Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Gavin Newsom has called a special
Speaker 1: session to protect California's liberal policies. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. The levers Dave Siota looks
Speaker 1: back at the campaign and tries to parse the data
Speaker 1: and show us what he's learned. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: pollster John Delavolpi about the youth vote and how challenging
Speaker 1: it is to connect with young people.
Speaker 2: But first the news, So Malli, while don't we go
Speaker 2: over some of the things we're seeing with how the
Speaker 2: election is checking out? What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: We're just going to sort of update because not everything
Speaker 1: is counted. California takes forever, but I just want to
Speaker 1: get you guys up to speed on the House. Right now,
Speaker 1: Republicans have won two hundred and five seats. Democrats have
Speaker 1: won one hundred and ninety one. There are thirty nine
Speaker 1: races under sided. A party needs to get to two
Speaker 1: eighteen seats to win the majority.
Speaker 3: This is like my math nightmare.
Speaker 1: So Republicans need only to win one third of the
Speaker 1: remaining thirteen races, Well, Democrats need to win two thirds.
Speaker 3: That's twenty six.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of these races are in California, there
Speaker 1: is a real chance that Democrats can win a lot
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 3: Whatever it looks like.
Speaker 1: Even if Democrats do win the House, which is possible
Speaker 1: but less and less likely by the day, it'll still
Speaker 1: be closed. And you'll remember that last session Republicans had
Speaker 1: the House but a very very slim, almost ungovernable majority,
Speaker 1: which ended up being quite good for Democrats and meant
Speaker 1: they were able to get very little done. So we'll
Speaker 1: keep following on that, and then I just want to
Speaker 1: do a few minutes on what we saw from the
Speaker 1: election and just so we can learn from it.
Speaker 2: So there's some dalysis here about the Latito vote, since
Speaker 2: a lot of people are very confused about that.
Speaker 4: What do you see here?
Speaker 1: Six percent is the percentage of Latino's that Trump won.
Speaker 1: That's according to recent exit polls. It's the highest number
Speaker 1: for Republican presidential candidate in at least fifty years. Think
Speaker 1: about that. It's eclipsing George W. Bush's forty four percent
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four. So Trump also won a
Speaker 1: majority fifty five percent of Latino men. I think it's
Speaker 1: important to learn from. So Trump did, in fact win
Speaker 1: Latino men by a large margin. He had a sixteen
Speaker 1: point margin of victory in Star County, Texas, the country's
Speaker 1: most heavily Latino county on the US Mexico border. He
Speaker 1: lost that same county in twenty sixteen by sixty points.
Speaker 1: Trump surged in a heavily Latino county near the border.
Speaker 1: These are people, some of them probably will end up
Speaker 1: in deportation camps if these deportation camps happened, but they
Speaker 1: still voted for Trump. Another really interesting data point. These
Speaker 1: are all from the Washington Posts, and you should definitely
Speaker 1: check out this article from very smart data journalist Aaron Blake.
Speaker 1: But another really interesting statistic is that Vice President Harris
Speaker 1: had a forty seven percent favorability rating and exit polls
Speaker 1: versus Trump's forty six. She may have actually been more
Speaker 1: liked by voters, but these voters still decided to vote
Speaker 1: for Trump, So make it make sense.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1: And then Trump won the one in ten these sort
Speaker 1: of double haters, those are the voters who don't like
Speaker 1: either candidate. He won one in ten of those voters.
Speaker 1: It's the third time he's done that where he's won
Speaker 1: the double haters. He carried them by seventeen points in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, twenty seven points in twenty twenty, and it
Speaker 1: reinforces that they don't mind his character issues for what reason?
Speaker 1: It is not disqualifying to them. So now let's talk
Speaker 1: about undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 4: S numbers are pretty alarming. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: One of the things that is interesting is that in
Speaker 1: voc has, fifty two percent si undocumented immigrants should be
Speaker 1: offered a chance to apply for legal status, versus only
Speaker 1: forty seven percent who said they shouldn't be deported. But
Speaker 1: fully one in four of those who support legalization for
Speaker 1: immigrants voted for Trump anyway. So what this means is
Speaker 1: that a lot of people voted for Trump who may
Speaker 1: end up getting deported. It seems as if in exit poles,
Speaker 1: fifty four percent of voters agreed that Trump was too extreme,
Speaker 1: but one in nine who viewed Trump as too extreme
Speaker 1: still voted for him. Again, they thought he was too extreme,
Speaker 1: but they voted to make him president. So obviously we
Speaker 1: have a problem here. The math is bad, This is
Speaker 1: not good. A lot of people voted for a guy
Speaker 1: who's going to do some crazy stuff, and maybe they
Speaker 1: thought it wouldn't happen to them. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important and also just insane
Speaker 1: and also, like you know, it cannot all fall to
Speaker 1: the mainstream media to explain Trump is, especially when Trump
Speaker 1: is such an effective messager on his own.
Speaker 3: I want to take another minute.
Speaker 1: To talk to everybody, because I feel like on the
Speaker 1: last episode, I talked to everyone about the things I
Speaker 1: got wrong and how I felt that I had really
Speaker 1: let people down and was way too rosy a picture,
Speaker 1: and perhaps that I was affected by my own media silas.
Speaker 1: I want to take a minute now to talk about
Speaker 1: the good stuff, because there's some actually good stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It fucking sucks to have watched.
Speaker 1: Another female presidential candidate be defeated by someone who at
Speaker 1: this point now is a felon. But there are a
Speaker 1: few bright spots, and I want to share them with
Speaker 1: you guys so that we all don't go crazy. One
Speaker 1: of the bright spots is that Democrats held a lot
Speaker 1: of Senate seats and it was this very very bad
Speaker 1: Senate map for Democrats and they had to defend a
Speaker 1: lot of seats and they were able to do it.
Speaker 1: So some of the seats they defended, which is just great,
Speaker 1: are Jackie Rosen is going back to the Senate and
Speaker 1: that is incredible. She is from the state of Nevada.
Speaker 1: So you had Jackie Rosen and that is just great.
Speaker 1: And then you had Tammy Baldwin going back to the Senate,
Speaker 1: which is another really great seat that Democrats could have lost.
Speaker 1: So basically what it looks like is Laura Gillen, who
Speaker 1: has come on this podcast. She's a member of Congress.
Speaker 1: She has flipped a seat that belonged to d Esposito,
Speaker 1: so that's very good, and that's New York's fourth congressional district.
Speaker 1: Then also Jackie Roe will keep her seat in the Senate.
Speaker 1: Then the other Senate seats are there's also Josh Riley
Speaker 1: is going to he's a member of Congress and he's
Speaker 1: winning New York's nineteenth so that's also a flip.
Speaker 3: So there are some good things here.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's a bummer that Bob Casey is
Speaker 1: not coming back. And also Michigan Elisa Slotkin is going
Speaker 1: to the Senate and she is a Michigan Democrat, and
Speaker 1: that is really great. So there's a lot to feel
Speaker 1: good about in this map, and just go from there.
Speaker 1: I think everyone should not despair and we should all
Speaker 1: just keep going. Dave Serota is the founder of lever News,
Speaker 1: the creator of the podcast The master Plan, and the
Speaker 1: author of the screenplay Don't Look Up.
Speaker 4: Welcome back, Dave, Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I took like two days of like not sleep,
Speaker 1: being on television but also not sleeping and being in
Speaker 1: that weird fugue state. And then I was like, who
Speaker 1: are the people I need to talk to right away?
Speaker 1: And you were high on my list. I want you
Speaker 1: to just talk about where you are right now after
Speaker 1: this twenty twenty four cycle, and you know wherever you
Speaker 1: want that to go.
Speaker 4: I feel like I've been here before. I feel like
Speaker 4: I was here twenty years ago after the John Kerry campaign.
Speaker 4: I actually went back and looked at the writing I
Speaker 4: did around the time. Back then, I had worked for
Speaker 4: a guy who was running in a red state, guy
Speaker 4: who was a farmer rancher, Brian Schweitzer, who became the
Speaker 4: Governor of Montana as a outsider candidate. On a night,
Speaker 4: an election night that was one of the worst election
Speaker 4: nights for the Democratic Party. That was the night that
Speaker 4: George Bush got reelected. And I went back and I
Speaker 4: looked at the exit polls, by the way, and Bush
Speaker 4: won voters below one hundred thousand dollars and above fifty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars. So there was a maybe not as abrupt,
Speaker 4: a class alignment back to the Republicans, a working class
Speaker 4: alignment to the Republicans. It was similar. And I bring
Speaker 4: this all up to say that we have been here before.
Speaker 4: We were here in two thousand and four, we were
Speaker 4: here in twenty sixteen, we were actually almost here in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, and we are now here in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: And I think there's a theme through all of this
Speaker 4: that at this point I'm like annoyed and angry that
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm saying the same thing for twenty years, right,
Speaker 4: because I went back and I looked at what I wrote,
Speaker 4: and it was all about how the arithmetic of democratic
Speaker 4: politics does not work in a unfortunately a downwardly mobile
Speaker 4: economy where the working class is getting bigger. The Democrats
Speaker 4: theory of the wine track of affluent suburbanites.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just not enough people.
Speaker 4: It's just not enough people. It's not enough, And so
Speaker 4: then you get to the question of, okay, well, why
Speaker 4: is the Democratic Party's formula upper middle class, affluent urban
Speaker 4: nights and people of color. Why does the Democratic Party
Speaker 4: want that to be its formula. Why does the Democratic
Speaker 4: Party see as the key swing demographic disaffected upper middle
Speaker 4: class Republicans. Why do they keep clinging that the quote
Speaker 4: from Chuck Schumer from twenty sixteen is the one that
Speaker 4: rings true in this election, which was Chuck Schumer said
Speaker 4: back then, Hey, I'm not worried about Western I'm paraphrasing here,
Speaker 4: I'm not worried about Western Pennsylvania. For every Democrat we
Speaker 4: lose in Western Pennsylvania will win two disaffected Republicans in
Speaker 4: the suburbs of Philadelphia and will replicate that across state
Speaker 4: after state after state. That's been the Democratic Party's formula.
Speaker 4: So you have to ask the question, Okay, why did
Speaker 4: the Democrats see as their key swing vote disaffected upper
Speaker 4: middle class Republicans and not the Western Pennsylvania blue collar
Speaker 4: Democratic archetype. And I think the answer is because if
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party leaders are constantly trying to appeal to
Speaker 4: some sort of voting electorate and also appease their billionaire
Speaker 4: and corporate elite donors. It's easier to make cultural appeals
Speaker 4: to country club Republicans on reproductive rights, LGBTQ, diversity, democracy norms.
Speaker 4: It's easier to make those appeals to those country club
Speaker 4: Republicans without having to fear that you're going to offend
Speaker 4: the donor class. If you don't want to offend the
Speaker 4: donor class, then you want to try to cobble together
Speaker 4: some coalition that means your electoral appeal isn't offensive to
Speaker 4: the donor class. And so country club Republicans aren't offended
Speaker 4: by cultural appeals. But the problem is, as we've just discussed,
Speaker 4: there's not enough voters there. So if you're going to
Speaker 4: make an economic populist case to the working class, like
Speaker 4: a real case, you're going to offend your donors, right,
Speaker 4: and so that's why the Democrats have been averse to
Speaker 4: doing it.
Speaker 1: So I want to pause for a second here because
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of good stuff in what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Because everybody's a little fragile right now, or
Speaker 1: at least I'm a little fragile, I want to just
Speaker 1: say two things which I think are true, which is
Speaker 1: one Harris did an incredible job considering where she came in.
Speaker 1: She raised a billion dollars, she got voters excited, She
Speaker 1: did everything she could in a very tough situation. Certainly,
Speaker 1: in my mind, she really did. But I see what
Speaker 1: you're saying, and I think that it's really important. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I want you to want you to
Speaker 1: talk about, which is really I think the crux of
Speaker 1: all of this is that it's easier to motivate your base.
Speaker 1: And this is what Donald Trump discovered in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: and then replicated in twenty twenty four is it's easier
Speaker 1: to motivate your base than it is to try to
Speaker 1: convince other people to go after Republicans.
Speaker 3: So can you explain to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Well, I certainly agree that it's easier to motivate your
Speaker 4: base than it is to convert.
Speaker 3: People with chain. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, I think Kamala Harris ran I don't even
Speaker 4: know how to characterize. I don't think she ran an
Speaker 4: awful campaign. I also think that she ran as a
Speaker 4: generic Democrat, So I think that was the strategy, just
Speaker 4: any generic Democrat that doesn't have a kind of unique
Speaker 4: problem like Biden.
Speaker 3: Right, But she came in so late and she inherited.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I see the threat. I would say
Speaker 4: this though, and look twenty twenty hindsight always, but I
Speaker 4: said this right when she was nominated, which is, you
Speaker 4: can try to run a risk averse campaign and just
Speaker 4: be the generic Democrat, but there is no risk of her.
Speaker 4: That's a risk on to itself.
Speaker 3: Right now. That is a very good point. You know,
Speaker 3: if you look at.
Speaker 4: The structural obstacles in this race for the incumbent party, inflation,
Speaker 4: people are unhappy.
Speaker 3: Low approval rating for Biden.
Speaker 4: Right like, whether that's her fault or not, those are
Speaker 4: just structural impediments that we know are impediments to every
Speaker 4: candidate running in this situation. So there's an argument that
Speaker 4: you have to risk aversion is just accepting those impediments
Speaker 4: and thinking somehow history is going to be different. I
Speaker 4: would argue again twenty twenty hindsight, but I argued it,
Speaker 4: then you have to make big risks in a situation
Speaker 4: like that, And what are those risks? I mean, what
Speaker 4: were the risks that you could have taken. I mean
Speaker 4: I had suggested as an example. I don't think this
Speaker 4: would have won the race for her, but you know,
Speaker 4: put out there a specific proposal, don't You don't have
Speaker 4: to put out twenty eight thousand proposals campaign on two
Speaker 4: or three things that are so crystal clear in how
Speaker 4: they will benefit the working class and then run around
Speaker 4: and just only talk about that. And I had suggested
Speaker 4: at the time paid family leave, right like Tim Waltz
Speaker 4: said that should be the top priority of the Democratic
Speaker 4: Party right before he was nominated. You could just like, hey,
Speaker 4: vote for me, you get paid family of That's it, right,
Speaker 4: Like that, Like it's very I don't think anybody can answer.
Speaker 4: Could have answered, Hey, if Kamala Harris wins the app time,
Speaker 4: at the average voter, what does it mean for me?
Speaker 4: I get like it's not Donald Trump, and like there's
Speaker 4: this thing called democracy, but like what do I actually
Speaker 4: get directly? And I don't think that question was answered.
Speaker 4: I don't even think the campaign really made an effort
Speaker 4: to really seriously answer that. I know they had TV
Speaker 4: ads on about price gouging. I know they had TV
Speaker 4: ads about some basic economic stuff. You know, there's two
Speaker 4: media worlds that the voter is immersed in. There's the
Speaker 4: paid television ads, then there's the what is the campaign
Speaker 4: doing the candidate doing on the campaign trail. So you
Speaker 4: had these anti price gouging ads on TV and reproductive
Speaker 4: rights ads, and then you had like the candidate running
Speaker 4: around with Liz Cheney, and you had the face of
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party on cable TV being a billionaire Mark Cuban,
Speaker 4: and you had a Democratic convention in which you had
Speaker 4: a billionaire governor bragging about being a billionaire. The average
Speaker 4: voter probably walks away from this being like, I don't
Speaker 4: even know what the hell that is? What is this picture? Right?
Speaker 4: At least with Trump, he's telling a story. He's telling
Speaker 4: a clear, crystal clear. I mean, he's incoherent, but like
Speaker 4: his story is basically, you know, a story of grievance,
Speaker 4: a story of the government getting in the way the economy,
Speaker 4: government run by elites who don't care about you, right, Like,
Speaker 4: it's at least a story. And so you know, I'm
Speaker 4: not try to say this was an easily winnable race.
Speaker 4: It was not. But I think this Democrats having a
Speaker 4: problem connecting with the working class. I go back to, like,
Speaker 4: this is what I've been talking about and a lot
Speaker 4: of us have been talking about for twenty years, and
Speaker 4: I'm burying the lead here because I think the thing
Speaker 4: that we have to wrestle with is if you look
Speaker 4: at the exit polling, who do the Democrats do worsd
Speaker 4: with overall working class voters? Obviously men and Latinos. The
Speaker 4: Democrats had within its midst a movement that almost won
Speaker 4: its nomination, a movement that was strongest among those demographics
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders when he ran in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying, like, you know, he should have
Speaker 4: run in twenty twenty, I'm not saying any of that.
Speaker 4: What I'm saying is is that the Democratic Party, it
Speaker 4: has ostracized Bernie Sanders. It is ostracized the people who
Speaker 4: ran Bernie Sanders campaigns. It has ostracized the Bernie bros.
Speaker 4: I'm putting that in quotes. I mean literally, they genderized
Speaker 4: the establishment of the Democratic Party, genderized Bernie supporters by
Speaker 4: calling them Bernie brose. And then they wake up in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four wondering, hey, why do we not do
Speaker 4: so well among working class male voters.
Speaker 1: You did this, yes, but our listeners are not necessarily
Speaker 1: those people.
Speaker 4: They are for sure, No, No, I'm right, for sure.
Speaker 1: Wanting to catch up on What's happening. But I do
Speaker 1: think those are really good points. And the democratic establishment
Speaker 1: one of the things when you look at Harris, she
Speaker 1: lost that vote. Right, These young men, the Joe Rogan crowd,
Speaker 1: were very winnable for Bernie, And in fact, Bernie went
Speaker 1: on the Joe Rogan podcast and Joe Rogan sort of
Speaker 1: semi endorsed him.
Speaker 4: Right, Yep, that's exactly right. And by the way, there
Speaker 4: was controversy about Bernie going on Joe Rogan. There was
Speaker 4: controversy about Bernie going on Fox News, the Fox Newstown.
Speaker 4: Oh he can't. One of the lessons here is you
Speaker 4: go where the voters are.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, that's the candidate's responsibility. This idea that you know,
Speaker 4: we're expressing our values by going on Joe Rogan and
Speaker 4: saying therefore Joe Rogan is No, that's not how this works.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The people who listen to Joe Rogan are not going
Speaker 1: to listen to CNN. Right, that's a choice. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in front of those voters, you go
Speaker 1: on Joe Rogan.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. And I would say there's a bigger
Speaker 4: issue here we're talking about media, which is I think
Speaker 4: that the Democratic Party, Democratic elected officials, the sort of
Speaker 4: the infrastructure of the Democratic Party is obsessed with getting
Speaker 4: onto and building out its communications strategy through traditional communications platforms,
Speaker 4: cable TV, news, newspapers. They're obsessed with talking on platforms
Speaker 4: and through conduits that are only talking to the voters that,
Speaker 4: by the way, the Democrats are winning sort of upper
Speaker 4: middle class, affluent, educated, highly informed voters, and they're not
Speaker 4: all that interested. They haven't been all that interested in
Speaker 4: engaging with independent media, alternate platforms, and that's a huge
Speaker 4: disadvantage right clearly. And the Republicans, they've spent years cultivating
Speaker 4: and building out that infrastructure exactly.
Speaker 3: And if you look at this campaign.
Speaker 1: He went on Theovon, he went on Joe Rogan, he
Speaker 1: went on all of these podcasters who speak to this group,
Speaker 1: which Harris lost. I want to go back to this
Speaker 1: idea we talked about before, because there's so much of
Speaker 1: the Democratic idea and I think it may have worked
Speaker 1: to some in twenty twenty, was to reach across the
Speaker 1: aisle to these disaffected Republicans. But now the disaffected Republicans
Speaker 1: are by de facto either don't vote or vote for Democrats,
Speaker 1: and the Republican party itself is now maga.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this question of who the real swing voters are
Speaker 4: is the central question here moving forward. This, I hope,
Speaker 4: is the end of a Democratic party that sees the
Speaker 4: primary target swing voters as country club Republicans. The primary
Speaker 4: swing voter in America are working class people generally, that is, the.
Speaker 3: Who were already Democrats, who are not showing up.
Speaker 4: Yes, who are either not showing up or voted for
Speaker 4: Trump but have voted before for the Democrats. We did
Speaker 4: learn this lesson in twenty sixteen, right all the counties
Speaker 4: that voted twice for Obama and then voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: These were a lot of them were working class locales
Speaker 4: in the country that had been hit really hard in
Speaker 4: the financial crisis and in the recession that followed. Those
Speaker 4: are the target swing voters, and the Democrats need to
Speaker 4: reorient their party to be talking to those voters. And
Speaker 4: I think it's also worth saying this is worth asking
Speaker 4: some difficult questions about what those swing voters see when
Speaker 4: they see Democrats. And my view is is what they see,
Speaker 4: let's talk a little bit about you can tell what
Speaker 4: the Republicans are trying to make them see. In Donald
Speaker 4: Trump's ads, for instance, during NFL games. Right, Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is trying to talk to working class voters when he's
Speaker 4: advertising in NFL games. My belief is this all of
Speaker 4: the anti trans ads, the weirder the ad got right,
Speaker 4: Like she wants to give sex change operations to people
Speaker 4: who are in prisoners. What is that really saying?
Speaker 3: I mean, people are getting your free stuff.
Speaker 4: I think it's deeper. Actually, I think it's obviously at
Speaker 4: one level, it's a dog whistle to sort of bigots, right,
Speaker 4: people who just you know, sort of the maga bass,
Speaker 4: the real base. But I think it's also this, it's
Speaker 4: also saying to people who are not bigots or who
Speaker 4: don't think much about any of that stuff. Hey, the
Speaker 4: Democrats are so obsessed with specific demographic groups. They don't
Speaker 4: care about you. They don't see you as anything other
Speaker 4: than you know, whatever demographic group you can check on
Speaker 4: a piece of paper. We the Republicans look at you
Speaker 4: as you know, there are people, everyone's everybody. And what
Speaker 4: they're saying is the Democrats is a party of small,
Speaker 4: niche groups, and they don't see you, the regular average American,
Speaker 4: the so called is Nixon called it the silent majority.
Speaker 4: And I think that all speaks to Democrats can say, oh, well,
Speaker 4: that's just racism, that's just bigotry, and that you know,
Speaker 4: we'll never see.
Speaker 3: But that's not really what it is.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: I think it means the democratic messaging, the Democratic brand
Speaker 4: has to return back to a brand that says universal ideas,
Speaker 4: universal programs are good on their own merits and don't
Speaker 4: have to be cast as for this group or for
Speaker 4: that group. Molly, I want to tell you a story
Speaker 4: about twenty twenty. It was twenty nineteen, because I think
Speaker 4: this is really important. I was working for Bernie Sanders
Speaker 4: and he was out and talking about Medicare for all.
Speaker 4: He was in an event. It was an event about
Speaker 4: black women, issues of interest to black women. I can't
Speaker 4: remember the name of the group, and he was asked,
Speaker 4: what are you going to do? And I'm paraphrasing here,
Speaker 4: you know, what would you do for What are your
Speaker 4: plans for the black community? Et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 4: he said a couple things and then he really focused
Speaker 4: in on Medicare for all. Now, I don't care where
Speaker 4: anybody who's listening what they think about Medicare for all,
Speaker 4: but he made a very universal argument about how you know,
Speaker 4: the healthcare crisis, and he was essentially booed because the
Speaker 4: idea was that he wasn't specifically talking about a specific
Speaker 4: policy program that would only help one specific set of people.
Speaker 4: In other words, the universalism of what he was pushing
Speaker 4: was seen as sort of insensitive to the specific needs
Speaker 4: of a specific demographic group. Now, obviously specific demographic groups
Speaker 4: do have specific needs and do have specific grievances that
Speaker 4: are different. But I think my point is is that
Speaker 4: if the Democratic Party becomes hostile to the idea of
Speaker 4: universal class based peals, that is a fundamental problem. It
Speaker 4: gives the Republicans a way to say the Democrats don't
Speaker 4: care about all people, They only care about specific so
Speaker 4: called interest groups or demographic groups. And I think Donald
Speaker 4: Trump exploited that, and the working class of this country
Speaker 4: reacted to that. And by the way, the asterisk is,
Speaker 4: even with the Democrats being perceived as that they did
Speaker 4: worse among those specific demographic groups in the voting, even
Speaker 4: those specific demographic groups don't like to feel pandered to.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, a man, very very very very interesting.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: John Delivolpi is a polster and author of Fight How
Speaker 1: gen Z is channeling their fear and passion to save
Speaker 1: America as well as the substackt jdv on gen Z.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Fast Politics, John dela Volpi.
Speaker 2: I love, it's great to be back with you, Mollie. Thanks.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Start by explaining to our listeners the last time we
Speaker 1: were together, because I think it's important.
Speaker 3: I came to.
Speaker 1: A panel you had at the Harvard Institute of Politics
Speaker 1: and I am seated and it was you and me
Speaker 1: and John anzelone who's another very smart pollster, and two
Speaker 1: young students who are college students at Harvard and who
Speaker 1: are involved in the institute, and then the head of
Speaker 1: Emily's list.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: We talked about the coming election, and at the end
Speaker 1: of our talk, we all weighed in on what we
Speaker 1: thought was going to happen, and I think you were
Speaker 1: really right. These kids, by the way, also thought Trump
Speaker 1: was going to win. So it did show that young
Speaker 1: people were not having it even then. So explain to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about what you saw through this process,
Speaker 1: and maybe you want to start with Biden.
Speaker 2: Sure, Well, you ended that forum with us asking us
Speaker 2: for predictions, and my prediction was to the students, specifically
Speaker 2: in the audience, that we need to be prepared for
Speaker 2: any outcome. And the reason I said that was I
Speaker 2: didn't feel comfortable predicting a Trump victory at that moment.
Speaker 2: Though that's clearly kind of what you and I were
Speaker 2: talking about, I think before and afterwards, right. But the
Speaker 2: reason I operated it in that way is because I
Speaker 2: didn't feel like our students were prepared for this outcome.
Speaker 2: I didn't feel that my own kids, you know, in
Speaker 2: the members of our community, were prepared for this outcome
Speaker 2: because the media that they consumed, the media that their
Speaker 2: friends and their neighbors and their peers consume, indicated that
Speaker 2: there's nothing to worry about, that democracy was on the ballot,
Speaker 2: that reproductive health was virtually the only issue that mattered
Speaker 2: to younger people, and therefore, how could there be an
Speaker 2: each choice other than rejecting Trump and voting for our Harris.
Speaker 2: And what I tried to do is just to say,
Speaker 2: hold up, let's reconsider who we're really talking about here.
Speaker 2: So that was the point of that, right, And when
Speaker 2: we talk about Biden, this is someone who produced Obama
Speaker 2: like support among younger people four years ago long and
Speaker 2: what I mean by that is he received sixty percent
Speaker 2: of all the votes cast among Americans under the age
Speaker 2: of thirty one. But what he also did was something
Speaker 2: that Obama never dated. He helped produce record level turnout
Speaker 2: and participation. The first time in recorded history, we have
Speaker 2: over a majority fifty three plus percent of all eligible
Speaker 2: young people voted in the twenty twenty election. And for
Speaker 2: those on college campuses and younger people to collectorre grady
Speaker 2: was it was over sixty percent. So that is where
Speaker 2: we collectively started. When we really think about the first
Speaker 2: significant kind of gen Z kind of experience in presidential campaigns.
Speaker 2: Whenever we have conversation, I always remind people that it's
Speaker 2: because of younger people in twenty twenty that Biden was elected.
Speaker 2: Of course, there are a lot of, you know, ways
Speaker 2: in which you can cut this data, but it is
Speaker 2: true that President Trump won everybody over the age of
Speaker 2: forty five, and it was that combination of record turnout
Speaker 2: in twenty point margin that elected Biden in the sixth
Speaker 2: the in the five battleground states that flipped from red
Speaker 2: to blue, Democrats generally start in the mid fifties with
Speaker 2: younger people, the job is can you push it to sixty.
Speaker 2: When you push it to sixty percent, mollet you win
Speaker 2: the loy Else when you fall below sixty percent, you
Speaker 2: join the legs of Al Gore, Hylary Clinton, John Kerrey
Speaker 2: find public servants not presidents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really important point. So he had that
Speaker 1: support and he really lost it.
Speaker 2: Right, He had the support in What is incredibly frustrating
Speaker 2: to me, Molly, is that he did what younger people
Speaker 2: ask him to do. Okay, And this is the thing
Speaker 2: that makes me so frustrated, is that the couple of
Speaker 2: years he despite Republicans not supported in the Supreme Court, right,
Speaker 2: he relieved over one hundred and seventy billion dollars of
Speaker 2: student debt. He passed the first five you know, he led.
Speaker 2: That's the first byparison, Gun Violence Prevention Act, and two
Speaker 2: generations right, historic investment and climate But as you know,
Speaker 2: I spent you know, in ordinary number of hours every
Speaker 2: single week working and talking to younger people, and very
Speaker 2: few people know or appreciate that. So that was I
Speaker 2: think the one of the most significant factors of young
Speaker 2: people essentially losing faith in the Biden Harrison mistraction and
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party is they didn't see the receipts, you know,
Speaker 2: the checks for cash. They didn't see the receipts. They
Speaker 2: didn't see the impact that their vote made. I think
Speaker 2: that's a major part of it. And of course you
Speaker 2: have on the other side, you know, the stress around economics.
Speaker 2: But the failure to communicate and I know it's hard,
Speaker 2: but the failure to communicate that he led and successfully
Speaker 2: accomplished more for younger people than any president problem in
Speaker 2: my lifetime is a key part, I think to understanding
Speaker 2: where we are today.
Speaker 3: Yes, so let's let's do more on that.
Speaker 1: Is that inability to message with to that group the accomplishments,
Speaker 1: is that a media failure, a communications failure? I mean
Speaker 1: that group young men who went for Biden, Like he
Speaker 1: managed to get to those young.
Speaker 2: Men, right, Trump was able to, yeah.
Speaker 3: And take them away from Biden. Talk about that shift.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying, you know, one of the most challenging
Speaker 2: things to do in media today, in communications today, right
Speaker 2: and survey research today, is to connect and talk to
Speaker 2: younger people. You know, is the fractioned media landscape, social
Speaker 2: media level of authenticity you know, certainly Biden's not is
Speaker 2: not native to any of these platforms. But we're talking
Speaker 2: about the president of the United States of America. Okay,
Speaker 2: it is required that the White House and the party
Speaker 2: that supports him, Molly, finds a way to communicate more
Speaker 2: effectively to more Americans. When you don't, this is what happens. Okay,
Speaker 2: you lose people who you have no business losing to
Speaker 2: an anti Democratic, you know, a Republican contanger. That's what happens.
Speaker 2: It's not easy, but you need to find a way.
Speaker 2: You have all the resources in the world at your disposal.
Speaker 2: We got into this interesting exchange actually on our panel, Molly, right,
Speaker 2: Republicans had x number of dollars more money spent. Well,
Speaker 2: not this cycle. You know, the Democrats had far more
Speaker 2: resources from Republicans, and of course they controlled half of
Speaker 2: Congress and the White House as well. So there's that
Speaker 2: can be a hard but you know, I'm not making
Speaker 2: you can't make any any any excuses. But listen, let's
Speaker 2: take a lesson of how Trump did it. And by away,
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris did a pretty good job of this. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, certainly over the first you know, undred, you know,
Speaker 2: sixty days and over the entire campaigns. She did a
Speaker 2: damn good job of this.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I want to stop us for a
Speaker 1: minute here and say, Harris did absolutely the best anyone
Speaker 1: could do with the situation. She inherited, Like, if we
Speaker 1: see anything, it's that she she got in there.
Speaker 3: She was a really good orator. She raised a.
Speaker 1: Billion dollars, She had huge I mean, like, it was
Speaker 1: not like she was in the greatest starting place, right,
Speaker 1: I mean the incumbent had and Biden had a forty
Speaker 1: one percent approval rating. I mean, for her to win
Speaker 1: would have been a humongous left.
Speaker 2: And I give her so much credit for becoming a
Speaker 2: far better politician than she wasn't when I first got
Speaker 2: to know her, you know now shleep back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: Far far better. I don't think there's no question that
Speaker 2: she couldn't have managed that rollout any any better. But
Speaker 2: the political and the communication side, right, I thought the
Speaker 2: convention was brilliant, you know. Her prosecution of the case
Speaker 2: during the debate again a plus. I wish I think
Speaker 2: she wishes as well that she had a better prepared
Speaker 2: answer on the view regarding you know where ever, voters
Speaker 2: might find some distance between her Biden. I do think
Speaker 2: that hurt her, if we're being honest. But the capacity
Speaker 2: that she had, like Trump, was to use social media
Speaker 2: to connect with people outside of these kind of political
Speaker 2: algorithms that you and I spent so much of our
Speaker 2: time in. Right. You know what Trump was able to
Speaker 2: do is he was able to extend his his relationship
Speaker 2: with the younger voters through connections right to Dana White
Speaker 2: and UFC, or to Dave port Novoliam Bar School or
Speaker 2: the melt Points, etcetera, etcetera. Well, Kama was able to
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 3: With call her Daddy, but not quite enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also through the joy of that somber of
Speaker 2: her dancing. I've been enjoying, you know, cooking and mused
Speaker 2: and those sorts of things. That's important to kind of
Speaker 2: make that connection is that's how you build confidence and
Speaker 2: trust to have a more meaningful conversation later on about Okay,
Speaker 2: which policy is going to be more effective? Right for
Speaker 2: my economic future? You need to make that connections first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, top line, this election for us, like ultimately and
Speaker 1: again state by state wasn't completely uniform.
Speaker 3: We did see a lot of split ticket voting, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: We had been in an era I think Maule the
Speaker 2: last two presidential cycles, you can check me, but I
Speaker 2: think it's accurate to say there is only one instance
Speaker 2: of ticket splitting, I believe, and the last two cycles,
Speaker 2: which was difference than the previous three cycles, where we
Speaker 2: saw somewhere between seven and ten states tickets splitting. So
Speaker 2: one of the reasons, one of the reasons that I
Speaker 2: was not confident, you know, in terms of a Harris victory,
Speaker 2: it is because of that ticket splitting, and to me,
Speaker 2: that showed an election to it that basically kind of
Speaker 2: normalized Donald Trump, that people were making the choice of
Speaker 2: I can vote democrat, I can vote for him because
Speaker 2: I think it's going to improve the economy. But then
Speaker 2: I'll try to balance that with the point of my
Speaker 2: democratics center. They saw some value in voting for him.
Speaker 2: It wasn't they didn't necessarily see, you know, the pure
Speaker 2: fascist tendencies that so many other Democrats saw. They saw
Speaker 2: the value in the economy. And I think he has normalized,
Speaker 2: you know, a big part of what he's doing. I
Speaker 2: think that explains a lot of tickets splitting and a
Speaker 2: lot of a reason that I was just not confident
Speaker 2: in a Harris pictory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so here are the things that I think are interesting.
Speaker 1: Tickets flitting then the house. It still seems like the
Speaker 1: house is going to be very tight. But that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: And also we saw she did grow vote chair with
Speaker 1: college educated women and rich people, right, So so I think.
Speaker 2: One of the most are lemm statistics and atheists, well
Speaker 2: in the non religious perhaps atheists as well as a group. Right.
Speaker 2: So basically, you know, I don't know a lot are
Speaker 2: the people that you know who are my friends at
Speaker 2: neighbors and Massachusetts's about right, and probably for you too
Speaker 2: in Manhattan, I don't know, right, But but these but
Speaker 2: this is the echo chamber that we're talking about, and
Speaker 2: in the children and there for the parents of the children,
Speaker 2: you know, on college campuses, who would try to prepare
Speaker 2: for this. You know, I think it was you know,
Speaker 2: you can cut this so many different ways, right, you know,
Speaker 2: I saw someone alsis showing a one point one percent
Speaker 2: shift across at ballet ground in the States. She wins
Speaker 2: the blue wall a one point one percent shift. This
Speaker 2: is winnable that I don't believe that. Yes, were there
Speaker 2: headwinds with inflation and his favorability, Yeah, headwinds you know inflation.
Speaker 5: You know, though it was getting better headwinds on his
Speaker 5: approval rating, of course, headwinds in fact, you know you're
Speaker 5: doing a one hundred billion dollars started up, right in
Speaker 5: one hundred and seven or eight days or something.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I still think this is winnable. And the biggest,
Speaker 2: biggest criticism I have is the Democratic Party's instituial the
Speaker 2: lack of institutional investments in listening, okay, and investing in
Speaker 2: listening to the people who Trump is clearly communicating with. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about younger people, clearly Hispanic specifically Hispanic men. Right,
Speaker 2: we saw like a thirty point shift there as well
Speaker 2: as as well as rural voters and others. Democrats seem
Speaker 2: to have a good grasp with the African American community.
Speaker 2: It could always be stronger, but it feels like she
Speaker 2: did really well there.
Speaker 3: Right, she didn't lose black men.
Speaker 1: I mean the reason she lost and tell me if
Speaker 1: this is correct, is Hispanic men, white non college educated.
Speaker 3: Men and women.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and listen, if you take the US both from
Speaker 2: one from fifty five percent, which is where I think
Speaker 2: what she got to sixty percent, well that adds a
Speaker 2: point and a half.
Speaker 4: You win.
Speaker 2: And you know, again, Democrats in particular continue to make
Speaker 2: progress with seniors, you know.
Speaker 3: Which is amazing, Which is amazing, and.
Speaker 2: It's important, which makes all this, in my view, all
Speaker 2: the more frustrated.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it is very shitty, I mean, but it is
Speaker 1: also very interesting. So how much do you think that
Speaker 1: Gaza and Israel affected this?
Speaker 2: Let's look at from a couple different perspectives. I think
Speaker 2: that in all of the polling that I've conducted, and
Speaker 2: I've asked a question dozens of times and dozens of
Speaker 2: venues of different word choices, Gaza and Israel is generally
Speaker 2: near the bottom of all list of priorities. However, it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's not a priority, right, And that is
Speaker 2: I think where we said somehow we sometimes misinterpret things.
Speaker 2: I think overwhelmingly younger people voted some combination of economic concerns,
Speaker 2: trying to get a sense of economic independence and financial stability,
Speaker 2: and of course reproductive health, abortion rights, you know, freedoms
Speaker 2: more generally. But I kind of think about Gaza and
Speaker 2: Israel like climate change, and that climate change is very
Speaker 2: rarely at the top of a list of priorities. But
Speaker 2: if a younger person doesn't see their values on climate
Speaker 2: reflected by the person they're learning for. It's really hard
Speaker 2: to motivate them, Okay. And I think that's probably the
Speaker 2: case with Israel and Gaza that I do think, yes,
Speaker 2: it wasn't the driving issue, but I think that when
Speaker 2: we look at turnout, it was higher in ballot ground
Speaker 2: than a non background. The body was depressed, and I'm
Speaker 2: pretty confident that, you know, Israel and Gaza played a role.
Speaker 2: I believe we'll see once the final exit polls are
Speaker 2: into that she she might have lost. So you vote
Speaker 2: in Michigan, you know, and we know clearly there's a significant.
Speaker 3: Partment and she lost. You're born yeah, yeah, right, but.
Speaker 2: But the thing is probably right, like you don't need
Speaker 2: to like when you're a younger person in Michigan. It's
Speaker 2: certainly in the greater you know, dear born Detroit, Oakland,
Speaker 2: you know county, et cetera. Like you're connected to that community.
Speaker 2: You may not be from that community, right, but you
Speaker 2: know someone or you know someone who's been affected by this, right,
Speaker 2: So you know, it's something that's been brought up in
Speaker 2: all the focus groups that I do out there, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's certainly in fact when it's one percent
Speaker 2: virtue of everything that matters, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, exactly, Just give me two more minutes.
Speaker 1: On Anecdotally, since you are at a university, you saw
Speaker 1: young people not as engaged with this campaign.
Speaker 2: These are the things I saw this year that struck me. Okay.
Speaker 2: The first one is the first series of focus groups
Speaker 2: I did in February and March of this year. And
Speaker 2: I recruit focus groups, you know, I generally do bigger
Speaker 2: groups of town hall's. We've got Democrats and Republicans and
Speaker 2: independence often in the same group. Often we will do
Speaker 2: other groups as well. But in those early groups, you know,
Speaker 2: and we were in Michigan, then we're you know, we're
Speaker 2: across all the battleground states, Western Pia, et cetera. I
Speaker 2: found that younger people were much more confident voicing their
Speaker 2: vote for Trump than Biden. Right, Independence, Democrats were flipping.
Speaker 2: So I just found that that was people were more
Speaker 2: confident saying publicly were Trump than even Democrats who are
Speaker 2: wing for Biden. That struck me, okay. One. The second
Speaker 2: thing that struck me Molly's in these earliest conversations, Okay,
Speaker 2: women would tell me they cared deeply, of course about reproductiveile.
Speaker 2: But you know what, they might care more about keeping
Speaker 2: that apartment and not being homeless. We talked about this
Speaker 2: is barely a focus group that can that I conduct
Speaker 2: where I don't have a member or more who is
Speaker 2: or had not been homeless. So that is something again
Speaker 2: when we're trying to understand how could someone possibly be
Speaker 2: for Trump who was younger. Well, when you're on the
Speaker 2: verge of not having a home, you know, and someone
Speaker 2: tells you I can fix this, I will put money
Speaker 2: into your pockets. I'm sorry. That's a really strong argument
Speaker 2: and we need to respect that.
Speaker 4: And my criticism is you're not.
Speaker 2: Going to pick that up, Molly, okay, through deeper analytics
Speaker 2: and modeling, You're not. You're only going to pick that
Speaker 2: up by listening and engage it. And by the way,
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris has done that. She spent a good part
Speaker 2: of the last year traveling to college campus get into
Speaker 2: she knows that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, none of this is about Paris, right, she
Speaker 1: got in too late for it to be about her.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact that she was able to just
Speaker 1: do what she was able to do was such a
Speaker 1: testament to her strength as a candidate and her ability
Speaker 1: but just is this is a really really important point.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 3: I hope you will come back and talk to us
Speaker 3: more about this.
Speaker 2: I hope so too. I really so much appreciate the
Speaker 2: opportunity to speak with you today.
Speaker 3: Thanks. No, no moment, Jesse Cannon my junk fest.
Speaker 2: You know, it's hard for me to ever be a
Speaker 2: fan of Eddie these type of guys.
Speaker 4: But Jerome Powell not so much.
Speaker 1: No, this is actually really good and it's my moment
Speaker 1: of fuckery because I think this is how you're supposed
Speaker 1: to behave when faced with trump Ism. A journalist asked
Speaker 1: Jerome Powell if he would resign if Trump asked him to.
Speaker 3: Jerome Pal's the chairman of the FED.
Speaker 1: It's a very important job, and Trump wants to make
Speaker 1: the FED an arm of his campaign that will fuck
Speaker 1: up the United States economy beyond repair. It'll make the
Speaker 1: United States economy like Trump's steaks. So I'm really glad
Speaker 1: that Jerome Palell said this, said, do you believe the
Speaker 1: president has the power to fire or demote you? And
Speaker 1: Jerome pal just responded, not permitted under the law. That's
Speaker 1: what all of us need to do. No more. You know,
Speaker 1: don't be the Jeff Bezos, who says, thank you so much, sir.
Speaker 1: You know, don't comply in advance. The only way to
Speaker 1: stop Trumpism is to resist. And that was very good
Speaker 1: about Jerome pal So. I hope we'll see more federal
Speaker 1: employees do stuff like that. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and
Speaker 1: Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.