessons before , but the act of going—having to remember who he was and what he ’ d done—kept him on track , and he had no plans to stop anytime soon .
“ I ’ m just in a better place when I ’ m going to group , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m still hoping that , one day , my abuse might be totally eradicated.
” From Gretchen ’ s perspective , as soon as her ex-husband was back in DAIP , he was , once again , respectful , patient , and sometimes even complimentary .
He remained—as he ’ d always been , even during the worst years—a wonderful father .
After almost a year attending classes , Andrew became engaged to a woman named Theresa .
He is currently seeking to become her 3-year-old daughter ’ s adoptive father .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s rehabilitation .
Gretchen said he had never apologized to her for his violence , and that when Andrew reached out to her asking if she ’ d be willing to be interviewed for this article—about “ my abuse , ” he wrote—it was the first time she ’ d seen him use those words .
( Andrew said he has apologized multiple times . )
“ I don ’ t think he ’ s fundamentally changed , ” Gretchen said .
“ But I do think he ’ s getting tools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Andrew used those tools , and then sometimes—even after all those hours of class—he did not .
In October , Gretchen posted a message on Facebook in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month .
An hour later , Andrew left a comment below it : “ You love so much to be seen as the victim .
”

Andrew Lisdahl and his fiancée, Theresa, at their home, along with Andrew's daughter with his ex-wife (left) and one of Theresa's daughters (right)
The photograph above shows Andrew Lisdahl and his fiancée, Theresa, at their home, along with Andrew's daughter with his ex-wife (left) and one of Theresa's daughters (right).
Andrew Lisdahl was mad. His wife, Gretchen, had smoked a cigarette, a habit he detested. They fought, and Gretchen spent the night at a friend’s house. The next day, Andrew drank a bottle of tequila and hitched a ride to the stained-glass studio where Gretchen, an artist, gave lessons. When Andrew found her, he grabbed her left hand and tried to remove her wedding ring, but Gretchen fought him off. As Andrew stumbled away, he took Gretchen’s car keys and phone.
After work, Gretchen’s father drove her back home to retrieve her things. Inside, Andrew had been passed out on the couch, but he woke up and yelled at Gretchen, “Get the fuck out!” When she didn’t, he grabbed her by the hair, dragged her into the living room, threw her on the carpet, kicked her in the chest, and pinned her to the ground. As Gretchen’s father approached the house, Andrew let her go and she was able to escape.
Gretchen went to a police station near their home in Superior, Wisconsin, and showed an officer on duty the red marks coloring her sternum. When police arrived at the house and knocked, Andrew announced from inside that he was aiming a shotgun at the officers’ faces. A SWAT team was summoned. Soon after, Andrew emerged, hands in the air, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, and surrendered. Police said they recovered a loaded shotgun next to the door. (Andrew denies that it was loaded.) He was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic battery, to which he pleaded guilty. (Many details of the encounter are contained in a police report. This abuse incident, and others described in this article, have been corroborated with both Andrew and Gretchen.)
Read: The Particular Cruelty of Domestic Violence
After two years of court proceedings, Andrew found himself sitting in an austere conference room in Duluth, Minnesota, with a dozen other men, most convicted of similar crimes. In the United States, domestic abusers are rarely sent to prison. More often, as in Andrew’s case, they are sent to a special class designed to teach them to refrain from physical violence. The methods employed by these groups, known formally as “batterer intervention programs,” or BIPs, vary—there are 2,500 in the United States alone, according to one study—but most base their instruction on ideas from second-wave feminism, striving to educate men about the ways in which the harm they visit on their romantic partners mimics the larger, repressive structure of patriarchy.
For Andrew, then 34 years old, being court-ordered to attend a class for wife-beaters was a shameful low point. It signaled to everyone that he had violated an immutable taboo, impressed upon him since childhood: Men do not hit women. He had been arrested for battering Gretchen five years before, in 2010, but she had requested that he be let off, and the charges had been reduced to disorderly conduct. Since his latest arrest, Andrew hadn’t wanted to speak to anyone about the classes, afraid of where the conversation might go. As he waited for class to start, he stared at the dusty umber carpeting, inwardly vowing to avoid speech or eye contact.
Andrew was horrified when, a few minutes in, the facilitator leading the group asked him to introduce himself to his classmates. Explain, the man said, smiling, why you’re here.
Andrew stood up. “I’m Andrew,” he said, eyes still fixed on the floor. “I’m here because I hit my wife, Gretchen.”
Sinking back into his seat, Andrew was suddenly overcome by an unexpected sense of relief. He still didn’t want to be in the room, at all, but speaking his stigma aloud—admitting, in semipublic, the hideous thing he’d done—felt, to his surprise, kind of good. Over the next six months, he continued to unburden himself to the men, and they to him. Soon, Andrew would come to believe—as would Gretchen—that the class was the only thing capable of exorcising the evil pieces of his spirit and making him a decent man.
Considered in aggregate, physically abusive men constitute a catastrophic public-health hazard. While research suggests that men and women employ violence in relationships at roughly equal rates, the damage inflicted on women is far more severe. Nearly half of all homicides of women in the U.S. are committed by a victim’s romantic partner. Globally, the leading cause of nonfatal injuries to women—ahead of car crashes, falls, and accidental poisonings—is domestic violence.
For most of American history, authorities treated domestic violence with benign neglect. Legally, the act of assaulting one’s spouse was only widely criminalized within the last century or so. Even then, cops saw fisticuffs between lovers as a private sport they had no business refereeing. (A 1975 training bulletin issued by the police department in Oakland, California, advised that, instead of making an arrest, officers should “encourage the parties to reason with each other.”) District attorneys, meanwhile, resisted prosecuting abusers, often because victims—many in danger of further attacks—were reluctant to pursue charges. In general, all but the most egregious cases went unpunished.
Read: How Domestic Abusers Weaponize the Courts
An organized effort to take such violence seriously began in the early 1970s, when activists set about publicizing the social problem then known as “wife battering.” A flurry of research—epitomized by Erin Pizzey’s collection of case studies, Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear—gave rise to a network of support groups and women’s shelters. In 1980, a small band of activists gathered in Duluth with the goal of addressing the justice system’s failings. The creators of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP), as it became known, devised a revolutionary plan to help communities respond aggressively to the phenomenon. To prevent cases from being ignored, relevant municipal agencies, including police, courts, and social workers, would carefully coordinate their actions. Women would be assigned advocates to help them understand their legal options and seek orders of protection from their partners. To make sure cops did their jobs, arrests for certain offenses would become mandatory, and prosecutors would try cases even without cooperation from victims. After a pilot run of the program in Duluth appeared to reduce assaults, the “Duluth model” of responding to domestic violence was adopted by cities across the country.
But there was one aspect of domestic violence for which the Duluth model didn’t have a solution: what to do with the abusers. While activists agreed that the threat of arrest and incarceration was an important deterrent to domestic violence, it wasn’t a cure. Batterers couldn’t be locked up forever, and the prison environment was hardly conducive to reducing aggression. Ellen Pence, a cofounder of a Minneapolis women’s shelter, was one of DAIP’s organizers. In her experience working with victims, Pence had observed that many men who hit their partners did so repeatedly, over many years. Such habitual batterers, in her opinion, required not just punishment, but some form of reeducation.
At the time, little was known about the causes of domestic violence. Many psychologists viewed abuse as the side effect of some other difficulty—alcoholism, an inability to handle stress or anger, poor communication skills. Not infrequently, blame was placed on a woman’s failure as a wife or girlfriend. One study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1964, asserted that spouses of abusive men tended to be “aggressive, efficient, masculine and sexually frigid.”
Like many contemporary feminists, Pence saw the phenomenon differently. Abuse, in her view, wasn’t an individual problem, but a social one. For millennia, men had been taught that it was their right to control women, by force if necessary. Domestic violence was the means by which a man exercised this power on an interpersonal level. Far from a dysfunction, it was a rational tactic—a tool for patriarchy. Yet men had grown so used to this system, into which they’d been socialized since birth, that they never thought to question its correctness.
If men were conditioned to become oppressors, the only way to change them, Pence reasoned, was to denaturalize this arrangement. Inspired by the work of the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire—who, in his classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed, described educating peasants by posing questions that foster dialogue—Pence wondered whether she might be able to challenge, through conversation, the ideas motivating domestic violence. Along with a Duluth City Council member named Michael Paymar, she drew up a curriculum for a series of support groups meant to help men come to terms with their destructive behavior, take ownership of their actions, and, with luck, stop injuring women.
Launched in the mid-1980s, Pence and Paymar’s program was not the first men’s group for batterers—several other programs, using different techniques, had already sprung up in other cities—but it proved the most influential. The Duluth curriculum’s innovation, of attacking the societal roots of abuse, met with approval from activists and victims’ advocates. Lawmakers found in the groups a convenient means of dealing with the new wave of domestic-violence arrests. Over the next three decades, the curriculum spread rapidly, until programs advancing the theory that domestic violence was underpinned by sexism had been established in every state in the country. Over time, the “Duluth model” would come to refer to those specific gatherings, and their pedagogical focus on dismantling patriarchal norms, rather than to its original plan for coordinated community action.
But as their popularity grew, Duluth’s men’s groups faced a backlash. As researchers began conducting more studies, they found that the early psychologists who had ascribed domestic violence to individuals’ underlying problems, such as addiction and trauma, were, to an extent, correct. Studies showed that the Duluth approach, with its broad social message, had little effect on whether men actually re-offended. It was also criticized as ill-suited for addressing assaults committed by women and within same-sex partnerships. Yet today, Duluth’s backers continue to argue that its gender-based approach is the only one capable of getting at the roots of male battering. Men's groups remain the most common method of attempting to reform the domestically violent, and in these groups, the Duluth curriculum is the most frequently used approach.
Left: Andrew Lisdahl; Right: DAIP facilitators take notes on class discussions on a whiteboard.
The offices of DAIP occupy the third floor of an inconspicuous brick building, distinguished, mainly, by a faded white sign above the front door reading Home of the Duluth Model. The organization hosts men’s groups in a room fronted by a big picture window overlooking Lake Superior, which, when I visited in mid-March, was still frozen over and skinned with snow.
On a Thursday morning, I watched twelve men in heavy winter coats shuffle inside and take seats in a semicircle of office chairs. In exchange for receiving probation instead of incarceration, men agree to attend 27 classes at DAIP, each lasting 90 minutes. The group seemed, by all appearances, a thoroughly average sampling of midwestern manhood. Most of the men were deep into middle age, but a few were younger, and they sat hunched over, hiding in their phones. (DAIP allowed me to sit in on its groups with the condition that I not include the participants’ real names or any identifying details. The names of the participants’ victims have also been changed.)
At the front of the room stood the class’s facilitators, Jen Rouse, one of DAIP’s newest staffers, and Scott Miller, one of its codirectors. According to DAIP’s lengthy instructor manual—the core of the Duluth curriculum—the goal of a facilitator is threefold: to challenge men’s patriarchal views, to help them take responsibility for their past violence, and to inculcate a new, more egalitarian set of beliefs. Each class has two facilitators, one man and one woman, to habituate abusers to seeing men and women on an even footing. Many of the men, Rouse told me, publicize their disdain for the female facilitators with theatrical displays of anger, silence, or hostile body language. “Some of the men, when they first come in, they can’t even look at me,” said Rouse, a small, cheerful woman in her 30s. “But over time they engage.”
Critics have caricatured the Duluth approach as one in which men are shamed and bullied into taking on feminist-approved ideas. In truth, the meetings are free of jargon such as “patriarchy” and “misogyny,” and DAIP’s facilitators seldom lecture or admonish. Rather, they try, in the words of the facilitation manual, to “create a process of change.” This usually takes the form of peppering the men with questions. The goal is to encourage the men to confront their assumptions about power, gender, and privilege. The best situation a facilitator can find himself in, Miller told me, is to ask a man a question for which he has no answer. That’s when the growth happens.
Read: Abuser and Survivor, Face to Face
The class began with a short video illustrating the week’s topic: emotional abuse. It depicted “Steve,” a jittery man with a chinstrap beard, accosting his estranged wife, “Cherie,” outside her home, as she’s taking out the trash. By visiting the house, Steve, we learn, is violating an order of protection, but he pleads with Cherie to let him move back in. “I just feel like I’m starting to change, okay?” he huffs. Unmoved, Cherie threatens to call the police.
“You’re not going to know what to do without me!” yells Steve.
Cherie starts marching inside. “You’ve got 10 seconds and I’m calling the cops.”
“10-9-8-7-fuck you!” Steve screams, kicking the trash can.
The class hooted with laughter.
Afterward, Miller—tall and lanky, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and a springy energy that is echt Minnesota—asked the class to describe how, exactly, Steve had been emotionally abusive. Rouse, armed with a dry-erase marker, compiled their responses.
“He started being nice at first,” offered a flannel-shirted man—one of many—whom I’ll call Liam. “But he was just trying to manipulate her.”
The men, Miller explained to me later, arrive in the class with different levels of resistance to its teachings. At first, many deny having done anything wrong, claiming that it was self-defense, or that it was an accident, or—the most common justification of all—that their partner drove them to do what they did. The first step in helping the men, therefore, is to make them fully aware of their abusive behaviors, of which physical violence is only one component. In the 1980s, DAIP developed a now-famous diagram, the “Power and Control Wheel,” to illustrate the variety of tactics abusers use to dominate their partners. These include more subtle forms of tyranny, including emotional abuse (“putting her down”; “making her feel bad about herself”) and exercising male privilege (“making all the big decisions”; “acting like ‘the master of the castle’ ”). One-third of the Duluth classes were allotted to educating the men about this spectrum of abuse, the rest to teaching them different, more equitable forms of conduct.
An important step in creating change was to help the men become aware of the misogynist judgments that served as justification for their violence. Once their unconscious thoughts about gender relations (“She needs to listen”; “I’m right”) were exposed, they could be amended.
Some men, however, required special encouragement to reflect on their actions. Miller pointed to one of the class’s youngest attendees, Jimmy, who had been to three classes but had yet to speak.
“Jimmy,” Miller said, “what’s something that you’ve done that’s emotionally abusive to your partner?”
“I can’t think of anything,” Jimmy mumbled, arms folded, chin to his chest. “That video? … I’m in the woman’s spot.”
Miller paused. It was a common strategy for abusive men to identify as victims. Whenever an offender sought to minimize or deny his behavior in this way, it was the facilitators’ job to challenge him. When facilitators failed to hold a man accountable for patriarchal behavior in class—self-pity, chauvinist jokes, disparaging their partners, and so on—they were, in Ellen Pence's phrase, said to be “colluding” with the abuser and giving him license to be violent.
“But what’s the thing that you’ve done that’s emotionally abusive?” Miller countered.
Jimmy shrugged.
Wayne raised his hand. “The world I was living in was narcotics and partying,” he said. “I cared about my kids. I loved Diane”—in class, men are required to use their partner’s given names instead of saying “my wife” or “my girlfriend,” as a means of reminding them that women are human beings, with individual identities—“but I loved my party life better.”
Read: Nearly Half of All Murdered Women Are Killed by Romantic Partners
Most of the men in the room, it became clear, had issues with substances, generally alcohol or opioids. Facilitators generally like to give the men free rein on what topics they explore—Miller told me exit interviews showed that participants learn most from hearing each other’s experiences—but are quick to question men who cite addiction as a reason for their violence. For a facilitator, allowing the men to avoid accountability by placing the blame on substances would be a form of collusion.
Trying to shift topics, Rouse asked the class to consider how their abuse had affected their families. A critical means of compelling change is to get men to see the negative ramifications of their violence on themselves and others. In truth, Miller told me later, patriarchy is not pleasant for men either. In class, abusers are constantly telling him that, given the chance, they’d prefer to be in loving, equitable relationships with women—they just don’t know how. But convincing the class to focus on their physical abuse instead of their substance abuse, the facilitators agreed, remained a challenge.
“If they have PTSD or an anxiety disorder and that’s getting in the way of their becoming someone new, yeah, fix that,” Miller said. “But if you think someone is going to sober up and stop being abusive, they’re not. They’ll just be sober batterers.”
Left: DAIP facilitator Jen Rouse and a colleague; Right: A DAIP participant
In March 2003, during the earliest days of the Iraq War, the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, received orders to capture and hold a pair of bridges in the city of Nasiriyah. Andrew, a 20-year-old mortarman on his first deployment, found himself trapped at the center of a hellish, week-long urban firefight, lobbing explosives at dangerously close targets in every direction. Several years later, after his third tour in Iraq, Andrew returned home to Superior. The VA diagnosed him with PTSD and prescribed him medication. A few years later, he married Gretchen and they had their daughter.
Gretchen told me that, during their marriage, she could almost set her watch by when her husband would start hurting her. After a blowup, there’d be a honeymoon period lasting a week or two, during which Andrew would be the nicest man she’d ever met. But then tension would rise, and another version of the man—she called him “Bad Andy”—would return. Finally some small frustration—a late meal, a dirty shirt on the floor—would set him off, and he’d explode. (Andrew denied that he regularly hurt Gretchen beyond the two occasions, in 2010 and 2015, when he was arrested for domestic abuse. He said, however, that there were instances in which Gretchen attacked him, as well as fights that led to violence on both sides. Gretchen said she used violence only defensively.)
By the time Andrew was sent to Duluth—a short drive across the Wisconsin-Minnesota border from his home in Superior—he was frightened by his own capacity for violence. He wasn’t aggressive just with Gretchen; he was aggressive with everyone. He’d lost count of the number of bar fights he’d started. He didn’t have much confidence, though, in the men’s group’s ability to help him change. His experience with the VA, which had once assigned him to what he described as a “cookie-cutter” anger-management class, had soured him on the efficacy of “programs.” Yet, DAIP felt like his last chance. After his second arrest, Gretchen had finally left him. He loved, more than anything, being a father to his 9-year-old daughter, and, while he and Gretchen were sharing custody, he worried that he would lose her.
For the first month of class, Andrew slumped in his seat, arms crossed, glaring at the whiteboard. He deeply resented having to be there, and he instinctively hated every other man in the class because they’d done what he’d done. While Andrew understood, in theory, that he was responsible for his actions, some small, pernicious inner voice kept telling him that he’d had no choice—that it really wasn’t his fault, and he didn’t deserve to be there. In an odd coincidence, Gretchen had started working part-time in a blown-glass gallery that shared a building with DAIP. She would see Andrew stomp downstairs after class, looking pissed off. She worried that he was getting worse.
Soon, however, Andrew began recognizing himself in some of his classmates. When one guy told a story about demolishing his girlfriend’s modem with a shotgun, Andrew found himself nodding along. He had punched out a girlfriend’s TV once. When he saw the Power and Control Wheel, he recognized, with a lurch in his stomach, most of the behaviors as stuff he’d done. After a few weeks, Andrew worked up the courage to talk. He shared an anecdote about his day, then glanced up and caught a few guys making eye contact with him. That was the biggest reassurance: someone being willing to look at you.
Gradually, Andrew felt the stirrings of camaraderie. Some of his classmates clearly weren’t ever going to change—an old guy who wouldn’t shut up about his wife’s spending habits, a young guy who was just biding his time until the final class—but a lot of the men seemed okay. He’d always been most comfortable in all-male environments, where he felt like he could be himself. The relationships with coworkers and his buddies in the Marines had each created a particular type of intimacy, but a limited one—nothing too personal. In the men’s group, though, you could say almost anything and know no one would judge you for it.
After a couple months of classes, Gretchen noticed that Andrew was acting different. The two of them would meet up every few days to hand off their daughter. The encounters had been tense at first, but Andrew had begun to soften. He stopped making backhanded compliments and showed an unprecedented willingness to compromise, offering to cover for her when she needed a babysitter. She didn’t know quite where the shift had come from, but she hoped it would last.
Gretchen Lisdahl
In her writings, Ellen Pence, who died in 2012, was insistent about seeing domestic violence within its proper context. “When a man slaps a woman,” she would often tell staffers, “it doesn’t happen in a vacuum: It’s a historical act.” With regards to Duluth, Pence would also often acknowledge that the city’s men, many of them working class, were uncommonly burdened by personal problems—poverty, stress, addiction, trauma—some stemming from childhood, others from the collapse of the region’s ore-mining industry. But, while Pence allowed that these factors might exacerbate abusive behavior, she denied that anything other than male entitlement, born of patriarchy, could cause a man to hit his partner. Though the facilitator’s manual, which Pence coauthored, counsels sympathy for troubled men—“We can’t discount their pain and scars”—it warns against allowing “individual experiences” to serve as “an explanation” and “an excuse” for them to continue their oppression. Letting the men think of themselves as victims ran the risk of letting them escape blame for their actions.
“A lot of times, the men are victims,” one facilitator told me. “Just not in that room.”
Pence also dismissed the idea that eons of male domination could be solved with psychotherapy. While counseling might help an abuser work through certain individual issues, it did nothing, in Pence’s opinion, to address the larger social and political realities inspiring his violence. Moreover, she felt that by “psychologizing” the problem of domestic violence, therapists were vulnerable to collusion. They might allow their clients to see their abuse simply as a by-product of their past trauma or other difficulties. But as she saw it, each abuser, regardless of background, was motivated by a common sense of male entitlement.
“It really comes down to a very simple thing,” Michael Paymar, Pence’s colleague, said. “Men who batter want what they want when they want it.”
Duluth’s renunciation of individual psychology in favor of what critics have called a “gender political model” of abuse has drawn scorn from mental-health professionals. In the view of most psychologists, domestic violence can be caused by many things. While culture—particularly the degree to which domestic violence is tolerated or encouraged by a society—plays a role in producing batterers, scholars argue that it is impossible to isolate a single element, like male entitlement, from what is often a grisly gnarl of psychological and biological influences.
Most studies, including two published by the federal National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 2003, have shown that men’s groups modeled on Duluth’s have, at best, a minimal effect on whether participants continue to abuse their partners. At the same time, other types of group-based interventions, including various forms of cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT—an apolitical method of helping abusers change the thought patterns that lead to violence—have proven little more effective. Perhaps because better alternatives haven’t presented themselves, many state-mandated programs are required to adopt Duluth’s philosophical framework.
Read: The Term ‘Domestic Violence’ Is a Failure
This has led some domestic-violence researchers to worry that Duluth’s dominance has made it difficult to try new approaches. Carla Stover, a professor at Yale University’s School of Medicine who studies domestic-violence interventions and, as a clinical psychologist, has counseled abusive men, told me that, while the Duluth curriculum might work for some offenders, many would likely find the lessons inappropriate to their situation.
“If your problem is, say, emotional dysregulation”—an inability to appropriately handle overwhelming feelings—“how is focusing on societal norms about gender roles going to help you?” Stover said.
In published rebuttals to its detractors, DAIP has claimed that its men’s groups work, but only if correctly implemented. Virtually all studies, including the NIJ one, were conducted on groups outside of the city of Duluth, many of which, Paymar contends, failed to follow the program’s guidelines. (Paymar and others have questioned the methodology of the NIJ research.) Though DAIP offers trainings, it has no system of licensing or accreditation, which means that a men’s group can claim to abide by its teachings but resemble it in name only. DAIP also emphasizes that the groups were never intended as a cure-all solution to domestic violence, but only one element of its original Duluth model, requiring a coordinated community response. Many cities, however, use just the groups.
“The Duluth curriculum was one of the early batterer-intervention programs that centralized victim safety, held offenders accountable, and offered men who batter concrete ways to change,” said Paymar. “Since BIPs emerged, programs are trying new techniques which are good.”
Perhaps one reason for DAIP’s limited effectiveness is that, by its own pessimistic assertion, many men are, unfortunately, unlikely to reform. While group facilitators, per the DAIP manual, “must have an unshakeable belief that within each of us is the capacity to change,” they should also “have no illusions that the majority of offenders will stop their use of violence.” Domestic violence, Miller told me, will likely stick around until society can figure out how to rid itself of male entitlement.
“We can have an impact, but it’s still a generational process,” he said. “This problem is so long-standing, so entrenched, so historical—to think one agency has the power to end that violence is ludicrous.”
Recently, frustration with Duluth, as well as CBT-based methods, has led some states to begin experimenting with alternative approaches to their men’s groups. Several years ago, after an internal review by the Iowa Department of Corrections found that its intervention program—a hybrid of Duluth and CBT—was so ineffective that it constituted “a waste of taxpayer dollars,” the agency adopted a new method, one that took a radically different view of abuse.
Developed by Amie Zarling, a professor and clinical psychologist at Iowa State University, “Achieving Change Through Values-Based Behavior,” or ACTV, rejects the idea that there is any single root cause of domestic violence. According to Zarling, sometimes violence is deployed to preserve male dominance, but often it’s simply a coping mechanism for extreme distress. For many men, Zarling said, being violent is a way of fending off unpleasant emotions, such as vulnerability, shame, jealousy, or anxiety.
“In the moment, violence can actually be extremely effective at helping someone avoid feeling bad,” Zarling told me. “Abusers learn that when they punch someone, they get some kind of relief from pain. And their brain remembers that. It’s a very under-the-skin, insidious process.”
One solution, Zarling posited, was to give abusers a way of making their distress manageable. Whereas Duluth is predicated on preventing violence by challenging men’s beliefs, and CBT by changing their thought processes, ACTV (pronounced “active”) takes a different approach. Instead of trying to alter what men believe or think—“It’s really, really hard to change someone’s thinking,” Zarling said—ACTV strives to help abusers accept their thoughts but respond differently to them. Ideally, an abuser will learn to become aware of unpleasant feelings but to not let them control him. In addition to teaching abusers about patriarchy, ACTV is also teaching them mindfulness.
Like Duluth, ACTV imparts its lesson in small seminars. When I visited one of its classes, in Des Moines, last July, I watched a program coordinator, Lucas Sampson, and the men discuss the difference between “away moves”—things people do to avoid uncomfortable feelings that take them away from their values—and “towards moves”—things people do to deal productively with those feelings and take themselves toward their values. The trick, Sampson explained, was for men to be able to notice and identify difficult emotions before they led them to act out in ways they would later regret.
“You know the ‘Check Engine’ light in your car?” Sampson asked. “When that comes on, what do we do?”
“Put a picture over it,” one man replied. Everyone laughed.
“Right,” Sampson said. “And that’s okay for a little bit. But if I ignore it, eventually … ?”
“Your engine gets fucked.”
“Exactly. Anxiety, stress, anger—those are your ‘Check Engine’ lights. If you don’t deal with them, bad things happen. You’re putting yourself and your family at risk.”
Read: Paid Leave From Work Can Help Domestic-Violence Victims Leave Abusers
ACTV seemed less of a strain on the facilitators. Their primary task is to help the participants act in accordance with their own values and goals, which they are asked to define early in the program—“Stay out of jail”; “Raise my kids.”
At the same time, facilitators lacked the comfort of thinking that they were much different than the abusers. “We’re on the same level as the guys,” Sampson told me. “I use these mindfulness techniques—I think, ‘Is what I’m doing right now an away move or a towards move?’—in my own life, with my wife, my kids.”
Results for ACTV are preliminary but promising, especially given the dearth of effective domestic-violence interventions. In a pilot study, published in 2017, men who successfully completed an ACTV program were nearly 50 percent less likely to be rearrested for domestic violence as participants in Iowa’s old program. The Iowa Department of Corrections believed in ACTV enough to implement it in prisons statewide as part of prerelease programming. While the program is still relatively new, ACTV-based men’s groups have already been introduced in Tennessee, Vermont, and Minnesota.
As far as what, at bottom, causes domestic violence—why some men deploy violence to avoid unpleasant emotions instead of other forms of evasion—ACTV is agnostic. While participants are encouraged to seek out their own motives, ACTV classes are also designed to help them control their behavior in the moment.
In any case, while it might be satisfying to hear an abuser express regret for the harm he's caused, there’s no empirical evidence that taking responsibility does anything to make him less violent. Theoretically, a man could go through ACTV never admitting a single fault—could, in fact, believe that he is the victim in the relationship—and yet come through it a less dangerous man.
“I’ve had facilitators in trainings say, ‘Well, how can we even do this if he’s saying he’s a victim?’ And I’m like, ‘Who cares if he says he’s a victim?’ ” Zarling said. “He’s still going to learn these skills … Let him believe that.”
Gretchen in the stained-glass store where she works
In the two weeks I sat in on the classes at Duluth, I often witnessed men venturing into uncomfortable emotional territory and glimpsing, possibly for the first time, some of the damage they’d wrought. There were tears, expressions of regret, pledges to improve. There seemed something undeniably valuable about giving men a forum to discuss subjects for which they had almost no language. Carol Thompson, who had been facilitating classes at DAIP for more than three decades, told me that many of the men in her classes had never talked about relationships before, in any context. At DAIP, they were forced to spend hours mulling over not just power and violence—the program’s purported focus—but what it means to be intimate with someone, to grapple with the implications of sharing another person’s life.
Still, even Ellen Pence found it difficult, at times, to square Duluth’s single-minded fixation on patriarchy with the infinitely messier reality of men’s emotional lives. While never disavowing its methods, in 1999, reflecting on DAIP’s origins, Pence seemed to cautiously backtrack on her original formulation of violence, in favor of a more expansive understanding of the phenomenon.
“Many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner,” she wrote. “Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find.”
By the final weeks of his court-mandated program, Andrew had begun looking forward to class. One day in 2017, a few weeks before the end, he stood up and spoke about his greatest fear. He was scared, he said, that he'd ruined his daughter’s life. He didn’t think she had ever seen him be physically violent, but she’d observed his anger and his drinking. He worried that she would grow apart from him. He imagined that, one day, she'd start dating someone like the man she had grown up with, and that boyfriend would hurt her. His announcement, which brought him to tears, was met simply, with a round of nods and a little eye contact—but that was enough.
After leaving the program, Andrew finally felt like he had some control over his violence. The upside of taking responsibility for his mistakes, he found, was understanding that it was in his power to fix them. Gretchen, however, told me that only a few weeks after Andrew finished the program, his blowups returned. They were less frequent, only once every three months or so, and they didn’t culminate in physical violence. Instead, he’d send a threatening text or leave a nasty voicemail message.
While insisting that he’d refrained from any physical violence, Andrew admitted that he had, on occasion, returned to other bad habits. In the summer of 2018, after a bad breakup with someone he had been dating, he’d gotten drunk and received a DUI. In February 2019, Andrew checked himself back into DAIP, this time voluntarily. He’d heard all the lessons before, but the act of going—having to remember who he was and what he’d done—kept him on track, and he had no plans to stop anytime soon. “I’m just in a better place when I’m going to group,” he told me. “I’m still hoping that, one day, my abuse might be totally eradicated.”
From Gretchen’s perspective, as soon as her ex-husband was back in DAIP, he was, once again, respectful, patient, and sometimes even complimentary. He remained—as he’d always been, even during the worst years—a wonderful father. After almost a year attending classes, Andrew became engaged to a woman named Theresa. He is currently seeking to become her 3-year-old daughter’s adoptive father.
That said, there were limits to Andrew’s rehabilitation. Gretchen said he had never apologized to her for his violence, and that when Andrew reached out to her asking if she’d be willing to be interviewed for this article—about “my abuse,” he wrote—it was the first time she’d seen him use those words. (Andrew said he has apologized multiple times.)
“I don’t think he’s fundamentally changed,” Gretchen said. “But I do think he’s getting tools to learn how to cope.” Sometimes Andrew used those tools, and then sometimes—even after all those hours of class—he did not.
In October, Gretchen posted a message on Facebook in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. An hour later, Andrew left a comment below it: “You love so much to be seen as the victim.”


theatlantic--2020-01-18--Progressives Warn of a Great Deflation

Progressives Warn of a Great Deflation

Sanders and Warren , campaigning on promises to enact some form of Medicare for All , free public college , and a wealth tax , have delighted the leftmost segment of the Democratic base .
Warren , with her steady stream of ambitious policy plans , has drawn consistently massive crowds , where attendees happily chant wonky slogans .
Sanders raised $ 34.5 million in the last three months of 2019—far more money than any other presidential candidate .
And more than 26,000 people attended Sanders ’ s October rally with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York , making it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidential candidate this cycle .
Biden ’ s rallies are consistently much less well-attended .
And although crowd size is not necessarily predictive of electoral success , it could indicate whether a candidate has a sizable pool of enthusiastic volunteers to draw from in the general election .
A Biden nomination would trigger a huge deflation in enthusiasm , and a shrinking of that volunteer pool , progressives argue .
“ If a candidate that gets selected doesn ’ t have the type of energy and excitement from the troops—the people who give @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bank , who show up to rallies , it will be harder ” said Rashad Robinson , the president of the racial-justice organization Color of Change .
For many Democrats , that warning triggers an unpleasant flashback to 2016 .
Sanders , after losing the primary , was late to endorse Hillary Clinton .
At least 20 percent of people who voted for Sanders in the primary did not vote for Clinton in the general election against Trump , according to one study .
But every progressive organizer and leader I talked to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the same thing : They ’ re not concerned that Americans will choose Trump over Biden .
They ’ re worried that , absent a Democratic candidate who excites them , many Americans might not vote at all .
Democrats have two theories of how to win the 2020 presidential election : persuasion vs. turnout .
Advocates of the former , generally moderates , believe that Clinton lost to Trump mostly because she failed to persuade enough moderate voters in swing states .
But progressives say that an emphasis on turning nonvoters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic victory in November .
They blame Clinton ’ s loss on failing to inspire and mobilize Americans : An estimated 4.4 million people who voted for Obama did not vote in 2016 .
This kind of mobilization strategy relies heavily on local canvassing , and some of the activists involved with grassroots progressive groups told me that they have serious concerns about being able to mobilize volunteers for Biden .
Jackie Dempsey , a 53-year-old member of the Forest Hills , Pennsylvania , chapter of Indivisible , a progressive group , intends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as she would for any other nominee .
But when Dempsey asked other members of the group what they ’ d do if Biden was the Democratic nominee , she received a range of responses : “ Some people said , I ’ ll vote for him but I won ’ t work for him , ” Dempsey told me .
“ Some people said , I ’ ll work around him .
[ Others said , ] I ’ ll make sure Democrats are registered , but I won ’ t even @ @ @ @ @

“Please don’t make me vote for Joe Biden!” a flock of teenagers pleaded in a series of videos posted to the social-media app TikTok earlier this month.
But as the Iowa caucuses draw closer, a Biden nomination is looking more likely by the day. Lefty groups are worried—and warning that a Biden win could crush the activist enthusiasm they’re counting on to win in November.
The thousands of Americans who wait for hours in line to snap a photo with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts or who fill arenas for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont simply will not be as enthusiastic about the former vice president, leaders at nine progressive organizations, all of which are involved with organizing and get-out-the-vote efforts, told me in interviews this month. “I can’t imagine having Biden on the ticket is going to be the thing that energizes these folks to get out and do the door-knocking and have the conversations we need them to have,” said Natalia Salgado, who runs civic engagement at the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-wing advocacy group. “It’s incredibly concerning to me.”
Despite the conventional wisdom that Biden, with his nearly ubiquitous name recognition and decades of experience, is the safest candidate to put up against President Donald Trump in November, some progressives fear that he might actually be the riskiest.
Sanders and Warren, campaigning on promises to enact some form of Medicare for All, free public college, and a wealth tax, have delighted the leftmost segment of the Democratic base. Warren, with her steady stream of ambitious policy plans, has drawn consistently massive crowds that happily chant wonky slogans. Sanders raised $34.5 million in the last three months of 2019—far more money than any other presidential candidate. And more than 26,000 people attended Sanders’s October rally with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, making it the largest event held by any Democratic presidential candidate this cycle.
Biden’s rallies are consistently much less well attended. And although crowd size is not necessarily predictive of electoral success, it could indicate whether a candidate has a sizable pool of enthusiastic volunteers to draw from in the general election. A Biden nomination would trigger a huge deflation in enthusiasm, and a shrinking of that volunteer pool, progressives argue. “If a candidate that gets selected doesn’t have the type of energy and excitement from the troops—the people who give small dollars, the people who phone bank, who show up to rallies—it will be harder” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the racial-justice organization Color of Change.
Read: The kumbaya candidate
For many Democrats, that warning triggers an unpleasant flashback to 2016. Sanders, after losing the primary, was late to endorse Hillary Clinton. At least 20 percent of the people who voted for Sanders in the primary did not vote for Clinton in the general election against Trump, according to one study. But every progressive organizer and leader I talked with for this story told me a variation of the same thing: They’re not concerned that Americans will choose Trump over Biden. They’re worried that, absent a Democratic candidate who excites them, many Americans might not vote at all.
Democrats have two theories of how to win the 2020 presidential election: persuasion versus turnout. Advocates of the former, generally moderates, believe that Clinton lost to Trump mostly because she failed to convince enough moderate voters in swing states. But progressives say that an emphasis on turning nonvoters into voters is more important for a Democratic victory in November. They blame Clinton’s loss on failing to inspire and mobilize Americans: An estimated 4.4 million people who voted for Barack Obama did not vote in 2016.
This kind of mobilization strategy relies heavily on local canvassing, and some of the activists involved with grassroots progressive groups told me that they have serious concerns about being able to mobilize volunteers for Biden. Jackie Dempsey, a 53-year-old member of the Forest Hills, Pennsylvania, chapter of Indivisible, a progressive group, intends to campaign for Biden just as vigorously as she would for any other nominee. But when Dempsey asked other members of the group what they’d do if Biden was the Democratic nominee, she received a range of responses: “Some people said, ‘I’ll vote for him but I won’t work for him,’” Dempsey told me. “Some people said, ‘I’ll work around him.’ [Others said,] ‘I’ll make sure Democrats are registered, but I won’t even vote for him.’”
Linda Bishop, a member of Progress PA, a group based in Pittsburgh, told me that she’s especially worried about youth organizing. “Will [older people] get out and canvass for him? You bet they will,” she said. “The younger people, not as much.”
Young voters tend to prefer Sanders and Warren to Biden. Of all the 2020 Democrats, the two senators have the most and second-most support, respectively, among voters ages 18 to 34, according to the latest national poll from Quinnipiac University. Several youth-led progressive groups have warned that a Biden nomination would be disastrous for enthusiasm. “In 2018, in states where we had progressive champions running on the Green New Deal, we saw that we could turn out huge numbers of young people to knock doors and organize their friends,” said Stephen O’Hanlon, the communications director at Sunrise Movement, a climate-change group that is led by a 26-year-old and that recently endorsed Sanders. A Biden nomination “will make it harder for us to mobilize as many young people to give as many hours to help defeat Donald Trump this fall,” O’Hanlon said.
Biden’s campaign insists that it has worked for months to engage and mobilize young people and college students. “Joe Biden is best positioned to beat Donald Trump because of his broad, diverse coalition, which includes support from younger voters,” says TJ Ducklo, Biden’s national press secretary. Biden also polls better among black voters than both Sanders and Warren do. And a Sanders or Warren nomination presents its own risks for Democrats. Although a progressive might be more appealing to a particular segment of Americans, they might also turn off other voters. In the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats flipped 41 House seats from red to blue, the majority of the party’s winning candidates were more moderate. Candidates endorsed by lefty groups such as Our Revolution and Justice Democrats had much less success. Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at Third Way, a center-left think tank, cited those gains as a reason to stick with a more moderate presidential candidate this year. “Why would we think we can throw persuasion out the window in 2020?” she said. “We should probably think about running that same playbook.”
Read: The opportunity that Warren and Sanders passed up
In six key swing states—Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—Democrats would prefer a 2020 nominee who is more moderate, a November poll from The New York Times and Siena College showed. Among those same voters, Biden performed better than other Democrats in theoretical head-to-head matchups with Trump. Which is to say that although progressives contend that nominating Biden would deflate the progressive base, a Sanders or Warren candidacy could just as likely dampen turnout with moderates. “If it’s Bernie, you’re going to have slightly fewer of the upscale suburban women and slightly more folks whose involvement has been in [the Democratic Socialists of America] and other progressive [groups],” says Lara Putnam, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied the anti-Trump movement. Like Biden, if Sanders or Warren wins the nomination, they would also have to figure out how to mobilize people who didn’t support them in the primary.
Above all, progressives want to beat Trump. The Democratic front-runners have all pledged to support the eventual nominee no matter who it is. And this week, the leaders of six national progressive organizations sent out a “unity statement” to this effect: “While we firmly believe that either Warren or Sanders should lead our nation in 2021, we will, in the end, go all-out to defeat Trump no matter who the Democratic nominee is.”
Still, progressives can’t shake the feeling that they’ve seen this movie before. Like Biden, Clinton was once widely considered to be the safest bet to beat Trump. She wasn’t as radical as Sanders, the thinking went, so she could better appeal to voters straddling the political middle. She was a known quantity, a bridge builder, a shoo-in. But then millions of American voters who once voted for Obama didn’t vote for her. To some lefties, a Biden nomination feels like déjà vu.
“This is an exciting time,” Salgado said. “And I can’t imagine anyone that’s less exciting than Joe Biden.”


theatlantic--2020-01-18--Does Chuck Schumer Have an AOC Problem?

Does Chuck Schumer Have an AOC Problem?

“ Despite the fact that it includes very good labor provisions , I am voting against USMCA because it does not address climate change , the greatest threat facing the planet , ” Schumer said .
“ When it comes to climate change , the agreement still contains many of the same flaws of the original NAFTA , which I voted against.
” Justice Democrats , the group that helped power Ocasio-Cortez to her upset victory over Representative Joe Crowley in 2018 and is now pushing other primary challenges to Democratic incumbents across the country , was quick to declare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sit-ins targeting moderate Democrats have been criticized as divisive and unnecessary by many in the party establishment , ” Alexandra Rojas , the executive director of the group , said in a statement .
“ But Senator Schumer ’ s decision to oppose the USMCA on climate change grounds would not have happened without our movement putting pressure on Democrats to make this crisis an urgent priority in the party like never before.
” Climate change also happens to be a core issue for Ocasio-Cortez , who has fought to get other Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On her first day as a member of Congress , she joined climate-change activists from the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats in a sit-in outside Pelosi ’ s office .
Read : ‘ If we pass Medicare for All , I ’ m going to be silent as a lamb ’ A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez , who also voted against USMCA , declined to comment .
Schumer has faced pressure back home , including occasional protests outside his Brooklyn apartment by activists urging him to take a stronger stand against Trump across a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of those groups , Indivisible Nation Brooklyn , has prioritized climate issues and pushed Schumer to endorse the Green New Deal and oppose USMCA .
Schumer ’ s vote on the measure is “ progress , ” says Liat Olenick , a co-president of the group .
“ It ’ s positive , and we always want to acknowledge positive things.
” Schumer declined to comment beyond his statement .
But his office noted that the longtime senator has been placing a higher priority on addressing climate change in recent years .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that any new trade agreement would address climate change , and last year Schumer established a Democratic special committee to address the crisis after Republicans refused to create an official Senate panel .
If primary considerations were a factor in Schumer ’ s vote , he ’ s likely not alone .
The Democratic defections on USMCA underscore the growing threat incumbent lawmakers feel from progressive primary challengers , who are building on the model popularized by the Tea Party to push the party leftward .
Just 38 House Democrats voted against the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are already facing aggressive primary challengers .
The opponents include two representatives , Eliot Engel of New York and William Lacy Clay of Missouri , whose challengers have been endorsed by Justice Democrats .

Amid talk of a primary challenge, the Senate Democratic leader cast a surprising vote against the USMCA trade deal, bucking most of his party.
The revised U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade deal which the Senate passed Thursday, drew the support of more than 80 percent of Democrats in Congress, handing President Donald Trump a signal bipartisan accomplishment.
Yet perhaps the most surprising vote came in opposition: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who spurned a deal negotiated by his governing partner, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Schumer had kept his position a secret until the roll call was taken, stunning people who had been closely following the trade debate and who immediately began wondering about the political motivations that might have prompted the senator from New York to vote no. The fast-emerging consensus: Schumer is trying to ward off a 2022 primary challenge from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman Bronx Democrat who could find herself without a district if New York loses congressional seats in the next round of reapportionment.
“That’s all I thought it was about,” a veteran trade lobbyist told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the powerful minority leader. “He sees AOC over his shoulder at all times, apparently.”
Schumer has long been a trade skeptic; he voted against the original North American Free Trade Agreement as a member of the House in 1993 and opposed former President Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2015. Yet the 200-word statement he released Thursday explaining his vote against USMCA cited just one area of complaint: the climate.
“Despite the fact that it includes very good labor provisions, I am voting against USMCA because it does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing the planet,” Schumer said. “When it comes to climate change, the agreement still contains many of the same flaws of the original NAFTA, which I voted against.”
Justice Democrats, the group that helped power Ocasio-Cortez to her upset victory over Representative Joe Crowley in 2018 and is now pushing other primary challenges to Democratic incumbents across the country, was quick to declare victory.
“Our primary challengers and sit-ins targeting moderate Democrats have been criticized as divisive and unnecessary by many in the party establishment,” Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of the group, said in a statement. “But Senator Schumer’s decision to oppose the USMCA on climate change grounds would not have happened without our movement putting pressure on Democrats to make this crisis an urgent priority in the party like never before.”
Climate change also happens to be a core issue for Ocasio-Cortez, who has fought to get other Democrats to back her Green New Deal. On her first day as a member of Congress, she joined climate-change activists from the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats in a sit-in outside Pelosi’s office.
Read: ‘If we pass Medicare for All, I’m going to be silent as a lamb’
A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez, who also voted against USMCA, declined to comment.
Schumer has faced pressure back home, including occasional protests outside his Brooklyn apartment by activists urging him to take a stronger stand against Trump across a range of issues. Of late, one of those groups, Indivisible Nation Brooklyn, has prioritized climate issues and pushed Schumer to endorse the Green New Deal and oppose USMCA. Schumer’s vote on the measure is “progress,” says Liat Olenick, a co-president of the group. “It’s positive, and we always want to acknowledge positive things.”
Schumer declined to comment beyond his statement. But his office noted that the longtime senator has been placing a higher priority on addressing climate change in recent years. The Democrats’ 2018 campaign platform pledged that any new trade agreement would address climate change, and last year Schumer established a Democratic special committee to address the crisis after Republicans refused to create an official Senate panel.
If primary considerations were a factor in Schumer’s vote, he’s likely not alone. The Democratic defections on USMCA underscore the growing threat incumbent lawmakers feel from progressive primary challengers, who are building on the model popularized by the Tea Party to push the party leftward. Just 38 House Democrats voted against the trade deal, but several of them are already facing aggressive primary challengers. The opponents include two representatives, Eliot Engel of New York and William Lacy Clay of Missouri, whose challengers have been endorsed by Justice Democrats.
In the Senate, Schumer was one of nine Democrats to oppose USMCA, which split the party’s current and former presidential contenders. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennet of Colorado voted for it, while Bernie Sanders opposed it. The departed White House hopefuls Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand all voted no—perhaps with a spot on the Democratic ticket in the fall, or their current job security, in mind.
Evan Weber, the political director for the Sunrise Movement, told me Schumer’s office gave him a heads-up the day before the vote that he’d be opposing the trade deal. “We’re very thrilled,” he said, praising Schumer for recognizing the growing climate crisis and its importance to millions of young voters. When I asked him if he thought a potential primary challenge from Ocasio-Cortez factored into Schumer’s thinking, he replied cautiously: “He's a sharp politician, and I think he sees the political winds changing.”
He added: “Maybe wanting to secure his position as majority leader in the Senate has something to do with that.”


theatlantic--2020-01-20--John Delaney Is Still Running. Why?

John Delaney Is Still Running. Why?

It ’ s quickly evident that Delaney can ’ t get this voter , but courtesy dictates that he now listen politely while the man talks about how he wants to fix up the shed across the road .
After that , Delaney ’ s small caravan , a big blue-and-red bus trailed by a car , rolls on .
No one is home at the next two houses .
When a woman pulls into the driveway of the second house , Delaney ’ s campaign manager tries to talk to her , but she walks in the back door @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Up a hill and around a corner is another house that the campaign staff have identified as belonging to a Democratic voter .
An old man opens the door .
He says he ’ s recovering from eye surgery but that he doesn ’ t like Donald Trump and is happy to talk .
Finally—a prospect !
He says the main thing he ’ s looking for in a candidate is honesty .
Delaney makes his pitch , but the man is soon trying to wrap up the conversation .
“ Hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says .
Delaney invites him to a free dinner that the campaign is hosting the next town over .
The man just smiles noncommittally .
At this late stage of a very long presidential campaign that has by any conventional measure been remarkably unsuccessful , this actually counts as a pretty good hour for Delaney .
How , I asked him as he walked away from the old man ’ s house , does he keep his head up ?
“ I ’ m disappointed it hasn ’ t gone better , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do this , ” he said .
“ I meet people who are really struggling .
And I realize , you know , I have really no problems .
And the opportunity to make a difference in people ’ s lives is—what better way to spend my time ?
” A successful businessman and former representative from Maryland , Delaney could be spending his time on pretty much anything else .
Or anywhere else .
Like Fiji .
Or at least Florida .
Or lifting weights , which he likes to show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not a billionaire , but public estimates tend to put his wealth in the high hundreds of millions .
But instead of relaxing on a beach , he ’ s sitting on a ratty recliner draped with a faded afghan , riding around on a bus with his name on it to meet with small groups in small towns , insisting that he ’ s the only one talking about what they care about .
Running for president , even when it ’ s going well , requires a level of delusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ half years and $ 40 million of his own money ( and 44 trips and counting to Iowa ) , Delaney ’ s delusion has been replaced by a kind of stoic acceptance that approaches Zen .
“ My incredibly supportive wife even gets more frustrated than I do about this , ” he said .
“ I feel like I ’ ve changed the debate on a couple of issues , mostly health care .
I think I went on the debate stage twice and took down Medicare for All , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the July Democratic debate , in Detroit , he went hard after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for what he called their “ impossible promises ” and “ fairy-tale economics.
” “ And I think I did a huge service to the party .
And I think people now realize that .
That doesn ’ t mean that you get credit … Is that frustrating ?
Yes .
Do I think I made a contribution ?
Yes .
”

Despite registering near zero in most polls, John Delaney keeps visiting Iowa, as he did here in December.
Updated at 4:20 p.m. ET on January 20, 2020.
WHAT CHEER, Iowa—Don’t let the name fool you: What Cheer is a dreary little town. Other than the gas station, the most notable place in the city is an old building that apparently used to house the What Cheer Telephone Company, whatever that was. Today, cheap white curtains are drawn across the windows. It looks like someone is living there.
John Delaney is here at dusk on a Friday night in January because he’s still running for president. Did you know he was running for president? Probably not. If you did once know—Delaney was actually the first Democrat to declare his candidacy, way back in July 2017—you probably forgot. And if you did know he was still running, the question you’re probably asking is the one I am here to explore: Why? Why is a candidate who’s barely registering in any poll still traipsing across Iowa day after day when he has absolutely no chance of winning, or even of seeming like more than an outlying blip on the radar?
Today began with an event at a pizza place in the small central-Iowa city of Montezuma, which 12 people attended. This evening, the door-knocking starts at a house across the street from the old telephone-company building. No answer. At the second house, a light in the front hall illuminates a Christmas tree, but no one answers the door here either. Third house, also no answer. Finally, at the fourth house a man wearing pajama bottoms answers the door. After listening to Delaney make his pitch for six or seven minutes, he says that while he’s committed to voting for a Democrat in the general election, he’s not planning to caucus—and that if he was, he’d probably go with Andrew Yang, because he likes Yang’s proposed Freedom Dividend, his signature policy of providing a guaranteed basic income of $1,000 a month to all Americans.
“But that can’t happen!” Delaney says.
It’s quickly evident that Delaney can’t get this voter, but courtesy dictates that he now listen politely while the man talks about how he wants to fix up the shed across the road.
Read: John Delaney is playing the long game
After that, Delaney’s small caravan, a big blue-and-red bus trailed by a car, rolls on. No one is home at the next two houses. When a woman pulls into the driveway of the second house, Delaney’s campaign manager tries to talk to her, but she walks in the back door and doesn’t come out again. Up a hill and around a corner is another house that the campaign staff have identified as belonging to a Democratic voter. An old man opens the door. He says he’s recovering from eye surgery but that he doesn’t like Donald Trump and is happy to talk. Finally—a prospect! He says the main thing he’s looking for in a candidate is honesty. Delaney makes his pitch, but the man is soon trying to wrap up the conversation. “Hope you do well,” the man says. Delaney invites him to a free dinner that the campaign is hosting the next town over. The man just smiles noncommittally.
At this late stage of a very long presidential campaign that has by any conventional measure been remarkably unsuccessful, this actually counts as a pretty good hour for Delaney. How, I asked him as he walked away from the old man’s house, does he keep his head up?
“I’m disappointed it hasn’t gone better, but I think it’s a privilege to do this,” he said. “I meet people who are really struggling. And I realize, you know, I have really no problems. And the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives is—what better way to spend my time?”
A successful businessman and former representative from Maryland, Delaney could be spending his time on pretty much anything else. Or anywhere else. Like Fiji. Or at least Florida. Or lifting weights, which he likes to show off that he does. He’s not a billionaire, but public estimates tend to put his wealth in the high hundreds of millions. But instead of relaxing on a beach, he’s sitting on a ratty recliner draped with a faded afghan, riding around on a bus with his name on it to meet with small groups in small towns, insisting that he’s the only one talking about what they care about.
Running for president, even when it’s going well, requires a level of delusion. Yet, after two and a half years and $10 million of his own money (and 44 trips and counting to Iowa), Delaney’s delusion has been replaced by a kind of stoic acceptance that approaches Zen.*
“My incredibly supportive wife even gets more frustrated than I do about this,” he said. “I feel like I’ve changed the debate on a couple of issues, mostly health care. I think I went on the debate stage twice and took down Medicare for All, which deserved to be taken down.” At the July Democratic debate, in Detroit, he went hard after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for what he called their “impossible promises” and “fairy-tale economics.” “And I think I did a huge service to the party. And I think people now realize that. That doesn’t mean that you get credit … Is that frustrating? Yes. Do I think I made a contribution? Yes.”
But all that money and time just for one night when CNN turned him into a foil for Sanders and Warren? Is that enough to justify his long campaign? Is that why he ran?
“No, it’s not why I ran. But I’m happy that at least we’re not talking about Medicare for All,” he said. “I do not think we’re going to put up a candidate who runs on Medicare for All. I think I had something to do with that.” With Sanders currently surging in polls, it’s uncertain whether Delany’s prediction is true—but his debate performance may have helped create a template for criticism of Medicare for All on political/fiscal-realism grounds that damaged Warren in particular.
Peter Beinart: Democratic moderates fade into the background
He pointed to other ways he says he’s inflected the Democratic race, noting that the Washington Post op-ed he published when he launched his campaign invoked automation and job retraining long before anyone had heard of Andrew Yang. He says he’s helped keep Democratic trade policy from going off the rails. (He’s the only Democrat running, Joe Biden included, who still supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which not that long ago Barack Obama was calling his most important foreign-policy priority.) And more than a year before either Tom Steyer or Michael Bloomberg entered the race, Delaney was the rich businessman talking about the economy and self-funding his own high-circulation TV ads. (Steyer and Bloomberg are both a lot richer.)
As other candidates beat him at his own game or voice his ideas to greater response, Delaney’s been reduced to playing pundit, welcoming these candidates and their ideas into the race. He always knew that his campaign would be a long shot. His hope was that by getting in almost absurdly early, he could generate more attention, make himself less of a long shot. That didn’t work.
“Politics is not like other things,” he told me. “In a lot of things in life, when you're there first, people realize you're there first. You break a story, they know who broke the story. If you come up with an innovation, that's protected, normally, so no one can just copy it.”
“I always believed in the Wayne Gretzky line ’You skate to where the puck is going.’ I think I was skating to where the puck is going. I think the puck’s gone there now. Do I wish I got more benefit for being the first to skate there? Yeah. Have I? No.”
I asked why, given that he seems to have reached the acceptance stage, he hasn’t ended his campaign, as many more prominent candidates have. He said that he’s by nature a person who finishes what he starts—and that means continuing on at least until the Iowa caucuses, on February 3, even though that will cost him more money, and bring his tally of trips to Iowa closer to 50.
In Montezuma, he told a local reporter that his aim now is to surprise.
What does “surprise” mean? I asked him a little later, as we were riding on his bus.
“I don’t actually have a firmer answer than that. Obviously, the expectations really are very low,” he said. “It’s kind of like, you’ll know when you see it.”