Speaker 1: Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Reason Choice Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome home, y'all. This is
Speaker 2: our mini pod. We tricked, y'all, We still here. I
Speaker 2: I wanted to touch base with y'all because we did
Speaker 2: a whole show where we ended up in a rumble
Speaker 2: around the Oval office and whose I asked, should have
Speaker 2: a chair in there. But what we didn't talk about
Speaker 2: is what happened in the elections. Well, but I think
Speaker 2: that our perspectives matter here. A lot of the folks
Speaker 2: that have something to say don't necessarily have the inroads
Speaker 2: with the people we know within these campaigns. And I
Speaker 2: think the other thing that has been talked about in
Speaker 2: passing but not as much as the fact that it
Speaker 2: wasn't just a Harris for President campaign loss. The Senate
Speaker 2: is gone and so is the House, and so I
Speaker 2: want to talk about what we all think happened. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that this is another one of those conversations where
Speaker 2: reasonable minds can disagree, and so I want to hear
Speaker 2: what you think. Andrew. You are our resident candidate, democratic
Speaker 2: strategist that has run a campaign and knows what it's
Speaker 2: like to get close. I think you probably only know
Speaker 2: what it's like to get close. You only have won,
Speaker 2: and you've only gotten close. You've never had a blowout
Speaker 2: like this. So what do you think went wrong? Or
Speaker 2: what do you know went wrong?
Speaker 1: Angela? I can tell you one thing that I believe
Speaker 1: went right, and that is Kamala Harris, with one hundred
Speaker 1: days to transition from VP candidate to presidential candidate, which
Speaker 1: is I can't even imagine the change that would have
Speaker 1: had to happen, ran through the goddamn tape. I think
Speaker 1: she was everywhere, talked to everybody. Are their tactical pieces
Speaker 1: that needed to change? Are there? You know, things that
Speaker 1: can always be done on the edges and the scene
Speaker 1: in scenes of a campaign. Absolutely, But when you think greater,
Speaker 1: bigger picture, Kamala Harris did what she could do as
Speaker 1: a candidate. She could not, however, answer for endemic problems
Speaker 1: and within the Democratic Party structure and quite frankly, the
Speaker 1: diminished democratic turnout that we experienced in this election. Let
Speaker 1: nobody forget that we had a voter drop off from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, and the seven states
Speaker 1: that were battleground states where Kamala competed on the air,
Speaker 1: was very present, tried to make her case. She lost
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump by basically three points on average between
Speaker 1: those those states or less that she did not compete,
Speaker 1: meaning they were not they were not battleground states. She
Speaker 1: lost by six points or greater. What's the point there?
Speaker 1: And places where she where people got to hear her,
Speaker 1: where people got to hear her defense and what she
Speaker 1: stood for. She closed the gap between Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: Republicans by three points of industrialized nations where and I
Speaker 1: know people were like, well, we don't live in industrialized
Speaker 1: that we live in the United States. Will listen to
Speaker 1: this just globally. Globally, the incumbent parties, be they conservative
Speaker 1: or liberal, and democracies all across the globe up until
Speaker 1: getting to ours, the incumbent party and leadership were walloped
Speaker 1: across the board. The United States, of all of those
Speaker 1: developed nations who had democratic elections, had this small list
Speaker 1: the the smallest defeat of any of the other countries.
Speaker 1: I think that's important to understand. Because Kamala closed a
Speaker 1: very significant gap, it should have been worse. And the
Speaker 1: reason it should have been worse is I got to
Speaker 1: retort back to James Carville, it's the economy stupid. And
Speaker 1: I know we've been talking a bit about whether or
Speaker 1: not there is some a duplicity, and people believe it
Speaker 1: in that message. But when you can take black men's
Speaker 1: support to low twenty percent and Latino men's support to
Speaker 1: fifty percent plus a twenty five point shift in a cycle,
Speaker 1: we can't just trump it up to what is a
Speaker 1: significant issue here, which is that of race and gender,
Speaker 1: including amongst these two groups that I just mentioned as
Speaker 1: being real impediments to Kamala's ability to scale that additional hurdle.
Speaker 1: I would say, while we did not win in a
Speaker 1: number of plays, this is where we wanted to win.
Speaker 1: At the top of the ticket. The most Democrats really
Speaker 1: did mitigate a number of losses. Hakeem Jeffries will have experienced.
Speaker 1: What potential gain of one or two seats, a loss
Speaker 1: of one or two seats. The fact that they were
Speaker 1: able to help steady when people held us accountable for
Speaker 1: not being able to afford their groceries. That is, that
Speaker 1: is not a mandate for the president or the Congress
Speaker 1: to treat the opposing party and their beliefs and their
Speaker 1: supporters any kind of way. I know everybody thinks you're
Speaker 1: saying that went wrong. What I'm saying is is that
Speaker 1: there was a lot that went right that we are
Speaker 1: not accounting for, and the way this election in total
Speaker 1: played out.
Speaker 2: The other I want to know what those things are.
Speaker 1: Well, the things that went right to make that happen.
Speaker 2: Are you saying that the loss wasn't that bad? So
Speaker 2: that's when right? No?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, yes, in part because it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be much greater. I know we all had optimism that
Speaker 1: it was the devil versus the angels sitting on the shoulder.
Speaker 1: She's not an angel. But I'm just making the comparison,
Speaker 1: which means he was canceled, could not be considered well.
Speaker 1: For a lot of voters. They didn't experience him so
Speaker 1: badly the first time. They ignored a lot of his nonsense,
Speaker 1: which was consequential for a lot of communities, but they
Speaker 1: ignored it, and what they recall was that their groceries
Speaker 1: were accessible and affordable. You had people across the board
Speaker 1: saying that they felt like they financially did better even
Speaker 1: though the US survived. The US survived the inflation better
Speaker 1: than any other industrialized country, we came out of it better.
Speaker 1: We came out of COVID better. But people don't live
Speaker 1: in other countries. They live in this one, and so
Speaker 1: if their experience is bad, it's going to be reflected, y'all.
Speaker 1: I think there were a lot of contributing factors to
Speaker 1: the loss that Democrats experienced. But I always felt like
Speaker 1: this race was out of going to be like this
Speaker 1: neck and neck, or that it was actually going to
Speaker 1: be a demonstrable win. I was hoping that demonstrable win
Speaker 1: was going to be in favor of Kamala Harris. But
Speaker 1: if you look across these battleground states, the blue wall collapsed,
Speaker 1: not terribly significantly, but enough for us not to win
Speaker 1: those electoral votes. And we got to get inside what
Speaker 1: the hell working people in this country? I think? And
Speaker 1: when I include working people, I'm not talking about white
Speaker 1: world folks. That is not a syndonym for working people.
Speaker 1: Working people are black, brown, everything in between. Who felt
Speaker 1: like this party was not doing their bidding even though
Speaker 1: we're the only ones doing their bidding. The talking points
Speaker 1: on the other side and the messaging from the other
Speaker 1: side made them look like they were the Union Party
Speaker 1: and not us. And we got to figure that shit out.
Speaker 1: And the last point I'll make is when we were
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, and I will never forget that young man
Speaker 1: who stood up and talked about the hundreds of black
Speaker 1: men that he encounters every single week in Atlanta through
Speaker 1: the nature of his work, and the fact that they
Speaker 1: were saying that straight black men don't have a home
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party. And you then consider the significant
Speaker 1: loss of black men, younger, Black Latino men younger, and
Speaker 1: white men younger who philosophically are not identifying ex conservative,
Speaker 1: They're just looking for a home.
Speaker 3: Well, they didn't Dane Brown with black men, Andrew, and
Speaker 3: I want to be cautious about putting out doubttle.
Speaker 1: Listen, I'm not saying that black men are responsible for
Speaker 1: Kamala losing white women, without a doubt, they're white and
Speaker 1: white men, or without a doubt, the reason that she
Speaker 1: did not win it was their collapse. But what I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do is ignore that in some of
Speaker 1: these battle round states, Donald Trump got ten points more
Speaker 1: than he did in the last election with black men
Speaker 1: and doubled twenty points with Latinos. And so what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is is we can't try to explain an academician.
Speaker 1: Through academic exercise, our way out of the fact that
Speaker 1: we have an emerging problem amongst certain constituencies that the
Speaker 1: young men who do not feel like they are seen heard,
Speaker 1: played with, dealt with within the Democratic Party, and that
Speaker 1: will be a significant problem, especially when you consider what
Speaker 1: the future demographic, voting demographic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to happen. Because we're ten minutes
Speaker 3: in that piece. I think we have to consider that
Speaker 3: the voter turnout itself was smaller and that's why some
Speaker 3: of those gains looked like they were larger. I'll be
Speaker 3: quick what I think went right. I think that Vice
Speaker 3: President Harris ran an amazing campaign that was pulled together
Speaker 3: and executed in one hundred and seven days. This idea
Speaker 3: that she didn't talk about the economy is bullshit. She
Speaker 3: absolutely did. You know, she put together an incredible campaign
Speaker 3: in one hundred and seven days, and I don't think
Speaker 3: the idea that she didn't talk about the economy is
Speaker 3: complete and utter bullshit. And it drives me crazy that
Speaker 3: people say that constantly across the cable news spectrum, and
Speaker 3: hosts who are supposed to be journalists don't correct it.
Speaker 3: She did talk about the economy. I don't think there
Speaker 3: is anything that she could have done differently that would
Speaker 3: have changed the outcome of this election. What I think
Speaker 3: went wrong, hence right for the Trump campaign, is that
Speaker 3: a majority of people in this country were either in
Speaker 3: support of or okay with, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic viewpoints of
Speaker 3: this president. Even if the president was saying, I will
Speaker 3: do this thing for you, I will pretend to put
Speaker 3: put this policy for which he didn't put any policy
Speaker 3: up front, but he was saying under me, you'll walk
Speaker 3: down streets paved with gold and have you know, refrigerators
Speaker 3: and milk and honey every day, And in the next
Speaker 3: breath he was calling Nancy Pelosi a bitch, or he
Speaker 3: was dancing incoherently across stage for forty five minutes, or
Speaker 3: insulting Michelle Obama, insulting Vice President Harris. They were okay
Speaker 3: with all those things. So that is what we have
Speaker 3: to confront in this country, quite frankly, the fact that
Speaker 3: a majority of people were either in support of or
Speaker 3: indifferent to his hatefulness and his hateful rhetoric.
Speaker 2: I a few things. One, I want to commend Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris for a historic run and a very brave run.
Speaker 2: I don't know anybody that could have pulled off what
Speaker 2: she did in one hundred and seven days. So I
Speaker 2: echo that Tiff. I also want to commend her on
Speaker 2: molly wopping and mopping the floor with Donald Trump in
Speaker 2: that debate. I also want to commend them on plugging
Speaker 2: in influencers the best way they knew how in the camp.
Speaker 2: I would argue that the influencers and the surrogates who
Speaker 2: participated on the campaign trail were probably one of the
Speaker 2: more organizing, organized pieces of the campaign. However, that's not sufficient,
Speaker 2: and I think andrew to the argument that we had
Speaker 2: with Tiff before on if the role of celebrities is
Speaker 2: outsized with what actually matters when people go into the
Speaker 2: voting booth is something that really should be questioned at
Speaker 2: this point. A lot of money was spent on getting
Speaker 2: those folks out to the trail, getting them on the stage,
Speaker 2: ensuring their involvement, and I don't know that she saw
Speaker 2: a real ROI there, and that's something that has to
Speaker 2: be discussed. I have a tremendous bone to pick with
Speaker 2: white men and with white women. These are the same
Speaker 2: folks I talked about needing to be held accountable for
Speaker 2: whatever they decide to do on election day, and I'm
Speaker 2: not veering from that. I have a tremendous issue there
Speaker 2: shout out to y'all because you showed up. The sad
Speaker 2: part for y'all that showed up is you showed up
Speaker 2: and voted against your interests. People have argued that you
Speaker 2: did vote your interest What I'm saying to you is,
Speaker 2: and I'm not trying to call you ignorant, but I
Speaker 2: believe that you voted in the long run, against your
Speaker 2: interests and you don't even know it. You thought your
Speaker 2: interests were mass deportation. You thought your interests were getting
Speaker 2: rid of DEI. You thought your interests were ensuring that
Speaker 2: affirmative action no longer existed in institutions of higher learning
Speaker 2: for your children. What you don't realize is the ways
Speaker 2: in which these things are going to backfire and hit
Speaker 2: you even even more. I gotta say that I think
Speaker 2: the biggest winner in this campaign is once again, the
Speaker 2: white consulting class. Regardless of what parties sit in, that
Speaker 2: one has to be disrupted, it has to be destroyed.
Speaker 2: We're talking about contracts in the hundreds of millions of
Speaker 2: dollars I'm sure folks will say, well, you're not looking
Speaker 2: at this right because this was a media buy and
Speaker 2: so most of this went to TV. Well, what ROI
Speaker 2: do we have to say that it was worth the
Speaker 2: campaign spending over two hundred million dollars with one vendor
Speaker 2: for TV adviys. The ROI is not there. This has
Speaker 2: to be disrupted and the bottom line is there was
Speaker 2: a whole other contract for digital adviys. What ROI do
Speaker 2: we have that says this was a good use of resources.
Speaker 2: Here's my point. There is nothing that y'all can do
Speaker 2: to out smart good old fashioned canvassing, mail, door knocking,
Speaker 2: text messages. You're not going to be able to goo
Speaker 2: target enough in a digital space, to target enough on
Speaker 2: a TV space to make up for the lack of
Speaker 2: not being involved in knocking on doors. That was an
Speaker 2: issue before Kamala Harris became the top of the ticket
Speaker 2: and the nominee for this parties or this party's nominee
Speaker 2: in this election. That was an issue that preceded Joe
Speaker 2: Biden being at the top of the ticket. This is
Speaker 2: an age old battle that has to be fought and
Speaker 2: has to be challenged. There are black staff who are
Speaker 2: part of the organizing community, part of canvassing challenge, paid
Speaker 2: canvassers challenge whether or not this was the right tactic.
Speaker 2: Said they didn't have the resources. Jasmine, who was the
Speaker 2: state director in Florida andrew I said you are a
Speaker 2: tweet her Twitter threat earlier. She goes in about how
Speaker 2: much they had to rely on outside resources because they
Speaker 2: couldn't get any resources from the campaign because the campaign
Speaker 2: had pretty much given up on Florida. The sad part is, y'all,
Speaker 2: that is not a Florida unique story. It is the
Speaker 2: story of every battle ground state director and that has
Speaker 2: to be discussed. They spent so much time and effort
Speaker 2: in ensuring that these large, rich white consultants would keep
Speaker 2: their share, could even potentially get bonuses off of a law,
Speaker 2: but wouldn't get these folks the dollars they needed to
Speaker 2: get signs on the ground, to get folks on the
Speaker 2: ground knocking on doors. You guys, we went and knocked
Speaker 2: on doors. We can figure out how to use the
Speaker 2: MGB van at right. We could not say if somebody
Speaker 2: wasn't home or not. We know that firsthand. But there
Speaker 2: are folks who did this every single day that can
Speaker 2: talk about what went wrong here, y'all. Like I said
Speaker 2: on the main episode, I was convinced this election had
Speaker 2: to have been stolen in some really remarkable, challenging way
Speaker 2: on data. It's not we ignored the people at the bottom,
Speaker 2: if you were ever, of course, But as usual, what
Speaker 2: we've learned as well is that nothing from the top
Speaker 2: ever trickles down. There's not a trickle down economy, there's
Speaker 2: not a trickle down campaign. You cannot expect that people
Speaker 2: will be touched just because folks are getting paid at
Speaker 2: the top. So there's a lot more to be said there,
Speaker 2: but that's what I got to see. Say, the biggest
Speaker 2: loser here is the DNC, because I think that thing's
Speaker 2: gonna have to be disrupted and destroyed to really get
Speaker 2: back to the heart of what it was supposed to
Speaker 2: be for the beginning.
Speaker 3: What the biggest loser is the American people. And I
Speaker 3: just want to echo your point, Angela. We know people,
Speaker 3: we know personally, people who were given crumbs out of
Speaker 3: this huge pot of money. They were given crumbs, and
Speaker 3: these are people who have been doing organizing work and
Speaker 3: gotv work for decades. People are so willing people poured
Speaker 3: money into I don't know about this cycle because I
Speaker 3: don't know the numbers, But previous cycles, people poured money
Speaker 3: into never trumpers, they poured money into the Lincoln projects.
Speaker 3: But you have people like you didn't dance with the
Speaker 3: ones who brung you, and I honestly just think we're
Speaker 3: looking at a space. It wasn't just that Vice President
Speaker 3: Harris lost. It was the way we were treated all
Speaker 3: the way down, Like you talked about Angela as staff
Speaker 3: or as people outside the campaign who were trying to
Speaker 3: help this campaign. And I want to be really clear,
Speaker 3: none of us are putting this at the feet of
Speaker 3: Vice president here. Nope, we're putting it at the feet
Speaker 3: of people who are in charge, who are constantly discrediting
Speaker 3: the people who's very fucking backs this democracy depends on.
Speaker 3: And when I wept for days after the election, that
Speaker 3: is what I left about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the thing, like at some point that
Speaker 2: those who get rewarded for losing elections cycle after cycle,
Speaker 2: and they get named campaign managers or named campaign chairs,
Speaker 2: that has to be we have to that is the
Speaker 2: first place where accountability must be had. And so I
Speaker 2: wanted to have this conversation. I know that it's emotionally charged.
Speaker 2: I know this is challenging, it's hard. We've been screaming
Speaker 2: this from the beginning of the podcast. Andrew's giving y'all
Speaker 2: his own story. I know that he'll continue to do that.
Speaker 2: I hope that he'll participate in this autopsy as well,
Speaker 2: because it's not just an autopsy of this cycle. It's
Speaker 2: an autopsy of what's been wrong with the party for
Speaker 2: years and it's time for it to change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and black women, you do not want it to
Speaker 3: be Black women versus the party. Black women are We
Speaker 3: are the backbone. So see how you do without your base.
Speaker 3: See how that goes.
Speaker 2: Since we weren't now in black men because they black
Speaker 2: men too.
Speaker 3: But I'm just saying black women, in terms of organizing,
Speaker 3: we do outnumber black men. I love black I never
Speaker 3: believed that Trump bs. I know brothers are right there
Speaker 3: with us. I don't even believe that Trump gained ground
Speaker 3: with black men. But the I would say one distinction
Speaker 3: is when black women organize, Black women organize a community
Speaker 3: of people that includes black men and black women. Black
Speaker 3: women are constantly on the front lines as poll workers organizers.
Speaker 3: You just disproportionate to any other group, including our brothers
Speaker 3: are black men. But this is not meant to put
Speaker 3: black men down or disparage black men. We need y'all,
Speaker 3: We love y'all. Y'all are right there with us in
Speaker 3: this fight. But I am just so frustrated and her
Speaker 3: We're broken, heartbroken by the way we're treated. It is
Speaker 3: so exhausting. It's so exhausting, and I don't know how
Speaker 3: you hold on the hope. But I'll tell you, guys,
Speaker 3: I don't have an ounce of fucking energy to do
Speaker 3: anything for this party, this country. All I want to
Speaker 3: do is make sure my people are okay. I don't
Speaker 3: I'm running out of the fight, to be honest. If
Speaker 3: this is what y'all want to have at it, let
Speaker 3: it burn. I want to make sure that my people
Speaker 3: are okay. That's just where I am. Truly.
Speaker 2: I hate this. I know that this probably means that
Speaker 2: we'll have to do a part two on this as
Speaker 2: we continue to figure out what happened in this election,
Speaker 2: as we continue to wrestle with our own feelings and
Speaker 2: the facts, and we'll always do that right here on
Speaker 2: Native Lampid. So thank you all so much.
Speaker 1: Nobody's wrong for how they feel. That's for damn sure.
Speaker 2: Thank you all so much for tuning in. Welcome home, y'all.
Speaker 1: Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Resent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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