Episode Summary

Following her recent electoral defeat, many people have questioned why Kamala Harris didn't go on to the podcast of Joe Rogan, the standup comedian and sports commentator who has the number-one podcast in the world.

For the record, Harris’s former advisers have said that they tried to coordinate a time with Rogan, but they very obviously did not make it a priority.

The more interesting related question that other people have been asking post election is why is there no left-wing Joe Rogan?

The immediate answer is that there is not a full-service Democratic ecosystem that includes media, legal, and local components. There are also some larger reasons why Rogan and other libertarian-oriented people have signed up with the Republican Party, after having hated it in the 1990s and 2000s when party was less radical.

But there are some more specific reasons for why Rogan and people like him have become de facto Republicans that are especially relevant since Rogan himself once supported the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders—and they involve how the Democratic Party communicates, or rather, doesn’t, to the public.

In recent decades, Democrats and the American left as a whole have moved to a communication strategy which focuses more on controlling the message in every possible way rather than trying to forcefully advocate and explain its ideas to people who have never heard them. On issues of science, economics, race, climate, gender, and regulation, Democrats have, by and large, resorted to blindly pointing to expert consensus rather than making the case to the uninformed.

Joining me to discuss on this episode is Lisa Corrigan, she’s a professor of communications and gender studies at the University of Arkansas. She’s also the author of several different books, including Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation.

The video of our December 9, 2024 discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Related Content

—How podcasts became a key source of news and entertainment for millions of Americans

—Right-wing comedy isn’t particularly funny, but it’s extremely effective at persuading low-information voters

—Joe Rogan and the epidemic of pseudo-expertise

—Former establishment Republican have made the Democratic party more conservative, and less electorally successful

—As libertarianism has radicalized, some of Silicon Valley's biggest names are turning toward fascism

—Why Christian authoritarians and atheistic libertarians decided to meet in the middle

—The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the long history of right-wing rebranding

—How the Donald Trump fandom completely reshaped the Republican media ecosystem

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

03:24 — Democratic leaders' excessive desire to control all media encounters

08:42 — Howard Stern, Joe Rogan, and the rise to dominance of casual infotainment

14:05 — Democrats have lost the urge and the ability to debate

23:11 — Democrats' post-graduate economic bubble

27:06 — Republicans overthrew their obsolete party establishment, can Democrats?

31:38 — How "The West Wing" encouraged Democrats to adopt a fictional communications strategy

35:08 — Kamala Harris's initial media interview strategy and Democrats' total risk aversion

39:56 — Trump targeted disengaged Americans with media appearances, Harris with advertisements

42:39 — Why did Democrats lose ground with women despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade?

46:49 — The Democratic Party doesn't want to talk to low-information voters

54:40 — As Democrats have won more prosperous voters, they've become less interested in economic populism

59:20 — The ALEC behemoth outside the Beltway

01:03:19 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Lisa Corrigan. Welcome to Theory of Change, Lisa.

LISA CORRIGAN: Thanks for having me.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So I think one of the questions that is almost inescapable in the 2024 election post mortems is, is why is there no left wing Joe Rogan?

But it's a very strange and weird question to ask because Joe Rogan was a Bernie Sanders.

CORRIGAN: He certainly was. Yeah.

I think there's no tolerance in the Democratic Party for class analysis, and I think that there is. a class [00:03:00] politics that really chafes at someone like Rogan's style,

And also that he's not controllable. So they prefer to control, highly control their own media, such as it is. And so I think we can read that as a sort of intolerance and lack of curiosity, not just about Rogan, but also his audience.

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Well, okay.

Democratic leaders' excessive desire to control all media encounters

SHEFFIELD: So, but when you say, I think, I agree with you when you say that the, that the Democratic elites want kind of controlled media. What do you mean by that?

CORRIGAN: think they're going to Move almost exclusively to position their own influencers to just about the party line rather than turning to organic media spaces to actually take the temperature of communities across the country. I think they would much rather control all of the messaging all of the time, and that's gonna in the long term continued [00:04:00] to diminish their effectiveness as communicators.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's a, it is a really good point because when you do look at the few, media operations that have been funded, by the Democratic donor class or party elites. they tend to be 100 percent partisan. So everything that they say is in agreement with whatever the Democrats are saying in any given moment.

And then they also don't have, have even a discussion about what those points are. So like, they'll just say, well, this is the message. And then they'll just repeat it over and over and they won't talk about, well, why do you believe the message? What is this message even mean? It's just no, here's what we're talking about.

CORRIGAN: But it's because I mean, in some ways they have a very low threshold for conflict. So somebody like Nancy Pelosi has never had a debate for her seat in all of the decades that she's held it. She [00:05:00] refuses to debate any challenger,

right? So, so they don't want to actually move the conversation forward. They've chosen their lane and they want everybody to get on the lane and there's no tolerance for people who have alternative perspectives about where that lane should go. So they don't want to refine their ideas. And they're not capacious thinkers. And in some ways they're anti intellectual in ways that are similar, though, in some ways different from the Republican party, right? There's just not the tolerance for rigorous debate and they don't want to be dislodged from their donor class. So they're loathe to upset them. I mean, I think about the sidelining of Tim Walz. As total evidence of that, arguably the best decision of the campaign was to choose him as a vice presidential candidate. And then they sidelined all of his vigor and all of [00:06:00] his successes in Minnesota and his, in some ways, temperament, right? Which is more combative than certainly anybody else in the party during the campaign. What little of it we were able to have. They didn't want to have an open primary. There was no conversation about Biden's efficacy, right, before the fall. All of that, I think, is evidence that they can't really tolerate. dissent or conversation about what they've done wrong.

SHEFFIELD: no, I, and that's a good point. And, and obviously, we do want to say. In this regard, though, that you're not endorsing Joe Rogan's ideas by saying that he should have been engaged with, you're saying you have to engage with people.

CORRIGAN: I mean, look, my PhD is in communication. If you want to talk to people, you actually have to meet them where they are. Even if you don't like where they are. Like I don't have a classroom of students [00:07:00] who are all exactly where I'm at in terms of how much they've read or kind of life experiences that they've had or what their parents even know about.

Right. I mean, if you want to. Really have a close consideration of ideas, though you actually have to meet people where they're at and not where you're at. And the Democratic Party refuses to do that. If no interest in it whatsoever.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, they don't. And and yeah, I mean, there's this weird paradox, though, because the, the critique that they often make of the right is that they're anti intellectual, which they are. Right. But at the same time, if you don't want to have any kind of debate, and you don't want to have a discussion, and you won't even explain your viewpoints, let alone debate them, if you don't tell people, well, this is why we want something, that's also anti intellectual.

And it's not satisfying to a lot of people.

CORRIGAN: Yes. And I think at least in for the very online class of mega [00:08:00] voters, right? People were really upset that Harris didn't want to talk about policy until the last month of the campaign. And even though presidents have minimal influence over a lot of forms of U. S. policy making, especially domestically, hearing them talk about their vision About policy is actually quite important to huge segments of the population.

If you refuse to do it, I don't know why you think that they're going to turn out and vote for you, right? If you dismiss them out of hand, if you scold them, then they're not going to show up for you. And so I think a more robust engagement with even members of the establishment who are critical of the democratic party would really be of.

Benefit.

Howard Stern, Joe Rogan, and the rise to dominance of casual infotainment

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I think one of the other significant, even fundamental flaws of this Rogin analysis is that it misses who the audience of Joe Rogin is. Like, the [00:09:00] stereotype on the left is that it's just a bunch of 20 something white men. But in reality the men who are younger are majority not white.

And that's when you look at the polls. That's where the gains that Republicans had among men came from. They didn't come from white men. They came from black men. They came from Hispanic men where Trump got the majority of them. And they came from Asian men. And so it's not, it's about something much bigger than Joe Rogan.

So,

CORRIGAN: Yeah. I mean, as a demographic fact, white men are not going to be where either party make gains. Right. I mean, this is just a fundamental fact of the demographics

of the country. Yeah, but I do think that those listeners of the Joe Rogan program are also looking for connection. And they're looking for community and they're looking for information. And so if the Democrats don't want to go there, their only option is to create something else, which is why, right? Why isn't there a Democratic [00:10:00] Joe Rogan? Why isn't there something like that? And in The outside in the info spear where people can go, and that's by design. I think it's a problem though, right?

Because the people who are listening to Joe Rogan, they want novelty and they want community and they want knowledge. They're seeking connection. If you don't build a place for them to come to their knot. I will also say that alongside of the Joe Rogan was also called for like Kamala Harris to go on hot wings. And I'm sure that the establishment just dismissed that as like, I don't know, absurd, but also it's sort of humanizing and playful and people want play. And I'll tell you that Joe Rogan can do

play.

SHEFFIELD: no,

CORRIGAN: says are totally ridiculous, he can do play. And that's what shock radio has always been about. Stern has always been very good at that. And the Democratic party doesn't do play. I will also say that walls should have gone on all of the sports shows and done [00:11:00] coachy coach talk and fishing and hunting and whatever men do with dogs that kind of stuff because people also want to talk about that and he has that capability and he didn't move.

They would not let him move through those spaces either and that could have been a place to make up some of those white male voters, but they didn't explore it at all and this was the one chance they had to do. That it's not like they could have deposed Joe Biden to do that for a bot for Obama. He's not that guy. He's the elite guy. He's the banking guy. He's the law guy.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah and what's interesting though is that there is an understanding from kind of old fashioned retail politics that you have to show up at events and kiss the babies and shake the hands, so Democrats understand that in some limited sense of physical space, but they don't understand that in the media space.

That especially in this, in this era of thousands and tens of thousands of [00:12:00] YouTube channels and, hundreds of thousands of social media posters that you, that's the only way that you can find these people. So, like showing up at the county fair or something that can not, that gets you much less now than it would to do.

An interview with, with someone. And, and, and, and, but that, that's also the, the lack of control. Like, I think that's, to go back to that, that I think is also a probably the fundamental problem with democratic elite messaging is that they don't understand that we're, we're so far removed from the age of five television channels and two major national newspapers.

Controlling all of the information. Now we're in this ocean of media. And the only thing that you can do is surf the waves. You can never control anything. You'll never have control ever, but they don't get [00:13:00] that.

CORRIGAN: don't get it, but also they're, they're too risk averse. And probably because it's just like regurgitating like the Obama campaigns with the same like media strategies as the Obama campaigns. I'm also not super convinced that Harris would have done well on like Normie shows Like some candidates can move through playful spaces.

Clinton, Bill Clinton can do this very well. Right. Where you can talk to anybody, anytime and be interested in them and be curious about their life story and connect with them. But that's a pretty rare quality in DC. I don't know that she would have, she would have done well. Walls would have been fine. It didn't wonderful.

And they should have deployed him in that way. But I think there's a, an aversion to like, I don't know, actually talking with and to. the plebes, like the gen pop, the normies. And I think that that will only continue to undermine, candidates, especially at the [00:14:00] national level because of exactly the media ecology that you're describing.

Democrats have lost the urge and the ability to debate

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, now, so let's, let's talk about where do you, where do you think a lot of this attitude derives from?

CORRIGAN: I think elitism, I really think that the Democratic party elites got cashed out really hardcore. And I think that they have built their own ecosystem of particular oligarchs, right? Some of them are info bros, a bunch of them are tech guys, right? Certainly a bunch of them are holdovers from the Obama administration.

And some of that is because the campaign had to by necessity be so short. It's not like they could totally vet and assemble and massive new comms team. Right. And they had to kind of build the airplane while they were flying it. But I don't think. that they have a sense of how much group think is happening inside of the party apparatus in terms of policy or comms. Like John Kennedy had a sense [00:15:00] about this during the Cuban missile crisis. He basically assigned his executive committee members to debate what the options were to deal with the missiles going into Cuba, and he assigned perspectives that You know, each member of his ex com actually disagreed with whether they're going to do a blockade or whether they were going to move missiles to Miami or whether they were going to do an airstrike and in that way, they avoided group think it's really famous case study and I don't, the Democrats don't do that enough.

So they don't do counterfactual play that way. They do war rooms about how to win sometimes, but they don't really take on positions that they themselves find distasteful. And I mean, tasteful, right? Because it is this sort of value judgment and aesthetic thing about policy choices and about style and they won't do it. They find it distasteful. And so if they can't overcome that feeling about being with people who are different than them, then they're not actually going to win over new voters.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And [00:16:00] well, and it's also, I mean, a lot of that also derives from, and we were talking before we started recording that that a lot of it does derive that after Republicans basically decided to walk away from academia that it became. Just kind of a de facto space in which there was no opposition from right wing beliefs and ideas within academia.

And obviously these ideas have no merit. And they're not demonstrable in any kind of fashion like evolution, obviously it's true, etc. But from a social and political standpoint, you have to have these interactions in your regular life. And the reality is that most of them haven't. Most of the Democratic establishment leaders don't. And so they lost the ability to understand that you actually have to communicate your ideas because to the only extent that they ever encountered them.

It was with [00:17:00] students who were completely uninformed and would just knuckle under whenever you question them. But that's not how things work in real life that if you go to convince people at the bar of your belief or something, they'll tell you to get the hell out or shut the fuck up.

And Democrats lost that ability to go into these spaces and just have a regular debate and articulate your beliefs, because it all became about, well, this is my belief and you have to take it or leave it, otherwise you're a sexist or a racist or whatever ist. And those are not arguments.

They might be true that these people have those beliefs that are, that, that's where they come from, but that's not an argument against them. That's just a label, right?

CORRIGAN: Well, I will say it's so funny that you talk about debate. I was a high school and college debater, and I will say that the trend that you are pointing to coincides with the massive underfunding of K through [00:18:00] 12 public debate programs. And Public debate programs in higher ed. And so when I went to college in the nineties, one of my debate partners was on the ground floor of building the club for growth and the other one worked in the Senate offices of Moynihan, Dana Peck, Moynihan. And so there was a. degree of tolerance for all different kinds of ideas and ideologies. And people went on to do all kinds of things. But if you want more debate in the public sphere, you have to fund debate programs and we don't have that. And as a consequence, I will tell you, as a college professor, the students do not have a threshold for disagreement. They can't think about argument that way. They have no exposure to it on the whole in high school. And they're not prepared to encounter ideas that are different from whatever the vague notions that their family has growing up, which makes them worse readers and worse writers and worse thinkers. So. I think it's a real shame that the Bush administration crushed [00:19:00] funding for public education at both K 12 and higher ed because one of the long term consequences is, an intolerance for multiple perspectives and an inability to debate the actual ideas, which is what you're pointing to as a, as a concern right now. That's a direct consequence of cutting that funding.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and of course, but then at the same time, they also, while that was happening, turned around and created an entire rhetorical strategy about cancel culture and the students are trying to, they're just like, Chairman Mao, and they're going to murder people who disagree with them.

Like, this is just, this is a huge, huge industry on the right to say that the thing that they created. Is actually the left's fault. And then they don't also, they of course don't want anyone to talk about the actual bannings of books. And the actual censorship that's going on by the government is being done by them [00:20:00] exclusively, pretty much.

CORRIGAN: But that's a recursive structure. It's something that ebbs and flows with the Republican party and really has since the 1920s. And so that kind of grievance politics is an essential feature of the GOP. And it's animated by censorship. It's animated by book banning. It's animated by sex and race panic. It always has been.

You can trace it from the twenties. to the fifties to the seventies to the nineties. I mean, whether it's tip or gores like crusade for parental labels on media or whether it's the book bands of the McCarthy era, they converge around civility and grievance and they're fundamentally Puritan discourses.

So cancel culture is directly, right? A product of what is a long vein of American puritanism. I mean, it's the it's what it's what underlies [00:21:00] massive resistance, right? To desegregation. It animates the failure of reconstruction. It animates the fugitive slave laws. All of those things are a product of grievance politics.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and of, of other people being allowed to participate in the civic debate, ultimately. And just civic spaces at all. To exist in public, I mean that's, really what the complaint was. And but it's, it's remarkably effective and, and it's, but it also does filter back into this Rogan situation as well, because Democrats lost the interest in public education, like as a matter of something that they have to do themselves like when Bernie Sanders went on Joe Rogan and he was condemned heavily for doing it because he was, was platforming Joe Rogan.

The guy with the [00:22:00] number one podcast in the world, he was being platformed by someone who was running for president who was much less famous than him. Like, these, these discussions, these criticisms don't even make any sense. But there there seem to be pretty, although I don't know, I mean, the Harris loss, at least for a little while, seems to have opened up some space for people to realize, oh, well, maybe we don't control everything in the world.

But I don't know, I'm not sure how long this, that this, this little moment's going to last. I don't know, what do you think?

CORRIGAN: It's a bubble, I think, but I do think that you're right in saying that the aversion to going on Joe Rogan was really just vibes. It was deeply unserious. There's no data that you could marshal to suggest that it was a bad idea for a presidential candidate of any stripe to go on Joe Rogan. It's just vibes only. So, I do think that this is a media bubble [00:23:00] and the next election, if we have one, will not unfold in a similar way with a similar media ecology. It's going to change dramatically in the next four years. Mm

Democrats' post-graduate economic bubble

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I certainly hope so. I mean, but the, the other, I guess besides the lack of interest in, advocacy. I think the other reason why that this attitude exists is that the Democratic Party became a party for, that was run by and run for people who live in, you know, the Acela corridor with who have postgraduate educations and they, they have community. So like

the more degrees you get, the more friends you get just in the course of that, and the more connections you have. So like it's, Actually, much, much easier.

And obviously there are exceptions. Lots of people do have, I want to say have got [00:24:00] a college degree and have nothing to show for it, but yet but by and large, on average, it is a, it is that you, you have more connections from that, and you have a better time getting jobs, and you have more community. So, but if you don't have those connections in those communities.

That's, that's the majority of the people who don't have those connections and don't have those communities, but to the Democratic establishment they can't even see them because they're surrounded by people who are just like them. Either they've worked in democratic campaigns, so maybe they don't have a graduate degree or whatever, but they have they came in as an intern and worked on a presidential campaign and worked their way up, so they have all the right connections and whatnot. and

so. They can't see that the majority of Americans, have no connections, and the majority of Americans have no employer loyalty. Their what they can get out of life as a [00:25:00] job is minimal. And like,

CORRIGAN: Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: higher unemployment rate has kind of masked the fact that a lot of people are, are taking substandard jobs because, They have no choice.

CORRIGAN: I mean, those people also live in walkable cities. Mm hmm. And the most of America is rural. And so part of it is democratic party elitism that fundamentally refuses to engage rural politics. I mean, if you are going to write off all of those parts of the country, and your goal is to just flip blue cities to vote for you, you're going to have a problem. Not just at the top of the ballot. But also down ballot. So the inability to see how much people are missing, both a robust public sphere and connection in their communities is a long term problem. Like for democracy generally, and the rise of fascism and [00:26:00] also for the party's ability to make inroads with new voters.

And I think one thing we haven't talked about is young voters, especially whether we're talking about Joe Rogan or new. Ecologies, info ecologies or media ecologies. New voters are not watching the news. They don't give a shit about MSNBC. They do not care about Rachel Maddow. They don't know who Chris is Hayes is. They're not going to go read the next book by Lawrence O'Donnell. They don't give a shit about those people. So if you're not going to go to where they are, they're not coming over to cable news.

SHEFFIELD: No and especially if you've only got one channel whereas Fox, there's like seven alternatives to Fox that, that Republicans have created. And if, if, if you were only investing in TV, you could at least have more than one. But it does, it does, it comes back to control. Like that's when you watch MSNBC, you are watching the Democratic Party line.

And and a lot of people, they don't want to [00:27:00] hear that. And I can't blame them. would you blame them?

Republicans overthrew their obsolete party establishment, can Democrats?

CORRIGAN: It's not that they don't, that they can't hear them, but they're tuning out. So I think that's been a fascinating consequence of the Harris loss is that a bunch of reliable lib white viewers have turned off MSNBC and I don't know that they'll come back, but if they don't, it's a huge problem for the party. And I'm not saying doubling down on MSNBC is the move forward. I'm saying it's not right. That is not the path forward, but the fact that people are turning out the news and they don't want to hear like Maddow's take on everything. Is really I think significant and should spark a kind of reckoning about what the media strategy is because Those are reliable voters and they are pissed and they're they feel alienated from the party And they don't feel necessarily alienated because of class they feel alienated by the one sidedness Of representation and also the [00:28:00] fact that like the democratic party was huffing its own supply But I think my biggest take after the election is like, okay She raised a billion and a half Billion and a half dollars and bought literally nothing durable cash, literally, definitely buying media platforms would have been a much better use of that money.

There's no

SHEFFIELD: Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And well, and the fact that they did it, though, that it goes, again, to the kind of the way the Democratic establishment is structured. I mean, the Republican Party used to have all of these same problems before Trump because, and I know, because I was, I was in the Republican politics and worked there during that moment, and they were, they had all kinds of grifty, sclerotic professionals who gained the system for themselves and were getting enormously wealthy from it, while continuing to lose race after race.[00:29:00]

And so what Trump did for them and why he, part of why he won is that he, he hated all of those people because they hated him. And so he, he wouldn't hire them. He, he threw them out and then he brought in new people who were doing new ideas. And didn't know, well, this is the way it's supposed to be this is the way you do things, quote, unquote.

And and, and it worked. I mean, the amount of money that Trump set, spends on television ads is, like, especially in 2016, was almost nothing in comparison to what Hillary Clinton, and, I mean, but here, here's the other going back to this anti intellectual, fake intellectualism that the Democratic operative class kind of has, is.

The political science data is unanimous that in presidential campaigns, advertising doesn't work, it has almost no effect. [00:30:00] And yet, they claim to we're all about the data, we all we believe in the data, they never even talk about this. mean, there is literally not one study out there that shows that advertising works for presidential campaigns, not one.

CORRIGAN: but that's because they're chasing celebrity.

SHEFFIELD: What do you mean?

CORRIGAN: I mean, they're putting the ads out there because they want to like send the ads in for Emmys and they want, they want the flash. Of the ad for the campaign.

SHEFFIELD: And they want the money for replacing it. Like,

CORRIGAN: Sure. They want the grift of it. Financial grift is absolutely a part of it. I will say though, that it's true that Trump has a higher threshold for creative risk in campaigns and even in governance.

Right. But his people are equally networked, in, in terms of their pedigrees and their education and the institutions [00:31:00] where they're networked.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I mean, but it's, it is, that's true for like the cabinet people, but like the actual campaign operatives, it wasn't true actually. So like Corey Lewandowski or, the people, or even his past campaign managers, like the ones he just had, Susie Wiles, like she was just a Florida governor.

Person who had never worked nationally at all. So I mean, but I, I agree with you in a certain extent, like it's certainly his top advisors, the inner circle, that's how it is. But yeah, I mean, I don't know.

How "The West Wing" encouraged Democrats to adopt a fictional communications strategy

SHEFFIELD: Some of this, though, I do think is with these ad obsessions. It's also kind of a in a lot of ways the Democratic Party was very negatively influenced by the West Wing, I feel like.

What do you think?

CORRIGAN: Yeah, I lived in D. C. in the Beltway when the West Wing [00:32:00] was on and it was intolerable, like I've never seen it. Because I

lived there during the Bush administration. And I was like, this is such projection. So I've never seen it, but they're obsessed with it and they want it to be true so badly. It's

SHEFFIELD: well,

it is, yeah, and like they, I mean, and the core premise of the show, which was repeated over and over, was that if you can just deliver the right message, the right sentence the right comeback, the right quip, then the Republicans will fold and they'll say, oh gosh, you nailed me. I was, I was just lying the whole time.

And you told the truth too, too hard for me. And now I have to confess, that's what, that's what the show did. And real life is not that way.

CORRIGAN: No, but they love a conversion [00:33:00] narrative

SHEFFIELD: They do, but only if it's fictional. They don't like the real ones like mine. Um,

CORRIGAN: truths though.

SHEFFIELD: any comedian in what way?

CORRIGAN: Because I don't think that you were persuaded a persuasion thing didn't happen to you. Nobody gave the magic bullet argument.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, I, I found it myself. Yeah. People didn't do it for me. Yeah. And like, but, but it, and it, it, I think though that that West Wing ification, like, that is part of why there is such an obsession with controlling the specific wording. Like, it, that's part of why it appealed to them, but it also reinforced it at the same time.

Like, and they, and they just haven't understood that we're, this is such a huge country. We've got over 300 million people here. With all, all the kinds of different ages and regions and races and all the, all these things. [00:34:00] There's never going to be a perfect message, but I hear that all the time well, Democrats have to get better at messaging.

They need to have, have better rhetoric. And it's like, they need to have more rhetoric and they need to actually listen to people. And, and respond to the things that they said like, and I think that the COVID 19 pandemic was another example of, of this faulty, fake intellectualism.

So if you're a, a, a scientist who is an immunologist or a virologist or a public health, biologists you can destroy any of these things that a Joe Rogan person has to say. But they didn't do it. They just sat back for the most part and just like, well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to platform those people by talking about their ideas.

And and it's [00:35:00] like, are going to talk about these ideas, whether you engage with them or not. So. best that they hear from you.

Kamala Harris's initial media interview strategy and Democrats' total risk aversion

CORRIGAN: I know. But don't you think that they're scared to go on Joe Rogan? I mean, I'm not convinced that Kamala Harris would have done well on that show because I think that she would be afraid that he would make fun of her or yell at her or bring up something that she hadn't carefully researched.

SHEFFIELD: Well, okay, so, I mean, we, it is the case that some of her top advisors were recently on the Pod Save America show, and they did say that they wanted to do Rogan, and that they tried to, but they didn't.

And it is the case that, like, that first month of her campaign, Harris didn't do any interviews, and and I, and I can understand maybe she was wanting to not [00:36:00] get tripped up by some gotcha question right before the convention or whatever, like, that's a reasonable thought.

But on the other hand, then you, you structure your media unveilings with friendly interviews in the beginning. Where you won't get the gotchas, and they didn't do that and they didn't do it until later after the convention and when they started getting desperate.

CORRIGAN: But my most generous read of that is that they didn't think that there were any friendlies. And so I think that the campaign was actually quite paranoid. And in that way that's where the circle meets on the right and the left is around paranoia. And I think that they were very paranoid sabotage especially well known media figures, and they didn't want to engage them at all. And when I'm feeling generous, I think that that was their pragmatic decision calculus.

SHEFFIELD: Well, I mean, look, I don't think, I mean the, the [00:37:00] mainstream media, the audience just isn't there the way that it used to be. So I don't think there was anything wrong with not doing that, doing them at the beginning, but they should have stepped forward and gone on Howard Stern, some of these, or I mean, Jimmy Kimmel would have loved to have had Kamala Harris there.

Do you think he was going to be mean to her? He was not, and to her credit, I do want to give her credit that when she did go on the Bret Baier show on Fox, she did fine and like when she had the debate with, so, so she can actually handle herself. It was just that I do think the advisors, they were so paranoid about, well, what if she gets this, thing, we'll just have endless plays of this and whatever. And it's like, so what, like you do enough media that, that one particular gaff or whatever, it becomes meaningless, like that's. That, I think, is the key communication strategy of Donald [00:38:00] Trump is that you just have so many things out there that no one can focus on any particular bad thing that you said.

CORRIGAN: No, I disagree with that, because I think that the standard is actually wildly different for black women and black men and women. So the gaps actually are stickier. And they get replayed in different media spheres. I think it's not the same. I mean, I think that they really should have handled her media rollout differently. I don't know that it would have made a difference though, based on what we ultimately saw, but I will say that this is anecdotal. Okay. So take that for a grain of salt, but I would say that the very high, highly engaged voters in my family, especially the women, especially the boomers are getting all of their information. From the late night talk shows now about politics and they'll never go back to MSNBC. So not going on the humor [00:39:00] shows is a problem and also it speaks to their risk threshold and they need to increase that risk threshold. If they want to get back voters or win new ones.

SHEFFIELD: Well, okay. What do you mean when you say risk threshold?

CORRIGAN: Well, like, I don't think that they want to be butt of jokes, so they don't want to be on the humorous spaces. And I think that they didn't want her on Rogan because he is off the cuff and funny and he talks a long time and he's a curve ball and they can't control the media environment. They can't feed him questions, right?

Like, I think that they need to increase the risk threshold because that's where you get candor and that's where you get the kind of content that new voters want to see, especially younger voters. But if they stick to the same old media strategy from it's going to continue to fail and it's going to fail harder and harder and harder.

And the costs are going to be higher and higher.

SHEFFIELD: Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Trump targeted disengaged Americans with media appearances, Harris with advertisements

SHEFFIELD: And, well, it, it, it's also that you have to [00:40:00] actually be listening to people. Like a huge part of media strategy is listening and listening, not just to the to your, to the people who agree with you, but also to the people who kind of disagree. Maybe like you more than not.

But you need to be figuring out, well, why are they kind of lukewarm? And that was, that was a really big difference, I think, between the Trump and the Harris campaigns is that the Trump campaign, they knew that the the hardcore loyalist Republican. Was gonna vote for him. They knew that. But, and so they put all their focus on and they were saying, this right out for months in the campaign.

I did several shows on it where they were saying we're, our entire basis of strategy is low propensity voters who don't follow the news. And they were telling the Harris campaign what they were doing. And the [00:41:00] Harris campaign in response to that was Well, we're going to put Liz Cheney on the stage with her, and that's how we're going to and, and then and then we're going to target these lower information people with advertising, which, again, is so dumb because no one watches ads anymore.

Like, I literally know one person who likes ads and she's like 75. And that, and she likes him because she doesn't watch the news. So she thinks the ads are a source of news for her. And I guess in some sense, you could say they are, perhaps. I don't know. But, that's it. Like, everybody else is like, oh no, an ad.

And they try to skip it. Or they turn on or they have an ad blocker on their browser. Whatever it is, like, no one wants to see your ad. And if they see it, They hate it. And they hate you for having one. That's the problem with ads. Like, Democrats don't realize that. People hate your fucking ads. They don't want to see them.

CORRIGAN: [00:42:00] Yeah, but they're in denial about most of their media strategy. Like it's total blanket denial. So not a surprise to me that they ignored like the Trump administration's clarity about who their audience was that they were appealing to. And also like, yeah, they put up Liz Cheney and then they lost one percentage of the Republicans who had voted for Biden in 2020.

They didn't even, they won nobody.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, because Liz Cheney is hated by Republicans. So, if you like Liz Cheney, you're not a Republican at this point. By and large. So, so they gain nothing by, by having that outreach.

Why did Democrats lose ground with women despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade?

SHEFFIELD: And of course there is another, The other side of the, of the sex divide is that they also lost support among white women.

And, and once again, Trump got the majority of, of white women. And this was, of course, the first presidential election after the Andrew Roe versus Wade. [00:43:00] So it's, it's like, and I, and I said this on a previous episode that they, the Democrats missed, The Gen Z women and younger millennial women were obviously very affected by the removal of Roe versus Wade.

But for women older, let's say, I don't know, 37 and higher, generally speaking, they're not having children. They're not going to get pregnant because they've either had the procedure or their partner's had the procedure, or they don't want a partner, whatever it is, or or they're not they're in menopause.

So, like, they're not having a pregnancy, there's no risk of pregnancy to them. lo and behold, that was what powered the Trump victory was, women who were not at risk of becoming, having another one in pregnancy, but Democrats didn't seem to, think about these women at all. Did they? I don't know. What was the message for them? Did they have [00:44:00] one

CORRIGAN: No, she wouldn't even, I mean, what she, she barely said abortion. It's not like Biden wanted to talk about abortion.

He can barely save the word. So it's not like there were

between Dobbs and the election, all of this messaging from the party about abortion. I also think there's an interaction effect from the states who had ballot initiatives, right?

So women could vote for abortion rights in their state and also vote for Trump. And it kind of gave those women an out to do both. And that's what happened in places like Missouri. You and I were talking about that before we started recording. Missouri had a ballot initiative. Women voted for it. It passed.

They have abortion rights restored to a certain point, and they also went for Trump, so I don't know that it's just a fertility issue.

SHEFFIELD: well, actually, no, that, that, that is a good point because yeah, like If you're, if you gave them the opportunity to say [00:45:00] that, well, I'm going to, I'm going to I support abortion rights access and, and I'm going to vote for it, but also that makes it safe from Trump or somebody else trying to get rid of it, because now it's safe in my state and he said it's turned over to the state.

So, I'm good. I can vote for him without putting myself at risk or somebody else. And yeah, I think that's a great point. But, but it's also goes to the, that they were, they were trying to, they were unable to articulate the larger theory of the case, which is like why do Republicans want to criminalize abortion?

Well, it's because they want for the same reason they want to criminalize birth control for the same reason that they want to make. Being non heterosexual. It's because they want to have a forced gender conformity. which is religion control. And they don't tell that to [00:46:00] people.

CORRIGAN: But that's because they're doing the same kind of sex panic. They're fundamentally conservative. It's fundamentally anti intellectual. It's not like you saw Kamala Harris defending trans people. She didn't bring any trans people out during the, right, the, the convention at all. There was no mention of trans rights or rights in a larger framework.

There was no clear understanding of where the party was going to be on privacy or, or medical rights or the military or any of the things that we're about to see, or even divorce, right? No fault divorce. So like all of those things in project 2025 that are also part of like the state GOP platforms and a bunch of the Southern states are going to be part of the public discourse moving forward.

No mention by the Harris campaign whatsoever.

The Democratic Party doesn't want to talk to low-information voters

CORRIGAN: So no, they refuse to contextualize any kind of rights into a larger framework for the party. See also the economy. It's not like the [00:47:00] Democratic party is creating large sweeping narratives about where its platform stands moving forward. Instead, she ran a campaign against Trump and invoking him as a bad boogeyman. And we you don't want four more years of Trump. Well, no, people actually felt fine about that. But in terms of creating contrast, you have to say instead of. Trump's world view. Here's what we want. And there's, I mean, no world in which she did an excellent job or the party did an excellent job of creating contrast aside from like terms that they would throw out, right? Like, of course, he's an authoritarian. Fine, but what does that mean for an everyday voter in Missouri?

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm.

CORRIGAN: Especially one who has already voted to restore abortion rights and voted for Trump. Like, how do you, how do you create that narrative? And in some ways, the Democrats, when they're [00:48:00] working hard at it, they fall victim to nuance, to over explaining. Trump doesn't have that problem. He never over explains. He under explains. Right? And in some ways, that serves him better. But, in the absence of a worldview, there is no contrast. It's just epithets, and name calling, and fear mongering.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CORRIGAN: that the fear mongering would turn out voters, and it did not.

SHEFFIELD: No, it didn't. And because, yeah, they, like, these are just labels. They're not. They don't have any inherent meaning especially, especially also because, like, I think a lot of Democrats, they thought that protecting democracy was a very strong thing to say against Trump, but even if it was, which it was maybe for some people, but hardly anyone but let's say that it was for, I don't know, [00:49:00] 35%, not true, but let's say it was, Trump also muddied the waters On that very issue, because he said that he was protecting democracy, because the deep state and the cancel culture are trying to eliminate democracy and impose Marxism on the country.

And so when you, when you looked at people who did say, because like, and a lot of polls were like, Oh, look, 50% 60 percent of the public wants to protect democracy. That's an important issue. And they never asked the Republicans who said that, and the Republicans who said that wanted to protect democracy from the conspiracy that QAnon had uncovered, like, that's what they wanted, and like, Democrats, they never look beyond this little surface level understanding of things, and the same thing like on the abortion stuff, that by becoming the party of more educated Americans, that's They became the party of people who are [00:50:00] high propensity voters, which meant that those ballot initiatives were going to be overwhelming in favor of protecting abortion choice. And it didn't mean anything about the rest of the public who didn't participate because they weren't there.

And like then that's why Democrats did so well in these midterms and, and not because they're now the high propensity voters, Republicans are the party, at least while Trump's around. I mean, we'll see if anything happens differently, but under, in the age of Trump, Republicans are the party of low information, low propensity citizens. That's how it is. And Democrats. They couldn't even understand, begin to understand that that's how it is.

And that this is just a change.

CORRIGAN: No, I mean, that's what I'm saying about them being in denial. I don't know that they want to talk to low information voters. I just don't think that they want to do that.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. [00:51:00] Well,

CORRIGAN: But

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. What is, yeah, they, they don't have an interest in it. And I think you're right that, About that. And, Because they look down on them. They're like, well you don't, read the New York Times every day. You don't subscribe to my favorite podcast. You don't read 20 books a year, you're irrelevant. I don't who's, who cares what you have to say about anything.

You can't have a politics, a democratic politics without the people. But that's basically what they have, have tried to do.

CORRIGAN: I mean, that's where they've converged with the GOP's philosophy about what the party does. And in some ways, I think we could probably do a study that trace the tech finance, right, money into the Democratic party and also map it onto the way that they talk about rural communities or the South or the Midwest or manufacturing jobs or educational [00:52:00] attainment or voting patterns. And I think you would see a shift in the way that they have moved away from parts of the historical rhetoric of the democratic party, certainly in the late 20th century to now, and it maps right onto the changing finance capital of the party since citizens United. And in some ways you can see it with Biden, right?

Because he's still little Joey Biden from Scranton and he wanted, so he wants to talk about manufacturing jobs and he's going to go down right to the union strike. And I mean, he is, he was still participating at least in some of the fantasy of the Democratic party's relationship with labor in his presidency in a way that. Harris made no attempt to connect with really. And I mean, the Democratic party has lost the unions and arguably, and that's a problem, right? If we, if the Democratic party no longer sees itself as in conversation with labor, I don't know how they think that they're going to speak [00:53:00] to the majority of workers in the country, especially with the minimum wage that hasn't moved in like two decades.

And The lack of home ownership and I, I mean, are they, who do they want to be? not going to tell us, it's not like people are going to like somehow come to an organic answer on their own, right? The Democratic party just ceases to exist as a legible entity of political influence.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, I mean, the minimum wage, I think, is a really great example of that, like, this is a position having it raised in whatever your locality is they get 70 percent of the vote in almost everywhere it's put on the ballot. So, you would think that if Democrats are all about the data, and they, they want to be their data professionals.

Well, then Kamala Harris should have made that, centerpiece of her campaign, but she didn't.

CORRIGAN: But, and there's also, [00:54:00] listen, I'm a race and gender scholar in addition to being a scholar of politics. And there is also a certain set of the academy that's like she lost because she was a black woman. And there is some truth to that, certainly. And also it's not the entire story and you can't tell her identity story as the top of the ticket and not talk about the fact that people do have class concerns that are reflected in their voting patterns. And that's not about their household income necessarily. It's about how much money they are spending at the grocery store. And if they feel shitty about it, they're going to not turn out. And this was not a high turnout election compared to previous elections for the democratic party. And that seems like a non negligible variable.

As Democrats have won more prosperous voters, they've become less interested in economic populism

CORRIGAN: But I will say that even among my circles of like academics who, who, especially on the political science side, who are deeply invested in Democratic politics, they do not want to talk about class and they don't want to talk about the alienation of voters or how they feel about money, even though they're happy to talk about how they feel about [00:55:00] identity, they don't want to talk about how people feel about money. And that's a mistake because the way that money is operating in the culture is changing drastically. They don't want to talk about crypto. They don't want to talk about the U S dollar and its valuation or devaluation. They don't, and these are the academics that don't want to talk about that. Right. Who are, I would say closer to the Democratic party elite. And if they don't want to talk about it as like, as a vein of inquiry, It's not like there's going to be some other way to get that conversation to the democratic elites and be like, yo, people have feelings about money. If you don't tap into them, you're going to be hosed in all of these metro areas, which are the only places you're really competitive.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and then, and I guess you, as somebody who has lived in the South for a long time I mean, that's, you have seen all of these things happen in your own life, personal life, right? You want to talk about your story in this context here?

CORRIGAN: Yeah. I mean, I was born and raised in Ohio, in Northeast Ohio. Right. So I w my, my [00:56:00] dad was a steel worker. I'm from the Rust Belt. I've seen that side of politics. I did almost 10 years in the Beltway for graduate school. And I taught there. Taught inside of DC for years. And then I moved to the South and I've been here almost 20 years.

And the thing about it is that almost all of the innovations in American political life in the last 20 years, I think have happened in the South where people are forced to do more with less. And so we're a bellwether for where things are going and there's no interest on the coasts and certainly on the East coast and talking with people in the South about how to engage. Like these new voting blocks or the ideas that they represent, even though we're successfully doing it here. And I think that speaks to the larger issue of the anti intellectual bent and democratic party. They're not curious about what's happening in the middle of America. And they're not curious about rural America [00:57:00] and that's the majority of the country.

So it's really, it's hard, I think, for us, a lot of the people in the South to watch because it's all of this fear mongering and the blue states like, Oh, we don't want to be a red state and look at them and they're so backward. And it's like, if you don't think that retribution politics is coming to your blue state.

I have a story to tell you about how this unfolds across time, because it is a recursive, predictable part of American political life. So in a state like mine that only has 3 million people in it. We, everybody knows everybody, right? It's very, it's a very intimate state and a lot of the country is that way.

And if you cut people out of their communities and they have no spaces of intimate politics, they're not coming back to participate. And if you're already in a deficit for voters, it seems like a long term problem. So I, I mean, I moved to Arkansas when it was still [00:58:00] a blue dog state. And I watched the Koch brothers buy up the legislature here and the politics of the legislature doesn't match the will of the people in terms of our ballot initiatives.

And that's a lot of the country, including states like Missouri or states like Nebraska. And I think the Democratic Party, if it's serious about winning, has to be serious about what's happening in these states and think about two way organizing and what they're bringing to the people to get them to come to the Democratic Party for the first time or come back to it if they've left.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a great point. And it reminds me that one of the Harris advisors who was on the Pod Save America show in that interview David Plouffe, he, he said people need to understand that the swing states have a lot of conservatives in them, and it's really hard for Democrats to win in those states.

And so. The answer to that should be, well, maybe you can test out ideas and strategies across the country where there are many places [00:59:00] where you can experiment and like this whole idea of the laboratories of democracy or that is poli-science 101. Like, it's like they, they, they completely lost track of that and also don't understand that should apply to campaigns, not just a policy.

The ALEC behemoth outside the Beltway

CORRIGAN: But there is no national Democratic Party presence in most of the states in terms of trial ballooning policy, and it's not like we have an ALEC, right? I mean, CAP is like the Center for American Progress is not. Doing the same kind of work as Alec and producing template legislation, but it should be, you should be able to just roll up as a newly elected member of your legislature and be like, I would like to download the legislation about this great idea that the democratic party wants to trial.

How do I do that? And you should get the kit to do that. Right. And there isn't a place for that. And I know that because I, I work with legislators across the aisle who want some other [01:00:00] option for template legislation other than Alec and they don't have it. So they all have to invent it from scratch. That is a simple problem that has an easy solution that could be funded with the

billion and a half dollars that we, that that lady shit out onto ads.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and here's what's even more depressing. That if you look at what the super PACs included, she had three and a half billion dollars. And yeah, none of that money has any return on it.

CORRIGAN: No, but I'll tell you as a public university instructor, I have to demonstrate ROI for my classes and stakes are so much lower. Right. And it's like elections are a public good. I mean, honestly, I think none of this, not even the vision side gets ironed out without campaign finance reform. And I don't see that coming, but I think that if anybody is serious about democracy, they would talk about that, which is why I don't think the democratic party is serious about democracy because they don't want to talk about [01:01:00] campaign finance reform, finance reform, because the people who are in charge of promulgating that kind of legislation are deeply benefiting from a lack of campaign finance law reform. And so they're not going to push it because they're personally, you know benefiting from it.

And so there's a sense of which the democratic party is best most ethical messaging was about, Democracy promotion and democratic institutions, but it continues to participate in grift and anti democratic functions of capital in ways that undermine that messaging and make them not credible messengers for it.

And , I think that's why everybody is so fixated on how much money that Harris raised and where the hell it went. in the same way that, like, Garland never really got Trump for his numerous crimes against the nation, so too did this claim that he's a grifter become hollow at the point at which that much money goes to one campaign and it turns into nothing durable. And I think that that undermines the ability of the Democratic Party [01:02:00] to make a credible case for itself as an entity of change. Which is self inflicted!

SHEFFIELD: is. Yeah. And, well, and then here's what's even worse is that because they became less interested in focused on economic things because of the new donor class that came into the party, they, they tried to focus more on abstract like protect democracy type things. But then they also to some degree make some concessions on grounds of gender or race. But ultimately, even those concessions are not real either, because like, and, and, like, you will, you would see, for instance I remember there Ta Nehisi Coates gave a lecture at Georgetown University, and the workers of Georgetown were on strike because they were being treated, and I may not be Georgetown, so don't say I'm in Georgetown, but whatever the university, like, they'll go and have these conferences and these lectures about inequality and [01:03:00] and identity, and then when the actual people who are there, who are suffering because of their identity, ignore them, and they have nothing to say to them.

And in fact they tell them to get lost.

CORRIGAN: I mean, well, the or they speak out for Palestine and then they get tear gassed and beaten and the cops called on them.

Conclusion

CORRIGAN: So like, okay, like, I mean, there's no doubt that academics are inconsistent about where they put their movement energy or social change energy. But that's, I think, a symptom and not the problem, right. The problem is that capital makes it very difficult for people to participate in civic life because everybody's working too much in jobs that they hate. And they don't feel loyalty to their employer because they are only taking those jobs for healthcare, which they're overpaying for.

And so everybody's exhausted. And they're alienated and they don't know how to connect with one another in ways that are productive. And that's above and beyond the social violence that they're facing as a result of poverty or race or geography or [01:04:00] whatever.

So, it's not, it's not that the academics are hypocrites. It's that the culture is foreclosing possibilities to engage meaningfully in community in ways that create a sustainable vision for progress and people don't feel like the nation is progressing on both sides of the aisle, and they feel kind of hopeless and burnt out, especially since the pandemic has taken such a toll on communities and in public health. So, if the Democrats were like, if they had just extended the child tax credit. I think that they could have won the election. I think, I mean, I think that they, if she had embraced even one 10th of the, of the actual things that the Biden administration had done that improved the economic position for the lower 50 percent of the country, she could have potentially won that election, but they didn't even try to make the case for the successes that they had.

That they had lodged. And student loans were not going to [01:05:00] be a winner for the election, but it would have potentially turned out more of that MSNBC audience that potentially stayed home. But that's just like not where the conversation is for them. And I, I, I mean, it's inexplicable to me. It's just a will to fail.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, actually, that is a very good way of saying that. Describing a, a terrible problem all right. well, so this has been a great conversation, Lisa.

But all the good things have to come to an end. So, why don't we just end with just giving you a chance to plug your social media and books and other stuff so people can keep tabs on what you're doing.

CORRIGAN: Yeah. If you're interested, you're welcome to pick up Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation or #MeToo: A Rhetorical Zeitgeist or Black Feelings: Race and Affect in the Long Sixties. You can find me at “drlisacorrigan” on the socials, and as an occasional contributor for The Nation. Thanks for having me.

SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate [01:06:00] everybody joining us for the discussion, and you can always get more if you go to theoryofchange.show, and I also encourage everybody to go to flux.community. Theory of Change is part of the Flux Media Network. So please go there and check us out.

And if you're able to support the show financially, that would be great. You can do that on Patreon or on Substack. And if you can't afford to do that right now, I understand but please help spread the word of what we're doing here. And that would be much appreciated. And if you're watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode.

So that'll do it for this one. Thanks for watching or listening, and I'll see you next time.

Episode Summary

Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump came as a huge surprise to many Democratic Party loyalists, especially since Republicans had a number of serious defeats in elections in 2018 and in 2022, and abortion rights ballot initiatives prevailed in every state where the public had voted on them since the Republican Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

So what happened? We've talked on this program at length in several episodes about how Democrats have failed enormously to invest in advocacy media to the degree that Republicans have. But a political ecosystem isn’t just about national media, it’s also about how things work at the local level as well.

And in that regard, the Republican Party is also very superior to Democrats. Working together and individually in cities and towns across America, fundamentalist religious organizations and local talk radio hosts are constantly explaining Republican viewpoints to the public, taking the message to Americans who don’t follow politics closely.

While they may not understand all the particulars, these citizens believe that there are people in their communities who are looking out for them. They can see and talk to people who explain the world and tell them what they can do about it.

Within the Democratic Party, however, these types of local political institutions are sometimes regarded as antiquated or absurd. This was not always so. In the past, labor union halls and liberal religious communities were places where people were able to learn that progress isn’t something that happens, it’s something that’s made.

The right’s huge advantage at the local level has been in place for a long time, as sociologist Theda Skocpol documented in 1995:

“The Democratic party no longer has a national, locally rooted infrastructure of loyal local organizations and allied groups (such as labor unions) through which concerted grass-roots political campaigns can be run. The conservatives right now have such an infrastructure, in the form of grass-roots Christian fundamentalist groups and Rush Limbaugh-style talk radio. But Democrats depend on pollsters, media consultants, and television to get messages out to the citizenry. Yet pollsters and political consultants tend to think in terms of appealing labels (‘Health Security’) and advertising slogans (‘security that can never be taken away’) rather than in terms of explanatory discussions.”

One person who understands how all of this worked in days of yore is our guest on today’s episode. His name is Eric Loomis, and he's a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island. He’s written several different books, including A History of America in Ten Strikes. And he’s also a writer at the blog Lawyers, Guns, & Money.

The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

05:58 — Democrats only talk to their voters for three months every two years

10:28 — How local organizations preserve collective memory and protect democracy

13:50 — The decline of unions and liberal religion has significantly hurt the Democratic party

29:02 — Why reproductive freedom didn't save Democrats in 2024

32:38 — The rise of AOC-Trump voters

36:15 — Biden's communication failures made it so no one knew about his policies

41:59 — Operationally, Democrats are more conservative than Republicans

45:36 — Economic and social justice need each other to succeed

52:13 — Campaigns need coherent and simple narratives to win

01:02:06 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

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MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Eric Loomis. Welcome to the show, Eric.

ERIK LOOMIS: Very happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

SHEFFIELD: So you and your co-bloggers have been tackling this idea of there's something wrong with Democrats, even before the election, you guys were kind of been edging around this point for a while, it seems [00:04:00] like.

LOOMIS: Well, yeah, I mean, if you look at the election, right? In a lot of ways, and I should say up front, I think that there are so many election hot takes out there, and I think a lot of them are flawed. I think we do have to everything into a kind of global context about, about governing parties and the post pandemic inflation generally doing quite poorly in elections, and that's all very important, and I think we have to keep that as part of our focus and not just engage in a kind of contextless blame game, but I also think that we're facing an opponent here that's not like an opponent that we faced with even Reagan, right? Even George W. Bush, who were, genuinely terrible people and terrible presidents.

This particular iteration of the Republican Party is effectively a fascist party. And it's very important to be thinking about broader ways to resist that. And the Democratic Party's model of anything has not really adjusted itself in 15 to 20 years. But what does a Democratic campaign look [00:05:00] like today? It's this post Citizens United endless fundraising effort, right? And that's really all it is. You get inundated with endless emails and texts and maybe suggestions to engage in a get-out-the-vote campaign or something of this nature. And that's really kind of it.

And eventually you start tuning this out because it gets annoying to get this many text messages and this many emails. There's a certain effectiveness in it. I mean, Kamala Harris had an ungodly amount of money, but as we've seen over the last, it's really several cycles, including congressional and Senate campaigns, you can have an endless amount of money, and you run out of ways to spend it, and it doesn't actually help you win.

The campaign to defeat Susan Collins in Maine in 2020 was a perfect example of this, right? And so I think Democrats have to figure out new ways to conduct campaigns and new ways to think of themselves as Democrats in order to engage a kind of broader populace who is very unhappy about the way things are going and clearly is not responding to the kinds of campaigns that Democrats put together.

Democrats only talk to their voters for three months every two years

SHEFFIELD: They're trying to, and [00:06:00] I forget who said this, but I liked the idea, that they're trying to activate people rather than engage with them.

LOOMIS: And there's room for activation. I mean, that's part of is, that can be part of a campaign, but that can't be all of the campaign. And so often, that's become all of the campaign-- is a short-term activation of people. And then it's like: 'Okay, now we win, it's all good. Go back to your regular lives.' And nothing really happens until the next campaign.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it comes off as very insincere to people, because this message, I mean, I don't know, to some degree, is it fair to say that the Democratic Party has been crying wolf about the Republicans being fascist? Because they were saying things like Mitt Romney is trying to create fascism.

I've heard people say things like that, or that George W. Bush, what wanted to be Hitler. And Donald Trump, as you said is a completely different candidate than these people. [00:07:00] And so to some degree, I think people are, might be put off by that, but also just the fact that there's this tremendous urgency that exists for three months of the year, and then there's no urgency at any other time.

LOOMIS: Yeah, well, I mean, I think that regardless of the accuracy of such depictions, which are obviously less accurate under Romney and Bush than they are under Trump and Vance and these sorts of people, regular voters, everyday folks don't respond to this. And that's the bigger issue, they don't respond to this. They tune it out. And I think that, you saw this in the, with the Harris campaign's choice to go all in on people like Liz Cheney, which I don't have, I wouldn't have had such a problem with if it was going to move any voters at all. But it moved nobody, like, like nobody cared.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LOOMIS: Regardless, it's ineffective. And then to me, the issue is it's totally ineffective.

SHEFFIELD: Well, it is and it's ineffective because [00:08:00] basically it was premised on the idea that, well, we can get some, people who don't like either candidate to vote for Kamala Harris. But the problem is they also didn't, hadn't created a gigantic media machine to 24/7 push their case.

And so, Basically now, if, as I said in an essay last month that the election was decided by people who didn't like both candidates. And it was really, it, but it came down to the people disliked Harris more. That was it. And it was evenly divided between the people who like each one, and then there were 2 percent of people in the exit polls who said they liked both of them.

I want to hear from those people. Uh, But ultimately, they didn't create the infrastructure to run a negative partisanship campaign, it seems like.

LOOMIS: I mean, you were right in that essay, you don't have a media infrastructure at [00:09:00] all. People were like, oh, we need to create the Democratic Joe Rogan. And it's like, well, that doesn't really it doesn't I mean, yes, in a sense, but that doesn't quite get it. Like the people saying that don't understand what Joe Rogan does or what's history or any of this sort of thing. I think that the broader takeaway there is kind of going back to what you said is that the Democrats don't have an ecosystem at all, right? There's just no ecosystem. It's all about activating voters at a very particular time. And that's very effective for base kind of vote, but it's not very effective for lower information voters it's not very effective for people who have pretty short term memories about things people who don't pay attention to what Donald trump is saying or doing don't pay attention to who he's naming to the know naming cash Patel to the FBI, the head

SHEFFIELD: they don't even know his policies. Yeah.

LOOMIS: and it's that

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LOOMIS: is

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LOOMIS: You need a kind of a media network That allows your [00:10:00] candidates and your ideas to reach into a different kind of voter. Right? And MSNBC does simply does not do that, right? That is that they are, I mean, I'm mixed on various MSNBC shows, but and regardless of its future, it's totally ineffective at touching those kind of voters too.

Right, right.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's only one channel, whereas Fox, there are seven alternatives to Fox that are, all of them are even further right.

How unions and local organizations preserve collective memory

SHEFFIELD: but even aside from media though, like infrastructure means an ecosystem mean more than just that. So, and that was something that you had mentioned, written recently about that there were these local organizations that used to be very common and were driving people into the Democratic party and the understanding sort of the shared theory of the case for voting being on the left and can you talk about that?

LOOMIS: I mean, if you look at the 1930s, for instance, and the aftermath of that going through the 60s and [00:11:00] 70s, so a long period of time and I understand the nation is different today and people have different activities that they do. But what it meant to be a Democrat was something that was actually central to your entire life.

I mean, the first thing there was in large parts of the country was the union hall, right? And the reality is part of what we're dealing with right now, is the wages of an entire generation of Democrats that turn their back on the labor movement.

And, here, I'm not talking about Joe Biden, who was older and, did what he could and, it was very good for unions with the limited power they actually had to create policy that could get through courts and such things. But here we're talking about not only, but very much talking about Jimmy Carter, very much talking about Bill Clinton, to an extent talking about Barack Obama, but even generations of, a whole generation of Democrats did not actually get to the White House.

Like, Michael Dukakis was horrible on unions, right? Michael Dukakis actually lost his first term reelection campaign to governor of Massachusetts because he had angered the union so much, right? Gary [00:12:00] Hart is extraordinarily anti-union. Jerry Brown is incredibly anti-union. So you had a whole generation of Democrats coming up in the 70s and 80s at the same time that these manufacturing jobs are disappearing.

They're actually fine with basically gutting the labor movement. And what that did is Was to undermine the tight connections between large swaths of the American working class, the labor movement and the Democratic party, the kind of thing that had been tied in by people like Walter Reuther, people like Sidney Hillman, but also by politicians, but people like, FDR, of course, but even the Harry Truman, who was not explosively pro union or anything, but understood coalitional politics. So that's just totally gone. But you also have the other kinds of social organizations that were big through much of the 20th century that tie people together, and they're also gone. I mean, you have these, like, Americans, and I'm hardly the first person to make this point. I mean, the sociologist Robert Putman famously wrote about this [00:13:00] in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone.

But Americans are incredibly atomized, and we don't get together to talk about things, talk about politics, talk about life. We're in our tiny little communities and these communities don't really meet. so you have what that ends up leading to is in part this incredibly fractured kind of media environment that Democrats have not understood and have not been able to make any connections with well Also just really having no ideas about how to engage voters or just engage even base democrats on a Day to day month to month kind of basis and I think we suffer for that, right?

We suffer for not having something that we can actually go out and do on a daily or monthly basis, other than like register people to vote and the kind of same old, but actually building community and pride as democrat this really is totally gone in much of this country now.

The decline of unions and liberal religion has significantly hurt the Democratic party

SHEFFIELD: It is. And it's, and it's not just about, community, although that's obviously very important, but it's also about understanding why we're doing this like [00:14:00] the sense of a collective story.

And I think it's illustrative to look at because as you said, the unions were the local roots for the Democratic Party, democratic activism historically. But that wasn't true in black American communities and where that was what it was for them was the black church. That was the community epicenter.

And it's notable that when you look at black voter demographics in every single poll that's out there, it's always the younger ones who were less identified with the Democratic Party, and that's because they're less likely to go to church. And that held true in this past election that we had where the older black voters were, extremely pro-Democratic. And black women were one of the few demographic groups that voted more for the Democrats versus in 2020 and a higher percentage.

And so, and it was because they have, there are places to give them a shared story and understand [00:15:00] this is the point of what we're doing. This isn't just. An idle exercise. This isn't just fun and games or just something to do. It actually is meaningful what we're doing here, and you have a place in, it

And we don't have that

LOOMIS: That's such an important point, a very important point. And the decline of the white liberal or the white mainline Protestant church has been a very big part of this, right? Because that was another place in which people got together. I mean, just let me tell you a personal story.

I mean, so, I'm from, The town of Springfield, Oregon. And a far-right group called the Oregon Citizens Alliance targeted my town to pass an anti-gay hate ordinance. And it passed in that town. And it went on, that group went on to attempt to pass several statewide ordinances in Oregon and were defeated. And it was a very traumatic thing. I was a senior in high school, so it was like my friends were going out and like, we hate gays. And I was like, what are you talking about? Who cares? I just didn't really get it, right? And I wasn't even particularly political, but the reason I tell this story is that, we came out of [00:16:00] a Lutheran family we're not overtly liberal or anything like that on a general basis, but like the pastor of the church was like very active in pushing back against these evangelicals who were pushing this anti-gay hate, right.

And this was the kind of leadership. you've got for mainline Protestant churches and members of those churches who in those spaces. Could potentially have uncomfortable conversations about social change, right? Or rally around candidates, rally around a vision of economics that was more shared, rather than this, New Gilded Age plutocracy that we see that the Evangelical Church is pushing. another area in which it's totally got the Lutherans, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, The Congregationalists, their numbers have just totally cratered. we've lost that space as well, and you are now beginning to see that in the Black community as well. This nation is more atheist [00:17:00] h than it's ever been in its history. And while some people might think that could lead to more progressive politics, it in fact has the opposite the opposite impact.

SHEFFIELD: So for communities that had benefited from government action, they had a place to understand how that happened, like the core problem of governance is that you don't want to think about it.

People, the whole point of having a government is that it works, and you don't have to worry about it. And the Republican Party, because of this, Ayn Rand market fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism. declared war on modernity and on functioning government, beginning with Bering Old Water.

And Ronald Reagan made that very explicit. And so the goal was to make government as bad for everyone else as they saw it as this noxious, horrible influence on society. [00:18:00] And so they've been, running around constantly tearing everything down and it worked, we're at this position now where we have fewer federal employees as a percentage of the GDP, than in decades.

And then Elon Musk is talking about, he's going to cut 75 percent of them which would do almost nothing in terms of the federal budget. But this is their ideology. And these are complicated things to understand if you don't really pay attention to politics. As a person, it's not your hobby or it's not your job, whatever it is, it's if you're not that, and because we're a minority, I think that's something that people who have, progressive or democratic commitments always forget is that most people don't care or understand, and they're not going to, so you have to do something about that, you have to play with that in mind.

LOOMIS: I mean, that's right, right? I mean, I think, I mean, I write for the block lawyers because of money and it has a lot of commenters and they tend to be like very much, pretty well educated white kind of base [00:19:00] Democrat types and they, like we all do, right, exist in these kind of tiny self, self-reinforcing communities.

And they were so determined that Harris was going to win. So determined that abortion was going to take the woman over the top that women were going to, once, women were going to lead. A democratic for a democratic victory. And of course, Trump won white women for the third election in a row. And so it's very easy for people who are deeply engaged in this stuff to convince themselves of that, that other people are too, and they're simply not, and if you go back to the thirties through the seventies, I mean, one of the things that you saw in that time was not so much a deep understanding of policy, right?

Like the unions would certainly provide some of that. And there were also things like democratic clubs, which I actually think would be great. Like, why don't Democrats start democratic bars, right? An actual bar that was for Democrats explicitly. And like, you could, other people could come in, but it's a [00:20:00] democratic space. And like there's good beer or whatever. And, again, these kind of like, what would a modern social function be that could replicate some of these club-type things that would help with this stuff. But the point is this honest, if people understood like the creation of HUD or something under, whenever that was, Kennedy or Johnson or whatever it was, but it was the understanding. That there was a person in the White House who was going to work for you, right? And so, everyday people would have pictures of FDR on their wall, like next to the Jesus picture. Or, even if, certainly for Catholics, Kennedy. And like, it meant something more than just a politician being elected.

It was somebody Who ultimately believed was working out, was looking out for your interests. and that alone, and I think that developed through those kind of institutions and that share understanding that you might not, understand what's going on in Washington per se. [00:21:00] And, everybody always thinks You know, the bozos in Washington are doing X, Y, and Z and whatever, but that person was looking out for you and that person was connected to a democratic party that you were pretty likely to vote for at least most of the time. And that was strong enough its policy positions even when you might vote for a Republican, like in the Eisenhower era, as an example, or even to an extent the Nixon era, what you were actually voting for was somebody who was going to hold up most of that state. You might not understand, but you knew it was going to work for you because the political cost of doing so was going to be too toxic and Reagan is ultimately the moment in which that transforms and a lot of that has to do with civil rights and race.

And, we can get into that if we want to, but that we've lost that ability and it's really critical to gain that back because sending a bunch of text messages a month before the election about, this candidate is one point behind this other candidate give, a hundred dollars is clearly not working.

SHEFFIELD: [00:22:00] Yeah, no, it isn't. Well, so I mean, you're a labor historian. So, but let's maybe circle back to that aspect of this here. So, a lot of people have remarked how labor unions have declined in this country. Tell, tell my audience why you think that happened. I mean, obviously there's a lot of reasons for that.

And did they, were people in the labor union leadership? Did they really try to do anything about this while it was happening? I don't know if they did that much, did they?

LOOMIS: Well, it's complicated. I mean, the short version of the decline of the labor movement is a combination of about four factors, right? One is that a lot of the jobs simply disappeared, right? They went to Mexico. They went, then they went to Asia and to China, part of globalization, which is something that was pushed by both political parties. The second was automation so you have this like peak of the labor movement in the 50s. But even by this, even before the jobs really started disappearing in the mid-60s automation and technological change was taking thousands and thousands of jobs in fact, in industries every single [00:23:00] year. And so you had that kind of decline. Third certainly was the end of the organizing era, right? The labor movement itself dropped the ball it effectively stopped organizing after The leftists were thrown out of the movement in the late 1940s, early 1950s. You had a movement that was pretty fat and happy, a movement that believed it had it had a permanent partnership with the Democratic Party and a lot of influence within the Republican Party. And when that was proven to be untrue, it really did not have the ability, wherewithal, or even the skills and energy at that point. To really do very much about it. There's other critiques that can make the labor movement as well I mean, I think those three are the biggest things but then also a kind of again, a political transformation in this country that really, comes out of the 1960s, is a bigger, more of an existential crisis, I think, than we give it credit for, which is the rise of this very [00:24:00] extreme atomized individualism that was, yes, the Randianism of the far right is a big part of that, but the counterculture absolutely 100 percent embraced that as well. That the man the union became part of the man in the 60s and was part of the problem And so, I as an individual I’m going to withdraw from society I'm going to go out on my own I’m going to do what You know, join a commune for a while or whatever I'm going to do, but it became even on the left among Democrats is extremely individualistic ideas about politics.

And that's still tremendously influential today. And that is across the political spectrum from the far left to the far right. We conceptualize ourselves as incredibly empowered individuals and parties need to appeal to me and my personal beliefs, as opposed to me needing to make broader connections with others around a complexity of issues [00:25:00] that may or may not completely reflect my politics, but that engage in an idea of solidarity. And solidarity is transformed from we help each other to You need to help me around my issue without any say obligation from me going back to you on your issue and that's really the opposite of What's the development of solidarity look like out of labor movement of late 19th century?

SHEFFIELD: well, and it's interesting because in the Republican Party, they developed an inverse of this concept, which they called fusionism, which was this idea that, you know, if you were somebody who was interested in Christian supremacism, or you were interested in, aggressive foreign policy, or you were interested in business, giving the oligarchs whatever they want.

Yeah. You needed to understand that you have to support the candidates with these other two issues. And you may not like them, but you need to keep your mouth shut [00:26:00] and not criticize them. At the very least, that's what you have to do. And that powered the Republican Party through Ronald Reagan.

Like that was the difference-maker between the complete disaster of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan's 1980 win was that, that they had that sense And they really did explain this. Like if you talk to anyone of who's, who is a who is, or was a Republican, who's let's say 50 and older today, they all have this knowledge of the three legs of the Republican stool.

They all say it, you tune into talk radio, all the hosts, they all say it. All the callers say it if they're old enough. This is this shared story that they have. And now, they've updated it post-cold war to be, more about, well, we're against the deep state. That's what we're, that's what we're against.

And that's now the shared narrative for the right. And it's to what you said, this idea of ignorant [00:27:00] anarchism, which in many ways calls itself leftist, but in, in operations actually ends up becoming right wing and Bobby Kennedy is probably the best-case example of that.

LOOMIS: that's a great point. And I think you're absolutely right about the Republican Party. Whereas Democrats will say, and this is especially true on the left, that candidate has to earn my vote. Well, why? Right? What is your obligation to the rest of the country? And people really don't like to have to be asked that question.

They, there's a, that leads to a lot of resentment I found. And it really goes back to a kind of lost idea of what solidarity really means. Like, yes you, you know what every candidate is the lesser of two evils, or perhaps the greater of two evils in given cases. That's the way the world works.

Like, I'm sorry. That's the actual reality

SHEFFIELD: That's always how it's been. Yeah.

LOOMIS: of politics, that's the reality of how things are always going to be and the just like stubborn unwillingness of people on the [00:28:00] left who call themselves leftist to just shrug their shoulders about that fact. Go out and do the right thing and understand that if you win, you have a stake in that broader coalition. And if you lose, you have nothing but your own self regard. And to make that choice about having some power in a coalition it's a real problem on the left. And I think that, going all, I mean, like, look, was I, a personal level, was I happy to be voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016? No, I was not.

Right. So I hate Phil Clinton. Hillary is no better, but you do what you have to do because of this is the nation, which we have. It may not be the nation we want to have, but it's the one we got and we see, and we saw the we saw some of the some of the consequences of that.

And yet there's a real unwillingness to learn. So it's very difficult to come up with collective solutions. When people talk a game about collectivism, but in fact act as incredibly empowered [00:29:00] individualists

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely.

Why reproductive freedom didn't save Democrats in 2024

SHEFFIELD: And to circle back to another issue that you mentioned earlier the, there was this very widespread hope that the end of Roe versus Wade was going to activate millions of American women. And what people missed and didn't understand is that basically what, because Democrats had become the party of the educated class.

Those are the people who vote in off your elections more. And that was the reason why Republicans got hurt so badly in 2018. And in 2022, it was because the high propensity voters, that's, those are, like when you, when, and people we've talked on this show and you've written about, like the people who pay attention to the news the most.

They vote Democrats for Democrats now. And the ones who don't pay attention at all, they vote for Republicans. So that's what happened with the [00:30:00] the midterm elections. And I remember saying this a couple of times and people got very offended that I would dare to suggest that that was really what was going on because, when you and then when you look at the numbers it is, it was true that for Gen Z women, who are directly, I'm impacted by these horrible laws that Republicans are pushing through in their states and are killing You know young women that's predominantly who's being you know made worse impacted by these things they did have made a very sharp turn to become much more democratic than any other generation but for gen x women and women out, older than that there is this natural human myopia to think, well, if it doesn't impact me personally, then I don't care about it.

It doesn't matter. And so a lot of women, who are, for whatever reason, not having children at that stage in their life. That was, they thought, well, Hey if they did, if Trump's, he turned it over to the state, so [00:31:00] we can just vote for him anyway, it's safe to vote for him.

And even if we had a bad law, it wouldn't affect me. So who cares?

LOOMIS: And look we've seen this for years and years with the minimum wage Where you have voters on ballot measures overwhelmingly support, rise to the minimum wage.

And then we'll vote in Republicans in places like South Dakota and Nebraska who are outright opposed to even the sheer existence of the minimum wage. And we're like, we'll vote to, we'll vote at the state legislative level to overturn that ballot measure, but they don't, they just don't make those connections.

And I think that what I've seen a lot of the people who comment on the site is a kind of wake up after November 6 to just what this nation is. who these voters are but the response is these people are morons and Screw them like they deserve what they get I’m out. These people are too dumb for me to deal with and I guess I understand a kind of immediate post [00:32:00] election outrage But boy, that's not going to be very helpful in trying to save people's lives keep unions legal, keep abortion legal, or anything else that these, liberals in this case claim to believe it, right?

I mean, you simply have to find ways to connect with these voters. And again, what the Democratic Party has done, and what that entire kind of infrastructure of Democratic leadership, has pushed forward over these last several elections again. It's just not working, right? And so we have to figure out ways to engage those voters in some kind of way.

I mean, even if we fail to do so, I'm not going to sit here and claim I have all the right ideas because I don't know. I do know.

The rise of AOC-Trump voters

LOOMIS: That what is we have right now is not working and we need to new deal style in a sense, right? We're in the early new deal. FDR didn't know if any of these programs were going to work, but a lot of them didn't, right?

And he would just like, okay, well, we'll try something else. That's kind of what we need to be thinking about in terms of what it means to be a Democrat in 2025.

SHEFFIELD: yeah [00:33:00] absolutely. And there also is this very common use of the phrase, f**k around and find out now where people, they think that the voters are going to, they're going to learn that Republicans are bad based on bad policies. And you know what? I don't think they're going to, because they, because Republicans basically Their entire goal is to break the government.

So in a sense, making government not work, making it non functional, that is what they voted for. And the people who voted for Trump, they think the system is horrible. Like, they want to just, So like, they don't want to f**k around and find out. They want to f**k it off. They want to blow it up.

And they have this, it, and it is a very naive nihilism, but that's basically what the Republican party has done is that they've taken their own, religious nihilism because now it's not possible. And I say this as a [00:34:00] former Mormon fundamentalist that, when I was a Mormon fundamentalist, I truly did believe that Native Americans were ancient Jews.

I really believed that, even though I knew that I couldn't prove that. I knew I couldn't prove it, and it made me angry at society because they rejected what I believed was the truth. And so, Republicans have been, the hardcore base activist. That's what they've been doing is to try to weaponize and instill nihilism in everyone else.

And it's working to a large degree.

LOOMIS: what Democrats have to do is to quit pretending like the system is working, right, and to quit defending the system.

And instead simply accept what voters are telling them, that to them the system is not working, and then figure out ways to engage them in drastic change. I mean, I, what I thought, a moment I thought was very interesting, after the election is when Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, actually reached out to voters in her district, which [00:35:00] went, way toward Trump.

I mean, one of the most, biggest swings for Republicans in the entire country was that district. And she's like, who are the AOC Trump voters? Right. And. And they were probably open about it, right? Both AOC and Trump meant change, meant who stood up to the system, stood up to the b******t and said it was b******t and that's who I want.

And they're not thinking very much deeper than that. Well, there's an opportunity there. Right. There's an opportunity there to, for Democrats to move away from defending the system that is a system, as a nation dominated by billionaires, a nation in which it's feels like, regardless of the Republicans are responsible for this or not, and of course they are, the government's not working for them. There's an opportunity to create a kind of politics out of that is a Ocasio Cortez type of politics where you really do say [00:36:00] 'this system is totally broken and we are going to revolutionize or remake the system' and to channel that anger and channel that energy in a more productive way than Donald Trump's like, let's kill all the trans people.

Biden's communication failures made it so no one knew about his policies

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, that is essentially what he's saying to people is, Everything is horrible. So let's just tear it down and let my billionaire buddies privatize everything. And, the average voter, they didn't pay, they didn't pay attention to that latter part because Trump didn't actually say that.

But that is what he's going to do. And, and there's a, I mean, it's just incredibly clear in that regard. And There is a certain irony in the fact that you're a university professor and we're talking about this also, but like, the educational system for America.

So like Joe Biden, he did he took a step in, in acknowledging that a lot of people were basically conned into paying [00:37:00] for college degrees that got them nothing and now they just nothing but debt and they're carrying it around like a millstone for the rest of their life or a ball and chain.

But he didn't say what they were feeling. He just said, well, I'm going to try to help you with this debt. And he didn't say why. And like, that's, I think, that, that is the core problem of the Biden administration is that, that they had the right ideas on a lot of policies, Lena Khan and, a lot of the FTC stuff and some great regulations out of the FCC and, other regulatory bodies and, prescription drug negotiating authority.

And I mean, they let Joe Manchin and the Senate parliamentarian boss them around on other stuff, but overall it was. He made a lot of the right policy choices, but he never explained to the public, this is why we're doing it. And I'm doing it for you.

LOOMIS: If the public tells you. That eggs are too expensive, then they're too expensive, right? It doesn't matter why.

SHEFFIELD: [00:38:00] Yeah.

LOOMIS: matter. You as a political leader. to be able to take that or to take that anger and articulate that in a way that makes you and your party and your policies look like the only solution and just, I mean, Biden, yes, absolutely. But Harris is really no better. It is a real failure doing that and acknowledging the anger saying I too am angry. And taking actions that show that you're in that you respect that anger and you're going to do something about it. And people respond to that, to their anger being validated.

I mean, if there's one thing that Donald Trump demonstrates is that people respond to their anger being validated and Donald Trump does a hell of a job of doing that. I believe Donald Trump is an incredibly stupid human being, but he has this innate ability to channel people's anger and hatred and Democrats actually have to do that too, right?

If you can't say yes, this higher education system is a disaster. And it's horrible that you have this [00:39:00] debt and we're going to, we're going to do whatever we can to make sure that future generations don't have that or that, the price of eggs is outrageous or that healthcare systems are, incredibly, Toxic and are killing people.

I mean, we recorded this day after the killing of that, United healthcare CEO. And it's like the kind of visceral response that is among people who just generally loathe the American healthcare system. Why are Democrats not taking advantage of that hatred? And like, I know that liberal based liberals hate the idea that, well, I should even use the word hate here.

They disdain the idea of that kind of emotionalist politics. But I don't really see how you fight the growth of American fascism without recognizing that the majority of this country thinks this nation is pretty broken. And have that and require an emotionalist response in order to gain their support in their votes.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. You need to [00:40:00] understand that, while it is, I mean, basically the system is now effectively rigged against people who don't have a postgraduate degree. That's essentially what it is like you can get a job, but it's going to be 40, 000 a year and that's it You won't have any choice You'd like you can't afford to live in some of the more expensive areas of the country in part because they don't have you know They won't build new housing, and that's another kind of residual It like the NIMBY coalition is this Weird bipartisan happening where you've got, older Democrats who use fake environmental objections when really they have the same concerns of, well, I don't want these poor people moving into my neighborhood.

LOOMIS: the housing

SHEFFIELD: don't want that the wrong kind of people.

LOOMIS: The housing issue and the nimbyism is a perfect example of this extreme individualism that I talk about, right? Like, [00:41:00] like,

SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah.

LOOMIS: people who moved 1968. Bought a house in the mid 70s and like we're still in the house and are determined that nothing's ever going to change Ever and they don't really care what the consequences that are because their house is worth You know some ungodly amount of money and that's all that's all that matters to them.

I mean You know and you know So now everybody hates California is moving away and they're moving to Texas in part because of resentments around that Because you can build cheaply in Texas

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And people have the right to be angry about that. Like this. And the terrible irony of these NIMBY policies is that they have cost the Democrats the House of Representatives, because of population loss in blue areas, because people can't afford to live there and they want to.

LOOMIS: California is projected to lose I believe four seats in the 2030

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LOOMIS: I mean, that's incredible. All of them are going to go to Texas and Florida.

Operationally, Democrats are more conservative than Republicans

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, [00:42:00] and as a former Republican, political activist and media consultant. It is, it just been, it's always stunning to me how conservative that Democrats are and how they do things and how Democrats are far more capitalistic than Republicans are.

Republicans are communalists. They are constantly lifting people up. So like, on, in the Fox news, they will reach down to the most anonymous Twitter poster that they can find and put them on their show. Whereas, if you're the host of a popular left wing podcast or something, They, they don't give a s**t who you are and or you're a popular left wing writer.

They're not they're only going to promote people who are their friends. And this is not a movement mentality and that's why the right is having these wins because they understand that you have like, that solidarity isn't just about the issues. It's about how you treat each [00:43:00] other.

LOOMIS: And I think, I mean, frankly, I think that there's a lot of Democratic leadership types are actually pretty fine with Republican economic policies, right? Like they want lower taxes too. Like they, it doesn't actually hurt them that much as Donald Trump's president. I think that this is this is part of the issue.

I mean, the, it's a bunch of very wealthy Beltway people who control the democratic party. And it's a very, it's, again, it's very insular. I mean, this sort of like. Attempts by certain members of it within the party. Like let's resurrect Rahm Emanuel. It's like, what are we doing here? Like, how was that? What on earth response is that going to be to Donald Trump to resurrect the career of Rahm Emanuel and put it back in charge of the Democratic party it's amazing. But I think a lot of it has to do with if there's one, if there's one group in this country that actually recognizes that's class interests, it's the rich that includes rich Democrats.

SHEFFIELD: It does. Yeah. And there, there is, I mean, essentially neo liberalism is what has sometimes been referred to as [00:44:00] high tax liberalism. That's all it is. That, it's about, it's fine with deregulation. It's fine with centralization of power. It's fine with redistribution of wealth to the upper class.

But with just, a little bit more taxes off the top. That's it. Everything else is the same

LOOMIS: Right, right,

SHEFFIELD: and

That's not going to work.

LOOMIS: and a kind of a social liberalism that, that

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LOOMIS: well with that, right? Like a very, maybe a robust support of say gay rights or abortion rights. Yeah. But, but of that threatens the class interests of the people who are benefiting from these neoliberal policies.

And I mean, I think that in, in no small part, part of what we're dealing with right now is. basically the impact of the neo liberal emptying out of the American working class, right? I mean, well,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.

LOOMIS: and Clinton and Obama explicitly pushed forward policies that undermine the American working class.

So why would American workers support These people who, the [00:45:00] republicans might not do anything for them economically either, but at least they channel their anchors and fears about other things, right? I mean, what did Barack Obama do for the United auto workers?

Right. He forced them to take a horrible deal when he preserved the when he bailed out the auto industry in 2009, right? Like why would, it's very hard to get UAW members to. Be like big time supporters of Democrats because they remember what Barack Obama did for them.

And it's true of Clinton. It's true of Carter. I mean, this is, we have to rebuild a lot that these Democrats,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

LOOMIS: Tore down as well as Republicans tearing it down too. But we expect the Republicans to do this. We shouldn't expect it from our own party.

Economic and social justice need each other to succeed

SHEFFIELD: And here's the other perverse irony is that. They broke the connection between economic and social justice because those two things actually require each other to be protected. And this is something that a lot of them who want these more conservative economic policies that they tell people, well, we can't [00:46:00] have gay rights if we don't, give the Republicans what they want on taxes. But that's not true actually. And what we're seeing with the hollowing out of the class sort of ethic in the Democratic party is it's made the social gains vulnerable. Because now, now, so now Republicans are talking about repealing same sex marriage.

Now we're seeing them, literally banning the teaching of about institutional racism or the history of race, or, talking about gender discrimination and like all of these things that the, you That they did, they stuck their necks out to some degree. I mean, Joe Biden, certainly famously did support same sex marriage before any other major democratic politician did, but all of these gains, they don't mean anything because without that shared sense of everyone should have a [00:47:00] shot, then no one gets a shot except for the people with the money.

LOOMIS: I mean, I think it's really important for people to understand you can't engage, you can't protect people and you can't push forward people's rights if you can't win an election. You have to be able to win. You have to figure out what it takes to win those elections and to build that kind of broad based. broad based coalition that can fight against what Republicans are offering. If you can't do that, then all your policy stuff around trans rights and civil rights and gender issues, none of it's going to win. Like you're going to lose all of it. And that's what we're seeing right now, right?

Look, the white working class has always been vulnerable to racism. This goes back to the 19th century. It's a deep problem with American life and it's a reason why America does not have did not have the kind of radical labor that you saw in much of Europe, right? Because it was divided by race. It's always been an issue.

But what was the one organization that could temper some of [00:48:00] that? What's the one organization that existed in the United States that could convince whites: 'You actually do not have these racial interests, you need to unite across race around class interest?' And that was the labor movement, right.

So why would class Americans have always had a vulnerability to racism? This has been an issue going back to the, going really back to the Irish in the 1820s and 30s who began to embrace whiteness as a way to break into the American economy and American life.

So this has always been an issue. And it's part of the reason why Americans have, people often wonder, especially the left, why doesn't the U. S. not have the kind of the kind of radical working class that that has existed in Europe? And this is a big part of the reason why.

But the point is, even given that there's one institution in American history that's been able to take that anger of, or that, that racism that often existed in the white working class. And tell people, tell their members, look, this is wrong. This is bad. And you're hurting yourself. You need to unite around the issue of class [00:49:00] and go and vote for the party.

That's going to push for the benefit of all workers. And that has been somewhat effective, right? The difference between, and it still is today, right? Union members still vote for Democrats today at very consistent levels, right? Union, Kamala Harris, one union members. The difference is that today, 10 percent of American workers are union, whereas, half a century or more ago, it was 35 or even 40 percent of American workers.

And that's millions of voters right there.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. And yeah, no, and I think that's a very important point because Republicans have been at great pains to try to portray themselves as a working class party. They're just constantly flooding. The internet with that type of messaging. And, it's not true based on the policies that they implement.

And, you look at who the people that are the supposed tribunes of the working class, whether it's Donald Trump, who is a billionaire, who is paying taxes. greatest policy achievement was a tax cut for [00:50:00] billionaires. It's Josh Hawley, who is a wholly owned subsidiary, a subsidiary of Charles Koch.

And all these fake populist people out there who implement policies that are nothing, any more different, any really different from the people that were there before.

LOOMIS: Well, I mean, I think for when you lose the ability and Democrats have done this, when you even Biden would get a very pro union president in his heart. When you lose the ability to channel economic anger, And to talk the language of economic anger, what you do is you open up the, you open the door to cultural anger and Republicans are very good at cultural anger, right?

I mean, take all the WWE stuff or the UFC stuff that has been, that has is this like extremely masculine kind of cultures that may not really be working class, but certainly. Certainly plays working class and really make them their own Democrats again have totally lost the ability to grab on to [00:51:00] any kind of actual working class cultural identity and make it their own, right?

Where is the working class cultural identity in this country that is explicitly connected to some form of liberalism? I mean, other than the union itself, it doesn't exist. Donald Trump is a master of this.

SHEFFIELD: The other thing is that I think Democrats, Democratic operatives They had the assumption that Donald Trump was a weak candidate, but in fact, Donald Trump is a very strong Republican candidate, probably the strongest, well, I mean, objectively, he is the strongest Republican that they have had since, since Ronald Reagan, I mean, he got.

He got the job done for them. And in a way that George W. Bush even could not do, even though he won reelection, the, he has real loyalty to himself and his brand and Democrats, they have consistently under us, look, I mean, the reality is Donald Trump is not a particularly intelligent person.

He, his brain is [00:52:00] clearly in cognitive decline. But nonetheless, he has that salesman approach and he listens to the customer, maybe not to give them what they want, but at least to tell them what they want and to tell them that he's listening.

Campaigns need coherent and simple narratives to win

LOOMIS: Yeah, I mean, that's the lesson Democrats need to take care of, right? You, having a candidate who could articulate a policy is not going to win. Nobody cares. Having a candidate that can articulate your hopes, your dreams, your fears, or your hatreds, that's a win. That's a much more winning approach, right?

And they'd better learn that, right? Some, I don't know, like. The conditions in 2028 are likely to be different, right? So maybe a Josh Shapiro Gretchen Whitmer, some of these people on a fairly deep Democratic bench could win, but if they are going up against somebody, presumably not Donald Trump, but who can continue to channel the kind of Trumpian resentment.

There's a very good chance that while we may think that these people are clowns, that they are in [00:53:00] fact incredibly strong candidates because the everyday low information voter sees them as articulating their again, hopes, dreams, fears, and or hatreds. And if Democrats don't learn that. Then it's going to be very difficult for them to tap into what is a very clear desire for a populist politics in this country.

And populism could go either way, right? Populism can be incredibly reactionary as in Trumpian populism, or it can be channeled for a progressive, for progressive aims as it was in the 1930s. Democrats have to figure out how to manage that. And if they don't, then people that we might think are idiots and clowns, like anybody who's been appointed into the Trump administration, like one of them is probably going to be the candidate in 2028, whether it's a Vance, or another candidate, or Laura Trump, I mean, or Dana White, the head of UFC, like maybe a perfect Republican candidate.

Democrats better figure this out.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And the [00:54:00] cultural politics, it works. Because people, it's easy to make a scapegoat and so like transgender Americans have been, people have been trying to claim that, oh, well, Trump won the election because of fear about transgender people.

And that's probably not true, but it is true that those fears, really were helpful to him. And but so there, there was a poll that was done by you gov. a couple of years ago that asked people, well, so what percentage of Americans do you think are, in various minority groups?

And they asked people, so what percentage of Americans are gay or lesbian? And people said 30%. of Americans were gay or lesbian. And they said that 30 percent of Americans live in New York city or and 30 percent were Jewish and 33 percent were atheists. And then when, if you look at our transgender population, People said 21 percent of Americans are [00:55:00] transgender.

So when Donald Trump is talking about, the evil trans women are going to come in your daughter's bathroom. If you think there's 21 percent of Americans are transgender, like that's, this is behind the fear that these Republicans are using and leveraging. And, the only, the problem is though, you can't you can't remove an idea from people's mind. All you can do is put another one in. You can't fact check your way out of fascism, but what you can do is teach people something different and something better.

LOOMIS: That's a really great way to put it. I mean, Democrats have to figure out who they're going to hate, frankly. And unfortunately because of the ways in which the donor class works Democrats are reluctant to engage in a board over class warfare. I mean, because ultimately what you need is you do need an enemy, right?

People respond to that. And it doesn't mean the enemy needs to be beaten [00:56:00] or killed or have some violence placed on them, the kind of ways in which Republicans talk about. But you need to have somebody to target. Frankly, I mean, FDR

SHEFFIELD: Well, you need to give them an explanation. That's what you need.

LOOMIS: I mean, FDR was

SHEFFIELD: Who did this to you?

LOOMIS: Yeah, right. FDR was perfect about this. It was the corporations. Even though FDR was a super rich guy who had tons of corporate people in his White House, right, who was incredibly pro monopoly, right? I mean, like, FDR's actual

policies were not some kind of crazy populism.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, was how he put it. Malefactors of great wealth. And that was a phrase he used over and over in variations of that. And it worked. And Republicans basically have, to go back to what I was saying they've created the enemy now, which is the deep state and of course the deep state, they never define what that is or what that even means or who's in it or what it does.

They don't have to do any of that stuff. All they tell people is, there's this, group of people that are highly educated, that are non [00:57:00] religious, and they like gay and trans people, and they're out to get you. And we're going to stop them from hurting you. And look, and it's laughable, and it's offensive, but it's effective.

LOOMIS: Well, yeah. And again, Democrats have to figure out how to create effective messaging. I mean, to be honest, like, how do and probably the target needs to be billionaires, right? I mean, like, like there are a group of people out there who are making your lives worse, right? These are billionaires and Donald Trump is the epitome of that, right? Musk and all these other people who are bringing into the administration.

The next four years are going to be billionaires ruling us in ways that are going to hurt a whole lot of people How do you create the messaging to target those people as in fact evil, right as malefactors as FDR said. And that has to be a piece of it, right because again the core issue of organizing and this is And political campaigns are not organizing.

It's [00:58:00] not the same thing. And it's one of the problems the Democratic Party has is conflating those two things. But you have to, but the first rule of organizing is you have to meet people where they are at, not where you are at, where they are at. Democrats have lost that. We don't meet people where they're at.

We assume a set of beliefs. And then if other people aren't part of that or whatever or reject that, then they're stupid or they're racist, or this kind of like these really broad claims that are being made about Trump voters. I mean, so sure. Some Trump voters are racist. I mean, yeah, tell me about it.

Right. But there's these masses of people who were disengaged, who were lightly engaged, who think Trump is funny. Right. Whatever it may be, you have to be able to reach out to those people. You have to meet the work they are at. And if you're not doing that, then you're not engaging in politics.

SHEFFIELD: You're not. And in, in a democratic political system. There will be either [00:59:00] economic populism or cultural populism. And if you don't understand that and you reject that, then you're going to lose. Like it's just that simple. And Trump and Republicans have, there's this entire industry now just kind of bemoaning, Oh, the Republicans vote against their self interest.

And they think that the government doesn't have their interest at all in mind. So they, their economic interests, they don't, they think the whole system is rigged. So that argument is meaningless to them. And so it, because they think that, and it's the same thing true on race, like there was this idea that caught on among a lot of Democrats that, demographics are destiny.

That is what they thought, that black people would always be Democrats, that Hispanic people would always be Democrats, and it's the exact same mistake that they made with blue collar white people. Because what made these [01:00:00] people Democrats was a shared story, was institutions, was a communal memory of who fucked them over and how they stopped it.

LOOMIS: And it shouldn't have taken more than a cursory look at American history to know that these Democrat demographics is destiny line was not going to work out like it's never worked out that way. I'm sorry. Like, like that's what this is. What American history is for is to provide us some lessons about what has worked and what has not worked in the past. Right? About trend history never repeats itself. Right. Don't never say it to a historian, but there are trends in American culture or trends in any nation's culture that we can learn from and try to like make adjustments for. And that's certainly one of them. Like demographics is never destiny.

People aren't going to do what you tell them to do based on a particular set of characteristics that you're giving them, we all know those characteristics are malleable anyway, and we all know that, like, there's an entire field of whiteness studies that demonstrate that, like, what means, what it means to be white changes all the time.

And of course, it's continuing to [01:01:00] change and bringing in all kinds of Latin Americans who are absolutely identifying with white power at this point. And so again the way to manage that is to actually engage in actual populist politics and actually reach out and engage people on the ground where they're at creating institutions, creating reasons for them to be Democrats, to be proud, to be Democrats, to go in streets as Democrats, to and to believe the democratic party is actually going to work for them in a very real way, as opposed to this, like, Oh, we're going to, We're going to engage in a like a slight change to the earned income tax credit, and that's really going to motivate voters.

Like, what are you talking?

SHEFFIELD: No, it isn't. And yeah, and it has, there is this, there's this temptation to think that, well, it's just this one thing. And if we just do this one thing different than we would win. No, it, that's not how it works. Politics is about what you say, how you say it, what you do and how you listen. And if you're not doing all those four [01:02:00] things, then you're going to lose.

It's that simple.

LOOMIS: Yep. Yep. I couldn't agree more.

Conclusion and final thoughts

SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, is there anything you feel like on the subject here that we need to hit on, or do you think

LOOMIS: I think we've covered everything we've covered. I mean, there's always more, but we've covered it pretty heavily. So I think this is if people are listening to 80 minutes of this, God bless them.

SHEFFIELD: Well, hopefully they are. So, and yeah, I know I thought it was a great discussion here. So for people who want to keep up with the stuff you're doing, tell us about your books and social media and websites and

LOOMIS: So, I have a bunch of a few books. And the one that's probably the most well known is called the history of America in 10 strikes. Came out with the new press back in 2018. I have a new book coming out this spring called organizing America 20 stories from our radical past. That the new press is also publishing that will be 20, 20 short biographies of Americans who made change, which I think is really valuable right now in an era where so many liberals feel hopeless.

I'm also very active. I was on Twitter X like everybody else, but [01:03:00] I have made that switch to blue sky. And it's Eric Lubas at blue sky dot social. And you can follow me there. I have daily labor history threads and I write almost every day at the website, lawyers, guns, and money.

SHEFFIELD: Okay, sounds good. Yeah, I think that book, as you said, is going to be a really important one. So I encourage everybody to check that out. All right. Thanks for being here.

LOOMIS: Yep. You bet. Hey, thank you so much for having me.

SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion.

And you can always get more if you go to theoryofchange.show with the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And my thanks especially to everybody who is a paid subscribing member of the show. You are making this possible. Thank you very much for your support. And if you can't afford to subscribe on Patreon or on Substack right now, we do have free options as well, if you want to keep tabs on the show that way. And I encourage everybody to visit Flux.community as well. Thanks very much for your support and I'll see you next time.

Episode Summary

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election was a triumph of political ecosystems and how much better the right has been in the United States at creating a full-scale ecosystem to funnel people into their party, but it also took place within a larger political environment in which many Americans are unsatisfied with the way things are.

For a decades, most Americans have felt that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that the economy is getting worse. But instead of realizing this and doing something about it, rhetorically and in terms of policy, many Democratic leaders have not responded to the discontent.

As I’ve discussed repeatedly over the years, right-wing propaganda plays a huge role in gaslighting Americans for the benefit of Trump and his fellow Republicans, but the situation here is more than that.

While Kamala Harris was able to motivate voters in the 7 main swing states through spending over a billion dollars, outside of those states, Democrats lost millions of voters compared to 2020. In many ways, the election was decided by people who stayed home.

We’re going to talk about all of this and a lot more with our guest Maura Ugarte in this episode. She is a filmmaker and professor of film at George Mason University and is the co-director of a 2012 film called Divide, which told the story of a West Virginia Democrat who was campaigning for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe on Patreon or Substack.

The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Related Content

— The 2024 election was decided by people who disliked both Harris and Trump

— Americans want progressive change, but to be able to deliver it, progressives will need to change first

— Harris’s loss has permanently discredited timid Democratic approaches to the MAGA threat

— Religious fundamentalism’s intellectual collapse powers Trump’s politics of despair

— Bureaucratic obsessions are ruining America’s educational system

— The science behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’

— Elon Musk and his fellow reactionary oligarchs are much more radical than people realize

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

04:55 — Divide, Maura’s film about building left solidarity

07:54 — How left elites fell for JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” fraud

13:21 — Biden’s failure to inform the public of his popular policies

16:12 — Trump’s new voters strategy and the limits of a “protect democracy” message

19:56 — How Democrats missed real suffering

23:26 — The decline of public trust and Trump’s con artist pitch

29:55 — How Ross Perot foreshadowed Trump’s appeal

31:08 — Fascism’s critique of capitalism must be countered

36:51 — The power of solidarity to beat divide and conquer

45:09 — Blaming voters never works to win elections

49:22 — Hopeful messages for the future

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So in this podcast and my writing at Flux, I've been trying to focus on the idea of ecosystems a lot in the response to the election outcome. But one thing I want to make clear. That it's easy to say, and it is absolutely true that right wing media was a huge part of why Donald Trump won.

And also, some people's thoughts about the economy are a huge part as well. Now whether that was because of propaganda, that's another thing. But it's a mistake. It's overly simplistic to think that it was just. Only those two things or, her failure to, do this or that smaller thing, there were some other [00:04:00] bigger dynamics and well, and one of them is that besides the fact that Democrats don't talk to the public, they also don't listen to the public or know what to say, even if they were talking.

MAURA UGARTE: It's, it's funny though, like, in some ways, I felt like Harris was responding to political consultants who were telling her to message in a particular kind of way, which wasn't actually listening either, but like, it was just sort of this This very sort of bulleted point, if I talk about this and that and the other thing, and not talk about this, that, and the other thing, it's a winning message.

SHEFFIELD: And your, you've been kind of thinking about how Democrats could listen and speak better irrespective of platforms to the public for a while. So with the the film that you co-directed as well, let's talk about that just a little bit before we get further into this particular election.

UGARTE: It's funny because the thing came out in like 2012, but it seems to, and it's short. It's like 21 minutes long, and it seems to unfortunately continually be politically relevant. It was about a retired white coal miner in McDowell County, West Virginia, which is right at the Southern-- it's right, right in the most southern county of West Virginia.

It is one of the poorest counties in all of West Virginia. And this man was organizing for Barack Obama.

Film trailer: If we don't do something in this country, the middle class will be eliminated. There'll be two types of people again. There'll be the rich and the poor. Which it's going that way real quick now the way I see it.[00:06:00]

This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen. Senator Obama's support among hardworking Americans white Americans is weakening again. It's a challenge to try to elect a black man that's named Barack Obama. It is. It's a challenge. Two out of ten West Virginia white voters said that race was a factor.

These are Democrats, white working class Democrats who say in a general election, we're not going to go for you. If we're not careful, we're going to be in the back of the bus and they're going to be in the front. Divide and conquer is of course that's an old saying I know and everybody's heard it, but there's a whole lot of truth in that.

UGARTE: And the, the film, we can talk about how the film came about, which I think is actually kind of important, but the film just sort of tracks his organizing efforts, media the mainstream media messages, both from the right wing and also a little bit from liberal media, mainstream media. and then also integrating that with the labor history of the area and try to tell this broader story of why we're, why we're seeing what we're seeing. And the sort of mechanisms of that, think that's what is important. continuing to be relevant.

And I, I have, I, I've unfortunately encountered a lot of liberals who have very retrograde ideas of what it to be from West Virginia or from Appalachia to be a white working class person, I think.

How the center-left fell for JD Vance's "Hillbilly" fraud

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and that's, ironically, that is those, those, uh, [00:08:00] hottie perspectives and opinions. That was actually when Howard, the success of JD Vance's Heelbilly Elegy book because that book, it was It was marketed as being, well, this is an explanation of why these people did this, but actually what it was, it was just this protracted harangue against, these dumb idiots.

They, they they've thrown their lives away on drugs and they're lazy and they won't move away. They should just leave. But instead they want to stay home and be on drugs. And that's why they voted for Trump,

which is not true at all.

UGARTE: I would remind everyone, I was given this book by several people at the time, people that I loved, people that I cared about liberals, right? People of the left, even people to the left of liberals were giving me this book. He was a darling of it was on the New York times bestseller list.

And if you read it, I only made it a partial way through to be, to to be honest, but he's basically blaming white working class people. He's blaming them for their situation. And,

and basically saying the reason why you can't give welfare to these folks is because they will spend it on drugs. doesn't mention the Sacklers. He doesn't mention any kind of structural problems, right? but he was a way for people to somehow understand the Tea Party. I, I, I, it's a bit absurd.

SHEFFIELD: It was, yeah, and, but it, it, it did, it fit, his narrative fit very nicely into the neoliberal conception of, of what being working class in America. And, and like the other thing also is that they, the people who were touting this book, most of whom I assume never read it, uh, [00:10:00] but if they had they clearly didn't understand what the point of it was.

But, but, from. The other, it also perpetuated another problem that really pervades a lot of elite left discourse about people who are blue collar is that they, they, they racialize so much of it when, and what this election in 2024 really showed is that, All these issues are not racial in a lot of ways.

So Donald Trump won Latino men for the first time of Republican had done that in a very long time and did very well with Latino women. And, and got higher margins among black men. And interestingly enough, did not. Do any better among white men. So

UGARTE: I did

SHEFFIELD: that was you know, and you can say well, maybe he's maxed himself out there, but but what that shows is that he actually, he gained some support from these new voters but he also lost a lot of white men supporters, but it didn't matter because he had these other new people Mm

UGARTE: the reason why Michael the co director, Michael Miller, the co director of the film may like we, we decided to make the film was that during the Dem primary in 2008, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and their surrogates were saying that the reason why you have to vote for Hillary Clinton was because white. Working class people would never vote for a black man, which is an inherently racist argument and it like the also working class people are not all It's a big diverse group and it What we've we Felt we were watching was a whole, but once once won the primary, it felt like mainstream senior news editors were sending reporters specifically to Appalachia, but, but also very, very [00:12:00] much to West Virginia, because it, it, it has such a tradition of being blue to find the white. Dem voter who voted Dem for all of their entire lives, who wouldn't vote for Barack Obama because he's a black man, as if all of the racists who are low information and vote against their own interests are located in this one particular state. And that is, that is. It's so upsetting and so offensive and not and I think that thinking is what, what, where, why we find ourselves where we find ourselves.

I should have mentioned prior about McDowell County, West Virginia, is that unlike the rest of West Virginia, it has a 16 year history. least at the time when we were there, I don't know what it's looking like quite now, but like 16 to 17 percent of the population of McDowell County was African American for, for coal mining reasons, like for very specific reasons. And now it is, it, it went they voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and now it is not only red.

It is quite red, that

county.

SHEFFIELD: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Biden's failure to inform the public of his popular policies

SHEFFIELD: And, and one thing about this though, is that with the presidency of Joe Biden, I mean, I think it is, we have to say that it is true that he. Did, do put in a lot of progressive policies. But those policies were, and this is where media does, was a factor, but it wasn't only media.

It's that, so these policies that he put in, a lot of people don't know that they happened. Either they haven't gotten into effect or, like Biden as the president. did the fewest number of press conferences of any recent president by far. So he wasn't out there, telling people what this is, what I have done for you, this is what I did.

And Harris [00:14:00] didn't really do that either. And so to a large extent, it was like they expected, and I kept seeing all these complaints about, well, the mainstream media, they won't report all these things that Biden did. And it's like, well, If the very least she should be saying you're going to expect them to do your, her work for her.

UGARTE: No

SHEFFIELD: that doesn't seem right. Oh, in,

UGARTE: were, like, asking people, like, what messages are they going to respond to, what they're not going to respond to. And clearly, whomever they're paying of dollars and, and I, personally, I'm quite frustrated and probably will be to the end of my days that that the Clintons in 2016 and Hillary and that whole establishment around forced her through because I'm relative, I counterfactuals, whatever, but like, I'm relatively certain that Biden would have won. Easily, based

on the same, yes,

SHEFFIELD: in, in 2016.

UGARTE: stuff that he was talking about in 2020. Yep.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I, I think so. And it definitely would have been better from an energy level, But you know, the other thing also though, is that so this, it was like, they they really did believe that, policies speak for themselves. And so like there was this, this idea and people started calling it deliver, deliver ism or delivery ism the idea that if we deliver policies that are good and helpful to people, they will appreciate that and they will vote for Democrats.

And

UGARTE: Especially because of 2016, right? It's very

frustrating. Well, that,

SHEFFIELD: what do you mean?

UGARTE: that, the denial, like, that because they are, they will receive votes.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it is. It's, it's [00:16:00] very, I mean, frankly, astonishingly naive that people who call themselves political professionals would advance these beliefs quite frankly, and, and I just to look at the numbers here. So,

Trump's new voter strategy and the limits of a "protect democracy" message

SHEFFIELD: I think Democrats haven't figured out that a lot of people are not paying a lot of attention to politics and it makes sense that people decide things on what they see.

And so if you're not there speaking up for yourself. Then then why would they, make up your justifications for themselves? They're not going to do that. And that's especially true with, with, younger people and, and newer voters. And just looking at the, the exit poll data. So, of the 8 percent of people who said that this was the first year they had ever voted, Trump won 56 percent of them and Harris won only 43%.

So That you could argue that was the election right there they were new to the system and Democrats were not there for them in one way or the other. And then of course, now we're going to have to the one, the biggest wild card, of course, in the election is that not all the votes are counted at this juncture, but about 7 million people who voted for Biden did not vote at all and Trump got about the same margin that he earned vote total that he had last time

And so the question is, why? What what's on the minds of those people who stayed home? We don't know that yet but we definitely need to know. But you know if I had to guess I would say that I mean, this was a, a huge record turnout in 2020.

And a lot of that was probably people who were just really mad at how messed up things were under Trump. And they were coming out to be against him. But notably Trump himself also, it massively increased his total from 2016 and 2020, and then he kept it. He had [00:18:00] badly messed up in 2020 and in his presidency, the, the number one task that he was assigned, by fate to accomplish was to handle the pandemic.

Because of his incompetence hundreds of thousands of people died and the economy was destroyed because of him. And so he failed at that. And that did probably is what motivated these people to come out and show up against him. But then come 2024, he had riled up a lot of people to come and support him anyway, despite how bad things were.

And they kept Out there to continue to support like that is the a power of the right wing ecosystem that He had he had messed up so badly As president and then you know was a traitor to the country the only president in history to resist You know leaving the office And he still was able to get people to come out and show up for him.

And then you know, whereas democrats And they kept running on the protect democracy. Trump's a fascist and look, that's all true. All that stuff's right. But that's not something that is going to resonate with a lot of people. That's I think that's what we have to admit.

UGARTE: I think I have a variety of thoughts here. I don't have a polling background like you do. So, I, make films. I talk to people. The professor, I talk to people, but so. this for what it is. But I, I think a lot of folks who voted for Trump understood of the general shape of who he was and were disgusted by him, but did it anyway. And then there were a lot of

people who just didn't, who just was like,

SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah.

UGARTE: I'm not going to vote. And those two categories are gettable voters. And they are both doing a disruption vote.

How Democrats missed real suffering

UGARTE: And, I've been banging this drum for so long [00:20:00] the liberal establishment, seems to be, Quite hubristic.

Like you do need to deliver on the things that you're saying that you're going to do. And while Biden did to a certain extent and did not message enough around those things you still have huge problems. Like, like. Like inner city poverty, like people, places like in DC or in the areas that I live, but like Philadelphia, like all these, like people are really suffering in rural areas.

People are really suffering. And you really do need to deliver some kind of message that you are going to something. But the problem is like. they voted Obama in, it wasn't, it wasn't tactile enough. It wasn't, it wasn't enough

SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, and especially with inflation, like. Democrats did not understand how to respond to that. Like they, so inflation started going up globally after the pandemic as supply chains restarted. And and there was some profiteering and greed as well. And then actually there also was the Donald Trump had explicitly raised gas prices actually right before he left office and, but Democrats didn't tell anybody that this happened that he had done that.

Like, that's what they should have, like, he did it actually before the election that he, he signed a, a deal with Saudi Arabia to raise gas prices. Like to me, I, that's something that everyone should have known about. And, but they didn't. And then But then, irrespective of that, once inflation did start happening going up, they didn't talk about it.

Like I, I looked in the White House press. archives of the, of the Biden administration. And they almost never talked about it in the early months of it going up. And then they took so long and it's not all their fault because obviously Joe Manchin and Kyrsten [00:22:00] Sinema were there ruining things.

But you know, at the very least, if people are ruining things for you, then you should be talking to the public about how these people are causing problems for you. And 'they're doing this to you, not me, they're doing this.' But yeah, so it took like almost a year when I, just short of a year of them to get the inflation reduction act out the door.

UGARTE: Yes.

SHEFFIELD: and they lost all that time and with that. And, and then after inflation started to go down and again, Biden deserves credit for that. A lot of the policies that were in the bill were inflation reduction, like forcing drug companies to take less money for their products, things like that.

So when it started going down, they didn't, let people know that that happened, but then at the same time also didn't understand that people still felt the pain of it. Because even if the prices weren't going up as high as quickly, they were still a lot higher than they were before that.

UGARTE: Like,

Like, there's, we were talking about, like, there's a vaudevillian aspect to Trump and that clownishness like, the Dems have also. Clownish they, they they have not, they talk in one way and then things don't end up happening in the way that they're talking. Like one of the things that was really important to understand about.

The decline of public trust and Trump's con artist pitch

UGARTE: Uh, 2008 was the election was the Iraq war, and that that is still an under discussed issue, particularly in working class communities and particularly in working class rural communities where you, you were sold this idea. And it was an utter disaster.

People lied to you left and right, and a lot of folks just see the system as rigged. voting for Trump or, or just simply not voting I think [00:24:00] that's, that's partly how you account for an Obama Trump voter. It's also how you account for the kind of split tickets that you're seeing in 2024. People just simply don't trust.

And, and, I think that that is a completely reasonable thing to, to feel.

SHEFFIELD: yeah, well, because, I mean, a lot of the people in power did lie to them. And or if they weren't, let's say you don't want to accuse them of lying at the very least, they were so terribly incompetent that they made it hard for people to trust them. There's This narrative that really has taken hold of a lot of people that, Oh, the public health authorities, they were wrong about everything. They lied about everything. They were too, tyrants. And, and these things are not true because, they were explicitly saying all along the way, look, we don't, know what this virus is.

We don't know what it's going to do. So we're putting these precautions in here as a matter of, just because it could be a lot worse and we don't know. And also it was Trump who did these things, not, not Joe Biden. And that, that's, that's something that the Trump supporters just kind of casually threw out and pretend didn't, wasn't there.

But you know, they were, they've been very good at creating this story of the pandemic that is favorable to their ideology. And There is no counter story to that that is more factual based from the other side. At least I haven't seen it. Have you? Mm

UGARTE: should be, in a sense, that like, the, some aspects of the institutions did fail us and even, like, the mistrust there, that is a failure. Of of our liberal democracy, right?

and,

SHEFFIELD: hmm.

UGARTE: I, I have particular interventions other than listening actually, when, when are telling, [00:26:00] telling people what the issues are. I, I think that is It's something that apparently we're in the, the DEM establishment is incapable of doing.

SHEFFIELD: They seem to be. And, and yeah, and I, the, the paradox is that, the Democrats, Aspire to be the party of the people, but they actually never listened to the people and have no idea what they're saying. And, the only real method of them trying to know or pay attention is through polling or focus groups, yeah. And I say this as somebody who is a former pollster myself that there are severe restrictions on what you can know from the public through polling even if all your methods are sound and all the, your sample group is, is Reliable. It's, it, it's a formal setting and it's, you're, you're asking people to understand the question the way that you have worded it and expecting that they will understand it the same way.

And, and you're in many cases, these are just multiple choice answers. And maybe somebody has a different answer for what this question would be. And, and, and then the focus groups are also problematic as well, because it's just so easy to skew these focus groups because a lot of times people are just going to sit there and echo whatever the loudest person in the room says, or the person who can talk the most says.

UGARTE: Democrats really seem to lack imagination, right? Our, like, the policy platforms of the Democratic Party should be aspirational. They should, need to have, we need to have not poll driven politics. platforms. We actually need to be able to shape to have an imagination, to shape a politics is broadly focused on liberation.

That's really important. That I think is what we should be doing and having poll, [00:28:00] polling, just as you said, like where you're, you're not really quite able to extricate bias from the way that you're asking the questions and who you're asking them from. Like that stuff, of course, is important, but it shouldn't be in the driver's seat. We should be

able to

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

UGARTE: a

politics.

SHEFFIELD: Well, and you were ex Yeah. And you're expecting also people to understand how to articulate what it is that they're thinking. Like that's, that can be extremely problematic because, and, and that's why I think the talk radio and podcasts it, besides being really great for pro, propaganda purposes of disseminating the, the right wing messages, they're also very good at helping them understand.

You know what the audience wants what motivates people and what they're thinking about So whether that's people calling in and saying what's on their mind or just simply them elevating particular hosts or or or Creators who are who are talking about certain issues. So maybe they they can't articulate What their beliefs are about something but they they really like this one guy who he tells it like it is about You know these four or five things And you know that those are those are real You I much more reliable barometers of opinion, I think

UGARTE: I

SHEFFIELD: or at least additional ones.

UGARTE: like, a figure like Bernie Sanders in 2016 was able to focus energy, was like able to focus people's discontent, was able to focus it into a real political movement. And I think, I guess we're hoping for someone to rise to the top now, but it seems to me after this last election, no Superman is coming to save us.

SHEFFIELD: Doesn't seem likely now at this point. And yeah, and,

How Ross Perot foreshadowed Trump's appeal

SHEFFIELD: and like with Sanders though typically in the past [00:30:00] when a politician had come along and kind of created a new movement, usually what the parties had done in the past was to say, okay, well, I'm going to identify what the things were that that person was talking about.

Then we're going to, Take them over those issues and incorporate them into our thing or their way of talking about things. So like Ross Perot is a great example of that, that Republicans hadn't talked about, national debt or trade. And Donald Trump in a lot of ways actually kind of absorbed a lot of the Perot message.

And the bluster and the showmanship like it was right there in front of us that you could see that a lot of people wanted this You know straight talking billionaire who tells it like it is and wants to keep the foreigners out like that was a that was a thing there and and you can't just The the problem that democrats have and and there was a great piece that that we've been talking about amongst ourselves about how There's this, economic think way of thinking and it's sort of almost completely paralyzed democratic establishment that, and it's a, it's a manifestation of neoliberalism, largely this, this idea that everything is about economics.

Fascism's critique of capitalism

SHEFFIELD: And you have a personal familial background to this topic here, because, the unpleasant reality is that fascism has a very effective critique of capitalism. And you have seen that and your relatives have seen that.

UGARTE: and I also, I'm like just to contextualize some of the other things that we've been talking about. I, I also have a personal relationship with West Virginia and I also grew up in mid Missouri, so I have these like rural roots, but yeah, my, my grandparents are. what I would describe as self exiles from the Spanish Civil War. My, my great grandfather was a governor in the, in the Second Republic, which was, so Spain has a very short history of democracy. This is, it's been its longest run, which is about 45 years or so. And yet my great grandfather was death marched across [00:32:00] parts of Spain and my beloved grand uncle spent a significant part of his life in exile, and, my, my grandparents suffered pretty significant health mental health challenges and that stuff kind of all rolls downhill. So for me, the stakes feel particularly high, but if you look at Spain you did have extremely polarized society. You, you can't have dear leader without. a huge portion of the, of the citizenry that support it. This is, this is quite dangerous. It's very dangerous. And I'm not trying to be histrionic here about, I'm not saying that that's what we're about to face here.

I, I just think that the stakes are high.

SHEFFIELD: Hmm. Well, they are. And and the, the, the critique though of, of fascism, of capitalism, what it, what it does is it, it's very eager and willing to point out how, some people are economically left behind but it also does fit to kind of the more, emotional and psychological problems with capitalism as well.

and it's absolutely the case, you know, economics. is not a way of living. We are not economic beings as humans. We are much more than that. And if you have a party that only can speak in economic terms and only thinks in economic terms about efficiency and about maximizing benefits and utilitarianism, like that's just crap to a lot of people.

Like it's and look and I love talking about those things But this is the reality that we live in, and like we're seeing you know I mean like the the commodification for instance of of dating, you know through that, it used to be it was a very organic thing that people met people through their friends or through community associations [00:34:00] or groups or religious organizations, whatever it is It was very localized.

It was non commercialized And it worked pretty well for a lot of people. And now dating has been completely centralized, corporatized. And it's just disgusting to a lot of people. And this is just one area.

UGARTE: said, I think Vance actually talks about these kinds of issues quite well, and he, he talks about, like, what, you're gonna give away your humanity for some plastic stuff from Amazon, right, but then his, of course, answer is blood and soil. That, that, that is how you, that is, you

you just

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm.

UGARTE: a group of people who have no power and march forward, like, no matter, no matter the consequences to, to certain, certain categories of people's lives, they're, they're fine to be eradicated. I was listening

to this interview with this guy who leads the Manhattan Institute or some right wing think tank. But he gets published in, big mainstream publications, blah, blah, blah, interviewed, widely quoted. And he said that what he really wants us to do as a country is invest heavily in prisons. That is his Intervention. Yes. And, and, like I said, he, he is well paid, he is, leads a major think tank, publishes papers that then, trickle down, or trickle up, I guess, into, into the the political discourse and he said it so easily, so smoothly this stuff is.

Bad.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah,

UGARTE: Bad.

SHEFFIELD: it is. and yet, like, again, because there is, there is not a media platform ecosystem, there's not a [00:36:00] communications platform. Understanding and then there's no appreciation for, the psychology or the and I don't, I don't want to use the word spirituality, but in some sense you could say just the emotional wellbeing that people are feeling.

And it is a paradox because like Republicans basically declared war on reality beginning in about the 1950s with William F. Buckley and these, reactionary figures who came in and took over the party. Like the problem with trying to defend reality is When you've got people who, when you've got a system that does suck for a lot of people and people are hurting, they're unemployed, they're, they don't have friendships, they don't have relationships, they don't have things that they want and should have as humans.

And we can't turn around and say, Oh, everything's fine.

The power of solidarity to beat "divide and conquer"

UGARTE: One of the things that I learned specifically making the movie Divide was how unions were such a central part of telling the story. So, so many folks. belong to unions and this is where labor history was taught and passed down and these ideas of solidarity and these ideas of like this solidarity is the only way out. Like this is, this is how we build movements. This is how we win against, the wealthy elites.

And we, and that story, labor history in the United States, which is so robust and amazing, it's not taught in schools, right? So it was the one place where it was. And then also in the military, right.

In terms of diversity, not, and not in terms of solid. Well, yeah, I guess it's a separate. Type of solidarity kind of message, but that diversity is our strength. And like, like coming together, like, these are very important institutions for telling the story of how we make everything better for the majority of people. And we don't, [00:38:00] don't have that now because the right has exploded it. The there is no society, like the And Reagan and all, all of that stuff. So I think that's also a part of, we're talking about media ecosystem, but it's also, I think that's also a very important part to discuss.

And I think that's also one of the reasons why higher ed is under such pressure right now, because it's, it's one of the last places where even any kind of story is being told about that, even though that's not what the main story is.

SHEFFIELD: The value that unions did provide to a lot of people who were never going to get formal education. And even to ones who did, like, again, like a lot of colleges, most colleges, I'd never heard of colleges that have a requirement to learn about these things, which I think they should.

UGARTE: right?

SHEFFIELD: But you know, like, You might yeah, you might at least see some of it. And yeah, like, but even unions, as they were became more beleaguered and under attack by the government from Republicans and also some Democrats as well. We have to say that that they, they focused all of their resources purely on survival and not enough on, on trying to, Expand because if you if you can't bring in new members, then you're not going to Whatever is happening to you on the economic side.

That's you're you won't have any hope of getting new Organizations new businesses to unionize like you have to spend on this and and they stopped to a large degree and but I mean ultimately the like what you were saying the idea of solidarity like That's that is the message that has to be understood and it's the only full You Full spectrum critique and response to capitalism in a way that is empowering of everyone.

Because I mean, ultimately, and it's such a simple strategy when you think about it, divide and conquer really is all that they're doing. [00:40:00] But. It's very effective. Yeah. And I mean, so, and like, the idea, I mean, and you talked about it in the film also, like with, with the mining companies, like how they use divide and conquer with specific demographic groups.

You want to talk about that?

UGARTE: Sure. Yeah. Um, they did it very specifically, very knowingly. So it's called the judicious mixture. So they would recruit miners directly off of Ellis Island, people who did not speak English. And they wanted, a third of their workforce, people who, who were immigrants who did not speak English.

They wanted a third of their workforce in this, this particular area to be black Americans who are coming up from the South, West Virginia was a free state and so could potentially like in one's imagination offer a little bit of a little marginally more security than some of the places in the Jim Crow South, but whether that was true or not, um, debatable. And then they also wanted a third of their workforce to be what they called native whites. So people from the mountains and they thought that that inherent mixture, that third, third, third would, never allow for organizing to happen, right? You have people who have vastly, not only different contexts, but also, different, Needs and different stakes.

And they thought like this would make enough conflict that they wouldn't be able to organize. But the thing, but stakes were so high. Everything was so horrible people were dying left and right. That they were able to. to organize a union. And, you know, John Sayles, described some of this, um, in the film, Matewan that happened in a neighboring county to McDowell County. And like I said, like, these are very simple kinds of things. But when, after the election, I, I am going on to [00:42:00] Twitter or I'm, I'm watching TV news or whatever. And people are saying, F around and find out Latinos, like and people are saying, Oh, like to the, Uncommitted voters like, well, if, uh, I'll be, um, drinking tea while you're getting deported and schadenfreude is a thing like this is playing.

Well, not only is that Trumpist, but it's also playing into this divide idea. I, I really wish if I had a wand and I could wave it around, I, I w I would want, middle class. I think it's important for us liberals to understand that they are part of a third of people, right, that they have choices here, and othering people who maybe, maybe we have very different ideas about what an egalitarian society would look like, but othering people like that is playing directly into the hands of our own people. Or overlords, to put it in a, in an exaggerated way.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's also, it is, it absolutely is doing that and you're making the job easier for them because yeah, like the goal is to get, is to pit the pit people against each other. So, and it's, and it's, and it's so hilarious because they often use, try to say that the Democrats engage in identity politics, quote unquote.

But the reality is. That is exactly what they do. Their entire operations are based on identity and, getting people to elevate, so whether whatever identity that they. You know are in favor of so like they offer to black Americans. They tell them well you Actually are a christian more like that's what you really identify as and you should accept our identity of christian, we're the christian nationalist party.

So if you're a christian you should We've [00:44:00] a long go along with this. And and, and so they just, they just offer different facets of, of their identity politics to people. And and, and, and the idea of solidarity and intersectionality, those, those are, those have got to be the, the only, those are, are the only ways that we can get around these things because our differences will always be there.

But. They aren't all that we are. And I think that that's that's the message that I think a lot of people have struggled to get.

UGARTE: Yes.

SHEFFIELD: right wants you to struggle with that. They want you to think that, that you're better than somebody else who thinks differently.

UGARTE: encountered so many liberals who think that, they are, right? Better, better than the people that I, I, I came from. And And the whole idea of flyover country, like all of this, all of this it's, it's absolutely like, like you, you are playing into the broader tool to disenfranchise yourself when you do that. And I, I,

I,

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm.

Blaming voters never works to win elections

UGARTE: The other, yeah, the other day I was talking to someone and they said that The, the reason why, actually it happened twice, the reason why Harris lost was because she's a woman or a black woman and, okay, that is a reason. is not the reason, right? that is a, a very important distinction, I think.

SHEFFIELD: It is. Yeah. And, and like, if that's going to be all the analysis that you're going to do, then nothing is possible because that's, these are thought terminating cliches actually is what they are. Like This is the system that we have, you're not going to magically get another one. So you have to learn how to operate [00:46:00] within it.

Like I, I will hear people complain about the electoral college and look and it's, it is unfair. It's not it's not fair to the vast majority of America that basically only the people in seven states, their votes really are the only ones who matter. That sucks and it's not fair, but This is.

how it is. And, and if you, and the only way that that changes is if you use the system to change the system. And like that ultimately is, what the institutional and organizational power of Republicans is based on. They knew what the rules were and they organized their ideas around them. And, Democrats, I think.

So the public supports our, the public supports left wing ideas more than right wing ideas, but that doesn't mean you don't have to do the work. That doesn't mean that you can, you don't have to talk to them. That doesn't mean that you don't have to create media for them. That doesn't mean that you, you're not, you're going to not bother educating them.

Like these things, politics is the art of the possible, but you make things possible. You can't wave a magic wand and say, Oh, look, we got better policies that you should vote for us. Otherwise, you're a dumb moron.

UGARTE: and

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm.

UGARTE: Spain became a fascist dictatorship for 40 ish years, depending on how, when you want to put the end of, of Francoism is internecine People couldn't get it together, um, create a popular, popular front. And they tried to at first it, they couldn't. And like I said, it's not the reason it's just one, one very important one. When Franco. One, a huge portion of the population was in concentration, civilians were [00:48:00] in concentration camps, people were being, tortured and murdered and like, it, it was an utter disaster. So don't you think that, like, it would have been better for the communists and anarchists to get along, like, in terms of that, like, and that, that, those stakes, again are very, very different than what we're facing right now, but I'm just saying, like, why can't we figure this out

here? And, and

it's going to take the

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

UGARTE: to figure it out.

SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, if you really,

UGARTE: already understands

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

UGARTE: which is

one of the reasons why so many of

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm.

UGARTE: Trump, they were like, okay, he, he seems to be like, at least blowing things up. So blowing

things up is a better option

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm.

UGARTE: quo and telling everybody the

status quo is fine.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

UGARTE: And then

asking, don't get it.

Like

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Create it. Yeah.

UGARTE: not.

SHEFFIELD: Creating a system where the only people who can get a good job are people with postgraduate degrees. And then tell people, Hey, that's just how it is. It's a great system. And you don't want them to be upset about that. Like, you have another thing coming.

Hopeful messages for the future

SHEFFIELD: So we're coming up on the hour here. So, and then you got a hard out here. So, but there is one thing hopeful thing actually for the future which I think is. Great to end on here. So, tell, tell me what you mean by that.

UGARTE: know,

The, there's a phrase in Spanish in a political sense, Seguimos Adelante. We continue forward, right? It's, and that I think is a particularly important message that we need to take right now because things feel pretty bleak and it's not like no pasarán and like si se puede, like those, those [00:50:00] phrases aren't, aren't for us right now. But we, is essential we understand, we look back to the, to the history of movements for justice and liberation and see how many times folks have won in almost miraculous circumstances. Like in Spain, it was a miraculous thing that that they got a democracy. And it's very, very important that we. We, we, we, we need to do that. No matter what I think

SHEFFIELD: button. Yeah, it, it, I think that's right. And it's easy to think it's, that the world is ending and everything is horrible and everything is awful. But that's having that mentality is the way to make sure that that happens.

UGARTE: to stand firmly and understand, and I say this to people sometimes and people are like, look at me like glassy eyed, like, what are you talking about? But it is actually a thing like the, how we were talking about a third, people, people participating in their own divide and conquer. Also participate in your own political demise when you have no hope. So, so it is

SHEFFIELD: You do.

UGARTE: much,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

UGARTE: I'm very pessimistic, so I'm not saying, but like, but but I am going to be marching forward, i, I, it's going to be, these next four years are going to be very challenging to put it mildly for some more than others.

And it's just going to be incredibly important to steel ourselves, particularly in the next, month and a half or whatever. We need to really be thinking

about that, I think.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I think so. [00:52:00] Yeah. The goal is to, is to make people feel bad and withdraw and to give up. And that is the, is the, is the one thing you can do the most that helps them win. And so,

UGARTE: thing.

SHEFFIELD: And and the good thing is, yeah.

UGARTE: or writing

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

UGARTE: or whatever. That is

a, that is something that you literally

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that is absolutely right. Yeah. All right. Well, so Mara for people who want to Keep up with your things on social media or the internet. What are your recommendations for them?

UGARTE: Well, my film is very short, 21 minutes, and you can get it at dividethemovie.com.

SHEFFIELD: Oh, we'll have the link to it.

UGARTE: I also have a film called Uncensored about journalists experiencing violence in Colombia. And then I have a film about Spain's transition to democracy, but like that's in progress. So, I have a mailing list.

So people, like you said, you're going to sign up. You're going to have a link so I can put a link in so people can, if they're interested in about that.

SHEFFIELD: Great. Well, it's been a great conversation and we will keep having this conversation in the months to come.

UGARTE: I hope so.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

All right. So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion and you can always get more. If you go to theoryofchange.show, you can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes, and if you are a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support, you can support the show on Patreon or on Substack.

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I'd love to talk to them. I'm always interested in new guests or being on somebody else's show. So thank you very much, and I'll see you next time.

In this final episode of the season, I have a casual and meaningful conversation with a friend: essayist and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Leta McCollough Seletzky. Leta joins me to discuss the impact Black women had on this election, on Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, and we explore how the campaign affected us personally. We also discuss how the country's treatment of marginalized people, particularly Black women, is a bellwether for anti-democratic trends.

This episode was made possible with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation through URL Media.

The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

KFF.org Report: Loneliness and Social Support Networks: Findings from the KFF Survey of Racism, Discrimination and Health

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Episode Summary

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson ending a national right to terminate a pregnancy came as an abrupt shock to millions of Americans. But if you had been paying attention beforehand, the verdict was no surprise at all.

In fact, the repeal of Roe v. Wade was the culmination of a successful strategy that began in the 1970s to flood the American legal system with activist judges who would impose their viewpoints that were so radical that congressional Republicans didn’t even dare to try to enact them legislatively.

As outrageous as the court’s recent rulings have been, what is perhaps even more outrageous is that the right-wing takeover of the judicial system took place almost entirely in full public view, as organizations like the Federalist Society and other deceptively named groups worked together to launder extremist viewpoints and disperse millions of dollars to everyone from law students to Supreme Court justices. It’s yet another instance where the sprawling Republican political ecosystem has overpowered neutral institutions with little resistance.

David Brock, founder of Media Matters, is our guest in today’s episode and he lays out how this all happened in his new book, Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America.

Can anything be done about this dreadful situation? We discussed that as well. I hope you’ll enjoy. And if you get a chance, please do share this episode on social media to help spread the word.

The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Related Content

—Democrats failed to create an advocacy ecosystem, Kamala Harris suffered for it

—Trump’s re-election has permanently discredited timid Democrats’ approach to MAGA threat

—Liberal law professors created a ludicrous cult of constitutional law while far-right Republicans were seizing control of the judiciary

—Former Trump lawyer John Eastman says Satan is behind legal attempts to hold him accountable

—Christian supremacists openly speaking about how they’ll use Supreme Court to install theocracy

—The judicial system is rigged and it’s time Democrats told the public about it

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

03:55 — The role of money in judicial campaigns

04:48 — The Powell memo and its impact

08:23 — The rise of false balance in media

18:55 — The Christian Right legal movement's overwhelming Roman Catholic dominance

26:24 — How the 1987 failed Robert Bork nomination was the catalyst for the Federalist Society

33:33 — Why the current SCOTUS is “the Clarence Thomas Court”

37:46 — Liberal leaders and donors have done very little to counteract the right's legal juggernaut

44:47 — Brock’s personal relationship to the right-wing judicial takeover

50:49 — Proposals for Supreme Court reform

54:13 — The importance of media and institutions

01:00:01 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: I was saying before we recorded that it's a bit surreal for us to be talking [00:02:00] because the old me and the old you would have never imagined talking to evil apostates from the right that we both ended up being. But your book that we're going to be talking about here today, it is a really good illustration of how the right uses institutions to change politics, whereas the left uses institutions to make change, and the right is so focused on doing that from an institutional level and financial level. And your book just lays it all out there.

DAVID BROCK: Yeah, absolutely. Beginning with a memo that Lewis Powell wrote before he went on the Supreme Court laying out what they want to achieve and then money moved.

And you had a group like the Federalist Society, which was founded by three conservative law students that was founded as basically a debating society that over time became incredibly [00:03:00] powerful validator for-- essentially you needed their imprimatur to get a federal judicial nomination or in the George W. Bush administration, certainly any high-level executive branch positions. And they were able to do this having a sort of public facade of debating society, and then a kind of stealth operation where they were highly ideological, but people could be, appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a confirmation hearing and say that the parallel society, they didn't even know it had an ideology and so they could deny it and get away with it.

And so this was a very persistent group of people that, from the outside, if you don't admire the results, you can admire the steadfastness. And the focus and the money. Money was critical. Once Citizens United came down, the Federalist [00:04:00] Society coffers on the dark money side exploded. Leonard Leo, who runs the Federalist Society formed additional groups adjunct adjacent to the Federalist Society that took in tens of millions of dollars in dark money for these judicial campaigns. I calculated that in the last 10 years, The Federalist Society and its affiliates spent 750 million on these campaigns.

But when you look at it, that's a lot of money, but when you look at it, when you look at the benefit they've gotten, not only on the social conservative side, but on the big business side, the decisions that have been favorable to corporate interests, which fund the Federalist Society groups that's got to be in the billions of dollars.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it really is. these amounts that they put in were just down payments. That's really what they were. And yeah, but I guess before we get too far into that, though, let's, [00:05:00] can we circle back, though, just to the Lewis Powell memo and who he was for people. So for people who are not aware of who he was and the critical role that he played in cementing both this information as the Republican political strategy and then also their interest in the court.

BROCK: Yes. So he was a member of the chamber of commerce assigned essentially by the chamber to write a memo about how the Republican right could organize itself to fight what they saw as liberal dominance across the institutions of the country, which included universities media and the judiciary.

And Powell. Basically put into writing that they needed a concerted effort over many years and devote many millions of dollars to thwarting [00:06:00] this liberal threat. And it would be done by building institutions of their own that would eventually. Change the political discussion in the country and to the favor of the right.

And so this was, the theory was you could fund think tanks, you could fund academic institutions scholarships you could fund alternative media and you could fund, Organizations like the Federalist Society, which didn't exist at the time, but came to exist to exert pressure on the judiciary and to put their own folks into the positions of power.

And so this was a long-term plan. He warned that it was going to require years of work. And shortly after writing the memo. He was appointed by Richard Nixon to the Supreme Court where he was basically a pragmatic pro-business [00:07:00] conservative. But for my story and in my book, what matters is he was a trailblazer in loosening the campaign finance rules.

And on the court, he was essentially able to through the, through their decisions to enable a lot of money to flow into these conservative outfits.

SHEFFIELD: and you mentioned it only slightly, but he also Powell was a lawyer for big tobacco for tobacco companies. And they were the originators of this idea of, so there's a debate between two sides here. We have to end that the media have to cover it. These claims made by any side. Even if they're, there's no evidence for them. And the research for tobacco causing cancer, that was, pretty definitive very early on, but it took decades to overcome. This this sort of both sides framework that had been built up [00:08:00] by Powell and in many ways, I think it was like a hack of the liberal epistemology, the idea of, there's that saying that sometimes attributed to Will Rogers that a liberal is someone so broad minded that he won't take his own side in an argument and I think that's what the both sides, it's a hack of that mindset.

I don't know. What do you think?

BROCK: Yeah. No, I think that's right.

The rise of false balance in media

BROCK: And certainly this notion of false or phony balance that the right Has successfully perpetrated, has done an awful lot of damage to the discourse. And but it's been a very effective tool for them to inject what essentially is conservative or right-wing propaganda into the debate where you've got.

99 percent of scientific consensus on an issue and 1 percent funded by the coal industry, and then you've got them on cable television, you've got a climate scientist, and then you've got a right wing [00:09:00] spokesperson and they're presented as. There are arguments having equal weight.

And that that is consistent through a lot of different issues that the media deals with. And we're still dealing with that today.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And with these institutions, though, It was an interesting, the palomino was interesting to see in retrospect because I think it does capture the right wing sensibility that, you know, that they are this sort of aggrieved minority or silent majority, depending on how they, who's talking and who they're talking to. But they have this sense that everyone's out to get them, that nobody agrees with them, but their ideas are still true, even though they're not provable and not demonstrable. And so they create these institutions because they feel like their ideas are not taken seriously. And of course, the reason they're not taken seriously is that they're not very good ideas. They're not, [00:10:00] if you want to say that let's say, That that there's no genetic component to homosexuality or, that it's all, Satan. If you want to believe that you're obviously free to, but it's nonsense. And, you're going to say the earth is 6, 000 years old or that just any of these variety of things, that was really what they're trying to do in many ways.

And where the tax cuts increase revenue, like there's just, it's complete nonsense what they're saying. But to a large degree, I think that, so they weren't wrong that these, that, let's societal neutral institutions were against them. But people on the left never adequately understood that if you've got people who have created this network dedicated to destroying institutions, maybe you should do something to save them and to, or at least, get them to defend themselves. [00:11:00]

BROCK: there are some ideas that are valid and there are some that are not. And you get equal time for the ones that are not in this, this paradigm that comes largely out of if you look back on it was intentional effort really to the, right use the argument of balance to get a foothold into the mainstream media.

It's how they first got for example, right when calmness published in mainstream publications and then Further to that into the mainstream cable conversations. And so it's been it was effective argument, and it was the, obviously the first iteration of Fox was fair and balanced, which, played on this notion.

They've [00:12:00] shed that now as more and more people, I think, have, come to the conclusion that at least. People who are not watching it that it's right wing, Republican Party

SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah, they've decided to embrace that. Especially as they face more competition from the even further right. pretending that you're a centrist. When you're just bleeding viewers to Newsmax or Right Side Broadcasting or any of these other ones, like that's not a good business proposition anymore.

BROCK: Yeah, no, it's been, it's, demonstrable that there have been times now where you can definitely chart. That Fox takes out one position and Newsmax is further to the right and then Fox changes its programming to be in concert with Newsmax, so they don't lose a rating share. Absolutely true.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And obviously most [00:13:00] prominently with the 2020 election that, they had originally stood by their, accurate projection that Joe Biden was going to win Arizona. And then and that the election wasn't stolen, that there was no evidence where they actually said that for, some time, or at the very least we're not promoting. Most of their people were not promoting these absurd things that Sean Hannity or something that we're talking about as the court record showed also, they didn't believe it. They didn't think it was real. and it's, but this is this whole idea of pushing this truth through power rather than knowledge that's ultimately. What I think this book and a lot of your other books are about is that if you don't have to be able to prove what you believe as long as you can force society to be governed by it.

BROCK: Yeah. and it's a very results-oriented approach. And this was [00:14:00] one of the fundamental reasons that I broke with the right was not over an issue like supply side economics doesn't work. It was real more about the integrity of the work and the conversation and the complicity that I felt for my own self being involved with what was basically even then what it took to succeed was lying. And that you did that for ratings, and you did that for an audience. And of course it’s far worse today because of the internet. But yeah, no, I agree that they have no they have disregard for any sense of truth in what they're saying.

And in fact, the opposite, that it gets rewarded.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And that's why Trump, I, [00:15:00] even now, nine years after the guy came onto the scene, you're still seeing essays from, clueless liberals and centrists saying, gosh, I can't believe. That, that these evangelicals and, hardcore Christians like someone who's such a liar. And it's actually the whole movement was built on lies long before Trump, like he's just, he just does it better.

BROCK: Yeah, there's still a really fairly large body of commentators in the middle and on the left. You still can't, still haven't come to terms with Trump. And that's the group that can't believe that the election is as close as it is because they just can't fathom that there's 48 percent or so of the country that is that is enthralled by Trump or because of tribal loyalty is just [00:16:00] following along the Republican line.

But yeah, and it's, inhibited a response to Trump because a lack of understanding, understanding it as the first. The first step toward trying to work against it. And so I think that some of the some of the never Trump groups are a little somewhat better at this, I think, because they understand the right somewhat more than, the mainstream or liberal commentators do.

But yeah, there's definitely a, there's definitely a deficit of, the appreciation for how much. That how much groundwork was already laid and how much of a foundation there was already built for what Trump brought along and brought out certain segment of the electorate.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. and there, there's a, there's an essay from George Orwell where he talks about his [00:17:00] fellow, midcentury, or I guess early 20th century author H. G. Wells. Did you ever, have you ever seen that? It's a really fascinating piece. I can send it to you if you have it.

BROCK: Sure.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so basically, what, HG Wells was a pacifist socialist, and he kept writing all these things saying, Oh, Hitler is going to lose. No one likes him. He's, He called him a quote, streaming little defective in Berlin and that everything was just going to collapse. He couldn't invade anyone.

And of course that was completely wrong. And Orwell he said, let me just pull it up here. He said that that Wells couldn't understand any of what was going on because he belonged to a different century. were creatures out of the Dark Age that have come marching into the present, and the people who have shown the best [00:18:00] understanding of fascism are either those who have suffered under it, For those who have a fascist streak in themselves,

BROCK: Huh. Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: And I think that's 100 percent right about an understanding Trump that if your ideas and your constitution is so totally different from him, you should listen to people who actually understand how it works and why it works.

BROCK: Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think we agree with that as well. And that's why there's. There's always some value in defectors.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All so just going back to the book here. all this got started during the Nixon years, of course, and one thing that you do. Develop also is some of the religious acts aspects of this and in a lot of reporting in media about right wing religion tends to focus on evangelicals.

The Christian Right legal movement's overwhelming Roman Catholic dominance

SHEFFIELD: But there's no question that it was right far right [00:19:00] Catholics who have remade the Supreme Court in their own image, rather than evangelicals. Now, you

BROCK: that's right.

Leonard Leo, who I mentioned as the head of the Federalist Society for many years, is also a member of a extreme sect of the Catholic Church called Opus Dei, which basically preaches that you bring your religious beliefs into your daily professional life. And so to an extent for Leonard Leo, this is a religious, the abortion issue is a religious crusade.

And what he was able to do was fuse the Catholic and the evangelical religious folks with the big business interests.

And that's how basically you got both Roe overturned, but you got all these business friendly decisions rendered by the high court. And [00:20:00] that was intentional and it was a good for them.

Anyway, it made sense and was a good strategy. The problem is that if we, went down the a hundred percent, the path of Leonard Leo, we'd be in a theocracy. And so you see this in in some of the jurisprudence, for example, of Gorsuch where the right has invented this notion of religious liberty to fritter away separation of church and state and to also on, on LGBT issues issue contrary rulings on the basis of this, notion of religious liberty and so you do see, he's a lapsed Catholic but the others are the others are, current in their faith from,

SHEFFIELD: I'm sorry, you said, who, isn't lapsed

BROCK: Gorsuch is a lapsed Catholic.

He went to the same Catholic school as Cavanaugh, [00:21:00] but he's, I believe, he's not a Catholic at the moment. He converted.

SHEFFIELD: I think he's Lutheran

BROCK: Yes, something like that. but there's definitely a

Strong religious, there are Opus Dei lieutenants of Leonard Leo

working in these groups, and so there's definitely a

theme that runs through it that is resisted in discussions by the media and by Democrats the whole theme is resisted on the basis of not wanting to be accused of religious bigotry.

But the beliefs are there.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, okay, so you mentioned that their peculiar view of religious liberty, but let's actually dig into that. What, do you mean by that? It is a complete perversion of the traditional meaning of religious freedom and it's important, I think, for people to understand that this is, now the dominant viewpoint on the right.

And the

BROCK: [00:22:00] one of the things I show in the

sort of history of the Federalist Society is that

they,

they are not just responsible for judges getting on the bench that's just the tip of the iceberg but there's a whole

system a kind of conveyor belt

of each step of the way As you get to these decisions, the Federalist Society funding things and so funding elements.

So the first is funding scholars in universities who come up with various theories that are on the edge or outside the box, whatever you want to call them, unconventional right wing theories. And these ideological hot houses come up with the theories. And then the next step is that, they

they fund plaintiffs to bring these cases. And They, find the plaintiffs and they through other right wing [00:23:00] organizations essentially get them money. And so the, that's a second A second step. And then the third step is they, what they call amicus briefs friend of the court briefs are briefs brought by organizations or entities that are not party to the to the lawsuits and, but they're influential, the judges and the justices read them and taken them into account.

what ends up happening. Is in these cases, if you look at the people who are filing the friend of the court briefs they're almost universally. Other organizations that receive money from the organized right. If not Leo directly than other donors. And so there's a, so by the time you get to the justices you have a, fully baked process by which, then you have a decision and, so to [00:24:00] circle back the this religious freedom is one of the things that would have come out of one of these Ideological attached to law schools, including some very prestigious law schools.

And then becomes part of accepted theory by the super majority on the court. And one case where they went out and found a plaintiff where this came into play was the Baker who said that it was a violation of her religious beliefs to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

Now, this was a plaintiff that was located, funded who never was approached by anybody who was gay to make the cake. So it was a basically a made up suit. And then on the On the basis of this religious liberty theory the justices upheld the position of the baker in a, fairly major case in the last, couple of [00:25:00] years.

SHEFFIELD: well, and it's this idea that, You can engage in any kind of discrimination or even flout any law, depending on who, on, some of the more radical interpretations that laws are Nolan Vellwey, if you say they're against your religious beliefs, and, this is even, Antonin Scalia, when he was alive, actually went against this idea, this was too radical for him. There was the case where, if you remember the there was a Native American tribe that was suing to be able to use peyote in religious ceremonies, but peyote was a controlled substance, and according to Scalia, that didn't matter because the state had a greater interest in keeping peyote an illegal substance, and so therefore their religious freedom complaint was invalid. But now the right has completely turned that around on its head and said that, actually some of these. Religious beliefs, [00:26:00] anything else, everything else is less important than their religious opinion.

BROCK: Yeah. And it becomes, as in the, case of, that I said it earlier, it is what you said, essentially an excuse for discrimination and that's, the way they want it to come down for sure.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

How the 1987 failed Robert Bork nomination was the catalyst for the Federalist Society

SHEFFIELD: And one thing that was the crucible for all of this, and really got it going in terms of letting you know, getting the right much more serious about funding takeover of the judicial system was. The failure of Robert Bork to get onto the Supreme Court after he was nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1987. And that's a, moment that you spend quite a bit on. But for people who are younger, I think they may not have heard of that incident. So maybe let's go over that real quick and what it, what were your takeaways, or the right takeaways were from that. I'm

BROCK: it was a [00:27:00] watershed moment in the history of the last certainly 40 years that I'm writing about.

So Robert Bork was one of the original faculty advisors to the Federalist Society along with Antonin Scalia, and Robert Bork gave the first presentation major speech to the Federalist Society on its first conference.

And the speech was about Roe v. Wade and the need to overturn it and that it was an attack on abortion rights. And so from there Robert Bork had a long paper trail of right wing decisions. And when, so he was appointed by Ronald Reagan it was near the end of Reagan's term. It seemed as if, Reagan even though he wasn't standing for reelection, had his standing questioned with the Iran Contra scandal.

So they wanted something to [00:28:00] reinvigorate the base of the Republican party and the conservative movement that would rally around Robert Bork. So they, picked Bork. They knew that he had this paper trail. And so in a sense they went into it knowing that it was going to be a tough fight that they might actually lose.

And that Bork would be a sacrificial lamb, which they were Probably okay with so the confirmation hearings went on all of this record came out into the public domain Robert Bork stood with his views. He didn't like. Subsequent nominees try to evade the questions. He answered them directly and the views were out of step with a mainstream America.

There was no question about that. And there was a an orchestrated liberal effort to defeat him. People for the American way and other organizations that were very [00:29:00] active back then and civil rights organizations there was a whole anti war coalition that formed and so the takeaway was.

For the right that they were victimized by basically what they viewed as a smear campaign by the left. And even though I conclude in the book that Bork. The term Borking became very popular on the right as meaning a smear campaign, but what I conclude in the book is that Bork basically Borked himself and that there was no smear campaign.

It was just an educational campaign, but the way they took it was very personally Bork was absolutely, literally one of them. And so they swore to have this never happen again. And The import of the Bork nomination really comes in later [00:30:00] starting with the Thomas nomination, where the, nominees are coached by the White House and the Justice Department Republicans to basically deny their positions.

And If you flash forward, all three of the Trump nominees, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all in slightly different ways, misled the Senate Judiciary Committee as to their position on abortion and Roe v. Wade. And these were lessons that the right drew from the Bork nomination. You couldn't really be yourself.

You couldn't be honest. You'd be coached to. evade and obfuscate to skate through the nomination process.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And it was in a lot of ways, a lesson that they had learned earlier in 1964, after Barry Goldwater got completely destroyed [00:31:00] in the general election against Lyndon Johnson, that, They, had an inkling that the general public did not agree with them but it didn't matter because they were going to build institutions of power to voice their viewpoint on the public anyway.

And, and then another way, another sort of pillar of, getting their nominees through besides the Federalist Society was also creating a lot of these AstroTurf organizations. Like the, you mentioned one, the Independent Women's Law Center, which of course, was said to be independent, but of course was funded entirely by Republicans. And, that, they, they have done that, going forward ever since, with all these phony, Organizations and with these neutral sounding names, Americans for consumer protection, which conveniently always seems to want companies to make shoddy products and, glute and, like that's, that became [00:32:00] a core component as well after this.

Yeah.

BROCK: Yeah, absolutely. So there's a whole, there's a whole network of organizations. some funded directly by Leonard Leo and others by other donors like the Koch brothers. And they're, they are front groups, if you will. They, are not honest about who they are and their They're formed basically as they're basically media focused groups that go out and, under this notion we were talking about earlier, balance get, quoted.

So you have the independent women's forum out there adjacent to women for Judge Thomas. And so they do. They do create these organizations also, the, friend of the court briefs. A lot of those organizations are similar in that they're you can't really tell what they are from their name.

SHEFFIELD: And we saw that most prominently [00:33:00] with But most recently with the Moms for Liberty group, which, was able to flood into school boards across the country with this very innocuous sounding name and, get people to do what they wanted to despite them having no idea where they came from or who was funding them. Yeah, and then of course after Bork failed to get onto the bench then there was the nomination of David Souter who ended up. not being sufficiently vetted from their standards. And he ended up not ruling in lockstep the way that they thought that he might have.

Why the current SCOTUS is "the Clarence Thomas Court"

SHEFFIELD: and so the, when the right got a chance to nominate again, there was, they picked Clarence Thomas and that's, And you call him, you call the current court the Thomas Court, even though he's not the judge of the Supreme Court.

let's maybe get to that point first and then we'll go back to, the confirmation of your own personal history there.

BROCK: Sure. Yeah. absolutely. The [00:34:00] Republican, presidents appointed some justices who were disappointments to the right Souter, Kennedy, O'Connor. And so the effort to overturn Roe. Which you can trace back pretty much to the time that Roe was decided suffered several setbacks along the way.

And it wasn't until Trump made a deal with the Federalist Society in the 2016 campaign that they were able to really achieve their goals. And that deal was evangelicals were skeptical. Somewhat of Trump because of Trump's personal behavior. And the Federalist Society gave lists to Ronald Re I'm sorry, Donald Trump and he, picked from those lists, his justices.

And this was publicly announced and known to voters at the time in 2016. And so that. That, that gave [00:35:00] him the good housekeeping seal of approval. And then he, did do what he said. He did pull all three from these lists. And then they did they did do what they were selected to do.

Now the reason I say that this is the Thomas Court is because in the deciding of Dobbs John Roberts loses control of the court. It, is the case that he did not favor overturning Roe. The case from Mississippi had a 15 week abortion ban. He was willing to uphold that ban, but not go all the way to reversing Roe.

There was a campaign in the press in editorial in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which is a very, known outlet for these right wing judges. And basically the editorial revealed that [00:36:00] Kavanaugh and Barrett. We're shaky on overturning Roe and they, might side with Robert.

And so that purpose of that leak was to lock in their votes because if they then did not overturn Roe, they'd look like they turned tail and they were weak and various other things that the right would say about them. that's basically another aspect of the decision that raises questions about the whole legitimacy of the whole operation that pressure campaign, but that's, basically the Thomas court obviously nominally, Roberts is still in control, but he's proved to be a very weak justice and particularly weak.

on the issue of having any kind of accountability for the justices people probably know that the, there is no ethics regime that governs the [00:37:00] Supreme Court itself. Regulating there are rules for every other level of federal judges but none of them apply to the Supreme Court. And Roberts has done nothing but sit on and really in their own report where they do.

They adopted so called some ethics reforms it covers it all up. And I have one piece of information in the book where the judicial conference of the United States, which governs all the federal judiciary below the Supreme court was so upset about Thomas and the gifts that he was receiving and the fact that he didn't disclose them, that they wanted to Do something publicly about it and Roberts shut it down.

Liberal leaders and donors have done very little to counteract the right's legal juggernaut

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's, and yet though, I get the feeling that Democrats don't really talk about this outside of Sheldon Whitehouse. Kamala [00:38:00] Harris almost never mentions the Supreme Court's radicalism, other than in the context of Roe vs. Wade. And whereas before the repeal of it, that was probably one of the most common talking points in a Republican presidential campaign.

That, we have to get, Can get the judges and you don't have to like me, but the, there is a long term future at stake here. So vote for me anyway, even if you don't like everything that I'm about. She doesn't really make that argument and I, it's an odd thing to see.

BROCK: through,

federal society to capture the court. There was no response. Democrats in some circumstances [00:39:00] enabled the right, the rights campaign.

For example, Joe Biden was the chairman of the judiciary committee during Anita Hill. He acted more as a judge and a senator, if you will, and allowed a deal to be made with the Republicans that only Anita Hill would testify and not other corroborating witnesses, which basically guaranteed that it was, he said, she said, and that this would get confirmed,

SHEFFIELD: Because, yeah, it was, she was not the only woman who had accused him

of sexually.

BROCK: There were women in the wings waiting to testify to similar behavior. And flash forward to, to right now you've got Senator Durbin as the chair of the committee. As you mentioned, Senator Whitehouse. Very outspoken on all this has written his own books about it, has done a lot to educate the public on the funding mechanisms behind the Federalist Society, but he is chafing [00:40:00] under the non leadership of Durbin, who doesn't want to take an aggressive posture toward on these issues like Thomas and the Gifts, where Thomas and his lack of recusal which we haven't discussed.

SHEFFIELD: I, yeah. They haven't even had hearings about this. yeah,

the, what's the total amount of money that Thomas has had? it's over a million

BROCK: Oh, it's definitely over a million dollars. Yeah. Because there was one trip that was a half a million and there was the RV that was worth 300, 000. So yeah, you're well over a million dollars and you're right. There, there were no hearings. And I think. The issue is very ripe for Kamala Harris.

And I scratched my own head as to why they haven't made this an issue. Hillary Clinton warned in 2016 that there would be two or three vacancies in the court under the next presidency, but nobody paid attention. It didn't get covered. And Democrats weren't [00:41:00] galvanized around it. And, even after the Dobbs decision leaked A lot of Democrats were not convinced that Roe was actually going to be overturned.

And it's all been it's, a lot of this has been mishandled.

SHEFFIELD: Absolutely, yeah, and the reason that I think that it's been mishandled is. is. what I call the, cult of constitutional law and it is primarily constitutional law professors who are responsible for why Democrats did not and still have not acted adequately in response because, they, cultivated this idea over the decades that, You know that there was a sort of a science of the law, and they had found it, and that if you just follow the law, and you knew what you were talking about, you would come naturally to progressive social conclusions, and, supporting of, expansion of the federal state or programs or regulations, like [00:42:00] you would just naturally understand that's how it was, because this is real, this is reality and we've found it and we teach it to our students and we all live in a wonderful, happy Valley with butterflies. floating around and birds singing and none of that was true. None of that was true. And they didn't understand that it was, it was almost like this to go back to H. G. Wells, like he wrote his novel, the time machine. And in, in the time machine, there was, the, these post human Eloy that lived in plenty and had all their problems in life solved. They were, vegetarians, they never had any, were never hungry, ever, were violent and then meanwhile they were being preyed upon by another tribe of, post humans, the Morlocks, who ate them and, had completely developed their own society. And it was totally unknown to them, and the Morlocks had, the Eloi had no idea what was going on, and they were just completely [00:43:00] defenseless. That's what's happened to the left, I feel in the United States.

BROCK: Yeah, not only did they not know what was happening in terms of the Federalist Society activities but the whole The whole, the big idea of the Federalist Society, originalism was never, countered by in a meaningful way by liberal scholars, judges, et cetera. And,

SHEFFIELD: And certainly not to the public,

BROCK: Not to the public.

No public case has ever been made against this notion of interpreting the Constitution very rigidly as a document that is set in stone from the time it was written and that all cases have to flow from that. they didn't know, they didn't see that coming either.

SHEFFIELD: They did not. And, and they also couldn't understand. Yeah. That the originalism, as an idea, they did that the right wing didn't even believe that either, because [00:44:00] if they did believe that, then they would not have created this, Second Amendment, Uber, Alice interpretation of the law that, Oh, you can't have any laws restricting guns because of, of the militia.

And of course, the idea was meant of the Second Amendment, as the history shows, if you had an actual originalist position on the Second Amendment, you would be in favor of restrictions if states wanted to have them on their citizens right to bear arms. Because it's the state's decision, not the government.

BROCK: Yeah, that's right. originalism is really a theory that's an excuse to get the results, political results you want, and it can be turned upside down and twisted any way you want to, just do just that.

Brock's personal relationship to the right-wing judicial takeover

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Now, you personally saw a lot of this ideological and factual malleability in your own life because that was around when you had begun your career as [00:45:00] the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the court and you wrote a book attacking Anita Hill called The Real Anita Hill, and then that You, in writing it and then afterwards you really got invited into the inner sanctum of all this stuff.

Okay.

BROCK: Still exists, I think, on the web. But in any case there was a donor who wanted to, Go after Anita Hill and protect Thomas's reputation because he was going to be on the court for 40 years.

And I took that assignment wrote an article that turned into a book. Along the way while I was writing the book the way I put it is it had a strong viewpoint that Thomas was innocent and Hill was lying. [00:46:00] But and. It was sourced all by people who were on the Thomas side.

And yet I still believe that what I was doing was telling the truth about the situation. And so later when I got closer to these folks they were more honest. in their relationship with me and led me to conclude by various things that were said that they never believed their own friend and that he had said and done some of the things that she, Elenita Hill alleged, and that this was all just a political, game.

And that shook my foundations because I didn't think I was playing a political game. I thought I was defending what was right. And,

SHEFFIELD: Or being a

pawn of other people.

BROCK: And, I take full responsibility for what I did, but I was used and sold a bill of goods. Absolutely. [00:47:00] No question about that. And I was never really the same again after that, even though it took me some time to work my way out of the conservative world.

But that affected my the way I saw everything going forward. And it resulted in, I got a. a contract to write a book about Hillary Clinton that would be was thought to be similar hatchet job that had been done by me on Anita Hill. And I went into that with a very different set of eyes and wrote something that was much more if you want to say fair and balanced.

And, that, definitely accelerated my departure from the right because I was, all the people who had, for the Anita Hill book, trash the Hillary book because it wasn't in line with their, ideology. And it was right before the 96 election. And basically what I [00:48:00] describe is a crisis of conscience and that, as I said, took place.

Took some time to, to work itself through, but by the time Bill Clinton was being impeached in 98, I was fully against that, could, knew about a lot of the anti Clinton operations as well that I was involved in earlier in the nineties. And, Hillary Clinton talked about the vast right wing conspiracy, all that.

Conspiracy really is a wrongful scheme and I thought that was what had happened. And so that was and I started to say so and that, that was the last straw, if you will, of getting out of the conservative world.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it was yet another example of how, yeah, as much as the right loves to talk about, oh, we, want to have a debate. We want to have both sides of the issue heard. In fact, they don't conduct themselves at all in that manner. They don't have debates. They don't have [00:49:00] discussions. The, only moment in recent 40 years or so, I feel like when there was any sort of debate in the and then after he won the nomination, everybody who had said that they were going to never support Donald Trump, they, fell in line and threw aside all the principles that they claimed were eternal, unmalleable turns out it was just about power all along.

Transcripts

BROCK: they don't the one of the things that are originally when I became a conservative,

Turned me off of liberals in the left was just the intolerance that I saw on, the left in some circumstances toward right and conservative and Republican views. And, it ended up being somewhat the opposite that there's no free conversation.

It's a party line, a hundred percent in the Republican party. And not only after 16, but then even [00:50:00] perhaps more egregiously after January 6th. There was an opportunity for accountability for Trump and that, pretty quickly went away when the Republicans all fell into line.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. okay, this is a, a very serious problem with the court and also the lower federal courts. A lot of these completely unqualified. People who are just political activists such as the judge who dismissed Donald Trump's case of his document theft case on the basis that, he had the right to do this. Because he was the president, except he wasn't the president. that's, so such astonishing thing is that she's claiming he has rights to do things as the president when he was out of office, Biden was president.

Proposals for Supreme Court reform

SHEFFIELD: so these are serious issues. And you do toward the end of the book, talk about some ideas this situation, get into that.

BROCK: Yes. I think that there's [00:51:00] at least increased awareness of the problems that are, Exist with the court. Public opinion polls show that they're really in the toilet in terms of approval ratings. And so there's, an opportunity to do something about it. You can't really do anything about it unless you have substantial democratic majorities in Congress and, or you get rid of the filibuster in the Senate.

But some of the ideas that I discuss in the book and that are out there as possibilities are we talked a little bit about ethics reform earlier. We could have an ethics regime imposed by Congress on the Supreme Court. The constitutionally, they have the power to do it. For example there is a 50 limit for what you can spend what you can give or in kind a 50 lunch or whatever it is with any federal official except on the Supreme Court.

So it seems to me, Thomas is [00:52:00] so far in violation of that, it isn't even funny that you could impose something like that and various other things that, that would constitute putting some teeth in the disclosure. Right now the justices decide for themselves whether they're going to I'm sorry, recusal recuse themselves and that, that could change as well.

You could have objective and independent sources and authorities Looking at that. So that's the ethics bucket. One thing I want to note is that even without the ethics regime, there are already laws on the books that Thomas is violating right now. With the gifts you have the 1978 Ethics and Government Act.

There are also federal laws on, recusal that he's violating. And so something Could be done. And, senators Whitehouse and Wyden wrote a criminal referral on Thomas to the justice [00:53:00] department in July. That is a route where you wouldn't have to have Congress do anything because there are, he's already a criminal and but that's in the hands of the justice department that I don't have any expectation that Merrick Garland would take it up.

But that's just a side note that there are some things right now that could be done. Other ideas are term limits. To give to have obviously more frequent turnover and give, presidents a set number of nominees, each one, the same number that would distribute. More evenly, the ideology of the court is seemingly the other idea is to expand the size of the court.

I think that has to be considered. I think that where the consensus would end up would be something more like term limits than, increasing the size. But if you really want it to solve the problem sooner rather than later. Because the term limits wouldn't apply [00:54:00] to the current court. So if you wanted to solve this problem sooner or later, you'd address the issue of the size of the court and get more true balance and representation there.

The importance of media and institutions

SHEFFIELD: And yeah, and I noticed he did not talk too much about counter institutions, though. Why was that? Transcription

BROCK: there are some, what's out there is the American Constitution Society, which was formed as a, response to the Federalist Society, but in true, liberal fashion, they actually are a debating society, which is what the Federalist Society presented themselves as, and that's about it.

So it's not really a response to the Federalist Society. We talked about there being no response to originalism and then. There are some groups that are pursuing Supreme court reform. And those are worthwhile, [00:55:00] but the problem with the reform issue politically is it's just not that sexy.

And if I were running Kamala Harris's campaign, I would have her bring up Clarence Thomas to personify. These issues and personalize it. But I don't think you'd ever, you'd probably wouldn't ever see that. But I think it would it would move some folks.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it certainly simplifies the issue. But, on the institutional point, though, like these institutions that the Federalist Society and all these other ones that the other people are involved in. They're very important as a way of, building an ecosystem because, I think the, going back to, this whole sort of institutions will figure things out themselves and things are, this blase attitude that a lot of people on the center left who are, who lead the institutions or are the donors that they don't understand that, Institutions don't [00:56:00] protect themselves. They are designed to be, governmental institutions are designed to be neutral and apolitical. And, things like the American Bar Association or something like that, like those are not supposed to be political. and it's good to have some non political institutions. But you can't, Those things will not protect themselves against this full scale ideological assault.

And then also, if you don't make your own countervailing institutions, you're going to make it so that people have to leave the political affair, or the political arena, because they can't afford to stay in it. that's what's happening to a lot of younger progressives in the country right now, they cannot afford to be political activists, they have to get out because there's nothing for them.

Whereas if you're on the right, you can be paid to speak at any number of conferences. There's these think tank fellowships available to you. Innumerable think tank [00:57:00] fellowships. You can have multiple of them at the same time, it doesn't matter. You can get a job at any of these publications or TV channels, There's, and then, at the same time they have talent bank organizations that explicitly recruit people and network them together and match them with employers. There's nothing like that on the left. And this is why the right wins elections as much as it can. Despite having only 25 percent of the public agreeing

BROCK: Yeah, that's absolutely right. It's a basically a cradle to graves jobs program if you're in the conservative movement and they do supply all these opportunities for getting experience and then advancing. There are nothing like the pipelines. That the conservatives have on the liberal side at all. And it does disadvantage the Democrats politically.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and even on the media side, the [00:58:00] Kamala Harris campaign spins that spent most of its money on, TV ads, but a lot of the money that they've spent has benefited Rupert Murdoch or has benefited Sinclair Broadcast Group, which are, part of the right wing media machine. And donors to Kamala Harris have funded right wing media without realizing. It's pretty awful, frankly.

BROCK: Yeah. it's 20 something years ago when I started Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group. I identified as the single most, prevailing problem, this this media behemoth that the right was able to build over the years. And it's only gotten a lot bigger and a lot worse since I said that 20 years ago.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. do you see, have any positive changes happened in the meantime on that front? Other than the [00:59:00] establishment of media

BROCK: Yeah, I think so. I think that when I started Media Matters, there was really zero appreciation for what the right had been able to achieve. And it was like people were gobsmacked to learn about it. I think there's a higher level of awareness. There may not be the level of response yet, but there's a higher level of awareness.

I feel like the culture is somewhat more aggressive than say 20 years ago. I remember when Media Matters launched that year was the year of the Swift boat veterans and the Kerry campaign being completely blindsided by it and not only blindsided, but then not responding to it for weeks.

And when there was incredible, blood all over the place on the floor. And so I think that at that level, tactically Democrats are better than they had been. But there's still, we're still too nice.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, [01:00:00] I think that's definitely true.

Conclusion

SHEFFIELD: all right, for people who want to keep tabs on, what you're up to. You on the internet what, is your advice for them?

BROCK: one could go to the Media Matters website, which is updated hourly. And it's a very good way of finding out what's going on, particularly in right wing media that folks are not consuming. But it's a good way of keeping tabs on. It's like we watch Fox so you don't have to. And so I would direct people there.

Sure.

SHEFFIELD: Okay. Sounds good. All right, thanks for being here.

BROCK: Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

SHEFFIELD: Okay.

All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the conversation. And you can always get more if you go to theoryofchange.show. You can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes.

And if you are a paid subscribing member on Patreon or Substack, you get unlimited access and thank you very much for your support. And if you can't afford to subscribe on a paid option right now, we do have free subscriptions as well. And if you can leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, that would be helpful.

And if you're watching on YouTube, please do click like and subscribe as well. Thanks very much.

Episode Summary

The 2024 presidential election is over, and the results are not what many of us hoped for. Despite engaging in treason against the United States on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump will become president once again.

While there are plenty of things that Kamala Harris could have done better, she was up against several larger obstacles, chief among them the price inflation that has troubled every country in the world after the Covid-19 pandemic and also the gigantic far-right media apparatus that relentlessly tells more than 100 million Americans that Democrats are controlled by Satan and falsely claims that the United States is currently in a recession. Undoubtedly, her being an Asian and Black woman was an obstacle as well.

Despite all of these difficulties, however, Harris made a number of solid choices, including speaking clearly about the threat of Trump’s fascistic politics, proudly articulating why reproductive rights matter, picking populist Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, refusing to get dragged into the mud with Donald Trump’s bigotry, and running an incredible social media presence.

But none of these tactical successes were sufficient to overcome Democrats’ refusal to invest in advocacy media or to ensure that social gains by one group do not negatively impact those of others.

During their administration, Harris and President Joe Biden rolled out a number of policies that undeniably helped millions of regular Americans but instead of frequently and coherently explaining what these policies were and why they mattered, both seemed to think that good ideas would speak for themselves. They did not.

Even if they had spoken about them earlier, whatever advantage Harris might have enjoyed from these policies was squandered, when she reoriented her campaign to prioritize outreach to Republicans over pressing the case against income inequality and social stagnation.

Joining us to talk about what went wrong is Jim Carroll. He’s an associate editor at Flux and also has his own site, The Hot Screen.

The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

03:04 — Pro-democracy arguments and their effectiveness

04:52 — Economic conditions and their influence

11:08 — The role of media in shaping public opinion

14:22 — Trump’s fake economic proposals sounded more ambitious than Harris's at first glance

16:47 — Democrats cannot campaign on policy alone

19:32 — How media shape public opinion of the economy

22:24 — The right’s “regime” narrative is a powerful response to concerns about protecting democracy

30:44 — Why social justice needs economic justice to survive

32:39 — Kamala Harris's failed pivot toward disaffected Republicans

36:26 — The impact of non-voters and younger voters

38:00 — Surfing the media wave rather than trying vainly to control it

42:31 — Many lessons of Obama and Clinton victories are not relevant to today

46:40 — Mainstream media’s failure to tell the full truth about Republicans

48:20 — Democrats cannot rely on the mainstream media

53:01 — Cause for hope: There’s plenty of money to create a progressive media infrastructure

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: People are floating lots of different ideas about what happened and [00:01:00] and I think we should say perhaps at the outset that, judging the total, the complete vote totals at this point.

As we're recording on the 11th of November, it's perhaps a bit premature because there are still a lot of provisional ballots and overseas ballots that haven't been counted yet. But at this point it does seem like that Donald Trump's going to have a very narrow popular vote. When the first time since 2004 for a Republican and, again, well, the totals are going to fluctuate a bit, but it looks like the Trump kept roughly the same amount of voters that he had last time in 2020, whereas Kamala Harris lost a significant percentage of the people who had voted for Joe Biden or couldn't retain them, or they stayed home or they switched to Trump or somebody else who knows.

Um, We will find that out later. But yeah, whatever the case may be, she's definitely going to have a lot fewer votes than Biden. So, I mean, there's a lot of different theories out there, but let's you wrote, wrote a piece over on [00:02:00] Flux for us, but let's maybe get, talk to some of the ideas Your initial thoughts of what, what happened do you think?

JIM CARROLL: Yeah, well, I'll back up one step and just to give context of what kind of what my perspective has been on the election and kind of how it's definitely influenced how I'm thinking about it initially. And basically, a lot of the concentration of my writing has been around the kind of the authoritarianism of Trump and the MAGA movement.

And to me, this has been just like a glaring fact about Donald Trump and then his candidacy. Going into 2024. And so that was really the perspective I've kind of tended to look at the campaign and I would say my heart would thrill when I would hear Kamala Harris, bringing up those arguments on the democracy front against, against Donald And I, despite her loss, I feel pretty strongly that those are the right points to make among others. Those had to be part of her [00:03:00] campaign because that side of Trump and the MAGA movement is just such a threat to democracy in the United States and something that I think this election had to foreground, the Democrats had to foreground and make that into one of the clear stakes of the election.

And I think one of my sort of more pessimistic points was like, in the event that Harris lost, at least the Democrats would have set this as one of the things that we're talking about and that we need to keep talking about. So obviously to see Donald Trump win to me was, probably the most gutting part of it was this is a guy who tried to overthrow the election in 2020. This is a really bad sign for American democracy that this was not a disqualifying factor for a sufficient number of voters.

And so that was kind of my, I'd say, like, after election night and the day after, I was like, this is just, really needed to get a handle on this, I think, going forward. How did the pro-democracy [00:04:00] arguments not resonate? So that's definitely a perspective and I, I think I kind of start there like one reason Harris lost is because these pro-democracy arguments didn't have the sway that I think the Democrats were hoping and I think they, I think, the 2022 midterms had definitely given I think a lot of people on the democratic side hope that the pro democracy arguments actually do have a lot of sway.

And, and I think there's a case to be made there, and I think, when you get down to the nitty gritty of like what swing states did in 2022 and 2024 I there is, definitely nothing about this election that's made me think that this is not an issue that the Democrats need to keep hammering but coming out of it, I would say that that's at the top of my list of like, what in the way that Democrats were talking about this, what in the way that people were thinking about their lives, why did this not resonate?

Economic conditions and their influence

So I think that's kind of kind of the first thing I'd say that the second thing that I'm thinking and seeing a lot of and it's really [00:05:00] holding a lot of water for me is just the basic economic conditions that people are perceiving their lives. I think particularly inflation

I think was A generational phenomenon. We haven't had this much inflation since the seventies, early eighties. And I think it's, I think it's pretty well documented that inflation is uniquely corrosive things to the incumbents in office to societal bonds in terms of, and people's attitude towards the economy, a lot of psychological things going on.

So, and then we cited, I think, at least in the exit polls that are, I know there's still kind of going to be a second guest and, there'll be more, more research for sure, but. Definitely seeing the economy being so high in a lot of people's decisions is particularly on the side that have voted for Trump.

So that's kind of, to kind of start us off. Those are, that's kind of what I've been thinking about. And I, I was telling you before we started also kind of did a kind of big download of what people are talking about. And definitely, there are many, many other factors [00:06:00] that are being discussed, but those are, I would say those are the two that right off the bat I was, I was thinking about preoccupied with.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the, the democracy question is interesting also because so, so when you look at the exit poll that actually was a question that they asked people. They said. Democracy in the U S is colon threatened or et cetera. And among the people who said it was very threatened, 51 percent went for Trump actually.

hmm. 47 percent went for Harris. And then people who said somewhat threatened, it was 50 percent Trump, 49 percent Harris. So that to me, I thought that was a very interesting point. Because I, I absolutely agree that the. Pointing out what it is that Trump and the more importantly, the people who control him want, like people needed to understand that.

And I, I do think generally speaking, Harris and her surrogates did a good job of that. But [00:07:00] at the same time, it's very clear that the public did not receive that message. And, let's Let's maybe talk about that. And cause I, obviously, I've written and you touch it on your piece as well, that, the idea of media, I mean, ultimately, I think that that's where, what this means is that, what was in many ways, the core argument of Kamala Harris, the majority of people didn't believe it seems like,

CARROLL: hmm. I think, I think that's true. I think one thing that popped out to me when you were mentioning that statistic is actually, a couple of months ago, I had seen a poll talking about, who do you think is a greater threat to democracy and, or who, I think it was actually phrased as who would be a greater defender of democracy.

And Trump was definitely, at least five or 10 points ahead of Harris. And I think for me, that was like a major moment about how the election was going to go, because I found that shocking, but I think if we think about it in terms of you've got people on the Republican side who [00:08:00] feel that the Democrats are a threat to democracy and that Trump is redeeming our democracy and, and what does democracy mean anyway to people when they say democracy, which I think is.

a huge subterranean aspect of, of where things have kind of gotten screwy with, with, with our politics. I think, yeah, I, I, I think it starts getting in some, some interesting territory in terms of, yeah, what, what people really are, are saying that they want or what they're scared of happening when they say, when they're asked that democracy question.

And like, to me, it it's, and I, while I always felt it was an important message I, I definitely did see warning signs on this.

SHEFFIELD: A lot of people, they didn't understand the question or they saw it, saw it differently or they, or from an economic standpoint, they felt like their lives are terrible.

So if the system is broken for, and you ask someone, well, we, should we protect our democracy? Do we need, or is it under threat? [00:09:00] They'll answer it in the current stance from where they're at, or at least from, what they've been exposed to from a media standpoint. And so, like, and Democrats have, I think, a very real problem that they have created a kind of this sort of society of science, if you will, is what I'm calling that people who have a multiple degrees and, live in an urban area, their lives are generally pretty good.

Whereas the vast majority of people are not like that. And and while Joe Biden did a lot of, good things for them, most of them never heard about it. And a lot of these things that he did like prescription drug negotiations and things like that they haven't started yet, but more importantly, they'd rarely talked about it, like Kamala Harris had all, she could have picked all kinds of policies and, talked about them on the trail that she and Biden had put in but they never heard it.

CARROLL: think there was if you think about it [00:10:00] in terms of like people, let's just take people, the responses at face value here and, a huge reason people voted for Trump was the economy, a sense of economic malaise, a sense that, you know, particularly with people on the lower end of the income spectrum that, they're living pretty precariously.

Trump, I think, is perceived as. Having a solution slash being aware of the issue. I think that Harris's proposals. Well, a, I kind of agree. Like, I didn't really hear too much and I was paying quite a bit of attention, but it felt like at bottom there was no there was no sense of like, a, A really broad based aggressive plan to be like, what our societies are on equal on equal.

People are very precarious. Let's like, have an aggressive economic program to really like, let's just dig in. Let's just do this. And so I feel like she had some, some really great ideas like [00:11:00] the, the first time home buying credit. I mean, that's that's awesome. And but they just like, wasn't. Wasn't enough.

The role of media in shaping public opinion

CARROLL: I think to counter what I think in some ways is Trump just kind of has more than anything, like a reputation. And I think it's it may be based on the fact that he was like a reality star on a show where he was a successful businessman. And part of me just feels like there's just this. Almost this on a reality to his sort of like hold on people's imaginations in the economic department.

It's just like he presided over like a crashing of the U. S. economy at the end of this term. So, like. The reality is like, he really didn't do great stuff for the economy. But and then you look at his plans and after bashing the Republican or started bashing the Democrats for inflation and blaming on Biden his solution is to impose tariffs that pretty much any credible economist says is kind of.

Lift inflation. Ditto with the mass deportations that he has planned. We're [00:12:00] going to like remove so many people from the workforce. Housing construction costs are going to go up because a lot of undocumented laborers work in, in, in that area of the economy. So, I just feel like on the one hand, you had Trump pretending to provide a solution very aggressively, which okay.

And then the other hand, I think Harris was very specific about what you do, but it, I think with the benefit of hindsight, A week, a week after this defeat it really feels like it did not rise to the moment of the economic insecurity people are feeling. And, I know it's a loaded term, but it's like, after inflation, I think people are really, really rattled and I think it kind of 1 of the consequences of it, I think, is a perception that maybe.

Like, can government do, how quickly can government actually do stuff? I mean, they said they were fighting inflation. It took so long for it to go back down and, and now prices are still higher than they used to be, which, it's kind of what happened with inflation. So I think, I think there was a real.

In a way [00:13:00] under Biden and again, Biden himself, his administration did a lot of great stuff, I think, for the economy that is going to have long term benefits like the inflation reduction act and so on, there was a lot of attentiveness, attentiveness to the economy and I think to working class folks but I think ironically, I think, if Harris had, to have had a chance, I think she would have had to be very aggressive of saying, like, Here's what we're gonna do.

Bam, bam, bam, a 10 point plan, 20 point plan to address people's concerns. And I think somehow that urgency just wasn't there. And it didn't strike me. It's such a problem during the campaign. But again, kind of looking at the, looking back now. I feel like that might have been one thing that could have turned this around potentially.

SHEFFIELD: hmm.

CARROLL: And not, sorry, not just turned it around, but the right thing to do. Also, it's just like, I, I think what's frustrating me to some extent is people talking about Democrats economic messaging. But [00:14:00] it's like, it's not just messaging. It's, it's like, you need to fix the economy. Like, it's not just like talking about it, right.

It's like, no, like there are, like, if you have, half the population who if they were to lose their job, only have savings to survive for a month, that's a pretty big deal. That's, that's, that's not something that any president should be like getting good night's sleep about like knowing that sort of fact.

Trump's fake economic proposals sounded more ambitious than Harris's at first glance

CARROLL: I think looking back at how Harris was making her case for the economy versus Trump, I think on the Trump end of things, You had kind of the whole Trump thing.

Like he had the greatest economy in the world when he was president. He's got plans to make everything great again. When you dig into those plans, it seems like they're basically have to do with cutting taxes and imposing tariffs and mass deportations. The latter two, at least are going to like inflation

SHEFFIELD: and drill drilling for oil or

CARROLL: He's got, he has this, let's put it this way. He's got this plan that sounds really aggressive. [00:15:00] big scale. And I think, I can imagine being a voter and hearing that. And, um, knowing nothing else about Trump for this hypothetical, I'm thinking like, okay, this guy seems to know what he's doing. And he seems to be thinking big. And I think, I don't think anyone listening to Harris would really credibly be able to say, like, she was thinking really big about the economy. And I, I'm not, I definitely don't want to get into that. critiquing the Harris campaign territory right now. But I think, I think the reality is that she was definitely hamstrung by being Joe Biden's VP.

And, and at some point there was not going to be any credible approach to putting an enormous amount of distance between, between herself and him. I think that people, voters would have not believed that it was authentic. But you know, we, we, no matter the, the, the constraints. Her, her presentation of, of economic solutions, just, I, I, even if Trump's are fantastical and aren't going to work the [00:16:00] appearance was, I think, pretty pretty visible to people. I, I can't help thinking that, that when you have a lot of people who are really like inflation was awful and prices don't seem to be going down. And even though they say inflation stopped, why are the prices still high? And I feel, I only have a month of savings here. Like when you hear. know, a limited number of solutions from from the Harris campaign. I think again, I feel like Trump was able to kind of just say anything. And Harris is like in the reality based world. And like, she's not going to, like, make promises that she absolutely can't keep. So I think there's that sort of imbalance at various levels, whether it's Trump's approach. Willingness to lie or Harris's in it.

SHEFFIELD: promise the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Democrats cannot campaign on policy alone

CARROLL: earlier also was like, I do think that Biden did quite a bit for the economy. And I mean, like the I, I feel like in some ways, like the Republicans can't have it both ways.

They can't say that like, Oh, Joe Biden, like cause inflation by all the [00:17:00] spending, but at the same time, like the spending helped the economy. Like, I don't think anyone is like. Questioning that like, hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of jobs are being created either directly by the IRA spending or by follow on effects. Like, this is like stuff that really is helping the economy. But again, I think it's it was more along the lines of setting us up for long, long-term success. As opposed to like things that people were seeing like right now, right now. Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's, I mean, the, the thing about it also is that I do think this campaign hopefully should. Forever in the idea that the public pays attention to policy very closely and understands who did what for them. Because clearly, when you look at the policies that Trump passed when he was the president, he passed a tax cut that mostly benefited companies and, and very wealthy people, and he tried to cut Medicare and Medicaid repeatedly tried to and actually one of his other policies, which almost never got talked about, including [00:18:00] by Harris was that he deliberately raised gas prices right before.

The right after the election were like in 2020, like when he was the president, his goal was he thought the gas prices were too low.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: he negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia and Russia and all and other and OPEC to. Lower production worldwide and make gas prices go up.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Donald Trump did that.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: yet people don't know that that happened. Like there's just,

Are so many things that he did. And of course, I mean, like to me, there was always this kind of heads. I win tails, you lose type of argument on the economy because, the Donald Trump crashed the economy. When he was the president, because of his incompetent handling of the pandemic, inflation was extremely low, and there was even a risk of deflation, because the economy was so horrible.

And gas prices were so low, again, because [00:19:00] of a global pandemic, which he made worse. But then, he wants to take credit for the gas prices being low, and inflation being low! And, but it's, but this is a very difficult argument to make to people who don't know anything about economics and aren't paying attention very well.

And, like I, to me, the Harris campaign didn't even really try to make this argument at all. But even if they had, I'm not sure that they would have worked because it is complicated.

CARROLL: Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: And it requires a lot of reinforcement and external validation.

How media shape public opinion of the economy

SHEFFIELD: And like that to me is the underlying biggest factory is that, Republican campaigns have this enormous margin of error because they have a huge ecosystem in support of them.

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: Whereas Democrats basically have to run a perfect campaign in order to win because of their poor larger strategy.

CARROLL: Yeah. Well, and I actually really like your point about the the Republicans just having a larger margin of error [00:20:00] in, in part, or maybe a large part because, because of the media. And I think, know, another, maybe, coming at this, the election results from, from yet another angle here, this is again, a kind of a big picture thing, but like, it just feels like, you have the the democratic party. In power with this, this record high inflation. And it's some, it's some level there was no. I think this kind of goes beyond just, I think they're communication problems. Like there was not an effort to tell the public, like, look, this is not, at the end of the day, this is because you all went out and like bought a whole bunch of goods after COVID ended and inflation spike, like there's kind of like these, these structural reasons that had nothing to do with Joe Biden nothing to do with like mistakes.

It was like literally how the economy, it was like when you suddenly

SHEFFIELD: And not just in the United States, everywhere in the entire world.

CARROLL: yeah, and of course, like, heaven forbid, the United States actually like learn something from looking at political situations in other countries and getting some context. [00:21:00] But so I think you had, I think you had that kind of, um, that that lack of communication about what's going on, which, was, I think, a political choice on the part of the Democrats, part of the Biden administration. But I think you also have kind of a more long term structural thing that I think. know, again, a big picture thing, which is the Democrats as a party simply did not have the any reservoir of trust with the public that they are good economic stewards. I think, I think something if, I think back to like, the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration, like, at some point, like there was a sort of like, such a hegemonic that the Roosevelt administration was in that they had like room for maneuver, like they could like play around with like solutions to the Great Depression. And I feel like. Um, at some, at some level, the fact that people were sort of like, well, Democrats couldn't handle inflation, better not trust them on the economy. That's, that's bad for the Democrats if they [00:22:00] are, a party that ideally wishes to present. as, the party of kind of the middle class and the working class. So that's I, I just thrown that out there. Cause I, I feel like that's both something that maybe is like super obvious, but I'm also kind of like, I think it, something to, to come back to as, as people like mole, like what went wrong here. Hmm. Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

The right's "regime" narrative is appealing to frustrated people

SHEFFIELD: Um, well, and, and, another angle on the media side is that, when you look at so another exit question on, on the poll for 2024 was, who did you vote for in 2020? And so the finding on that one was, so it was 44 percent said Biden, 43 percent said Trump. And then 10 percent said they did not vote.

And of that 10%, Trump won 49 and Harris won 45. And what was interesting further is that and this is the sample size is 23, 000 people. [00:23:00] And the sample size is about 23, 000 people. So these are much lower sample sizes, or sorry, margins of error. But it looks like that Trump, he was able to keep 95%.

Of his previous voters and by, and Harris was only able to keep 93%. So there were, there were some the 5% difference there or sorry 2%. And of course, but if it was directly from the opposing party, it's basically doubled, essentially. And then Trump also had the majority of people who had well, he 2% said they had voted for another candidate.

And of those people, 43% voted for Trump. And 33 percent went from Harris. And, so, I mean, to me, this also does suggest that, Democrats not wrongfully, do have a, an association with the current order and, and like Republicans, if you listen to [00:24:00] them on YouTube or podcasts like the ones who are better at communicating their views.

Thoughts instead of, like these, focus groups that you see on TV sometimes or that, oftentimes they'll say, well, they use the term the regime as if, or the cathedral or things like that terms to denote that there is this amorphous thing that controls everyone and hates you and is trying to keep you down and, Democrats by and large either are not even aware of these arguments seems like, and don't realize that they're extremely powerful.

I think if you talk to, almost any person who is, relatively young and not a loyal Democrat who is still an avid news consumer.

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: They have heard these things and, and they think about them. Like I have a, I have a friend who he thinks Trump is a complete moron and, should be in a rest home, but he still voted for him because he's so concerned about, [00:25:00] the regime.

And he, and he thinks Republicans are stupid. He doesn't like Republicans. But he still wants to, he still was willing to vote for Trump anyway, because of these, Narratives that have been just relentless. I mean, you would listen to Joe Rogan, like, and all these imitators of it. Like they just pumped that narrative every single podcast, whenever they talk about politics, that's what they're saying to people.

So to me, it was no wonder that a lot of people felt that way.

CARROLL: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing this reminded me of was whole like, democracy angle here and in, this is like an observation that I came across in the last day or two. I've seen it before. And I personally, I think the first time I encountered it, it was just really hard to internalize.

But basically this idea that, a lot of people are, When you talk about and protect democracy, a lot of people seem to be associating it with, like, protect the status quo, and I think that's a really important observation. I think again, like, it's kind of, I find that a gut [00:26:00] wrenching one because I mean, I feel like, The idea that people are, there are just a lot of angles that really bother me with that.

But but I under like, I get it. Like it, like if, if, if there is a conflation of democracy also includes the bureaucracy and includes unaccountable power. I think once you started hitting those, those points of people have a perception that there is something, yeah, unaccountable, something that doesn't have their interest in mind.

And, and, and like you're saying, like the. Republican party and right wing media have just pounded this idea into people's heads for. Like a generation now, like that the government, I mean, I think flashbacks of Newt Gingrich, you're like, the government is like this alien imposition on the American people. And it's like the most fundamentally anti dem, I guess as part of my personal sort of like, revulsion against it, it's like, it's, it's a fundamentally anti democratic idea that a democratically elected government is actually your enemy. But they've ridden [00:27:00] that horse to

SHEFFIELD: Yeah,

CARROLL: point of now we've got Trump. where Trump is like literally an insurrectionist who tries to overthrow the government and actually seen as somehow that has given him legitimacy in the eyes of, of the Republican base. It's things have sort of been kind of flipped over. It's, it's you've painted democratic governance, including the idea of. Science based decisions and, the inevitable governance by people who are experts because it's like a highly modern society where you have, like, you do have scientists at the EPA making decisions and you've got scientists and, and people with PhDs at, the Department of Labor, like making sure that, it, so there was a whole, there was like this grain of truth that has been like blown up into this idea of we are occupied by a, Oh, Alien entity that has seized control of our government.

Oh, and by the way, the Democrats, the Democrats love it and they've done this to you. So there's,

SHEFFIELD: yeah,

CARROLL: that is definitely part of the equation in [00:28:00] terms

SHEFFIELD: it is.

CARROLL: the thoughts about democracy. Yeah,

SHEFFIELD: if they have more far right Christian viewpoints as well, because, like they believe that their opinions are Should be the law of the land. And so when they see, their, their, their niece coming out as bisexual, or they see their, a gay couple move in next door, that to them is a threat to democracy in their minds.

And, and, and these are. They're not, they're not true beliefs. But there is, I think there is a general, there's a significant problem on the American left with seeing false beliefs and just saying, well, that's stupid and not wanting to address it. Like that's, that is the fundamental dynamic I feel like is that.

When people who are Democrats or further left, they, [00:29:00] they, they, they just think, well, these ideas are dumb and no one believes them. Or if they believe them, screw them. Who cares what they think? And you can't do that and win

CARROLL: I think there's a sense, and I think this kind of cuts across, Not just I go ideas and beliefs that that a lot of things are just like self explanatory and will kind of take care of themselves like I kind of avoid any concrete examples here because I don't want to wade into like, particular cultural conflicts.

But, but does seem that in general. have the Democrats as like the party of like social progress. And I think that is, is like undeniably like a great good that has been associated with the Democrats. In my opinion, I mean, from the civil rights movement to women's rights, the gay rights to into the future here and

SHEFFIELD: consumer protection. Yeah.

CARROLL: you.

Like there's a whole, like this whole vision. Of a more egalitarian society where we're all equal and where the government has a [00:30:00] role to play in keeping the playing field equal by, passing laws that say like you are equal, like, it's like, Oh, government oppression, or is it just like a law that is actually fair? And I think, I think one way of looking at our political situation is over time, the Democrats have. Not gained. I think, I think one, they've kind of downplayed this identity in a way that I think has prevented the democratic coalition from like really maybe cohering a bit more and kind of seeing it's various element is various constituents see the other constituents as allies who need to be defended and we're kind of all in this together. I don't think they really tended that as well as they could have. And I think on the flip side in, again,

Economic justice protects social justice

CARROLL: this is like a big picture thing where, you know, the Democrats as they, as Republicans continuously pound them, like every time there's an advance in rights, let's say it's like another point for the, the conservative counter revolution and the right wing media to, to bash through the [00:31:00] Democrats. And I think over time they've, kind of gotten this association with being like liberal and out of touch, even though. I think the reality is that I think our society in general has changed. And a lot of people who used to be conservative are actually in a lot of ways, not as conservative as they used to be. Not to say there isn't like a gigantic core

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: conservative people, but there's been, there's been good change, but I think.

SHEFFIELD: Oh, you see it on, yeah. Like same sex marriage is probably the most prominent example.

CARROLL: where I, I never, again, maybe we're going to see gigantic backlash in the next four years here if the Supreme Court tries to, reverse gay marriage and so on.

But I think there has been like genuine change because the reality is a lot of the threats that were warned about. Social progress don't come to fruition. Like society didn't collapse when women went into the workforce. I mean, it's like these, although I guess the conservatives would argue, yes, actually society did collapse when that happened because the family fell apart. So, but I, I, what I do want to connect this with is the economy because I think the Democrats I think they've played a game where [00:32:00] they're pushing really hard on a lot of social change, but they have not played hard on making sure that that egalitarianism floods out into the economy. And so we're, we're, we're the most unequal economy in the history of, the United States more or less at this point. And I, I can't say that, I just feel like that's at this point, the Democrats are paying a price for not being as aggressive on the economy as they, as they have been. And, and rightly so in other areas. And I, I think that that imbalance is kind of playing against them right now, especially in enabling a lot of Republican attacks.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's right.

Kamala Harris's failed pivot toward disaffected Republicans

SHEFFIELD: And there was Something that this was something that changed though, within the Harris campaign, because when she first came on the scene that was not what she, she actually was going a lot harder after that.

CARROLL: On what specifically are you thinking?

SHEFFIELD: on, on, on going after, billionaires for exploiting people or twisting regulations, manipulating the [00:33:00] system.

That was her early campaign. And like, and it was basically kind of, Right. It was dropped almost immediately after the democratic national convention. And there was a report recently that came out that claimed that her brother in law, Tony West, who is a lobbyist with Uber had advised her not to make those attacks anymore.

And. And, and we'll, we'll see probably further. I mean, I think it might be a little early to say at this point, who else might have said that to her or whether he said that or not. I mean, we don't know for sure at this point, but a strategic chain or communications change did happen within her campaign.

And. And I think that that was a, in retrospect, yeah, not a good one, not a good message.

CARROLL: And that reminds me of something else that I was, I was thinking in terms of there, I guess it's kind of strikes me as a bit of an irony because I do think that Harris put together like a broad based coalition of [00:34:00] anti MAGA politicians. I mean, like, it's almost becoming a cliche at this point, but he's like, it's like, it's stretched from AOC to Dick Cheney. Like, I didn't see that one coming. Right.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: did not see that one coming and I think, if you, if you talk to people experts in anti authoritarian, strategies and so on. It's like doing that sort of like bringing those conservatives on board and liberals on board, getting that majority, however you can put it together to defeat the, authoritarian, extremist party. That's what you need to do. And like Harris, Did that I like to her credit, but I think the price that got paid was, she also didn't want to alienate maybe, and I don't know if this was the specific thing, but like, there were some gettable suburban Republican women in Pennsylvania who might be put off by me talking about the minimum wage too much.

And I think, a bigger scale, I think that logic sort of applied. And I think some of the [00:35:00] kind of require what we're receiving is the political requirements in building this sort of broad MAGA coalition that, could include again, really people as far right as Dick Cheney and as far left as ASC you kind of had to stick to the middle on the economy. And

SHEFFIELD: In order to, yeah, continue to get their support. Yeah.

CARROLL: Dick Cheney walks, if you talk about raising the middle age, for ridiculous example. So I think there was a, in this, I think leads back to with Trump running, this was just a very, very fraught situation because again, you've got this guy who. Is a, convicted felon and he tried to overthrow the government and it's like, my God, yes, you are going to try to get as broad a coalition as you can to stop this guy. That just makes perfect sense. But if voters concerns were maybe a little bit more weighted, and I'm

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Mm

CARROLL: it's right or wrong at this point towards, Hey, I am just so [00:36:00] concerned about the economy. What Trump did was in the past. What you're saying about his threats are in the future. They haven't happened yet. All I know is like right now I'm hurting. Like I can see the logic there. I, it's, it, it sucks for our country, but I can definitely see the logic there. And

SHEFFIELD: hmm.

CARROLL: if we're talking about how did this election happen?

I think dynamics like that are part of, or part of the equation. Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

The impact of non-voters and younger voters

SHEFFIELD: And well, and, and, to go back to the exit poll about, The people who didn't vote. I mean, ultimately that was the difference was these non voters. Like, for Trump, Trump, Trump was going on a lot of these YouTube podcasts and, or podcasts in YouTube not just Joe Rogan, but like a bunch of these podcasts that people on the left, no one would ever.

Dream of even wanting to watch it. Like, this YouTube channel called the, by two brothers called the NELK boys. Like she would never have gone on that. Or, like, there's just a ton of these things and [00:37:00] there, there are some, it, to me, they did also fit to a, another larger problem within the democratic ecosystem, which is that it had a great message for women telling them, you need to come out and vote.

And protect your rights, but they didn't have a message for men. Other than, you're welcome to come and join us. We, we'd be glad to have you, but that was it. Like you, you had to have more than that. And, or even if you didn't, you just had to at least be where they were

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: and look at, and be in with the media where they were.

And, and so for these non voters a lot of them are, are just people who were too young to vote in 2020. And, when you, when you splice out the numbers Donald Trump as for a Republican did better among younger voters than any Republican had since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: And then of course he did got a majority of, of Latino men to vote for him.

And, and he did that by being in the places where they [00:38:00] were.

Surfing the media wave rather than trying vainly to control it

SHEFFIELD: So like, obviously, I, I'm not going to expect Kamala Harris to be going to UFC fights, nor would they want her to because they're, Dana White is a very right wing person. But there's, there are other places where she could have gone to and, like, Going on the Joe Rogan podcast.

You should have done that. Not that she would have persuaded him. Like, I don't, I don't think that, that she, she would have persuaded him, but these people who watch these podcasts, these are tens of millions of people who watch these podcasts. And if you add them all together, it may be like a hundred million people in a given month are watching or listening to these podcasts.

CARROLL: Mhm.

SHEFFIELD: she wasn't there for them. And, and, and all of these podcasts, like some of them were just not really, they weren't intending to be political, but the Republicans were the only ones who were showing up. And like, there is, there is this problem that a lot of Democrats have that, well, I don't want to go into a media environment unless I have complete control of the situation.

I [00:39:00] don't want it to go out of control. And it's like. We live in a, in a world of hundreds of thousands of, of posters, of people making content and you can't do that anymore. Like all you can do is ride the wave now. That's all you can do is stay on top of it and, give people your best answer and, and answer anything that they throw at you and not.

Come up with some, cause she did struggle a lot, especially early on about, well, how would you be different than Biden? And you touched on that a bit. She started answering something like that, but even then it wasn't very much. She was like, oh, well, I'll report a point of Republican to my cabinet.

Well, what, what good is that? Especially if you're somebody who is, more left wing, that's a negative.

CARROLL: Yeah. Well, yeah. Talking about the whole like podcast universe and the things that they, that, that Harris or other Democrats didn't go on. I mean, it makes me think of, and again, this is something as I was kind of like, burning, burning through people's reactions to the the election this [00:40:00] past weekend.

One thing that, that I thought was really a sharp observation that, that someone had made was like, there is like this whole, world of culture, which is, an enormous part of all our, our, our lives. And specifically in terms of like, men feeling that they're not welcome in the democratic party, not being talked to, I do think, we are living through an age of cultural black backlash right now, where I think, you had the me too movement. And I think ever since then, you've been kind of having this sort of like, banner sort of like. of rebelling. And, we're still a patriarchy. We're still a male dominant society. And health, men still have quite a, quite a few means to, to make their, their sort of dissat, dissatisfaction heard.

And it, it does seem like there is this kind of bit of cultural ferment going on right now that is separate from politics. But I think what you're getting at is also is also part of politics because it form, it influences people's votes, it influences how people think about politicians. And there's nothing to say, like you're saying [00:41:00] that a democratic politician can't go on one of these shows where maybe they're, the general tenor is like, not something that the Democrat agrees with, but. That's how else you're going to get, get your point of view across. And I, I think like one of the things that I think is just thrilled a lot of Democrats is seeing someone like Pete Buttigieg be going on Fox News, all these things and showing that like, yeah, with a certain attitude and a certain quickness of wit, like you can actually kind of get your ideas across.

And again, jury's out on whether It has all made a difference, or, I don't know how Fox News is cutting and splicing, Pete's discussions with people so that, does he come out sounding

SHEFFIELD: I think he does them live, actually. I think he does them live. Oh, they can't do that.

CARROLL: So, he knows what he's doing.

So, I think they kind of showed that, like, and I think, will kind of turn this to another, kind of push this forward again and say, like, I think this also speaks to, like, there is, in many ways, a sort of lack of aggression on the Democratic side. And it's, it is very befuddling because like the stakes could not be [00:42:00] higher. And I think obviously like Trump is a master of keeping the initiative and aggression, obviously. And seeing the Democrats not just like sometimes just like, let's just like freaking do stuff we haven't done before and like get out there. I certainly think in the post, post Harris phase of things here to blame her po the post-election phase.

I think you're gonna hopefully see people being much more experimental or at least suggesting that

SHEFFIELD: Yeah,

CARROLL: here and like, let's figure this out.

Many lessons of Obama and Clinton victories are not relevant to today

SHEFFIELD: well, and that is actually a core difference as somebody who has been on the inside of both sides, like the right is so much more experimental than the left is and, like, whereas, because people in the democratic campaign, super structure, if you will, largely are people who are veterans of the Bill Clinton campaigns.

And of the Barack Obama campaigns. And the critical thing to note about both of those candidates was [00:43:00] that in a lot of ways, the system actually favored them. They didn't actually have to grind out a good. campaign, a great campaign on their own. So, and I, and I'll say that, like, just to be more specific, like, so Bill Clinton, of course, 1992, he was helped with both of his campaigns by Ross Perot being there, taking away votes from Republicans.

And then, and then in 96, he ran against Bob Dole, who was, just everybody, No one liked Bob Dole. And so he never had a chance. And everyone knew it, probably including him, from the beginning. And then, fast forward to 2008 with, Barack Obama. So candidate quality and media environment are, to me, are the biggest determiners of who wins a little action.

And Barack Obama, was an incredible quality candidate. Like we haven't seen anybody with that level of eloquence. And he just like also with, like Trump has an ability to, give people an answer that sounds good to them and makes sense to them.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: and on case of Obama could actually speak grammatical [00:44:00] sentences.

And, a lot of people say is attractive and, like, He was a fantastic candidate. And so whatever other issues were going on and then he had the financial collapse that happened during the Republicans, like all of these things, like it was, he was going to win that election pretty much guaranteed in 2008 and 2012.

He was up against a guy who was, basically a venture capitalist banker. Like if a Democrat can't beat a boring venture capitalist banker, then, you're pretty awful campaign chop. And then of course he was still the, the great communicator that he was. So basically that goes back to this idea of not Democrats, not having room for error because the people who have the experience, who have the power, who have the infrastructure, who have the money, they never had to earn it in some sense.

And now that Democrats have to grind in order to win, they don't know how to. And Joe Biden, I would [00:45:00] say, one in spite. Of the democratic operative class, because it was largely people who were just so horrified by the Trump presidency, by the pandemic. And notably, that's why I was saying the people who didn't vote in 2020, they voted, they didn't vote, they voted for Trump.

So like basically Trump had of the electorate that we had. In 2020, he lost it. He lost. It was only these new voters that came out. That's why Donald Trump won. Is that he mobilized, non voters and he was able to convince enough younger voters. Like when you had those two together. That was his margin of victory.

And that's something that I think to me is, is a huge takeaway.

CARROLL: Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: And then, and then I guess maybe the last underscoring at that point is that when you look at, so one of the other exit poll questions was what's your feeling if Trump is elected or if Harris is elected and they gave people the [00:46:00] choices of excited, optimistic, concerned, or scared.

And the fascinating thing on this question is when they, of the people who said they were concerned if Trump won, which was 14%,

CARROLL: Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: 14 percent of them voted for him

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: that they said they were concerned if he went now. And then if you look at people who were concerned about Harris, if she won, there was 21 percent of them.

Who said they were concerned and she only got 7 percent of them. So basically the, these were reluctant voters who, who a lot of them didn't like Trump, but they voted for him anyway.

CARROLL: Yeah.

Mainstream media's failure to tell the full truth about Republicans

CARROLL: Well, this reminds me of the other, this is obviously staring us in the face, but just the issue of the kind of the massive media failures that happen, not just in terms of like. know, Democrats having to contend with, a massive right media apparatuses feeding all sorts of disinformation and, but also just, let's call it like the mainstream [00:47:00] media, New York Times, Washington Post, where I think it's, it's pretty clear that there was like just a, a gigantic failure to really talk about like what. What a threat like Trump poses to, not just our democracy, but pretty much every aspect of our lives. Because of his starting with the fact that, he's, he's basically like a lawless individual who tried to overthrow our government and seems to have no respect for the law.

And I think the Supreme

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: come in and said that, what he does can go. Going forward, so I think, I think in some ways, and this is kind of what is, what I'm seeing is a bit missing from kind of the postmortems that I'm seeing this last weekend and so on is Democrats had these massive headwinds that they're going against.

I mean, so much misinformation on the right the kind of, I guess that it's called the same washing phenomenon coming from [00:48:00] mainstream and then it's like, oh, and the Democrats lost. They must really suck. it's like, well, let's, let's hit the pause button here and kind of look at what these structural factors were that were going on. And but I, I just think that that's, I just didn't want to leave that out of kind of the overall kind of like

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: and things that I think people are going to definitely be like looking at and talking about.

Democrats cannot rely on the mainstream media

CARROLL: And, this definitely goes into discussions of like, how do the Democrats build a sort of media apparatus that can get the word out when they can't rely? And at this point, I think it's pretty clear they can't rely on mainstream

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: that for them, whatever.

SHEFFIELD: they can't. Yeah. And, and here's the, the other irony to me is, is again, somebody who switched sides was that people on the right, they figured that out also. Yeah. So the, so the mainstream media by design is appealing to both sides. Like that is the literal business model that they will not be the advocacy [00:49:00] organization for either political party.

And, they've, they've decided to commit to the bit. They don't care to defend themselves against a guy who literally wants to throw them in jail and calls them enemies of the people and incites violence against them. They don't care. And so, and I, and I know that that's probably, having to come to terms with that reality, like it's, it is an astonishing, myopia that they have, but they have it.

And, whereas the right, they figured out, well, okay, we're Christian fundamentalists who, want. Corporations to rule everyone in a sort of feudalism. So the media doesn't promote our ideas and they're not going to, so we will make our own. And they had that realization in the 1950s and that's, like this is the fundamental dynamic.

And and, but, but I think for again, like a lot of, a lot of people, the, the, the, the, the disadvantage that people who are trying to [00:50:00] oppose this, Unreality movement is that when you're, when you're just attacking, when you're attacking reality, you're against reality. That's easy. That's much easier than to say, well, I'm in favor of reality and we're going to make it better in small ways.

CARROLL: Yeah, I mean, that's, it's a huge imbalance. It's a huge imbalance. And it does feel like, yeah, it does feel like a lot of people, particularly on the right have, they're, they're in echo chambers. And, and, they're, Hearing, they're not getting the truth about what's going on with the economy.

They're not getting the truth about what's going on, even on like the culture war front. I mean, they fed these nightmares about, about immigrants invading the country and, and these things that

SHEFFIELD: Or,

CARROLL: I mean,

SHEFFIELD: or trans, sorry, or transgender prisoners. Like there were literally two gender affirming care surgeries and they were done under Trump. They were not done under Biden. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

CARROLL: [00:51:00] I mean, yeah, it's like, I get, it's like to state the most obvious thing in the world that it's been so obvious for so long that I think it's just like treated as a given, but yeah, if you have like massive propaganda apparatus that can broadcast fictional versions of the world that people are convinced are the reality, yeah, that's a huge political advantage.

And, and I do feel the Democrats at some level. At various points, they just gave up, they just took it as that given, and it's

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Mm

CARROLL: behind your back or your opponent has four arms or whatever metaphor you want to use. It's, it's, it's just kind of like, wow, like, I guess we're just going to like operate in this information environment.

I, I do feel like in some ways, there's some silver lining with this election. It's going to be that Democrats realize that this can't go on. Like you, there's no point in having great ideas if, if people aren't hearing them or [00:52:00] people hearing an avalanche of, of, of lies that kind of,

SHEFFIELD: hmm. Five lives.

CARROLL: them.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and like, well, and there were a lot of organizations that got lots of money for fact checking and whatnot, but the problem is,

CARROLL: hmm.

SHEFFIELD: and I, I still think those things need to be done, but the reality is,

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: fact check your way out of fascism. Fascism is about money. It is about a false version of reality that is crammed into your skull whether you want it or not, or whether, and whether you know it's even happening or not.

Like that's, like on the economy, when you look at it, like a lot of people, I mean, you look at the, the audience of these things, it's not the majority of Americans who are, participating in right wing media, but it is probably, Bigger now or at least proximate size to the mainstream media, especially and for younger people It is definitely bigger because gen z Prefers youtube.

They don't even like netflix like youtube is more popular among gen z than netflix is and any of the other [00:53:00] streaming services.

Money is not the obstacle to a better media environment, willpower and skill is

SHEFFIELD: But I will say there there is As we're getting to the end of our session here that there is one cause for hope that I do want people to think about. And that is when, when, when I have talked about these things and articles and social media, a lot of times people will say to me, well, this, it's, this is just not fair.

There's all these billionaires who are funding these things. It's this is what we're up against. How can we ever have any hope? But I want people to realize there were 83 billionaires who backed Kamala Harris in 2024. There were 52 who backed Donald Trump. So money is actually not the problem for the left.

It's skill and it's the desire to do something different and better.

CARROLL: Yeah, totally agree. I mean, I think it's in some, in some to be optimistic. I mean, I think this is a case of like just people's imaginations. I mean, I think it's sort of like the classic thinking outside the box about [00:54:00] proceed.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. But yeah, you, if, if, if you really believe that democracy is at stake, which is what they kept saying, then you need to act like it. It's time to do something different. And, and the great thing is there's a lot of people who would be really excited about doing something different and that would really get behind it, like, Kamala Harris is the democratic base of voters in, when, when Gallup has people, are you excited to vote this year?

Democrats. This was like 2008 levels of excitement about voting. So people really want something different and they want to stop, they want to stop, the, the Trumpian Christo fascism, they really are committed to do it. And so, this, I think it's, it's a painful shattering and of illusion.

But if we can keep it together and push back against all of the horrible things that Trump and his cronies will do there is, there is There is, there's a lot of people out there, who have said on Twitter, I've seen that there, that Harris managed to re [00:55:00] inspire patriotism in them in a way that they hadn't felt since the Obama years.

And, and that's a good energy to capture and we don't need to lose that.

CARROLL: Totally agree.

SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so for people who want to keep tabs with you, Jim what, what are your recommendations for it?

CARROLL: Well, you can check me out at flux. You can also check out my personal website. It's the hot screen. com. Yeah, I yeah, mostly politics these days used to do movie reviews, but then Trump happened and I kind of concentrate on the politics.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Now, what about on socials though? What are you, for people who want to catch?

CARROLL: still on Twitter at this point. So that's a JTC at JTC Carol and yeah, that's, that's kind of the extent of it these days. I, I definitely going to get onto blue sky soon. It seems to be a, it's a Twitter exodus is seems to be accelerating.

SHEFFIELD: Yep. It sure does. And with good reason, with good reason. Yeah. All right. Well, cool, Jim. Thanks for being here and we'll hopefully people got something [00:56:00] out of our chat here.

CARROLL: Great conversation. Thank you.

SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is the program for today. Appreciate everybody joining us for the conversation and you can always get more. If you go to theory of change that show, you can get the video, audio and transcript of all the episodes and my thanks to everybody who has a paid subscribing member. That's very, very important.

I don't have any connections to the Democratic Party or to MSNBC or any of these other large media platforms. We are supported by your help and I really appreciate it. If you can afford that right now, that would be great. And if you can't please do subscribe. Anyway, we have a free options on Patrion or on sub stack, and you can stay in touch and get all of the latest episodes as well, and all the articles that we're putting out.

So thank you very much. And I'll see you next time.

Transcript

Election Day is upon us, and as you surely know, the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is looking excruciatingly close. After Harris jumped to a small lead once she became the Democratic standard-bearer, Trump has tightened things up, primarily with the assistance of crazed former Democrat Robert Kennedy Junior.

How much support each candidate is receiving is truly difficult to say. Normally, public opinion surveys could provide some useful information in this regard but with pretty much every pollster showing the race within their studies’ sampling margins of error, the polls cannot be a reliable guide, especially since many of them seem to be engaging in “herding,” i.e. modifying their results to be similar to previous surveys.

With Trump and Harris each getting about 48 percent of the vote, the winner is going to be determined by how many of each candidate’s solid supporters actually turn in their ballots and also by what people who currently say they are undecided end up doing. Oftentimes, these undecided people end up not voting at all or leaving the presidential line blank.

Given Trump’s historically tyrannical, corrupt, and incompetent leadership, this race should not be a close one. It is nonetheless. And yet, despite some significant advantages that Trump has on the economy and the approval rating of President Joe Biden, it is my belief that Harris is poised to win a small victory tomorrow.

The primary reason I believe this is that Donald Trump is facing the classic celebrity problem: He’s overexposed.

After dominating the political landscape for nearly a decade, Donald Trump seems to be losing his grip on some Americans’ minds. At long last, Trump’s never-ending stream of corruption scandals, his non-stop offensive remarks, his ever-expanding retinue of controversial advisers, and his constant grifting have made some of his fans tired of it all.

As it has since the beginning of his political career, Trump’s strategy hinges on mobilizing his core supporters. However, the size of his base is not sufficient to secure victory. Realizing this, Trump has focused on attracting low-propensity voters who agree with him on certain issues but lack strong enthusiasm for his candidacy.

But the disgraced ex-president is likely drawing on a depleting well. That’s because Trump’s strategy this year is the exact same one that he employed in 2020. While it wasn’t sufficient to get him the victory against Joe Biden, Trump was remarkably successful. After receiving 63 million votes in 2016, Trump juiced his total to 74 million in his re-election bid.

But is it possible that Trump reached his ceiling in 2020? We can’t know at this juncture, but it’s possible that he may not have any more “unlikely voters” aside from young adults who have never voted before. The biggest indicator that his might be true is that Trump’s small-dollar donations are significantly lower than they were in 2020. As the Associated Press and Bloomberg reported last month, Trump has raised $260 million in donations of less than $200 each this year compared to $476 million in 2020. After nearly a decade of spamming his followers with endless (and even fraudulent) money requests, Donald Trump may have bled MAGA dry financially.

We’ll know soon whether the decrease in donations correlates to Trump receiving fewer votes, but one indication that it might is that Democratic enthusiasm to vote has been consistently higher since Kamala Harris entered the presidential race. According to Gallup, in March of 2024, 57 percent of registered Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said they were “more enthusiastic than usual” about casting a ballot this year. That jumped to 79 percent in August after Harris jumped in and was at 77 percent in a late October survey, a number even higher than the previous record for Democrats set during the groundbreaking candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008. Republicans, meanwhile are stuck at 67 percent.

There might be millions of hidden Trump voters out there who have not been brought into the fold, but if you were to judge by the final campaign rallies he’s holding, the crowds are not indicating this either. Reporters have been filling up social media with video footage showing that the disgraced ex-president is no longer able to pack an arena in swing states, and that many of his supporters are leaving well before the programs are over.

While hardcore Republicans agree with the reactionary policies that Trump is promising to enact and pushed through during his single term, his appeal to nonpolitical people is based on his showmanship. He knows how to improvise, he can be funny, and he sometimes say truths that other Republicans are afraid to admit because he doesn’t fully buy into their ideology.

But after 9 years, the Trump show has gotten old. He never plays anything new and yet the act keeps getting longer and more boring. If you’ve seen one Trump rally, you’ve seen them all. At this point, attending one is more about meeting with friends than to hear the old guy yack for hours about nothing.

Aside from activating potentially sympathetic citizens, the other major way that campaigns can pick up more votes is to reconcile with former supporters or persuade new ones. As he makes his third run for the White House, Trump is trying to reconcile with his former supporters—without really changing anything at all about his larger policies, platform, or persona.

While he does seem to have picked off some conspiracy-loving Democrats by teaming up with Robert Kennedy and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump has not been willing to cast aside his mostly unpopular policy positions like repealing the Affordable Care Act or executing drug dealers. He has also refused to rescind his blatant lies about the 2020 election or even apologize for trying to overturn the congressional certification and doing nothing as his supporters raided the U.S. Capitol. Instead of tamping down on his dictatorial rhetoric, Trump has only increased it, saying recently that he “shouldn’t have left” the presidency and that he wanted to execute former general Mark Milley.

Instead of dropping his unpopular stances, Trump has resorted to smaller gimmick proposals like ending federal income taxes on service tips and wild-eyed claims that he will magically replace income taxes with tariffs. These aren’t likely to win him new voters, especially since Trump has added new controversial stances like letting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “do what you have to do” in Gaza and also encouraging him to bomb Iran, even though it could set off a massive regional conflict.

Let’s go back to those former Trump voters for a second though.

Although Trump got more votes numerically in his second presidential bid, millions of the people who had supported him in 2016 declined to do so in 2020. That’s a sizable group of potential votes he could get in 2024.

There are multiple ways to slice this demographic, but the biggest group he lost support among in 2020 was among White men. (He lost a smaller amount among White women, stayed the same among Black voters, and gained significantly among Latinos, according to an internal Trump campaign memorandum.)

We don’t know how Trump will do among different demographic groups this time. This is largely because most public opinion surveys do not have sufficiently large enough sample sizes of smaller minority groups to be statistically meaningful. Given the continuing rapid growth of Hispanic evangelicalism, he is likely to pick up more support among Hispanics. Among Black voters, indications are unclear, especially since Black Americans who disagree with Democrats are less likely to vote. This is also true of the younger White men that Trump is trying to entice by appearing on the podcasts of bro-conservatives like Joe Rogan.

Trump has inadvertently made his task even more difficult since he keeps sending conflicting messages about early and mail-in voting. He frequently tells rally attendees to vote early, but then also derides methods of doing so as “stupid” and “terrible.”

“It’s sad when you have to go months early, it’s crazy,” Trump said in June. “What are they doing with all these votes?”

If you ask me, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to bet your entire campaign on getting low-propensity voters to show up on one particular day for a guy who they don’t even like that much. But that does appear to be what Trump is doing. The fact that he has almost completely outsourced his get-out-the-vote operation to the political newbie Elon Musk is not helping his situation either.

Given all of the above, I think it’s fair to say that Harris has a slight edge going into Election Day tomorrow, despite some larger traditional metrics that Trump has in his favor.

I could be wrong though so please make sure you get out the vote, especially if you are in a swing state!

Pamela Smith, election security expert and President and CEO of Verified Voting, delves into the critical aspects of voting integrity, and gets into the weeds of voting equipment, voter purges, ballot audits, recount procedures, and the hand-counting process, while addressing every conceivable question on election security. We also revisit the historic 2000 Presidential Election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, exploring the notorious "hanging chad" incident. Finally, Pam offers practical advice on what to do if you encounter issues on Election Day—simply call or text 866-OUR-VOTE or visit 866OurVote.org for assistance.

This episode was made possible with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation through URL Media.

Call/Text: 866-Our-Vote

866OurVote.org

Verified Voting

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

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Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette!

WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media.

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Kelly Hall, the Executive Director of The Fairness Project, an organization focused on empowering voters through citizen-led ballot measures, has become the country's largest backers of abortion ballot measures, investing $30M to critical ballot campaigns like those in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska. Ballot measures have become a critical lifeline to strengthening, restoring and expanding abortion rights across the country. Kelly discusses what's on this ballot this year, including what's going on in Nebraska—where a competing anti-abortion measure aims to mislead voters. 

This episode was made possible with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation through URL Media.

The Fairness Project

Abortion Rights Leaders Set Sights on Nebraska

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

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Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette!

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Political activist, and co-founder of the progressive organization Indivisible, Leah Greenberg, discusses the early days of the organization, and what she hoped would happen after publishing the first Indivisible Guide in 2016. We also discuss the big tent strategy embraced by the Harris-Walz campaign, and whether the coalition can hold after the election. Lastly, we discuss what you can do NOW, ahead of Tuesday's election, to help save democracy. (Hint: Vote, get your friends & family to vote, then visit AllInForHarris.org for volunteer opportunities)

This episode was made possible with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation through URL Media.

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4

Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette!

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