Jennifer Palmieri has been one of the party’s most influential operatives for the last decade. Most recently, she was communications director and a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, and came to that job after serving as White House communications director under President Obama for two years.

As Jennifer told me during our conversation, Clinton’s loss to Trump was like “the universe exploded.” As part of the soul-searching process in the wake of that loss, Palmieri has been spending more time in the South since the 2016 election, to visit with and meet people who see the world differently, and to reconnect with old friends who are politically conservative.

Palmieri explores her own sense of loss and disorientation after the election. But she also tells the story of how her grief was compounded by the loss of her older sister a few months after the election from early onset Alzheimer’s at age 58.

Palmieri connects her own pain to the pain of other Americans whose lived had been upended in recent years, namely Trump voters, and says the 2020 election will be a test of whether Americans can come to live at peace with those who see the world in radically different ways.

Outro: “Exception to the Rule” by Phoebe Bridgers & Conor Oberst (Better Oblivion Community Center)

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