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Front Burner Transcript for November 7, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme Poisson.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: Folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now. I get it. The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for. But hear me when I say, hear me when I say the light of America's promise will always burn bright.

[crowd cheers]

JP: That is Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour to be a U.S. presidential nominee. She conceded the election Wednesday afternoon at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In her speech, Harris talked about the peaceful transfer of power and vowed not to give up the fight for the values her campaign focused on.

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KAMALA HARRIS: Earlier today, I spoke with President elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.

[crowd cheers]

JP: But now that the election is over, the reckoning for the Democratic Party begins.

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KAMALA HARRIS: In our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States.

[crowd cheers]

KAMALA HARRIS: And loyalty to our conscience and to our God. My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.

JP: Earlier in the day, before Harris spoke, I got to speak with Alex Shephard, senior editor at The New Republic, about what went wrong.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Alex, hi. I'm so grateful to have you back on the podcast again. Thank you so much for making the time.

ALEX SHEPHARD: It's really good to be back with you.

JP: So here we are, we are into Wednesday. There's been more of an opportunity for people, I think, to wrap their heads around exactly what happened last night. And I would be so interested to hear you synthesize for me what happened. Like, what was the narrative of the night to you?

ALEX SHEPHARD: There are, I think, a couple of ways of looking at it. One is that the Harris campaign had spent the last several months communicating to supporters that this was going to be a very close race, that polls showed that this was going to be a remarkably tight race that was decided by, you know, one, two points or less in seven battleground states. But I think what we saw was that the lead up to the election, you know, I and other reporters and the campaign itself really started to push a kind of enthusiasm narrative. They were seeing, you know, remarkable turnout. They were seeing volunteers everywhere and there were no Trump volunteers in sight. What they were telling supporters in the lead up was that this is going to be a close election, but we can turn out the voters that we think we need to win. And so what happened last night? What happened last night is that, you know...

JP: Yeah, not that.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Not that, yeah. So, you know, really, in a lot of ways, it mirrored the 2016 election, that basically, starting around 9 p.m., you started to see, you know, Harris doing pretty well in places that she was expected to do well, but missing by one or two points largely in sort of these suburban ring counties, but also in urban areas like Atlanta and then later in the day, Philadelphia. And at the same time, Donald Trump once again had built on the sort of huge rural turnout operation that had sort of propelled him to victory in 2016, but also started to show gains in some really surprising places. So you started to see that, you know, the voters that Harris, that the Harris people said were going to win for her -- largely white suburban women -- they didn't show up in huge numbers.

JP: You talked about 2016. Was this markedly different from what happened in 2020 when Trump went up against Biden?

ALEX SHEPHARD: In some ways. I mean, I think that their, the campaign that Harris ran was in some ways similar. It was a campaign that was built around Donald Trump's character. It was built around the idea that she represented, like Biden said he represented in 2020, a break from this era of American history. And it was also premised on building a larger coalition involving more highly educated suburban voters. In 2020, we saw huge, huge, huge spikes in turnout. And those big spikes benefited Biden, right, because they could make up for Trump's growth with, for instance, Latino men. And that did not happen for Harris. We saw a remarkable dip in turnout. So, I mean, it looks like there's going to be around 65 million votes cast for her and Tim Walz, compared to, I think, you know, over 80 for Biden.

JP: And just riff for me on some of the reasons why you think some of this happened. You know, why did they not get suburban women? Why was turnout low? Why were they getting these groups that everyone's surprised by, like Latino men?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. I mean, I think that the one constant in American politics has been that the Democratic Party has underestimated consistently Donald Trump's appeal. And they have sort of baked in this idea, which I think is really wishful thinking, that this will be the election where the spell is broken. That voters that had previously been loyal will either not show up, and that they will get, you know, moderate Republicans or sort of highly educated Republicans. And that has never happened. Donald Trump has maintained that support and he's managed to build out a coalition. So that's one explanation. Another explanation is that Harris, you know, only became the nominee a hundred days ago. And so her ability to message, I think, was really limited. I think there's been a lot of criticism of that message. I think some of it's fair. She took a remarkably cautious approach. She was really reluctant to get into policy specifics. She was, she barely ever broke from Joe Biden, the incumbent president, who was wildly unpopular. And so one explanation is that, you know, she just didn't give voters enough to sort of grab onto.

[music]

JP: Why do you think that... you know, according to you, you wrote this in your piece today, she ran such a cautious and risk averse campaign? Why didn't she do more, even in that small window, to articulate a vision?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah, so over the summer, I did a sort of big reported piece that just sort of looked at Harris's 2019 campaign. And one of the things that I sort of found there was that Harris, the politician, she didn't have a ton of national legislative experience. She doesn't, aside from abortion and climate change, she doesn't have a lot of sort of key policy areas. And I think she's nervous about getting too far out, right? Her big concern was always appearing too progressive in this election. She was worried that voters would see her as a San Francisco liberal. And so she just didn't say anything. That's one explanation. But the more important thing is that... and I think this is the thing that is worth stressing the most, is that she only became the nominee a hundred days ago. Like, this does not happen in American politics. And she, you know, is the incumbent vice president. And it's just not really done for the incumbent vice president to radically break from the president. So she sort of just inherited the mantle of Joe Biden's presidency, which voters really, really, really don't like. They think that Biden is too old. They think that he's incompetent. They think that he's done a terrible job. And I think that she felt hemmed in there. And because the party had so little time, you know, it made the risk of a misstep so much greater, right, if she sort of said the wrong thing. So, early in the campaign... I don't know if anyone even remembers this anymore, but the first policy she unveiled, for weeks people were saying, and where are Kamala Harris's policies? The first policy is, I'm going to crack down on price gouging in grocery stores. Immediately, every economist in the country says, you know, essentially this is Stalinism. You know, that these are price controls at the grocery store. And I think that that really scared them straight. So she ended up inheriting a record that voters didn't like, and she's going against a, you know, the biggest, the most wild over-promiser in contemporary American political history.

[music]

JP: When Biden stepped down, you heard a lot of people talking about how he will be remembered as this great president that put his country before his own ambitions. But do you think that that's really how he's going to be remembered now in the history books? Like, how much responsibility here do you think that the current president, that Biden, will wear?

ALEX SHEPHARD: You can look at Joe Biden's presidency or you could look at Joe Biden's presidency on Monday and say that this is one of the most accomplished and arguably transformative presidencies of the last hundred years. In terms of his legislative record. Things like the CHIPS Act, the American Rescue Act. You know, he passed legislation that fundamentally altered the economy in ways that really benefited working people, in ways that Democrats hadn't really done since Lyndon Johnson. Which should be amazing. However, all of that is going to be wiped away in January. And it's going to be wiped away because Joe Biden didn't step aside sooner. And he didn't step aside sooner because he's got a massive ego. He thought that he was the only person who could beat Donald Trump. He put his party, and he put, you know, ultimately, his vice president in a position where I think any Democrat would have had a remarkably difficult time winning. And, you know, there's going to be a ton of, I think, deserved quibbling about Harris's campaign, about her decision to campaign heavily with Liz Cheney, about her failure to sort of articulate a clear separation from any real Biden policies, about her approach to Gaza and to Arab American voters and to young voters. But all of that stuff kind of doesn't matter. Like, she probably could have done all of that and it wouldn't have mattered, because I think the sense that we're really getting is that voters had already rejected the idea of a second Biden term. And Harris was running on that and she was running on that because she was forced to run on that because Joe Biden didn't step aside until July.

JP: Do you think that if Biden had stepped aside sooner and the party had had this free competitive primary, that they would have actually gotten a candidate that would have run a very different campaign?

ALEX SHEPHARD: So I've been talking to Democrats a lot about this even before Harris lost. So I've been having this conversation more in the kind of cold morning light of Wednesday. And I sort of heard two different things. So one is that a lot of Democrats believe that, one, if Biden had said he was going to step aside after Democrats overperformed in the 2022 midterm, it still would have hamstrung what little he could have done in 2023, and it would have opened up all of these new wounds that would have, you know, hampered the party. It would have diminished its ability to govern, and that, you know, there isn't quite a sort of Barack Obama figure waiting in the wings anyways. So this was kind of the best case scenario, no matter, you know. I don't find that particularly credible. And I think that one of the reasons why is that, you know, primaries are fractious. They can be crazy, right? The 2016 Republican primary was crazy and nuts. But what they do is that they give you a clear picture of where the party is, right. So in 2016, Trump won running to ban Muslims from the country and to close the border and to build a giant wall. And what that told you was, you know, essentially that, you know, this wasn't, this wasn't a kind of small-C conservative party anymore. It was a sort of nativist, you know, increasingly sort of xenophobic party and that they were willing to embrace a strongman. And in 2020, there was a sense of the Democrats were really interested in doing progressive policy and... but they also wanted to beat Trump. And like, over the course of a primary, you kind of figure out where you are, right. And that can lead to winning, right? And I think that what Democrats didn't have and what Harris didn't have in particular, was the ability to actually kind of get a good sense of where the party was.

[music]

JP: I'm curious to get your thoughts here. What role do you think that the mainstream media played in this election?

ALEX SHEPHARD: This has been kind of one of the sort of armchair topics of discussion here. I think the way that we in the media cover Trump has been, I think, a source of pandering. I think that there is, there are genuine questions about what you do when someone breaks all the, all the rules, right? And this idea-- there's an idea that sort of mainstream outlets like The New York Times are sort of sane-washing Trump, that they're making him seem more normal and palatable to viewers. To their readers, excuse me. That, you know, that voters haven't gotten a good look at how much older and less coherent and kind of angrier... It's a very dour figure now that Trump is. I think the story of this election is not the one that a lot of critics of the Times are pushing, which is that, you know, the Times contributed to Trump's win; that it is this kind of omnipresent force. I think it's the opposite, actually. That mainstream outlets have lost their ability to shape the news. And I think the one thing that Donald Trump did that I did not think he was going to do successfully, is that he went on a lot of small and big shows, a lot of comedy podcasts. You know, he did Joe Rogan, which is the biggest one in the country. That were aimed not just at men, but at... they are targeted to kind of different types of young men. And, you know, I was talking to people about this and, and, you know, I was, I laughed about it, too. Because if you are trying to win an election, you don't do it with young men because they don't vote. And yet, like he, you know, I think by doing these sort of podcasts and TikTok interviews and YouTube shows, I think he really built his coalition. And that, I think, is... one of the stories of this election for me is that Kamala Harris tried to run on a sort of big tent, classic Democratic message. You know, We're looking toward the future, and, We're not going back, and, We're all in it together. But, you know, I like Israel, but I also care about the suffering of Palestinians. You know, kind of this kind of wishy-washy thing. Which is what Democrats like, because that's the kind of thing that Barack Obama did too, right. Is this feeling that we're all in it together. Trump did something that was, I think, very different and, like, perfectly tailored to this media moment. He, I think, like Barack Obama, just commands an enormously high base, right? So [JP: Mm-hmm.] there is just supporters that are with him, like Barack Obama, no matter what. And he can take them for granted. And so what he did was he just kind of went out and did all these things, you know, some of them targeting Latino men. He went to Dearborn, Michigan, and wooed Arab American voters.

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DONALD TRUMP: I have a great feeling for Lebanon, and I know so many people from Lebanon, Lebanese people. And the Muslim population, they're liking Trump. And I've had a good relationship with them. And this is it, this is where they are, Dearborn. And we want their votes and we're looking for their votes. And I think we'll get their votes. What do you think?

ALEX SHEPHARD: And he can say things in these sort of micro-targeted things that... you know, he could say he was, cared about suffering in Gaza and he was going to end the war. Which is, you know, I think not particularly credible given his close relation to Bibi Netanyahu. But he doesn't pay a price for it. I think, one, because of the loyalty that his base shows him, but also just because of his sheer shamelessness. So, you know, for me, the story of this election, to bring it back to the question, is not one in which, you know, CNN, The New York Times, Politico, whatever you want to say, kind of made a narrative and ran with it, right. So it's not like in 2016 when there was, you know, the sort of Comey letter and the emails. And, you know, I think instead what you're seeing is just that a lot of people tune out the media. They don't take it seriously. But they do listen to Joe Rogan. And, you know, and you're starting to hear it. You know, it's all anecdotal, but I think everyone, you know, has talked to a voter who said, No, I heard Trump on Rogan, and, you know, Rogan said that Kamala Harris, you know, wouldn't go on. Which is kind of a half-truth. And, you know, I think it made a difference.

JP: And it was really something last night to watch Dana White, the head of the UFC, call out...

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DANA WHITE: I want to thank some people real quick. I want to thank the NELK Boys, Adin Ross. Um, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.

[crowd cheers]

JP: You know, right beside Trump, who had just claimed victory. It really, it told you a lot about what was going on. And how much pull these guys actually have, because they're already steeped in the politics, right? And they already have those people listening to them. They're not like J.Lo, who's normally not very political, showing up two days before you vote to tell you that if you don't vote, democracy will die.

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JENNIFER LOPEZ: [emotional] We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged. We should. Our pain matters. We matter... You matter. Your voice and your vote matters.

JP: I think there's difference there.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. And well, I think it goes further than that, right. Because the big event that... I mean, I wrote about it, too. I mean, the big event that shaped-- that changed my thinking of this election was the Madison Square Garden rally in which the sort of insult comedian Tony Hinchcliffe goes on stage, and like, and you know, roast comedy works because you are targeting individual people and you can get away with stereotypes because they are individual people. And he went up there and he said, Puerto Rico is a garbage island. And, you know, said disgusting things about Latinos. And I think that everyone looked at this and said, well, that's it, right? This is the remind-- this is his Comey letter. It's a reminder of everything voters don't trust about this guy. Everything that they're sick of this guy. And, you know, Tony Hinchcliffe, you know, he has a podcast called Kill Tony, right? He is a niche celebrity. And, you know, I think Trump's, uh, Trump's secret weapon as a politician, he is able to communicate authenticity to people. And that, and that -- which is crazy because he lives in a big gold skyscraper and, you know, doesn't tell the truth about anything. And, you know, who knows what's his real hair and what isn't. But that really comes across, I think, in these types of interviews, right? Like, I would talk to voters who would say things like, he reminds me of my uncle, you know. And you say, well, do you want your uncle to be president? And, you know, Harris, one, I think... I think ultimately was able to communicate a version of that. But it was always filtered, right? So, like, she was charming on SNL, but that's SNL. And then at the same time, you know, Dems, I think since Obama, they're always trying to replicate the Obama campaign. They just like to trot out celebrities, right. We're doing Scranton, Pennsylvania -- here's Bruce Springsteen.

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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for president and vice president! Get out there and vote!

ALEX SHEPHARD: We're appearing with a majority Latino audience -- here's Jennifer Lopez.

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JENNIFER LOPEZ: It wasn't just Puerto Ricans that were offended that day, okay. It was every Latino in this country. It was humanity and anyone of decent character.

ALEX SHEPHARD: And we're in Texas, so Beyoncé-- Well, I'm not going to say anything bad about Beyoncé. But [Jayme laughs] I think that, but I think that that approach, I think, is really kind of running out of steam, right? Voters don't want to go to a concert, right. They want somebody who understands their needs and has a plan to meet them. And I think that was the other thing down the stretch with Harris. She couldn't really ever communicate to voters that she would change anything for them. And Donald Trump's entire message is built around change.

[music]

JP: How dark a time do you think it is right now for the Democratic Party? Like, is it worse than after the Reagan administration came to power and they were really whittled down there? You know, can they bounce, do you see them bouncing back from this?

ALEX SHEPHARD: [chuckles] Yeah. I mean, I think that 1984 is probably the clearest comparison. You know, some people have been comparing this to 2016 for obvious reasons, but after Hillary's loss, there was an existential crisis to fight, right? You had Bernie Sanders and a sort of universalist approach to politics, and you had Hillary Clinton and a kind of incrementalist approach, whatever you want to call it. And the sort of next four years, that-- they would resist Trump, and that would sort of play out. But both sides kind of had a reasonable case to make that their approach was the best electorally. What we are seeing right now is the Democrats don't have anything right now. I don't think. Like, they basically lost everywhere and on everything. Their economic message, I think they-- which was a kind of synthesis of Sandersism and Clintonism, completely rejected by voters. I think they're [indistinct] as too progressive. But their stance on continuing to arm Israel, also rejected by voters for not being progressive enough. And, you know, I think that there is a real question about what this party looks like. At the same time, I think that what they're seeing, and I think what this election shows, is a clear lurch to the right on immigration in particular. Uh, maybe on economics. I think that one of the things that's-- I think that I have kind of undercounted, is just Elon Musk's pull with these voters. And I think that... Which I think has actually damaged the Democratic economic case, that they like this rich guy who just wants to not have his businesses regulated and pay a load of taxes. But, um. But, you know, so I think that right now, you know, if you asked me what kind of candidate the Democrats are going to run, you know, I have no idea, right. I think there is a clear divide right now. I think the sort of party Brahmins, the sort of more influential people that I talk to, you know, see this as a real warning sign. That, you know, Harris ran too far to the left, that Biden's economic message was too progressive. You know, there are large sections of the Democratic base that feel very differently. But unlike in 2016, you know, when sort of 'Bernie would have won' became a mantra, like, there isn't kind of a 'Bernie would have won' argument here

JP: Oh, man. That's really interesting. Alex, this was great. Thank you so much.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Thank you for having me.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Speaking of Bernie Sanders, he came out with a statement after Alex and I talked. Not just acknowledging his party's loss, but disparaging them. He said, and I quote, "It should come as no surprise that a Democratic Party, which has abandoned working class people, would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change." All right. That is all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.

How the Democrats lost to Trump again - Transcript

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