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- [00:05]
Shmita Basu
Good morning. It's Friday, November 8th. I'm Shmita Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, President Biden addresses the nation after major Democratic losses in the election. What a town in Pennsylvania can tell us about Trump's appeal and the tiny precinct that finally ended prohibition. But first, while millions of Americans are celebrating the reelection of Donald Trump, Democrats and Democratic women in particular are wondering how much did gender play a role in the outcome of the election? Elena Schneider wrote about this for Politico.
- [00:50]
Elena Schneider
So as I spoke with Democratic women about the conclusion of the 2024 race, many of them could only really draw the bleakest and most demoralizing conclusion out of it, which is raising, again, this question of whether or not they were going to see a woman serve as president in their lifetimes.
- [01:09]
Shmita Basu
Schneider spoke with about a dozen Democratic elected officials and strategists. While many people say this election came down to the economy and Vice President Kamala Harris, ties to an unpopular incumbent, a lot of the women Schneider spoke with say the role of sexism can't be ignored.
- [01:25]
Elena Schneider
The majority of the women that I spoke to said that, yes, all those things were true. And sexism and racism are inextricably linked to our politics and to our culture. And to deny that Donald Trump used gendered, sexist, and sometimes racist attacks, particularly on Kamala Harris, but throughout much of his campaign is to deny what we all saw. And in some ways, that was obviously very energizing to some of the people who wanted to support him.
- [01:58]
Shmita Basu
CBS spoke to several of Trump's female supporters ahead of Election Day and asked about some of Trump's comments toward Harris and other women. He's called her lazy, stupid, a sleazebag.
- [02:12]
George Packer
Does that bother you as women?
- [02:14]
Elena Schneider
Not a bit, no.
- [02:15]
Shmita Basu
No. Some said they felt more financially secure when he was president. I think it goes back to finances, you know, the grocery bills, the energy costs, gasoline, just all of that. Trump's record doesn't play well with all women. He's been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 17 women, and last year was found liable for sexual abuse. He also appointed the three Supreme Court justices who helped to overturn Roe v. Wade. And. And yet he made narrow gains with women in this election. And early exit polls indicate that Harris edge among women was smaller than Joe Biden's and smaller than Hillary Clinton's in the last two elections against Trump. Historically, women as a broad voting bloc have supported Democrats. Black women turned out in a major way for Harris in this election. She won them by more than 80 points. But for over 70 years now, when you look at white women specifically, the majority have voted for Republican candidates all but two times. And we saw this pattern repeat again this year.
- [03:22]
Elena Schneider
So I spoke with North Carolina State Senator Sidney Batch, who represents a sort of suburban chunk of Wake county just outside of Raleigh, and she talked about being dumbfounded at the results, and in particular, she expressed real frustration at white women. And so I think the senator is urging her party to really take a look at what is going on here and who owns this loss.
- [03:49]
Shmita Basu
Many women believed that the time had come and that this country was ready to elect a woman to the highest office. Just look at the huge gains women have made in the last few years alone. According to the Pew Research Center's latest data on this, from 2023, 28% of U.S. congressional members and about a third of state legislators are women. President Joe Biden had historic parody in his cabinet, with nearly half of the roles held by women. Come January, there will be 13 women serving as governors in America, the most in history. And Trump just named his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, to become his chief of staff when he enters the White House next year. She'll become the first woman to serve in that role. Schneider says this moment, while it feels like a devastating loss for so many Democratic women, will ultimately spur more progress.
- [04:40]
Elena Schneider
And I think what I'm going to be following and what we don't quite know the answer to yet, is what does the activism look like coming out of this loss? And we haven't yet heard some giant upswell of interest in marching on Washington the way that we saw in the immediate aftermath of 2016 for the women's March. We haven't seen this call for resistance the way that we saw again in the immediate aftermath of 2016. It's been much quieter, and I don't know yet what that resistance is gonna look like. And in speaking with Democratic women, I do think that they expect it will come, but I think that it might just take a little bit more time than it did in 20.
- [05:31]
Shmita Basu
To understand the right word swing we're seeing in many states in this election. It helps to zoom in on a place like Charleroi in western Pennsylvania. It's a small industrial town south of Pittsburgh that in its heyday was known for glass making, but has been in steady decline for decades now. I called up George Packer, a staff writer at the Atlantic, who recently spent time doing deep reporting in some of the most contested parts of the country, including in Charleroi, and he told me Talking to folks there, it's clear why so many people are rejecting the Democrats pitch to voters and embracing Trump's.
- [06:08]
George Packer
In September, the Pyrex factory owners announced they were going to close the factory by the end of the year and move the operations to Ohio with about half the workforce that was willing to move. So in other words, hundreds of union jobs, well paying union jobs, were going to disappear from Charleroi, which couldn't afford to lose them.
- [06:28]
Shmita Basu
Over the past few years, around 2,000 immigrants have arrived in Charleroi, fundamentally changing the dynamics of this small and mostly white town. Packer told me Donald Trump's campaign got wind of this change and he began mentioning it at his rallies.
- [06:44]
Joe Biden
Charleroi, Pennsylvania, have you hear of it? Charleroi, what a beautiful name. But it's not so beautiful now. Has experienced a 2000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris.
- [06:58]
Shmita Basu
There was no talk of immigrants eating pets, but Trump did say that the town was bankrupt and riddled with crime due to the influx of undocumented migrants. But Packer says none of that was true.
- [07:11]
George Packer
In fact, people I talked to said the immigrants were legal. They're in this country legally. They had jobs, they had contributed to the town's tax base, they were occupying empty houses. There were people on the street again after the place had kind of become a ghost town. Yes, there were also strains on resources, on schools, but clearly on the whole, immigration has been a good thing for Charleroi. But Trump put his finger in that wound and heedlessly stirred up people's anxieties, their anger, and then moved on. And Charleroi was left sort of traumatized. I was told immigrants stopped going outside as much thought about moving, pulling their kids out of school.
- [07:56]
Shmita Basu
At the same time, people in the town felt abandoned by Democrats. As a union town, it once really aligned with the Democratic Party. But Packer told us people there increasingly felt Democrats don't represent them.
- [08:09]
George Packer
Given that choice between two parties that really don't seem to have a plan or even a desire to help, people are more likely to choose the party that appeals to the resentments, the anger, the alienation, and that's Trump's party.
- [08:25]
Shmita Basu
Packer says the Democratic Party has a lot of work to do to win back this group of voters nationwide that once made up its base.
- [08:33]
George Packer
Even Sherrod Brown in Ohio, who has devoted his entire career to being a voice for working people in Ohio and in America, lost on Tuesday because the Democratic Party has just lost that identification with working people. And it, it's partly cultural, it's partly economic, and it's partly just Are they there? Is the party structure present in working class communities? How vibrant is the local Democratic Party? Who do voters see as the representatives of the Democratic Party? They basically see Ivy League graduates, celebrities, and, you know, the Obamas and the Clintons. And it's very hard to create that sense of I understand you, I'm actually one of you that people today seem to need because their cynicism about politicians is so deep.
- [09:33]
Shmita Basu
George Packer shared more of his insights from his reporting around the country in our latest episode of Apple News in Conversation. If you're listening in the Apple News app, it's queued up to play for your next before we let you go, a few other election related stories being featured in the Apple News President Joe Biden addressed the nation yesterday. He called Vice President Kamala Harris a woman of great character and said she and her campaign should be proud. He also called on Americans to look past the political divisiveness of this moment.
- [10:16]
Joe Biden
Something I hope we can do no matter who you voted for, is see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature.
- [10:28]
Shmita Basu
And he said to Democrats who are feeling demoralized that this isn't the end.
- [10:33]
Joe Biden
Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. We all get knocked down, but the measure of our character, as my dad would say, is how quickly we get back up. Remember, a defeat does not mean we are defeated.
- [10:48]
Shmita Basu
In other election news, we're getting more granular voting results. And Vox points out one notable Democratic Senate candidates outperformed Vice President Harri, in some cases by as much as seven points, which means a sizable number of voters, including in the key battleground states, cast ballots for Democrats in Senate races but then did not vote for Harris. It's impossible to say exactly why, but Andrew Prokop, the writer of this Vox piece, says it's too simplistic to chalk it up to just sexism or racism. In fact, Prokop writes that several of the Democratic candidates who overperformed Harris were non white or female. For the Democratic Party, it could mean that Tuesday's results were more of a rejection of the administration than the party writ large. And finally, prohibition has come to an end at long last in a small corner of Chicago. Voters there overwhelmingly repealed a ban on alcohol sales in a precinct in the city's Lincoln Square neighborhood that had been in Place since 1907 and affected three blocks. Some residents didn't even know about it, but restaurants in the area pushed to overturn the ban when a local restaurant owner had a liquor license denied. A local official representing the area said the ban was long overdue. And quote, at the risk of stating the obvious, a lot has changed in the last 117 years. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the news app, right now we've got that episode of Apple News in conversation about the election results and what Americans want out of their president queued up to play for you next. Enjoy your weekend and I'll be back with the news on Monday.