Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

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

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Verified Voting

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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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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

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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.

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Kelley Robinson, the President of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC.org), the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, discusses the enthusiasm on the ground for the Harris-Walz campaign. Kelley and the folks at Human Rights Campaign have held GOTV events across the country, in battleground states, on college campuses, and at HBCUs. She provides an update on those events, talks Project 2025, and delivers a closing message to voters on what we should remember as we head toward the most consequential election of our lifetimes.

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

Human Rights Campaign — Get Involved

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USAFacts President, Poppy MacDonald, discusses their mission to provide solid, unbiased facts about the United States that are rooted in data. USAFacts is a nonprofit, founded by Steve Ballmer, who assembled a small team of economists, writers, and researchers to help comb through government data. Poppy MacDonald discusses how this data can then be used to shape policy, to inform constituents, and even, to strengthen our democracy.

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

USAFacts.org

Just the Facts

Swing States Data

Facts About the Economy

Facts About Immigration

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In 2018, Liuba Grechen Shirley launched a historic congressional campaign to represent New York’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives—all while raising two young children under six-years-old. As her demanding campaign schedule clashed with limited access to affordable childcare, Liuba quickly realized the whole thing was untenable. So, six months into her campaign, Liuba petitioned the Federal Election Commission, making history as the first woman to receive federal approval to spend campaign funds for childcare. This experience inspired her to launch the Vote Mama Foundation, dedicated to empowering mothers to run for office. In this episode, Liuba discusses the importance of having pro-choice moms elected to office, the double standard that women candidates face, and how electing moms, up and down the ballot, benefits everyone.

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

Vote Mama Candidates

Vote Mama PAC

Vote Mama Research

Giving Circles

Climate Power 2024 Election

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