November 7, 2024 • 65 mins
The 2024 presidential race has finally come to a close, but the conversation and questions about how things unfolded have just begun. For this election debrief, Katie is joined by Democratic consultant and friend of the pod Brian Goldsmith to examine the surprising dynamics of Trump’s 2024 victory, including the conventional-wisdom-smashing voter coalition that delivered him a second term. With the Democratic Party now facing tough questions about its future, Goldsmith explores what Harris’s campaign could have done differently and the soul-searching needed for Democrats to reconnect with an evolving American public.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Couric and this is next question.
What was that song Maureen McGovern sang in the Poseidon Adventure?
Am I dating myself?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This got to be a morning of if we can
hold on?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Then This isn't exactly the morning after, but it is
the night after the twenty twenty four presidential election, and
I'm talking and debriefing with my good friend Brian Goldsmith. Brian,
I am so happy to have you here. There's so
much I want to talk to you about what happened,
(00:49):
how the country feels, and where we're going with the
future Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
So good evening, good evening, not much to discuss. Kind
of a slow week, right.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, really, let's you know. I want to dis first
start by asking your general reaction to this massive Trump victory.
I think people thought it was going to be very close,
and maybe you're going to tell me it was close,
But when you look at that electoral map, you're like,
holy shit, that's a lot of red.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What happened, Well, we may have overcomplicated this election. You
had an incumbent president with a forty percent approval rating.
You had sixty five seventy percent of the country saying
we're on the wrong track. Stuff costs about twenty percent
more than it did before COVID, and people were broadly
dissatisfied with the status quo and the party in power,
(01:46):
so they voted for the out party. Any political scientist
would tell you that that is the most normal thing
in the world. But of course Donald Trump is the
least normal candidate imaginable, and given all of the as
he would say, huge baggage that he's bringing into this
race and now into the White House. I think a
(02:06):
lot of Democrats, including me, thought this time would be different,
but it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Do you think that a lot of pundits and political
experts such as yourself, Brian, thought that again his lunacy
would outweigh people's pain at the pump and the grocery store, etc.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, we thought a couple of things. We thought the
load was just too much for voters to bear at
a certain point, the load of Trump right, all his problems.
You know. We saw a version of this in North Carolina,
where people wanted to vote for change. The state voted
(02:50):
Republican for president, and yet they elected the Democrat Josh
Stein as governor by a pretty big margin, because.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, fairness that his opponent was insane. If Mark Robinson,
if hadn't been revealed that he was called himself a
black hitler and liked to watch transgender people have sex,
you know that was part of his choice in pornography.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, that's just an example of the load is too
much to bear. So the load was too much for
voters to bear with Mark Robinson. I think democrats thought,
just as Mark Robinson was ultimately rendered unelectable based on
his problems, Donald Trump would be rendered unelectable based on
his problems. And yeah, he didn't call himself a black Nazi,
but he did try to overturn a free and fair
election and instigate a violent insurrection. So you know, Potato Patado.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Well he's done a lot more than just that massive thing.
I mean, if you just look at the last ten
days of the campaign, and we've talked about this Brian,
it seemed he was making no effort, as Maureen Dowd
wrote her Nerd column, to expand his base, to widen
the net, to get any voter he could, and he
just drilled down on this sort of obnoxious browie. I
(04:06):
can say anything and there are no repercussions unhinged kind
of weird behavior from Philating. I never knew that was
the verb. By the way, I learned something this week
filating a microphone and you know, making all these disgusting,
gross comments called, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Russ should be shot, saying that his opponent should be arrested.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a bitch, Kamala is trash,
you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, and more seriously, you know, promising all sorts of
illegal actions as president. And so you know, to step
back to answer your question. Yeah, we thought, despite broad
dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, that Harris had
run a pretty good campaign. She tried to position herself
as a change candidate. She closed some of the gap,
(05:01):
a lot of the gap on handling the economy, and that,
just as in twenty twenty two, Democrats would overperform because
of the Trump factor. And what I think we know
pretty definitively now is that Trump is a unique political
animal who is kind of untouchable to his supporters no
(05:24):
matter what he says or does, and brings out a
pretty big coalition to the polls no matter what. Now,
his coalition this time is actually pretty different than his
coalition in twenty sixteen. And we'll get into all of that,
But to your original point, it was a broad based
victory in the Swing States. It was a series of
narrow victories, consistent victories across the Swing States. But he
(05:47):
wasn't winning the Swing States by five or ten points.
He was winning them by one or two points. He
had bigger gains in places where the campaign wasn't actually
being fought between Harris and Trump on the airwaves, but
the whole country did seem to move in his direction.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
There is so much to unpack, Brian. Let's talk about
the constituencies that came out and supported Donald Trump. He
did surprisingly well or better. I guess it's all relative,
and you can put this into context for us with
a lot of groups. Let's first talk about black voters,
(06:23):
black women. I think ninety percent came out for Kamala Harris.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, about ninety percent, maybe eighty nine or eighty eight,
but pretty close to that.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And that held steady correct for Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, we saw a pretty significant deterioration among black men.
And I should just say at the outset that this
data is a little bit early. It still needs to
cook for a couple of days, a couple of weeks.
These numbers will change a bit. But directionally, we're talking
about stuff based on the exit polling that is conducted,
(06:59):
you know, right after the election. So to answer your question,
black men, Harris probably only won them by about fifty
six points. Clinton won them in twenty sixteen by sixty
nine points. Biden won them by about sixty points, So
you can see the line going down a little bit.
Black women, there was some deterioration too. Clinton won them
(07:23):
by ninety points, a nine zero point margin, went down
to eighty one points under Biden, went back up a
little bit for Harris, another black woman, that makes sense,
to an eighty four point margin. But the significant deterioration
was among black men. And where I'm sure you're going next,
Latino men.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Well, let's talk about Latino men and compare what they
did in twenty twenty versus twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, this is huge, This is a historic realignment of
Latino voters. I think political scientus and historians are going
to be talking about this for a long time because
what's happening, and it's consistent with the sort of the
broader story of America. As immigrant groups settle here, have children,
(08:14):
have grandchildren, they assimilate, and the second generation, in the
third generation start to vote like white people. And so
you are seeing non college educated Latinos begin to vote
like non college educated white voters. And that is bad
news for Democrats because non college educated white people are
(08:36):
at the core of the Trump coalition. So let's go
back to twenty sixteen again. The first time Trump was
on the ballot, Hillary Clinton won Latino men by thirty
one points. Then Joe Biden won Latino men by a
little bit less, by twenty three points. What happened this year,
Donald Trump won Latino men probably by about a dozen points.
(08:58):
That is like a thirty five point swing in four years.
And we can talk about some of the factors that
might have gone into that, but it's just stunning. And yes,
her advantage among Latina women narrowed as well, to about
half of Biden's margin from four years ago.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So as you say, that's a significant shift that's going
to be studied by historians, but it's not just a
generational explanation or assimilation. Are there other reasons for this
gravitational pull that Latinos had and Latina's had toward Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
We're moving toward educational stratification is the fancy term, but
sort of sorting in our politics where we have one
coalition for the college educated and another coalition for working
class voters who don't have a college degree. That is
the single best way to figure out today whether someone's
(09:59):
going to vote for a day Democrat or Republican. Do
they have a college or an advanced degree. The vast
majority of Latinos do not. They are increasingly starting to
vote based on cultural and economic factors more like other
voters without a college degree, and I think Trump really
(10:19):
hammered home a number of messages that resonated with that group.
They feel the pain of higher grocery costs, higher gas
prices like other working class people do, because they're living
paycheck to paycheck, and it's not just an inconvenience, it's
a disaster in their lives when those costs go up
so substantially. And on cultural issues, they've always been more
(10:40):
culturally conservative despite voting heavily Democratic, and so you know,
on issues like transgender care, which the Trump campaign just
hammered for the last two months, they sided with the Republicans.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Well, let's talk about college educated Latinos. When you look
at that group, I don't know if you have numbers
for them, but does it change dramatically and does that
college education mitigate some of the cultural issues that make
them tend to be more conservative.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
So it's interesting what the exit poll provides is voters
of color, black and brown with a college degree versus without,
and that the difference is really striking. Harris won voters
of color who are college graduates by thirty three points.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Voters of color with no degree, she won by a
narrower margin, by like twenty nine or thirty points, But
that's largely because you have, you know, black voters in there.
I think AAPI is included in there. I wish they
broke out just the Latinos because I think you would see,
you know, you would see a pretty dramatic difference.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Let's talk about white women. Hillary Clinton did not win
the election. One might argue, I'm wrong about this, Brian
in twenty sixteen because the majority of white women voted
for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, you're right about that, but white women writ large
have always been a Republican constituency. They voted for Romney,
of Robama, for McCain of Robama, et cetera. People thought,
because Hillary was a white woman, she would narrow that
gap a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
But did she.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
No, she didn't. She basically landed where, you know, where
Biden did, and that was a you know, that was
a significant problem. But again you'll see a huge education gap.
I mean, one of the few areas, maybe the only
area where Harris grew Democratic support compared to sixteen and
twenty is among white women with a college degree. White
(12:48):
women with a college degree were like Kamala Harris's base.
She won them by sixteen points compared to Biden winning
them by nine Hillary winning them by about that margin.
But among white women out a degree, zero improvement. Despite
Harris being you know, only the second woman to be
nominated for president, she basically performed the same among that
(13:11):
group as Biden did four years ago and as Hillary
did eight years ago.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
When it comes to white women with a college degree,
if rove Way had not been overturned, do you think
she would have fared as well with that demographic.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
No, I think Dobbs was a clearly a factor powering
overperformance among that group, which is strongly pro choice. I
think that improved her standing among men with a college
degree as well, but it just wasn't enough. You know,
you have states like Florida where there was an abortion
(13:52):
referendum on the ballot. Fifty seven percent of Floridians voted
the pro choice position and Harris got just shell act
in Florida, So a lot of voters, I think was
twenty eight percent of pro choice voters according to the
exit polling we have voted for Trump. So clearly that
was just not the most important issue to them.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Let's talk about young people because I read an article
before we hopped on about gen Z not really coming
out for Kamala Harris. Do you have any numbers about
young voters and what they ended up doing well.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
There are two ways of looking at these groups. There's
the turnout that is how many people were actually showing
up to vote, and there's the share that is what
percentage of the voters who do turn out of somebody
getting And the turnout was clearly not as big as
what Democrats were hoping for and expecting. They thought that
Trump would drive historic turnout and that doesn't seem to
(14:50):
have happened. And then secondly, Harris performed substantially worse than
Joe Biden did and worse than Hillary Clinton did among
a teen to twenty nine year olds. She probably only
won them by about ten or eleven points. Biden won
them by twenty four points four years ago. Hillary won
them by almost twenty points eight years ago. She made
(15:11):
up for that to a degree by overperforming among seniors.
There was probably a tie among senior citizens, whereas Trump
won voters over sixty five in both sixteen and twenty,
but the change just wasn't nearly as dramatic.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
This is what Peter Hanby wrote in Puck Kamala's Wasted Youth. Sure,
young white dudes broke for Trump, but Harris also underperformed
with almost every kind of young person, young white women,
young black voters, and young Latinos.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Why well, we're going to be sorting through that for
a while. I would say a couple of things. One,
if you're a young person, you're just starting out economically.
The majority of young people in the country still do
not have college degrees, and so so they feel stressed
and burdened by higher costs. They're saddled with more student debt.
(16:05):
And even though Joe Biden did a lot of stuff
around student debt. I don't think they felt like their
economic pain was substantially alleviated. There may have been some
backlash to Israel Gaza, although we can talk about that
a little more. I'm still skeptical that that was a
high priority for a lot of voters. And I also
think there wasn't like a clear agenda that Harris was
(16:29):
presenting to them about how young people's lives were going
to get better and how her administration would represent a
change versus the last four years the Biden administration.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
We have a lot to unpack and just that answer,
but just staying with young people, Biden won eighteen to
twenty nine year olds by a massive twenty five point margin.
She won them only by thirteen points, so that's a
significant drop.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
That margin was cut in half.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter
wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Let's
(17:26):
talk about the Middle East, And as you said, I
think the economy in most polls was the top priority
for young people, but Obviously, we had a lot of
controversy following the attack on Israel of October seventh, with
protests on college campuses as the war continued, people protesting
(17:49):
the number of civilian casualties and deaths in Gaza. How
did Kamala Harris do navigating that? Because I feel like
she tried to express her support of Israel but also
her sympathy to the people in Gaza, and it turns out,
(18:10):
it seems to me, Brian, she pissed both groups off.
There was that abandon Harris campaign in Michigan. I'm not
sure how significant that ended up being in the vote.
I want to talk to you about that and then,
and maybe it's because I live in New York and
follow a lot of Jewish people on Instagram, and you
(18:30):
know many Jewish people, and if you're Jewish, so you
probably talked to people who felt this way supported Trump
because they felt he would be better for Israel, and
they became single issue voters on that. So how much
did this trying to please everyone in a way hurt
Kamala Harris in your view?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Well, first of all, I think she was probably expressing
what her real position is. You know, for twenty years.
Kamala Harris has been a pretty stalwart ally of Israel
and Jewish Americans. Her relationship with Jews in the Bay
Area goes back decades. She actually took her Jewish husband
on his first trip to Israel after she became a senator.
(19:14):
So I think that's real. And I also think that
the Biden Harris administration had real issues with the way
that Biebe was prosecuting the war and not developing a
clear goal and an endgame. That said, I don't think
it was a top concern for a large number of voters.
The polling was pretty consistent about this. There were a
(19:36):
lot of people who were very loud on social media
on one side or the other. I think in New York,
which is home to the largest Jewish community in the
United States, there was clearly deterioration of Harris's position versus
Biden four years ago or Clinton eight years ago.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
In New York City.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
In New York State, Yeah, New York City and Long
Island and and throughout the state. New York City in
the suburbs primarily, which is where Jews tend to live,
But we don't see evidence of that yet. Nationally, in Pennsylvania,
for example, which has a very substantial Jewish community. She
seems to have performed about as well as Joe Biden
did four years ago. So maybe in the New York
(20:18):
media market, the New York echo chamber, this was a
bigger deal than it was in California or Pennsylvania, for example.
And it's interesting. In the exit polling, they asked the question,
is US support for Israel too strong, not strong enough,
or about right? Well, sixty one percent of voters thought
(20:39):
it was not strong enough or about right. Only thirty
one percent, less than a third thought American support for
Israel was too strong, and Harris actually won that group
by like two to one, By more than two to one.
We did see clearly in Michigan in Dearborn, some pockets
in certain precincts of Jill Stein's support and a collapse
(21:03):
in Harris's support. I don't think it was enough to
have made the difference statewide. I also think it's notable
that Alyssa Slotkin, who is a pro Israel Jewish woman,
was elected to the Senate from Michigan on the same
day and the same election when Kamala Harris lost. So
if that was the driving issue they wouldn't have voted
for Slotkin either, So I'm a little skeptical.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Well, did they vote for Slotkin and Dearborn? No?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
But it was clearly not enough to deprive her of
a victory. There were enough Trump Slotkin voters that she
was able to overcome that.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I want to ask you about the polls. You and
I seemed to talk about the polls every election. Were
they accurate? This time?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
They look pretty accurate, although misleading, which sounds like a
contradictory answer. And let me unpack it slightly. What the
polls essentially showed in the seven battlegrounds. Again, I don't
really care about national polling because this election is fought
in seven states, and it's about the electoral college, it's
not about the national popular vote. So the best polling
(22:09):
was of these seven states, and essentially what it showed
was a tie in almost all of these states. And
the thing that people often forget about polling is the
margin of error applies to each number, not to the
margin between the two numbers. So if you see a
poll that's one candidate at fifty another candidate at forty eight,
(22:30):
with a margin of plus or minus three, you know
that means the spread could be fifty three forty five
and it would still be statistically the same poll that
you're seeing. And so people overread polling, people ascribed polling
powers and precision that it doesn't have. And it is
(22:51):
also the historical pattern that in the end, presidential elections
tend to move one way or the other. That sounds
like a very obvious statement, but that is to say,
it is very rare that you would have of the
seven battlegrounds three going one way, four going the other.
It's usually like six to one, seven to zero, because
(23:14):
the voters are similar and the undecided usually break kind
of in one direction. And that's what we saw here.
We saw a pattern of consistent but narrow Trump wins
in the battlegrounds. And so, you know, people don't like
in Wisconsin right now it's a you know, it's a
(23:34):
less than one point Trump win. In Michigan right now,
it's a one point and change Trump win. In Pennsylvania
it's a one point you know. So these are tiny margins.
So you can't say the polling was wrong because this
was well within the range of what the polling was showing.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
There has been a ton of Monday morning, Wednesday morning quarterbacking,
and everyone is now setting their sights on the Democratic
Party and on the way Kamala Harris ran the campaign.
Let's talk about the campaign first, and then we'll talk
about the larger Democratic Party. If you were giving Kamala
(24:16):
Harris feedback or the campaign feedback, what would you tell
them they could have done better or differently?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Well, you know, we're all geniuses in retrospect. And there's
a famous JFK story. Right after he won super narrowly
in nineteen sixty, Time magazine called him and his advisors
chorus skatingly brilliant. I've never heard the word chorus skatingly, Katie.
You're kind of a vocab nerd, so you probably have.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
I've never heard of it.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, I should look it up. I did years ago.
And I think it just means like resoundingly impressively something
like that. And I'm allowed to swear on this podcast,
aren't I?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yes, you are?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Brian Okay. Well, apparently what JFK said upon reading the
article is he looked up, he smirked, and he said,
a couple of votes in the other direction in Texas
and Florida, and we'd have all been coruscatingly fucking stupid.
And you know, I think there's something to that. You're
a genius when you win and you're an idiot when
(25:17):
you lose. And that having been said, I think the
macro thing that the Harris campaign missed was broad dissatisfaction
with Biden and the direction of the country. And she
never broke from him. She had that horrible moment on
the view that played in a thousand Trump commercials about
(25:39):
she couldn't think of a thing she'd have done differently,
and so she seemed in the end like more of
the same. And Trump, for all of his flaws, was
the asshole who brought you lower gas and grocery prices,
and the change candidate exactly, and the candidate of change.
And so if you were to rerun the Harris campaign
(26:00):
and just based on what happened, which was Biden dropping
out in July and Harris becoming the nominee at that
point because there was really no time for a process
and she was the sitting vice president and so it
couldn't really go to anybody else. She needed to do
a couple of things, One more definitively break from the
(26:20):
policies and the record of the Biden administration a little tricky,
since there's not like a huge historical record of Harris
disagreeing with Biden about any of those policies, but at
the very least signaling substantively, not just rhetorically, that the
next four years would be quite different from the last
four years, maybe criticizing Biden on something like waiting too
(26:44):
long to lock down the border or waiting too long
to pivot to fighting inflation. The second thing is I
think she should have pushed off clearly against the far
left of the Democratic Party. She never had a sort
of Sister Soldia moment, as people described, you know, Bill
Clinton standing up to Jesse Jackson or this one rap
(27:06):
star in nineteen ninety two. She could have done that
on some element of the agenda of the left. She
could have said, you know what, I was wrong to
say that there should be taxpayer funding of gender reassignment surgery,
or I was wrong to have taken the position that
I did on medicare for all or banning fracking, and
(27:27):
I will never take that position as president. Instead, she
sort of tried to thread the needle. She abandoned those
positions through like statements that are campaign made, but she
never explained why she abandoned those positions. They just looked
like political expedients. And I think a lot of voters
believe that in her heart of hearts, she was more
of a kind of left wing Canada. And one thing
(27:50):
we saw on the exit polling is among that critical
group of voters in the middle who thought that both
Harris and Trump were too extreme. Trump won those voters
by a substantial margin. So she really needed to do
more to push herself to the center.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Why do you think she didn't And do you think
she was afraid of alienating voters who still had a
soft spot for Joe Biden and by the way, despite
his unpopularity. I mean, I think she was legitimately proud
of some of their accomplishments, you know, the Infrastructure Bill.
(28:28):
I think she was probably proud of the Chips Act.
They are very theoretical things that obviously you can't measure immediately.
It's not like paying a lot more for eggs or
yogurt than you did, you know, a year ago, and
having to really kind of figure out your household budget.
But there were some pretty impressive accomplishments, weren't there In
(28:52):
the Biden administration. I feel like they are really getting
beaten up, maybe unfairly or am I wrong? No?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I think you're right that there were enormous legislative accomplishments.
I'm just not sure voters really pay attention or care
about those, you know, when the retrospective approval of the
Trump administration is close to fifty and the current approval
of the Biden administration is close to forty. And Trump
(29:22):
essentially failed on everything as president except a big tax
cut for big corporations and the wealthy. And Biden had
the best sort of record of legislative success of any
president since LBJ with infrastructure and the American Rescue Plan
and the Chips Bill and the Electoral count Act and
(29:43):
just one thing after another. He was like a magician
dealing with a very closely divided Congress, getting things done,
getting big things done. You know. I think a lot
of the political strategy the White House was sort of
based on the theory that we if we deliver a
lot of legislation benefiting working class voters, they will reward
(30:04):
us with their votes. And the problem was, yeah, the
roads and bridges were getting rebuilt in town. I'm not
sure people really credited Joe Biden for that, but every
time they were driving on those roads to the gas
station of the grocery store, they were punishing Joe Biden
for that, and by extension, Kamala Harris. And so I
(30:24):
think Harris did feel a deep sense of loyalty to
Joe Biden. I think she does think he was a
very good president. I also think, you know, like a
lot of vice presidents, it's really awkward. You know, you
start to say, okay, well, I disagreed with the president
on X Y or Z. Is there a record of
you disagreeing with the president on X Y or Z?
Or are you just saying this out of expedience? Now?
(30:47):
Are you pissing off constituencies within the coalition to try
to reach for, you know, theoretical voters in the center.
Does it seem disingenuous and kind of hurt you more
than it helps you? I'm not sure. I think she
could threaded the needle by just more definitively describing why
and how the next four years would be different than
(31:07):
the last four years. And it was just it was
like generalities and nothing like clear.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It was really strange to me and frustrating. And I've
said this before on this podcast that she wasn't better
at answering some of these questions, that she didn't seem
to be able to communicate a clear, specific vision and
she doesn't have to get in the weeds on policy,
but you know, just one or two proposals, or as
(31:36):
you said, saying, you know, I think we probably made
some mistakes on immigration early in the administration, right, and
I feel like she didn't take accountability for anything. And
if she had admitted maybe some mistakes and things that
she would like to do differently moving forward, as you say,
(32:00):
she could have threaded the needle more effectively. And you know,
couldn't David Pluff and Kamala Harris get together with Joe
Biden and say, listen, we have to separate ourselves from you.
Couldn't they have those kinds of conversations and kind of
agree on some of those things or is that not possible.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I'd like to think it would be possible. I'm not
sure whether it's actually possible. Joe Biden is a very
proud guy with a real chip on his shoulder, and
I'm not sure he'd appreciate his own vice president pushing
off against him. But you know, I think you sort
of ask forgiveness, not permission. You got to win the election.
That's your job. And if Biden's a little miffed, you know,
(32:43):
maybe you kiss and make up at the meeting when
you're president elect. And I just think it's also really
kind of shortsighted conventional political advice that you never admit
a mistake because it shows weakness. I actually think it
shows strength when you admit a mistake. I think it
breaks through because it doesn't look like typical politicians speak.
(33:05):
So if Harris had said, you know, I think we
got that wrong, or I think I was wrong on
some of the positions I took in twenty nineteen, I learned,
I grew, I got better.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And also, I think you have to remember the moment
we were in culturally right, or.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
The moment we thought we were in in twenty nineteen.
As it turns out, Joe Biden read the moment for
voters a heck of a lot better than like Elizabeth
Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the editorial page of The
New York Times did but yes, meaning explain meaning the
conventional wisdom among like elites and journalists and people who
(33:42):
live where you and I live in LA and New
York City in twenty nineteen was we're in the middle
of this cultural revolution and the country and the Democratic
Party are moving dramatically to the left, and you've got
to accommodate this. And you know, Kamala Harris heard that,
and she responded by taking a whole series of like
(34:03):
Bernie Sanders positions on a wide variety of issues. Joe
Biden heard that and ignored it and thought that that
was wrong and thought that that's not actually where his
voters were. And Biden was right and Harris was wrong,
and Biden, you know, resuscitated Harris's career after she completely
flamed out. I mean, she dropped out of the Democratic
(34:26):
contest before a single caucus or primary in twenty twenty.
I remember I worked in that primary campaign for another candidate,
and you know, she she'd started with such promise. She
took a bunch of far left positions that didn't seem
authentic to her, and she was kind of between a
rock and a hard place with voters. Biden saved her
(34:47):
political career, made her vice president. She adopted Biden's positions
on just about every issue, which actually did seem more
authentic because you know, here in California, Harris is not
known as a far left politic by any strength. She's
known as a kind of mainstream democrat who was a
longtime prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
And a law and order and made people mad for
minimum mandatory sentence singing stuff. Right.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Well, yeah, there was a whole kind of series of
left wing memes in twenty nineteen when she was running
of Kamal as a cop. I mean, what she actually
tried to do when she was Attorney General and DA
of San Francisco was kind of create a third way
that she called smart on crime, and without belaboring the
point too much, it was not a far left plan.
It was a kind of a center left reformist approach
(35:36):
to criminal justice that was very authentic to who she was.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Do you think she emphasized abortion too much and not
pocketbook issues enough.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I don't know, which is an unsatisfying answer.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
No, that's okay, It's honest.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I'd like to see more data about the voters who
were pro choice and voted for Trump. Any are the
voters who voted for abortion referenda in various states but
voted for Trump, maybe she should have talked about abortion more.
That was clearly a big change that favored her. You know,
(36:16):
she was like wrestling a bear on the economy. Immigration
was a loser for her. Abortion was the one issue
where she was clearly in the stronger position. And there's
a part of me that thinks maybe she should have
just hammered abortion every day.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
We'll see, because it didn't seem to be a top issue.
I mean, again, you'll have to go through the data
from these exit polls because I think the referenda in
various states, I'm not sure what they'll tell. I mean,
I'll leave it to that political brain of yours. Let
me ask you about Joe Biden, though, I mean, there
was a segment of the population pretty upset about Joe
(36:55):
Biden kind of waiting till the last minute to drop out,
and his so called to nablers in the White House
not being honest about, you know, the fact that he
was getting older and less capable to do this very
demanding job. Susan Glasser Steve Schmidt basically were just railing
(37:15):
against Joe Biden for letting his ego get in the
way and for not stepping aside a year before, so
there could have been a proper primary, so the Democratic
Party would have been able to find the strongest candidate
who was best equipped to beat Donald Trump. I don't know,
how are you feeling about all that, Brian.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I agree with that. I'm mad at Joe Biden. He
was very clear in twenty twenty that he was going
to be a one term president. That's what it meant
when he said he was just a bridge to the
next generation. That's what it meant when he had that
big event in Michigan at the end of the primaries
in twenty twenty, with Whitmer and Corey Booker and Kamala
and all these people standing behind him saying they're the
(37:58):
future of the party. You're going to see a lot
more them than you are of me. I'm just a bridge.
Voters thought he was too old four years ago, but
you know, they were willing to sort of go with
it because he seemed sharp and he wasn't Donald Trump.
It was just the height of ego folly, willful ignorance
(38:21):
to think that an eighty one year old could get
re elected as president of the United States to another
four year term, especially when the decline was so clear
and so obvious to everybody except to him. We verged
into don't believe your lying eyes. And I do resent
that the team around him apparently never had the cajones.
(38:44):
As hard as this would be to go to the
sitting president and say, look, I just don't think this
is a good idea. Mister President. You've been a great president.
I know you feel sharp today, but I just don't
think this is going to work. And this is a
gamble with the democracy, with the United States of America,
with the Western Alliance that you cannot take.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I know this is that could have, would have, should have.
But if he had dropped out earlier and there had
been a primary process, do you think we would have
ended up with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
No, I don't because I think the question for primary voters,
who are actually pretty pragmatic in the Democratic Party would
have been the same as it was four years ago,
which is who can beat Donald Trump? And I don't
think she would have been the answer to that question.
And it's not really her fault. I think it's more
the fact that she was just you know, she's part
of the Biden Harris administration. It was very clear the
(39:41):
Biden Harris administration was just consistently congenitally unpopular. And so
I think, you know, a Whitmer Warnock ticket, or a
Shapiro Klobashar ticket, or a you know, boodhagige whatever to
I mean, you would have had a lot of strong
candidates running, all of whom would have represented change from
(40:04):
the status quo and wouldn't have had the baggage on
inflation and immigration that Harris did.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And also might that have given her time if she
was competitive, to hone her message, to introduce herself to
the public, to become more of a national figure, if
she hadn't had to do a campaign over the course
of one hundred and eight days or whatever.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
It was totally and it represents more dumb political conventional
wisdom like don't admit a mistake, the oh, we can't
have a primary that would be too divisive. Actually, when
was the best democratic performance in modern times? Two thousand
and eight, when we had this ferociously competitive primary that
went all the way until June between Hillary and Obama,
(40:51):
it made both of them dramatically better candidates. Obama emerged
far stronger from that process. Than when he'd entered it.
So you do need competition, and you do need to
There's a huge difference between a theoretical candidate and a
real candidate, and sometimes a real candidate needs some time
to hone their act and get better. Obama was actually
(41:14):
a pretty crappy candidate for the first three four months,
maybe six months that he was running in two thousand
and seven, and it was the process that made him
dramatically better and made him find his message.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
There's also some serious soul searching going on about the
Democratic Party and if it's lost its way. As we've
noted before, there's been a significant shift. It used to
be the party of union blue collar workers, and that
has really shifted over the last few decades, right, and
(42:05):
now it does seem brian. It is the party of
college educated, liberal coastal elites.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, it's the urban cosmopolitan party, and they're just not
enough white, college educated coastal voters to win a presidential election.
It reminds me of the story of Adlai Stevenson, who
ran for president twice unsuccessfully, whom the Republicans derided as
an egghead, and some voter came up to a mintern
event and said, you know, everythinking American is for you,
(42:36):
and Stevenson said, well, thank you, ma'am, but I need
a majority. So I think, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
This is why I love you, Brian, because you know
stories like this.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
And I think, by the way, some of that disdain
for working class people comes through among not from Joe Biden,
not really even from Kamala Harris this time out, but
from a lot of Democrats. And I think a lot
of working class voters can see it, can smell it,
and they don't like it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And I would say, I mean Joe Biden made that
slip about garbage or trash, you know. The last week
of the campaign, Mark Cuban said he never sees Donald
Trump with intelligent women. You know. I think those are
taken as real insults for people who feel dismissed and
(43:25):
look down upon.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, and Donald Trump never insults any group of voters.
They all feel very respected by him.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Well that's the mystery. You know. He is more Teflon
than Teflon, and I still will never quite understand why
he is never punished or held accountable for the horrible
things he says. I think maybe people eat it up
and they love that he says what they're thinking, and
(43:55):
that he doesn't have a filter, and he is the
antithesis of political correctness. And so I think that brings
me to my next question about sort of woke culture.
You know, I met Dasha Burns, who's this very good
young reporter for NBC, and I had dinner with her
(44:15):
a couple of I guess the night I was interviewing
Nancy Pelosi at the ninety second Street Why and I
asked her because she covered the Trump campaign. He told
her if she had beautiful skin, because I said, your
skin is so pretty? She said, funny, Donald Trump told
me the same thing.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Must have. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
I was like, this is really weird. But anyway, you.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
And Trump you really think very similarly about a lot
of stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I said, we must have similar taste in women, right,
So so anyway, I said, why do you think so
many people are attracted to him? And she said, well,
I think a little bit. It's lefty lecture culture. And
I think that was obviously another way of talking to
(45:00):
about woke culture, this kind of holier than thou self righteous.
I am much more sensitive and aware and ocurant, you know,
than you are, And I know all these terms, and
I do my pronouns, and I do this, and I'm
much more aware and sensitive and caring and educated than
(45:21):
you are, right, which I think a lot of people
felt that way, and I sort of thought that the
pendulum had swung back a little on that was this
sort of a woke hangover that was still in the
ether that turned a lot of voters off.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Maybe. I mean, I don't think Harris ran a woke
campaign this time at.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
All, No, but I think they associate it with Democrats,
you know, even if she didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Well, and there's a lot of video of her saying
a lot of crazy shit from twenty nineteen, back when
that was okorant and when people were using French as
you know, the language of world diplomacy and you know,
communicating coastal elites. But I think there's a there's a
healthy part of this, and there's an unhealthy part of this.
(46:12):
The healthy part of this is we shouldn't get to
a point where, you know, everything is like pointing fingers
and assigning blame and just because you're not kind of
one hundred percent jibing with the latest and greatest way
of describing diversity, that means you're a bad person that
(46:32):
that kind of you know, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty culture
was terrible and exclusionary and pushed a lot of good
people away from, you know, the Democratic Coalition. The unhealthy
part is, I do think Trump is a racist and
a bigot, and I think, you know, he's not only
(46:52):
sort of a giant middle finger to the establishment in
Washington and institutions that have let people down. He exposes
or draws out the sort of the unhealthy, the inner
id of a lot of people. You know, I think
the job of a leader is really to bring out
the best in other people, and he really brings out
(47:13):
the worst in a lot of other people. You know.
You see the behavior of a lot of his supporters
at these rallies before and after, the way that they're
engaging with other people online, and it's just very nasty
and very toxic. And so I hope that you know,
the pendulum doesn't swing so far in the anti woke
direction that we go back to racism, sexism. I know
(47:36):
that's not what you were saying, but like, we do
have a tendency as a country to sort of overreact,
and I think, you know, it is going to be
fascinating that, Like, I think it's one in four Latinos
in America have at least one undocumented family member. So
(47:56):
if some of these like Latino men who voted for
Trump to to you know, stick it to woe culture,
you know, all of a sudden have their abuela deported
because of the guy that they voted for, that's going
to seem like a bigger problem than what pronoun you use.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
And we're going to talk about what a Trump administration
is going to look like in a moment. But getting
back to the Democratic Party, what can they do to
attract maybe a different coalition or win back some of
the voters that were once solidly in their corner. I
heard Jesse waters is at his name on because sometimes like.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Full political commentator.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yes, hey, yeah, he is sort of you look up
smarmy in the dictionary and you see his face. But
he was saying that if the Republicans can hold on
to this new coalition, it's going to be transformative for
not only the party but for the country. So how
does the Democratic Party redefine itself?
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Well, that's going to be obviously the great conversation that
happens over the next months and years, and there's not
like an easy, you know, one, one simple trick to
fix your problems as a Democrat. I think there's a
lot of stuff. I think we do have to reclaim
a lot of voters in the center who think that
we've gone, you know, off the rails on a number
(49:19):
of these cultural questions and have taken like weird and
extreme positions. When you see polling that shows voters thinking
that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are equally
out of touch, equally ideological, equally extreme, that's got to
be very concerning when you're running against Maga, you know.
And so there's an ideological component to this. I think
(49:41):
there's also just a you know, a cultural component to this.
It means nominating candidates like the ones who performed really
well earlier this week, who are in touch with regular
Americans and the struggles and the concerns that they have.
I mean, I would listen to people like Jared Golden
and Maine who wan one as a House Democrat, even
(50:01):
in a district that Donald Trump carried by twenty points.
I would listen to Marie Glusen camp Perez in Washington State,
who I think is an auto mechanic and is really
you know, that interesting kind of female working class person
who's a moderate Democrat and has consistently won a Trump district.
(50:23):
I would go to the people who are in the
hard places, who are succeeding in Trump states and Trump districts,
and watch what they're doing, and then do a lot
more of that. And that, by the way, stands in
start contrast to what Bernie Sanders was saying. You know,
he put out a statement earlier today basically saying Democrats
(50:43):
have abandoned working class people in our agenda. You should
adopt my agenda essentially, and you'll reach working class people.
That would be all well and good if he could
come up with a single example of a Bernie Sanders
style socialist who won a swing state or a swing district,
and he can't because there isn't one. So, you know,
(51:04):
this fantasy of the kind of the far left that
you have all of these you know, far left voters
just waiting to be energized with the right agenda, it
has never happened. And in fact, when those candidates are nominated,
Democrats tend to lose in swing districts.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Let's talk about the future and what a Trump administration
is going to look like. So many people voted for
him because they believe he will bring prices down, you know,
at the pump, at the grocery store, right. And I'm
curious if you think that will happen, because I've also
read on the other end that if he's so crazy
(51:42):
about tariffs, those costs are going to trickle down to
the consumer. And if he does, in fact deport a
lot of these people, then a lot of agricultural jobs
that are being done by immigrants will then make food
prices go up even more. So will you help me
(52:03):
understand this?
Speaker 2 (52:05):
No, you understand it perfectly. So he's promised one thing,
and then the stuff that he's going to do will
produce the opposite effect, so people vote for lower prices.
He's promised tariffs which will raise prices dramatically, which are
also inflationary. He's promised mass deportation, which will constrain the
(52:25):
labor force and also raise prices. His economic agenda has
been you know, studied by independent economists who say that
it will spike inflation and potentially throw the country into
a recession. So you know, he might change his view.
I think a lot of people are a little bit
too quick to kind of console themselves by saying, ah,
(52:46):
he doesn't really mean it. You know, his team announced
today that's starting on day one, January twentieth, he is
going to begin the largest mass deportation of immigrants that
the United States has ever seen. So the effect in
cities like la and Chicago and New York is going
to be unbelievable. I mean, those cities could be ground
(53:09):
to a halt, and economic activity in those cities, which
are the growth engines of the country, could also be
ground to a halt. So we are in store, I
think for a level of chaos, confusion, and economic pain
that is very different from even his first administration. But
(53:29):
maybe I'm being too negative.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Now not to mention sort of the heartache on a
human level.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Not to even mention that. I mean, you remember those
heartbreaking pictures of kids getting separated from their parents at
the border. Well, those were migrants. Those weren't American citizens.
What he's promising is to deport eleven million American undocumented immigrants.
As I said, a lot of whom have US citizens
and their families. So you could see on an industrial
(53:58):
scale in images and video of children who are US
citizens being separated from their parents in US cities. So
I think the parade of horribles here is big and
it's real, and I fear the consequences.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
Let me ask you about foreign policy Ukraine and the
Middle East? What are we likely to see in both
of those situations? And he has expressed his hostility toward NATO.
What does it mean for sort of our position in
the world.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
I was at lunch a couple of weeks ago with
a former senior German official who was saying, you know,
you guys didn't really know you Americans what you were
getting into with Trump in twenty sixteen. You narrowly elected him.
You corrected the problem four years later. Life goes on.
NATO is strong, but knowing what you know now, and
(54:58):
given everything he's saying about blowing up NATO and deferring
to Putin, if you guys elect him again, that is
the end of NATO. That Europe will make a deal
with China, Europe will know that it can't rely on
the United States of America, Ukraine will have to cut
a bad deal with Putin. God knows what that'll look like.
So I think the consequences globally are immense. I think,
(55:22):
you know, superpowers don't just you know, continue by default.
They continue because they have to continuously earn that position.
And if America isn't you know, leading with our allies,
if we're thumbing our nose at democracies and embracing authoritarians
around the world as Trump always seems to do, if
(55:44):
our wallets and bank accounts are open to bribes basically
from foreigners, as the Trump families wallets and bank accounts
seem to be open, that also creates a climate in
which our allies are going to be very distrustful. I mean,
somebody told me the other day, and I don't know
whether this is true, but it sounds true that, you know,
(56:04):
Trump is selling these hundred thousand dollars watches that actually
cost like five or ten grand to make. And the
person told me that he has heard that a lot
of foreigners who want to influence Donald Trump have been
buying these watches just as a way to bribe Trump
and the Trump family. Because every time you buy a watch,
(56:25):
you know, seventy eighty grand goes into Donald Trump's pocket. So,
you know, if you were a foreign leader and you're
looking to get in good with the President of the
United States, the most powerful man in the world. Why
wouldn't you just buy a hundred watches? And by the way,
is anyone going to know that you did? No? Or
why wouldn't you like invest another billion dollars or two
(56:46):
billion dollars in Jared Kushner's private equity fund.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
What about the Middle East? Obviously, I think people have
described Netanyaho as Israel's Donald Trump. How do you see
that planet.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Well, they both have to stay in power so that
they can stay out of jail. They have that in common,
and they're both very cynical operators. There was a statement
today that perhaps Bib would end the war by the
time Trump comes to office as a sort of favored
him to allow him to start from a clean slate.
I'm not sure about that though, because if bb ends
(57:23):
the war, it would produce a reckoning in Israel that's
been sort of deferred by the war into Bibe's conduct
pre October seventh, how he allowed that to happen, and
his management of the war, and so I don't know
where that's going to go. I do know that you
know people who are anti Israel who either you know
(57:44):
stayed home or voted for Jill Stein or whatever because
they thought somehow that Trump would be better than Harris.
Are going to be in for a very rude awakening
once Trump is in power. Why because I don't think
Trump is going to stand up to BB at all.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
You're saying voters who are concerned about Gaza and what
happens next and civilian casualties who voted against Kamala for
that reason.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah, Trump's not going to be a check on BB.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Right, And when he went to Dearborn, Michigan, I thought
that was interesting, Right, didn't he win Dearborn?
Speaker 2 (58:21):
I think he did win at least East Dearborn. I
haven't seen the results in all the precincts, which is tiny.
But you know, conversely, Jewish voters who held their noses
on abortion and character and all sorts of other issues
to support Trump on Israel, I wonder what happens when
(58:41):
Israel throws out Bibe and elects somebody more centrist like
Benny Gance, or when the interests of the Saudi's and
the Kataris, who are literally funding the Trump family run
crosswise with Israel's. Will Trumps stand with Israel at that point,
I really don't think so. So I think he's a
very fair weather for I think it's very dependent on
(59:02):
bb being the one in charge, and I'm not sure
any of that's going to last.
Speaker 1 (59:07):
Two other questions, are we going to see a national
abortion ban given that the Senate is controlled by the
Republicans now, or minimum standards like a six week abortion
ban or a fifteen week abortion ban.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
The answer is, we don't know. He promised at the
very end of the campaign that he would veto a
national abortion ban, but it sort of depends how you
define a national abortion ban. I mean, maybe if it's
a twelve week ban or a fifteen week ban, he
won't view it as a ban. He'll view it as
like a minimum standard. And he's just against late term abortion.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
The problem with all of that is, if you actually
look at this issue, later term abortions happen through these
sort of, as you know, Katie, heartbreaking scenarios. It's not
as though the mother wants to have an abortion at
that point, it's there's some grievous health problem, either with
the mo other or the fetus that creates the situation
(01:00:03):
out of medical necessity, and so you put in place
an arbitrary limit, and you take options out of the
hands of a woman and her doctor, and it's really
dangerous and I'm not at all confident that he's going
to stop something like that from happening.
Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Last question, I saw an Instagram post that said, convicted
felons can't vote in this country, but a convicted felon
can be elected president. Please explain.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Well, in some states, convicted felons can vote. We learned this,
by the way, in Florida, where Trump lives. It depends
on what you're convicted of.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
So, oh, is that why he was able to vote.
I thought it was because he was appealing the verdict.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
No, it's because it depends on the type of felony.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Okay, In many states, convicted felons can't vote, but a
convicted felon can be elected president of the United States.
The question is, will he ever face any consequences for
his actions or even for the you know, crimes he's
been convicted of.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
No, I don't think so. I think he's gotten out
of it by being elected president. I think that's his
get out of jail free card. And you know, not
to sound too conspiratorial, but he just said last week
that his biggest mistake was a leaving office in January
of twenty twenty one. What do we think the odds
are that he's going to leave office in January of
twenty twenty nine. Is it one hundred percent? Is it
(01:01:33):
eighty percent? The fact that there's some doubt about that,
because you know, God knows what would happen to him
if he left the White House again, you know, creates
all sorts of scary scenarios, like what if he says, well,
you know, I was denied a second term in twenty
twenty that I rightfully won. I should be allowed. You know,
(01:01:53):
the Constitution says, you know, no two consecutive terms, but
I should be allowed a second consecutive term. Who's going
to stop the Supreme Court, the Congress. I'm just not
sure that these guard rails are strong enough anymore to
withstand what's about to be thrown at them.
Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Well, that's why I wanted to end with this quote
by FDR in a fireside chat he gave. He said
democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because
the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they
had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity of seeing their
(01:02:32):
children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of
government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership and government. Finally,
in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope
of getting something to eat. We in America know that
our own democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work.
(01:02:54):
But in order to preserve them, we need to act
together to meet the problems of the nation and boldly,
and to prove that the practical operation of democratic government
is equal to the task of protecting the security of
the people. I thought that sounded very prescient in some ways,
(01:03:15):
and perhaps an explanation to why some people seem to
gravitate towards an authoritarian figure like Donald Trump. We haven't
protected the people enough.
Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Right even though of course we have record low unemployment
right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
But you just run my very dramatic and.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
You know, here's another here's another line that I'm going
to steal, which is, if liberals don't secure the border,
fascist will I don't know who said that, but I
thought that was really smart. You know, there's certain things
that people expect of their government that you know, even
liberals have to deliver when they're in power as learning.
Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
And I think what's really challenging as we approach a
second Trump administration is he is so unpredictable. Nobody really
knows what he's going to do. And on that hopeful note,
(01:04:22):
thanks Brian.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Thank you Katie. Always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy
world reach out. You can leave a short message at
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I would love to hear from you. Next Question is
(01:04:54):
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producers are Me, Katie Couric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising
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Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Couric and this is next question.
What was that song Maureen McGovern sang in the Poseidon Adventure?
Am I dating myself?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This got to be a morning of if we can
hold on?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Then This isn't exactly the morning after, but it is
the night after the twenty twenty four presidential election, and
I'm talking and debriefing with my good friend Brian Goldsmith. Brian,
I am so happy to have you here. There's so
much I want to talk to you about what happened,
(00:49):
how the country feels, and where we're going with the
future Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
So good evening, good evening, not much to discuss. Kind
of a slow week, right.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, really, let's you know. I want to dis first
start by asking your general reaction to this massive Trump victory.
I think people thought it was going to be very close,
and maybe you're going to tell me it was close,
But when you look at that electoral map, you're like,
holy shit, that's a lot of red.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What happened, Well, we may have overcomplicated this election. You
had an incumbent president with a forty percent approval rating.
You had sixty five seventy percent of the country saying
we're on the wrong track. Stuff costs about twenty percent
more than it did before COVID, and people were broadly
dissatisfied with the status quo and the party in power,
(01:46):
so they voted for the out party. Any political scientist
would tell you that that is the most normal thing
in the world. But of course Donald Trump is the
least normal candidate imaginable, and given all of the as
he would say, huge baggage that he's bringing into this
race and now into the White House. I think a
(02:06):
lot of Democrats, including me, thought this time would be different,
but it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Do you think that a lot of pundits and political
experts such as yourself, Brian, thought that again his lunacy
would outweigh people's pain at the pump and the grocery store, etc.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, we thought a couple of things. We thought the
load was just too much for voters to bear at
a certain point, the load of Trump right, all his problems.
You know. We saw a version of this in North Carolina,
where people wanted to vote for change. The state voted
(02:50):
Republican for president, and yet they elected the Democrat Josh
Stein as governor by a pretty big margin, because.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, fairness that his opponent was insane. If Mark Robinson,
if hadn't been revealed that he was called himself a
black hitler and liked to watch transgender people have sex,
you know that was part of his choice in pornography.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, that's just an example of the load is too
much to bear. So the load was too much for
voters to bear with Mark Robinson. I think democrats thought,
just as Mark Robinson was ultimately rendered unelectable based on
his problems, Donald Trump would be rendered unelectable based on
his problems. And yeah, he didn't call himself a black Nazi,
but he did try to overturn a free and fair
election and instigate a violent insurrection. So you know, Potato Patado.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Well he's done a lot more than just that massive thing.
I mean, if you just look at the last ten
days of the campaign, and we've talked about this Brian,
it seemed he was making no effort, as Maureen Dowd
wrote her Nerd column, to expand his base, to widen
the net, to get any voter he could, and he
just drilled down on this sort of obnoxious browie. I
(04:06):
can say anything and there are no repercussions unhinged kind
of weird behavior from Philating. I never knew that was
the verb. By the way, I learned something this week
filating a microphone and you know, making all these disgusting,
gross comments called, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Russ should be shot, saying that his opponent should be arrested.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a bitch, Kamala is trash,
you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, and more seriously, you know, promising all sorts of
illegal actions as president. And so you know, to step
back to answer your question. Yeah, we thought, despite broad
dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, that Harris had
run a pretty good campaign. She tried to position herself
as a change candidate. She closed some of the gap,
(05:01):
a lot of the gap on handling the economy, and that,
just as in twenty twenty two, Democrats would overperform because
of the Trump factor. And what I think we know
pretty definitively now is that Trump is a unique political
animal who is kind of untouchable to his supporters no
(05:24):
matter what he says or does, and brings out a
pretty big coalition to the polls no matter what. Now,
his coalition this time is actually pretty different than his
coalition in twenty sixteen. And we'll get into all of that,
But to your original point, it was a broad based
victory in the Swing States. It was a series of
narrow victories, consistent victories across the Swing States. But he
(05:47):
wasn't winning the Swing States by five or ten points.
He was winning them by one or two points. He
had bigger gains in places where the campaign wasn't actually
being fought between Harris and Trump on the airwaves, but
the whole country did seem to move in his direction.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
There is so much to unpack, Brian. Let's talk about
the constituencies that came out and supported Donald Trump. He
did surprisingly well or better. I guess it's all relative,
and you can put this into context for us with
a lot of groups. Let's first talk about black voters,
(06:23):
black women. I think ninety percent came out for Kamala Harris.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, about ninety percent, maybe eighty nine or eighty eight,
but pretty close to that.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And that held steady correct for Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, we saw a pretty significant deterioration among black men.
And I should just say at the outset that this
data is a little bit early. It still needs to
cook for a couple of days, a couple of weeks.
These numbers will change a bit. But directionally, we're talking
about stuff based on the exit polling that is conducted,
(06:59):
you know, right after the election. So to answer your question,
black men, Harris probably only won them by about fifty
six points. Clinton won them in twenty sixteen by sixty
nine points. Biden won them by about sixty points, So
you can see the line going down a little bit.
Black women, there was some deterioration too. Clinton won them
(07:23):
by ninety points, a nine zero point margin, went down
to eighty one points under Biden, went back up a
little bit for Harris, another black woman, that makes sense,
to an eighty four point margin. But the significant deterioration
was among black men. And where I'm sure you're going next,
Latino men.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Well, let's talk about Latino men and compare what they
did in twenty twenty versus twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, this is huge, This is a historic realignment of
Latino voters. I think political scientus and historians are going
to be talking about this for a long time because
what's happening, and it's consistent with the sort of the
broader story of America. As immigrant groups settle here, have children,
(08:14):
have grandchildren, they assimilate, and the second generation, in the
third generation start to vote like white people. And so
you are seeing non college educated Latinos begin to vote
like non college educated white voters. And that is bad
news for Democrats because non college educated white people are
(08:36):
at the core of the Trump coalition. So let's go
back to twenty sixteen again. The first time Trump was
on the ballot, Hillary Clinton won Latino men by thirty
one points. Then Joe Biden won Latino men by a
little bit less, by twenty three points. What happened this year,
Donald Trump won Latino men probably by about a dozen points.
(08:58):
That is like a thirty five point swing in four years.
And we can talk about some of the factors that
might have gone into that, but it's just stunning. And yes,
her advantage among Latina women narrowed as well, to about
half of Biden's margin from four years ago.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So as you say, that's a significant shift that's going
to be studied by historians, but it's not just a
generational explanation or assimilation. Are there other reasons for this
gravitational pull that Latinos had and Latina's had toward Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
We're moving toward educational stratification is the fancy term, but
sort of sorting in our politics where we have one
coalition for the college educated and another coalition for working
class voters who don't have a college degree. That is
the single best way to figure out today whether someone's
(09:59):
going to vote for a day Democrat or Republican. Do
they have a college or an advanced degree. The vast
majority of Latinos do not. They are increasingly starting to
vote based on cultural and economic factors more like other
voters without a college degree, and I think Trump really
(10:19):
hammered home a number of messages that resonated with that group.
They feel the pain of higher grocery costs, higher gas
prices like other working class people do, because they're living
paycheck to paycheck, and it's not just an inconvenience, it's
a disaster in their lives when those costs go up
so substantially. And on cultural issues, they've always been more
(10:40):
culturally conservative despite voting heavily Democratic, and so you know,
on issues like transgender care, which the Trump campaign just
hammered for the last two months, they sided with the Republicans.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Well, let's talk about college educated Latinos. When you look
at that group, I don't know if you have numbers
for them, but does it change dramatically and does that
college education mitigate some of the cultural issues that make
them tend to be more conservative.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
So it's interesting what the exit poll provides is voters
of color, black and brown with a college degree versus without,
and that the difference is really striking. Harris won voters
of color who are college graduates by thirty three points.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Voters of color with no degree, she won by a
narrower margin, by like twenty nine or thirty points, But
that's largely because you have, you know, black voters in there.
I think AAPI is included in there. I wish they
broke out just the Latinos because I think you would see,
you know, you would see a pretty dramatic difference.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Let's talk about white women. Hillary Clinton did not win
the election. One might argue, I'm wrong about this, Brian
in twenty sixteen because the majority of white women voted
for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, you're right about that, but white women writ large
have always been a Republican constituency. They voted for Romney,
of Robama, for McCain of Robama, et cetera. People thought,
because Hillary was a white woman, she would narrow that
gap a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
But did she.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
No, she didn't. She basically landed where, you know, where
Biden did, and that was a you know, that was
a significant problem. But again you'll see a huge education gap.
I mean, one of the few areas, maybe the only
area where Harris grew Democratic support compared to sixteen and
twenty is among white women with a college degree. White
(12:48):
women with a college degree were like Kamala Harris's base.
She won them by sixteen points compared to Biden winning
them by nine Hillary winning them by about that margin.
But among white women out a degree, zero improvement. Despite
Harris being you know, only the second woman to be
nominated for president, she basically performed the same among that
(13:11):
group as Biden did four years ago and as Hillary
did eight years ago.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
When it comes to white women with a college degree,
if rove Way had not been overturned, do you think
she would have fared as well with that demographic.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
No, I think Dobbs was a clearly a factor powering
overperformance among that group, which is strongly pro choice. I
think that improved her standing among men with a college
degree as well, but it just wasn't enough. You know,
you have states like Florida where there was an abortion
(13:52):
referendum on the ballot. Fifty seven percent of Floridians voted
the pro choice position and Harris got just shell act
in Florida, So a lot of voters, I think was
twenty eight percent of pro choice voters according to the
exit polling we have voted for Trump. So clearly that
was just not the most important issue to them.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Let's talk about young people because I read an article
before we hopped on about gen Z not really coming
out for Kamala Harris. Do you have any numbers about
young voters and what they ended up doing well.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
There are two ways of looking at these groups. There's
the turnout that is how many people were actually showing
up to vote, and there's the share that is what
percentage of the voters who do turn out of somebody
getting And the turnout was clearly not as big as
what Democrats were hoping for and expecting. They thought that
Trump would drive historic turnout and that doesn't seem to
(14:50):
have happened. And then secondly, Harris performed substantially worse than
Joe Biden did and worse than Hillary Clinton did among
a teen to twenty nine year olds. She probably only
won them by about ten or eleven points. Biden won
them by twenty four points four years ago. Hillary won
them by almost twenty points eight years ago. She made
(15:11):
up for that to a degree by overperforming among seniors.
There was probably a tie among senior citizens, whereas Trump
won voters over sixty five in both sixteen and twenty,
but the change just wasn't nearly as dramatic.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
This is what Peter Hanby wrote in Puck Kamala's Wasted Youth. Sure,
young white dudes broke for Trump, but Harris also underperformed
with almost every kind of young person, young white women,
young black voters, and young Latinos.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Why well, we're going to be sorting through that for
a while. I would say a couple of things. One,
if you're a young person, you're just starting out economically.
The majority of young people in the country still do
not have college degrees, and so so they feel stressed
and burdened by higher costs. They're saddled with more student debt.
(16:05):
And even though Joe Biden did a lot of stuff
around student debt. I don't think they felt like their
economic pain was substantially alleviated. There may have been some
backlash to Israel Gaza, although we can talk about that
a little more. I'm still skeptical that that was a
high priority for a lot of voters. And I also
think there wasn't like a clear agenda that Harris was
(16:29):
presenting to them about how young people's lives were going
to get better and how her administration would represent a
change versus the last four years the Biden administration.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
We have a lot to unpack and just that answer,
but just staying with young people, Biden won eighteen to
twenty nine year olds by a massive twenty five point margin.
She won them only by thirteen points, so that's a
significant drop.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
That margin was cut in half.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter
wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Let's
(17:26):
talk about the Middle East, And as you said, I
think the economy in most polls was the top priority
for young people, but Obviously, we had a lot of
controversy following the attack on Israel of October seventh, with
protests on college campuses as the war continued, people protesting
(17:49):
the number of civilian casualties and deaths in Gaza. How
did Kamala Harris do navigating that? Because I feel like
she tried to express her support of Israel but also
her sympathy to the people in Gaza, and it turns out,
(18:10):
it seems to me, Brian, she pissed both groups off.
There was that abandon Harris campaign in Michigan. I'm not
sure how significant that ended up being in the vote.
I want to talk to you about that and then,
and maybe it's because I live in New York and
follow a lot of Jewish people on Instagram, and you
(18:30):
know many Jewish people, and if you're Jewish, so you
probably talked to people who felt this way supported Trump
because they felt he would be better for Israel, and
they became single issue voters on that. So how much
did this trying to please everyone in a way hurt
Kamala Harris in your view?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Well, first of all, I think she was probably expressing
what her real position is. You know, for twenty years.
Kamala Harris has been a pretty stalwart ally of Israel
and Jewish Americans. Her relationship with Jews in the Bay
Area goes back decades. She actually took her Jewish husband
on his first trip to Israel after she became a senator.
(19:14):
So I think that's real. And I also think that
the Biden Harris administration had real issues with the way
that Biebe was prosecuting the war and not developing a
clear goal and an endgame. That said, I don't think
it was a top concern for a large number of voters.
The polling was pretty consistent about this. There were a
(19:36):
lot of people who were very loud on social media
on one side or the other. I think in New York,
which is home to the largest Jewish community in the
United States, there was clearly deterioration of Harris's position versus
Biden four years ago or Clinton eight years ago.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
In New York City.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
In New York State, Yeah, New York City and Long
Island and and throughout the state. New York City in
the suburbs primarily, which is where Jews tend to live,
But we don't see evidence of that yet. Nationally, in Pennsylvania,
for example, which has a very substantial Jewish community. She
seems to have performed about as well as Joe Biden
did four years ago. So maybe in the New York
(20:18):
media market, the New York echo chamber, this was a
bigger deal than it was in California or Pennsylvania, for example.
And it's interesting. In the exit polling, they asked the question,
is US support for Israel too strong, not strong enough,
or about right? Well, sixty one percent of voters thought
(20:39):
it was not strong enough or about right. Only thirty
one percent, less than a third thought American support for
Israel was too strong, and Harris actually won that group
by like two to one, By more than two to one.
We did see clearly in Michigan in Dearborn, some pockets
in certain precincts of Jill Stein's support and a collapse
(21:03):
in Harris's support. I don't think it was enough to
have made the difference statewide. I also think it's notable
that Alyssa Slotkin, who is a pro Israel Jewish woman,
was elected to the Senate from Michigan on the same
day and the same election when Kamala Harris lost. So
if that was the driving issue they wouldn't have voted
for Slotkin either, So I'm a little skeptical.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Well, did they vote for Slotkin and Dearborn? No?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
But it was clearly not enough to deprive her of
a victory. There were enough Trump Slotkin voters that she
was able to overcome that.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I want to ask you about the polls. You and
I seemed to talk about the polls every election. Were
they accurate? This time?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
They look pretty accurate, although misleading, which sounds like a
contradictory answer. And let me unpack it slightly. What the
polls essentially showed in the seven battlegrounds. Again, I don't
really care about national polling because this election is fought
in seven states, and it's about the electoral college, it's
not about the national popular vote. So the best polling
(22:09):
was of these seven states, and essentially what it showed
was a tie in almost all of these states. And
the thing that people often forget about polling is the
margin of error applies to each number, not to the
margin between the two numbers. So if you see a
poll that's one candidate at fifty another candidate at forty eight,
(22:30):
with a margin of plus or minus three, you know
that means the spread could be fifty three forty five
and it would still be statistically the same poll that
you're seeing. And so people overread polling, people ascribed polling
powers and precision that it doesn't have. And it is
(22:51):
also the historical pattern that in the end, presidential elections
tend to move one way or the other. That sounds
like a very obvious statement, but that is to say,
it is very rare that you would have of the
seven battlegrounds three going one way, four going the other.
It's usually like six to one, seven to zero, because
(23:14):
the voters are similar and the undecided usually break kind
of in one direction. And that's what we saw here.
We saw a pattern of consistent but narrow Trump wins
in the battlegrounds. And so, you know, people don't like
in Wisconsin right now it's a you know, it's a
(23:34):
less than one point Trump win. In Michigan right now,
it's a one point and change Trump win. In Pennsylvania
it's a one point you know. So these are tiny margins.
So you can't say the polling was wrong because this
was well within the range of what the polling was showing.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
There has been a ton of Monday morning, Wednesday morning quarterbacking,
and everyone is now setting their sights on the Democratic
Party and on the way Kamala Harris ran the campaign.
Let's talk about the campaign first, and then we'll talk
about the larger Democratic Party. If you were giving Kamala
(24:16):
Harris feedback or the campaign feedback, what would you tell
them they could have done better or differently?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Well, you know, we're all geniuses in retrospect. And there's
a famous JFK story. Right after he won super narrowly
in nineteen sixty, Time magazine called him and his advisors
chorus skatingly brilliant. I've never heard the word chorus skatingly, Katie.
You're kind of a vocab nerd, so you probably have.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
I've never heard of it.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, I should look it up. I did years ago.
And I think it just means like resoundingly impressively something
like that. And I'm allowed to swear on this podcast,
aren't I?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yes, you are?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Brian Okay. Well, apparently what JFK said upon reading the
article is he looked up, he smirked, and he said,
a couple of votes in the other direction in Texas
and Florida, and we'd have all been coruscatingly fucking stupid.
And you know, I think there's something to that. You're
a genius when you win and you're an idiot when
(25:17):
you lose. And that having been said, I think the
macro thing that the Harris campaign missed was broad dissatisfaction
with Biden and the direction of the country. And she
never broke from him. She had that horrible moment on
the view that played in a thousand Trump commercials about
(25:39):
she couldn't think of a thing she'd have done differently,
and so she seemed in the end like more of
the same. And Trump, for all of his flaws, was
the asshole who brought you lower gas and grocery prices,
and the change candidate exactly, and the candidate of change.
And so if you were to rerun the Harris campaign
(26:00):
and just based on what happened, which was Biden dropping
out in July and Harris becoming the nominee at that
point because there was really no time for a process
and she was the sitting vice president and so it
couldn't really go to anybody else. She needed to do
a couple of things, One more definitively break from the
(26:20):
policies and the record of the Biden administration a little tricky,
since there's not like a huge historical record of Harris
disagreeing with Biden about any of those policies, but at
the very least signaling substantively, not just rhetorically, that the
next four years would be quite different from the last
four years, maybe criticizing Biden on something like waiting too
(26:44):
long to lock down the border or waiting too long
to pivot to fighting inflation. The second thing is I
think she should have pushed off clearly against the far
left of the Democratic Party. She never had a sort
of Sister Soldia moment, as people described, you know, Bill
Clinton standing up to Jesse Jackson or this one rap
(27:06):
star in nineteen ninety two. She could have done that
on some element of the agenda of the left. She
could have said, you know what, I was wrong to
say that there should be taxpayer funding of gender reassignment surgery,
or I was wrong to have taken the position that
I did on medicare for all or banning fracking, and
(27:27):
I will never take that position as president. Instead, she
sort of tried to thread the needle. She abandoned those
positions through like statements that are campaign made, but she
never explained why she abandoned those positions. They just looked
like political expedients. And I think a lot of voters
believe that in her heart of hearts, she was more
of a kind of left wing Canada. And one thing
(27:50):
we saw on the exit polling is among that critical
group of voters in the middle who thought that both
Harris and Trump were too extreme. Trump won those voters
by a substantial margin. So she really needed to do
more to push herself to the center.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Why do you think she didn't And do you think
she was afraid of alienating voters who still had a
soft spot for Joe Biden and by the way, despite
his unpopularity. I mean, I think she was legitimately proud
of some of their accomplishments, you know, the Infrastructure Bill.
(28:28):
I think she was probably proud of the Chips Act.
They are very theoretical things that obviously you can't measure immediately.
It's not like paying a lot more for eggs or
yogurt than you did, you know, a year ago, and
having to really kind of figure out your household budget.
But there were some pretty impressive accomplishments, weren't there In
(28:52):
the Biden administration. I feel like they are really getting
beaten up, maybe unfairly or am I wrong? No?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I think you're right that there were enormous legislative accomplishments.
I'm just not sure voters really pay attention or care
about those, you know, when the retrospective approval of the
Trump administration is close to fifty and the current approval
of the Biden administration is close to forty. And Trump
(29:22):
essentially failed on everything as president except a big tax
cut for big corporations and the wealthy. And Biden had
the best sort of record of legislative success of any
president since LBJ with infrastructure and the American Rescue Plan
and the Chips Bill and the Electoral count Act and
(29:43):
just one thing after another. He was like a magician
dealing with a very closely divided Congress, getting things done,
getting big things done. You know. I think a lot
of the political strategy the White House was sort of
based on the theory that we if we deliver a
lot of legislation benefiting working class voters, they will reward
(30:04):
us with their votes. And the problem was, yeah, the
roads and bridges were getting rebuilt in town. I'm not
sure people really credited Joe Biden for that, but every
time they were driving on those roads to the gas
station of the grocery store, they were punishing Joe Biden
for that, and by extension, Kamala Harris. And so I
(30:24):
think Harris did feel a deep sense of loyalty to
Joe Biden. I think she does think he was a
very good president. I also think, you know, like a
lot of vice presidents, it's really awkward. You know, you
start to say, okay, well, I disagreed with the president
on X Y or Z. Is there a record of
you disagreeing with the president on X Y or Z?
Or are you just saying this out of expedience? Now?
(30:47):
Are you pissing off constituencies within the coalition to try
to reach for, you know, theoretical voters in the center.
Does it seem disingenuous and kind of hurt you more
than it helps you? I'm not sure. I think she
could threaded the needle by just more definitively describing why
and how the next four years would be different than
(31:07):
the last four years. And it was just it was
like generalities and nothing like clear.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It was really strange to me and frustrating. And I've
said this before on this podcast that she wasn't better
at answering some of these questions, that she didn't seem
to be able to communicate a clear, specific vision and
she doesn't have to get in the weeds on policy,
but you know, just one or two proposals, or as
(31:36):
you said, saying, you know, I think we probably made
some mistakes on immigration early in the administration, right, and
I feel like she didn't take accountability for anything. And
if she had admitted maybe some mistakes and things that
she would like to do differently moving forward, as you say,
(32:00):
she could have threaded the needle more effectively. And you know,
couldn't David Pluff and Kamala Harris get together with Joe
Biden and say, listen, we have to separate ourselves from you.
Couldn't they have those kinds of conversations and kind of
agree on some of those things or is that not possible.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I'd like to think it would be possible. I'm not
sure whether it's actually possible. Joe Biden is a very
proud guy with a real chip on his shoulder, and
I'm not sure he'd appreciate his own vice president pushing
off against him. But you know, I think you sort
of ask forgiveness, not permission. You got to win the election.
That's your job. And if Biden's a little miffed, you know,
(32:43):
maybe you kiss and make up at the meeting when
you're president elect. And I just think it's also really
kind of shortsighted conventional political advice that you never admit
a mistake because it shows weakness. I actually think it
shows strength when you admit a mistake. I think it
breaks through because it doesn't look like typical politicians speak.
(33:05):
So if Harris had said, you know, I think we
got that wrong, or I think I was wrong on
some of the positions I took in twenty nineteen, I learned,
I grew, I got better.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And also, I think you have to remember the moment
we were in culturally right, or.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
The moment we thought we were in in twenty nineteen.
As it turns out, Joe Biden read the moment for
voters a heck of a lot better than like Elizabeth
Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the editorial page of The
New York Times did but yes, meaning explain meaning the
conventional wisdom among like elites and journalists and people who
(33:42):
live where you and I live in LA and New
York City in twenty nineteen was we're in the middle
of this cultural revolution and the country and the Democratic
Party are moving dramatically to the left, and you've got
to accommodate this. And you know, Kamala Harris heard that,
and she responded by taking a whole series of like
(34:03):
Bernie Sanders positions on a wide variety of issues. Joe
Biden heard that and ignored it and thought that that
was wrong and thought that that's not actually where his
voters were. And Biden was right and Harris was wrong,
and Biden, you know, resuscitated Harris's career after she completely
flamed out. I mean, she dropped out of the Democratic
(34:26):
contest before a single caucus or primary in twenty twenty.
I remember I worked in that primary campaign for another candidate,
and you know, she she'd started with such promise. She
took a bunch of far left positions that didn't seem
authentic to her, and she was kind of between a
rock and a hard place with voters. Biden saved her
(34:47):
political career, made her vice president. She adopted Biden's positions
on just about every issue, which actually did seem more
authentic because you know, here in California, Harris is not
known as a far left politic by any strength. She's
known as a kind of mainstream democrat who was a
longtime prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
And a law and order and made people mad for
minimum mandatory sentence singing stuff. Right.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Well, yeah, there was a whole kind of series of
left wing memes in twenty nineteen when she was running
of Kamal as a cop. I mean, what she actually
tried to do when she was Attorney General and DA
of San Francisco was kind of create a third way
that she called smart on crime, and without belaboring the
point too much, it was not a far left plan.
It was a kind of a center left reformist approach
(35:36):
to criminal justice that was very authentic to who she was.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Do you think she emphasized abortion too much and not
pocketbook issues enough.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I don't know, which is an unsatisfying answer.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
No, that's okay, It's honest.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I'd like to see more data about the voters who
were pro choice and voted for Trump. Any are the
voters who voted for abortion referenda in various states but
voted for Trump, maybe she should have talked about abortion more.
That was clearly a big change that favored her. You know,
(36:16):
she was like wrestling a bear on the economy. Immigration
was a loser for her. Abortion was the one issue
where she was clearly in the stronger position. And there's
a part of me that thinks maybe she should have
just hammered abortion every day.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
We'll see, because it didn't seem to be a top issue.
I mean, again, you'll have to go through the data
from these exit polls because I think the referenda in
various states, I'm not sure what they'll tell. I mean,
I'll leave it to that political brain of yours. Let
me ask you about Joe Biden, though, I mean, there
was a segment of the population pretty upset about Joe
(36:55):
Biden kind of waiting till the last minute to drop out,
and his so called to nablers in the White House
not being honest about, you know, the fact that he
was getting older and less capable to do this very
demanding job. Susan Glasser Steve Schmidt basically were just railing
(37:15):
against Joe Biden for letting his ego get in the
way and for not stepping aside a year before, so
there could have been a proper primary, so the Democratic
Party would have been able to find the strongest candidate
who was best equipped to beat Donald Trump. I don't know,
how are you feeling about all that, Brian.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I agree with that. I'm mad at Joe Biden. He
was very clear in twenty twenty that he was going
to be a one term president. That's what it meant
when he said he was just a bridge to the
next generation. That's what it meant when he had that
big event in Michigan at the end of the primaries
in twenty twenty, with Whitmer and Corey Booker and Kamala
and all these people standing behind him saying they're the
(37:58):
future of the party. You're going to see a lot
more them than you are of me. I'm just a bridge.
Voters thought he was too old four years ago, but
you know, they were willing to sort of go with
it because he seemed sharp and he wasn't Donald Trump.
It was just the height of ego folly, willful ignorance
(38:21):
to think that an eighty one year old could get
re elected as president of the United States to another
four year term, especially when the decline was so clear
and so obvious to everybody except to him. We verged
into don't believe your lying eyes. And I do resent
that the team around him apparently never had the cajones.
(38:44):
As hard as this would be to go to the
sitting president and say, look, I just don't think this
is a good idea. Mister President. You've been a great president.
I know you feel sharp today, but I just don't
think this is going to work. And this is a
gamble with the democracy, with the United States of America,
with the Western Alliance that you cannot take.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I know this is that could have, would have, should have.
But if he had dropped out earlier and there had
been a primary process, do you think we would have
ended up with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
No, I don't because I think the question for primary voters,
who are actually pretty pragmatic in the Democratic Party would
have been the same as it was four years ago,
which is who can beat Donald Trump? And I don't
think she would have been the answer to that question.
And it's not really her fault. I think it's more
the fact that she was just you know, she's part
of the Biden Harris administration. It was very clear the
(39:41):
Biden Harris administration was just consistently congenitally unpopular. And so
I think, you know, a Whitmer Warnock ticket, or a
Shapiro Klobashar ticket, or a you know, boodhagige whatever to
I mean, you would have had a lot of strong
candidates running, all of whom would have represented change from
(40:04):
the status quo and wouldn't have had the baggage on
inflation and immigration that Harris did.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And also might that have given her time if she
was competitive, to hone her message, to introduce herself to
the public, to become more of a national figure, if
she hadn't had to do a campaign over the course
of one hundred and eight days or whatever.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
It was totally and it represents more dumb political conventional
wisdom like don't admit a mistake, the oh, we can't
have a primary that would be too divisive. Actually, when
was the best democratic performance in modern times? Two thousand
and eight, when we had this ferociously competitive primary that
went all the way until June between Hillary and Obama,
(40:51):
it made both of them dramatically better candidates. Obama emerged
far stronger from that process. Than when he'd entered it.
So you do need competition, and you do need to
There's a huge difference between a theoretical candidate and a
real candidate, and sometimes a real candidate needs some time
to hone their act and get better. Obama was actually
(41:14):
a pretty crappy candidate for the first three four months,
maybe six months that he was running in two thousand
and seven, and it was the process that made him
dramatically better and made him find his message.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
There's also some serious soul searching going on about the
Democratic Party and if it's lost its way. As we've
noted before, there's been a significant shift. It used to
be the party of union blue collar workers, and that
has really shifted over the last few decades, right, and
(42:05):
now it does seem brian. It is the party of
college educated, liberal coastal elites.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, it's the urban cosmopolitan party, and they're just not
enough white, college educated coastal voters to win a presidential election.
It reminds me of the story of Adlai Stevenson, who
ran for president twice unsuccessfully, whom the Republicans derided as
an egghead, and some voter came up to a mintern
event and said, you know, everythinking American is for you,
(42:36):
and Stevenson said, well, thank you, ma'am, but I need
a majority. So I think, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
This is why I love you, Brian, because you know
stories like this.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
And I think, by the way, some of that disdain
for working class people comes through among not from Joe Biden,
not really even from Kamala Harris this time out, but
from a lot of Democrats. And I think a lot
of working class voters can see it, can smell it,
and they don't like it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And I would say, I mean Joe Biden made that
slip about garbage or trash, you know. The last week
of the campaign, Mark Cuban said he never sees Donald
Trump with intelligent women. You know. I think those are
taken as real insults for people who feel dismissed and
(43:25):
look down upon.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, and Donald Trump never insults any group of voters.
They all feel very respected by him.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Well that's the mystery. You know. He is more Teflon
than Teflon, and I still will never quite understand why
he is never punished or held accountable for the horrible
things he says. I think maybe people eat it up
and they love that he says what they're thinking, and
(43:55):
that he doesn't have a filter, and he is the
antithesis of political correctness. And so I think that brings
me to my next question about sort of woke culture.
You know, I met Dasha Burns, who's this very good
young reporter for NBC, and I had dinner with her
(44:15):
a couple of I guess the night I was interviewing
Nancy Pelosi at the ninety second Street Why and I
asked her because she covered the Trump campaign. He told
her if she had beautiful skin, because I said, your
skin is so pretty? She said, funny, Donald Trump told
me the same thing.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Must have. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
I was like, this is really weird. But anyway, you.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
And Trump you really think very similarly about a lot
of stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I said, we must have similar taste in women, right,
So so anyway, I said, why do you think so
many people are attracted to him? And she said, well,
I think a little bit. It's lefty lecture culture. And
I think that was obviously another way of talking to
(45:00):
about woke culture, this kind of holier than thou self righteous.
I am much more sensitive and aware and ocurant, you know,
than you are, And I know all these terms, and
I do my pronouns, and I do this, and I'm
much more aware and sensitive and caring and educated than
(45:21):
you are, right, which I think a lot of people
felt that way, and I sort of thought that the
pendulum had swung back a little on that was this
sort of a woke hangover that was still in the
ether that turned a lot of voters off.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Maybe. I mean, I don't think Harris ran a woke
campaign this time at.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
All, No, but I think they associate it with Democrats,
you know, even if she didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Well, and there's a lot of video of her saying
a lot of crazy shit from twenty nineteen, back when
that was okorant and when people were using French as
you know, the language of world diplomacy and you know,
communicating coastal elites. But I think there's a there's a
healthy part of this, and there's an unhealthy part of this.
(46:12):
The healthy part of this is we shouldn't get to
a point where, you know, everything is like pointing fingers
and assigning blame and just because you're not kind of
one hundred percent jibing with the latest and greatest way
of describing diversity, that means you're a bad person that
(46:32):
that kind of you know, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty culture
was terrible and exclusionary and pushed a lot of good
people away from, you know, the Democratic Coalition. The unhealthy
part is, I do think Trump is a racist and
a bigot, and I think, you know, he's not only
(46:52):
sort of a giant middle finger to the establishment in
Washington and institutions that have let people down. He exposes
or draws out the sort of the unhealthy, the inner
id of a lot of people. You know, I think
the job of a leader is really to bring out
the best in other people, and he really brings out
(47:13):
the worst in a lot of other people. You know.
You see the behavior of a lot of his supporters
at these rallies before and after, the way that they're
engaging with other people online, and it's just very nasty
and very toxic. And so I hope that you know,
the pendulum doesn't swing so far in the anti woke
direction that we go back to racism, sexism. I know
(47:36):
that's not what you were saying, but like, we do
have a tendency as a country to sort of overreact,
and I think, you know, it is going to be
fascinating that, Like, I think it's one in four Latinos
in America have at least one undocumented family member. So
(47:56):
if some of these like Latino men who voted for
Trump to to you know, stick it to woe culture,
you know, all of a sudden have their abuela deported
because of the guy that they voted for, that's going
to seem like a bigger problem than what pronoun you use.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
And we're going to talk about what a Trump administration
is going to look like in a moment. But getting
back to the Democratic Party, what can they do to
attract maybe a different coalition or win back some of
the voters that were once solidly in their corner. I
heard Jesse waters is at his name on because sometimes like.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Full political commentator.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yes, hey, yeah, he is sort of you look up
smarmy in the dictionary and you see his face. But
he was saying that if the Republicans can hold on
to this new coalition, it's going to be transformative for
not only the party but for the country. So how
does the Democratic Party redefine itself?
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Well, that's going to be obviously the great conversation that
happens over the next months and years, and there's not
like an easy, you know, one, one simple trick to
fix your problems as a Democrat. I think there's a
lot of stuff. I think we do have to reclaim
a lot of voters in the center who think that
we've gone, you know, off the rails on a number
(49:19):
of these cultural questions and have taken like weird and
extreme positions. When you see polling that shows voters thinking
that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are equally
out of touch, equally ideological, equally extreme, that's got to
be very concerning when you're running against Maga, you know.
And so there's an ideological component to this. I think
(49:41):
there's also just a you know, a cultural component to this.
It means nominating candidates like the ones who performed really
well earlier this week, who are in touch with regular
Americans and the struggles and the concerns that they have.
I mean, I would listen to people like Jared Golden
and Maine who wan one as a House Democrat, even
(50:01):
in a district that Donald Trump carried by twenty points.
I would listen to Marie Glusen camp Perez in Washington State,
who I think is an auto mechanic and is really
you know, that interesting kind of female working class person
who's a moderate Democrat and has consistently won a Trump district.
(50:23):
I would go to the people who are in the
hard places, who are succeeding in Trump states and Trump districts,
and watch what they're doing, and then do a lot
more of that. And that, by the way, stands in
start contrast to what Bernie Sanders was saying. You know,
he put out a statement earlier today basically saying Democrats
(50:43):
have abandoned working class people in our agenda. You should
adopt my agenda essentially, and you'll reach working class people.
That would be all well and good if he could
come up with a single example of a Bernie Sanders
style socialist who won a swing state or a swing district,
and he can't because there isn't one. So, you know,
(51:04):
this fantasy of the kind of the far left that
you have all of these you know, far left voters
just waiting to be energized with the right agenda, it
has never happened. And in fact, when those candidates are nominated,
Democrats tend to lose in swing districts.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Let's talk about the future and what a Trump administration
is going to look like. So many people voted for
him because they believe he will bring prices down, you know,
at the pump, at the grocery store, right. And I'm
curious if you think that will happen, because I've also
read on the other end that if he's so crazy
(51:42):
about tariffs, those costs are going to trickle down to
the consumer. And if he does, in fact deport a
lot of these people, then a lot of agricultural jobs
that are being done by immigrants will then make food
prices go up even more. So will you help me
(52:03):
understand this?
Speaker 2 (52:05):
No, you understand it perfectly. So he's promised one thing,
and then the stuff that he's going to do will
produce the opposite effect, so people vote for lower prices.
He's promised tariffs which will raise prices dramatically, which are
also inflationary. He's promised mass deportation, which will constrain the
(52:25):
labor force and also raise prices. His economic agenda has
been you know, studied by independent economists who say that
it will spike inflation and potentially throw the country into
a recession. So you know, he might change his view.
I think a lot of people are a little bit
too quick to kind of console themselves by saying, ah,
(52:46):
he doesn't really mean it. You know, his team announced
today that's starting on day one, January twentieth, he is
going to begin the largest mass deportation of immigrants that
the United States has ever seen. So the effect in
cities like la and Chicago and New York is going
to be unbelievable. I mean, those cities could be ground
(53:09):
to a halt, and economic activity in those cities, which
are the growth engines of the country, could also be
ground to a halt. So we are in store, I
think for a level of chaos, confusion, and economic pain
that is very different from even his first administration. But
(53:29):
maybe I'm being too negative.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Now not to mention sort of the heartache on a
human level.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Not to even mention that. I mean, you remember those
heartbreaking pictures of kids getting separated from their parents at
the border. Well, those were migrants. Those weren't American citizens.
What he's promising is to deport eleven million American undocumented immigrants.
As I said, a lot of whom have US citizens
and their families. So you could see on an industrial
(53:58):
scale in images and video of children who are US
citizens being separated from their parents in US cities. So
I think the parade of horribles here is big and
it's real, and I fear the consequences.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
Let me ask you about foreign policy Ukraine and the
Middle East? What are we likely to see in both
of those situations? And he has expressed his hostility toward NATO.
What does it mean for sort of our position in
the world.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
I was at lunch a couple of weeks ago with
a former senior German official who was saying, you know,
you guys didn't really know you Americans what you were
getting into with Trump in twenty sixteen. You narrowly elected him.
You corrected the problem four years later. Life goes on.
NATO is strong, but knowing what you know now, and
(54:58):
given everything he's saying about blowing up NATO and deferring
to Putin, if you guys elect him again, that is
the end of NATO. That Europe will make a deal
with China, Europe will know that it can't rely on
the United States of America, Ukraine will have to cut
a bad deal with Putin. God knows what that'll look like.
So I think the consequences globally are immense. I think,
(55:22):
you know, superpowers don't just you know, continue by default.
They continue because they have to continuously earn that position.
And if America isn't you know, leading with our allies,
if we're thumbing our nose at democracies and embracing authoritarians
around the world as Trump always seems to do, if
(55:44):
our wallets and bank accounts are open to bribes basically
from foreigners, as the Trump families wallets and bank accounts
seem to be open, that also creates a climate in
which our allies are going to be very distrustful. I mean,
somebody told me the other day, and I don't know
whether this is true, but it sounds true that, you know,
(56:04):
Trump is selling these hundred thousand dollars watches that actually
cost like five or ten grand to make. And the
person told me that he has heard that a lot
of foreigners who want to influence Donald Trump have been
buying these watches just as a way to bribe Trump
and the Trump family. Because every time you buy a watch,
(56:25):
you know, seventy eighty grand goes into Donald Trump's pocket. So,
you know, if you were a foreign leader and you're
looking to get in good with the President of the
United States, the most powerful man in the world. Why
wouldn't you just buy a hundred watches? And by the way,
is anyone going to know that you did? No? Or
why wouldn't you like invest another billion dollars or two
(56:46):
billion dollars in Jared Kushner's private equity fund.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
What about the Middle East? Obviously, I think people have
described Netanyaho as Israel's Donald Trump. How do you see
that planet.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Well, they both have to stay in power so that
they can stay out of jail. They have that in common,
and they're both very cynical operators. There was a statement
today that perhaps Bib would end the war by the
time Trump comes to office as a sort of favored
him to allow him to start from a clean slate.
I'm not sure about that though, because if bb ends
(57:23):
the war, it would produce a reckoning in Israel that's
been sort of deferred by the war into Bibe's conduct
pre October seventh, how he allowed that to happen, and
his management of the war, and so I don't know
where that's going to go. I do know that you
know people who are anti Israel who either you know
(57:44):
stayed home or voted for Jill Stein or whatever because
they thought somehow that Trump would be better than Harris.
Are going to be in for a very rude awakening
once Trump is in power. Why because I don't think
Trump is going to stand up to BB at all.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
You're saying voters who are concerned about Gaza and what
happens next and civilian casualties who voted against Kamala for
that reason.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah, Trump's not going to be a check on BB.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Right, And when he went to Dearborn, Michigan, I thought
that was interesting, Right, didn't he win Dearborn?
Speaker 2 (58:21):
I think he did win at least East Dearborn. I
haven't seen the results in all the precincts, which is tiny.
But you know, conversely, Jewish voters who held their noses
on abortion and character and all sorts of other issues
to support Trump on Israel, I wonder what happens when
(58:41):
Israel throws out Bibe and elects somebody more centrist like
Benny Gance, or when the interests of the Saudi's and
the Kataris, who are literally funding the Trump family run
crosswise with Israel's. Will Trumps stand with Israel at that point,
I really don't think so. So I think he's a
very fair weather for I think it's very dependent on
(59:02):
bb being the one in charge, and I'm not sure
any of that's going to last.
Speaker 1 (59:07):
Two other questions, are we going to see a national
abortion ban given that the Senate is controlled by the
Republicans now, or minimum standards like a six week abortion
ban or a fifteen week abortion ban.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
The answer is, we don't know. He promised at the
very end of the campaign that he would veto a
national abortion ban, but it sort of depends how you
define a national abortion ban. I mean, maybe if it's
a twelve week ban or a fifteen week ban, he
won't view it as a ban. He'll view it as
like a minimum standard. And he's just against late term abortion.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
The problem with all of that is, if you actually
look at this issue, later term abortions happen through these
sort of, as you know, Katie, heartbreaking scenarios. It's not
as though the mother wants to have an abortion at
that point, it's there's some grievous health problem, either with
the mo other or the fetus that creates the situation
(01:00:03):
out of medical necessity, and so you put in place
an arbitrary limit, and you take options out of the
hands of a woman and her doctor, and it's really
dangerous and I'm not at all confident that he's going
to stop something like that from happening.
Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Last question, I saw an Instagram post that said, convicted
felons can't vote in this country, but a convicted felon
can be elected president. Please explain.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Well, in some states, convicted felons can vote. We learned this,
by the way, in Florida, where Trump lives. It depends
on what you're convicted of.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
So, oh, is that why he was able to vote.
I thought it was because he was appealing the verdict.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
No, it's because it depends on the type of felony.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Okay, In many states, convicted felons can't vote, but a
convicted felon can be elected president of the United States.
The question is, will he ever face any consequences for
his actions or even for the you know, crimes he's
been convicted of.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
No, I don't think so. I think he's gotten out
of it by being elected president. I think that's his
get out of jail free card. And you know, not
to sound too conspiratorial, but he just said last week
that his biggest mistake was a leaving office in January
of twenty twenty one. What do we think the odds
are that he's going to leave office in January of
twenty twenty nine. Is it one hundred percent? Is it
(01:01:33):
eighty percent? The fact that there's some doubt about that,
because you know, God knows what would happen to him
if he left the White House again, you know, creates
all sorts of scary scenarios, like what if he says, well,
you know, I was denied a second term in twenty
twenty that I rightfully won. I should be allowed. You know,
(01:01:53):
the Constitution says, you know, no two consecutive terms, but
I should be allowed a second consecutive term. Who's going
to stop the Supreme Court, the Congress. I'm just not
sure that these guard rails are strong enough anymore to
withstand what's about to be thrown at them.
Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Well, that's why I wanted to end with this quote
by FDR in a fireside chat he gave. He said
democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because
the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they
had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity of seeing their
(01:02:32):
children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of
government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership and government. Finally,
in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope
of getting something to eat. We in America know that
our own democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work.
(01:02:54):
But in order to preserve them, we need to act
together to meet the problems of the nation and boldly,
and to prove that the practical operation of democratic government
is equal to the task of protecting the security of
the people. I thought that sounded very prescient in some ways,
(01:03:15):
and perhaps an explanation to why some people seem to
gravitate towards an authoritarian figure like Donald Trump. We haven't
protected the people enough.
Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Right even though of course we have record low unemployment
right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
But you just run my very dramatic and.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
You know, here's another here's another line that I'm going
to steal, which is, if liberals don't secure the border,
fascist will I don't know who said that, but I
thought that was really smart. You know, there's certain things
that people expect of their government that you know, even
liberals have to deliver when they're in power as learning.
Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
And I think what's really challenging as we approach a
second Trump administration is he is so unpredictable. Nobody really
knows what he's going to do. And on that hopeful note,
(01:04:22):
thanks Brian.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Thank you Katie. Always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy
world reach out. You can leave a short message at
six h nine five P one two five to five
oh five, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.
I would love to hear from you. Next Question is
(01:04:54):
a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive
producers are Me, Katie Couric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising
producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio
and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For
more information about today's episode, or to sign up for
(01:05:16):
my newsletter, wake Up Call, go to the description in
the podcast app or visit us at Katiecuric dot com.
You can also find me on Instagram and all my
social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Host
Katie Couric
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