The public response was so positive that he started considering it part of the job: keeping people posted. “I was this young, broke politician, and social media was the only way I had to communicate with my constituents.” “People had no idea who I was,” he recalls.
He had started with Facebook and Twitter when he was a 31-year-old who suddenly became a state senator when he was appointed to fill a vacancy. two-thirds.īalance Is enough still enough? Sweden reckons with its culture of ‘lagom.’ Coming in, he guesstimated the proportion of lawmakers on “Team Outrage” vs. And that list, he says, presented a warped view. He once did, too. Before he ran for Congress, he tried writing down all the members whose names he knew. He understands why outrage politics can seem like the only game in town, he explains. On an afternoon when votes were canceled because of intra-GOP wrangling, he sits down on his office couch for an interview. “I can prove to them that that is false,” he adds, noting that his own nonsensational, explanatory approach has garnered him 2.2 million followers on TikTok – and, he says, 1 million on Substack. “I think a lot of folks in politics and some folks in media treat the outrage model as basically the only way to get attention,” he says. Representative Jackson says the place reminds him of high school, and also a wax museum come to life. representative is carving out an alternative niche to outrage politics with his videos of Congress behind the scenes.
