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- [00:00]
Andrea Pitzer
So hear me, President Trump, when I say this, to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.
- [00:12]
Host/Political Analyst
You probably already know that Tuesday was Election Day.
- [00:16]
Andrea Pitzer
Massive, massive night for Democrats. I've been through a lot of these.
- [00:20]
Historian/Political Commentator
Elections off off year, and this is.
- [00:22]
Andrea Pitzer
As big as it gets.
- [00:23]
Host/Political Analyst
With key races in Virginia, New Jersey and New York getting decided, as well as a referendum in California and several local contests nationwide, Democrats swept every big.
- [00:35]
Historian/Political Commentator
Race on the ballot.
- [00:36]
Host/Political Analyst
The bad news is that it wasn't a general election.
- [00:39]
Andrea Pitzer
I don't know any of the details of that yet.
- [00:41]
Host/Political Analyst
I just heard about that. So the House, the Senate, and the presidency were not up for grabs. That's the first I've heard of that.
- [00:46]
Andrea Pitzer
I don't know anything about it.
- [00:47]
Host/Political Analyst
And we're stuck with the Trump administration in all the major political offices.
- [00:51]
Andrea Pitzer
You have to ask the president about that. I don't know any of the details of that yet.
- [00:54]
Host/Political Analyst
But the good news is that the results include victories that will be key to stopping Trumpism in the US we.
- [01:01]
Andrea Pitzer
Can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.
- [01:08]
Host/Political Analyst
Next week, I'll talk more in depth about conclusions from the elections when we have more data.
- [01:13]
Andrea Pitzer
After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.
- [01:21]
Host/Political Analyst
What they might mean in the light of history in the US and around the world in terms of upending authoritarian rule and where we can go from.
- [01:30]
Andrea Pitzer
Here while we cast our ballots alone. We chose hope together. Hope over tyranny, hope over big money and small ideas, hope over despair.
- [01:46]
Host/Political Analyst
But today I want to talk about the idea of elections and a little bit referendums and what voting can and can't do.
- [01:57]
Andrea Pitzer
Foreign.
- [02:03]
Host/Political Analyst
It'S easy to think that elections are the only tools that people have at hand to make their will known and to influence government. And as I'll make clear later, I think elections are critical and that people should participate in them. But elections are just tools, and there are many other tools.
- [02:20]
Judith Butler
I am Judith Butler. I'm most well known for my two books on gender, Gender, Trouble, and Bodies that Matter. Sex is generally a category that is assigned to infants. That has importance within medical and legal worlds.
- [02:37]
Host/Political Analyst
They're not the result itself.
- [02:40]
Judith Butler
Gender is a mix of cultural norms, historical formations, family influence, psychic realities, desires and wishes.
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Host/Political Analyst
Just think of how many politicians you voted for that sold out a cause that they campaigned on, or how many have shifted as soon as they were in office to become more responsive to donor pressure than public interest.
- [03:02]
Judith Butler
The assault on gender is also an assault on democracy.
- [03:06]
Host/Political Analyst
There's a line from a Butch Hancock tune that he wrote decades ago, sung from the point of view of somebody whose lover has let him down by telling him he's just a wave, not the water.
- [03:19]
Judith Butler
In my 20s, I came to see that it was not just the Jews who were apprehended and extinguished by the Nazi regime. It was queer people. It was gay, lesbian people, it was people with disabilities, people with illnesses, Polish workers, communists. And my sense was that one needed to widen the lens and see that many people have been subject to genocidal politics.
- [03:44]
Host/Political Analyst
You can use a series of elections to build on a strategy, and they do each have meaning. But in the end, every election is what happens. In that moment in time, we have.
- [03:55]
Judith Butler
The power and the freedom to make more livable lives for ourselves, where bodies can be more free to breathe, to move, to love without discrimination and without fear of violence.
- [04:07]
Host/Political Analyst
It's easy to mistake voters in a given race for the whole public. It's easy to imagine that voters preferences are unchanging. It's even more tempting to imagine that the past group of those who engaged and the things they said mattered in focus groups then somehow provide the only measurable tool to use in setting political goals.
- [04:29]
Judith Butler
Performance is important to the extent that we do enact who we are.
- [04:35]
Host/Political Analyst
It's true that even without guarantees for what will follow, elections can be extremely useful in achieving the results that you want. They're frequently the fastest path to new laws and expanded funding. They can make societal goals much, much easier to carry out. Or if you lose the election, that failure can be a significant roadblock to your goals. But in this good news moment, I want to take a second to remember that real change comes through having a set of ideals you're committed to over time, policies that people see you building toward, and a connection to constituents that goes beyond riding a single wave into office and then pretending you own the ocean. In our era of oligarchs, you may have seen people point out before how our current labor unions evolved as a.
- [05:26]
Historian/Political Commentator
Compromise after the First World War. The newfound confidence of workers and unions clashed with company owners as government took a backseat.
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Host/Political Analyst
They're a way to mitigate the financial and human costs faced by both owners and workers. During labor disagreements, workers were often paid.
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Historian/Political Commentator
In vouchers that could only be used in company stores. Owners also forced workers to sign yellow dog contracts which banned them from joining unions. If they did join, they might be thrown out of the company owned housing.
- [05:58]
Host/Political Analyst
Unions are largely, and I emphasize largely nonviolent compromise, in which the tendency to use bombs, arson and assassination becomes less likely. But that's not the way it always was.
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Historian/Political Commentator
The clash between the union busters of Baldwin Felt and Sid Hatfield and The miners in May 1920 became known as.
- [06:20]
Host/Political Analyst
The Matewan Massacre and the Battle of.
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Historian/Political Commentator
Blair Mountain, the largest armed conflict in the US since the Civil War.
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Host/Political Analyst
During the Cold wars in my home state of West Virginia, U.S. air Force.
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Historian/Political Commentator
Planes appeared above Blair Mountain Mountain to signal the imminent arrival of federal troops, and the miners pulled back, although many hid their weapons to avoid surrendering them.
- [06:41]
Host/Political Analyst
Like unions, elections are also a compromise. In a country founded on genocide, chattel slavery and revolution, elections are the means by which the people can assert themselves over the government. That has been both a comfort and an affliction for the governed across our history. In recent years, voters have been kept from voting in a variety of ways.
- [07:05]
Historian/Political Commentator
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said upending the Voting Rights act when it was working was like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you're not getting wet.
- [07:14]
Host/Political Analyst
There have been rollbacks of voting rights that had been restored for the last decade.
- [07:18]
Historian/Political Commentator
Each Virginia governor has eased the process to restore the right to vote for people who were convicted of felonies after they completed their sentence.
- [07:25]
Host/Political Analyst
Polling places in minority neighborhoods have been shuttered. In some places, heads turned earlier this.
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Historian/Political Commentator
Year when it was discovered Governor Glenn Youngkin quietly changed the process, effectively slowing down automatic voting rights restoration.
- [07:40]
Host/Political Analyst
Texas announced gerrymandering to guarantee Republican rule in Congress. As we can see from Proposition 50 in California, there are a lot of things that we can do to push back. But as we wrestle with our hardening authoritarianism, there may be times when elections will do a full and run around the people's will.
- [07:59]
Historian/Political Commentator
If you add up the population of the 26 smallest states, they can control 52 seats in the Senate that represents 18% of the population, right? So it's possible for a political majority to emerge in the Senate that represents less than one fifth of the American people.
- [08:12]
Host/Political Analyst
We have countless examples around the world in which elections can be directly subverted to do tremendous harm. Access to the Internet's been restored in Tanzania after a several day shutdown. Just this weekend in Tanzania, incumbent Samia Soluhu Hassan was announced to have won 98% of the vote after disqualifying one opponent and jailing another, who is currently charged with treason. People in Tanzania have been sharing images of dead bodies strewn on the streets after the violence that came after the election last week. Hassan was originally viewed as a reformer when elected in 2021 on the heels of a strong man. But she now seems uninterested in ceding power. And the big question, Barbara how a presidential candidate who claims to have won 98% of the vote has faced such protests and unrest? It is a crucial question, isn't it? Hundreds appear to have been killed, and while we are not yet in the US living in that universe. Burkhausen is the director of Safeguarding Democracy Project and professor of political science at the UCLA School of Law, and he joins me now here at home. Democracy watchers are voicing profound concerns about U.S. elections going forward.
- [09:26]
Historian/Political Commentator
I'm much more concerned about the security and fairness of the elections in 2026 than I am about a potential Trump third term in 2028.
- [09:34]
Host/Political Analyst
But even in the absence of outright suppression, we've seen how often individual winning candidates have transformed the country while also carrying out tremendous injustices. One simple example is how FDR instituted vitally needed works programs and launched Social Security in the wake of the Great Depression.
- [09:56]
Historian/Political Commentator
When the Hundred Days were over, Roosevelt had signed 15 major bills into law and created an Alphabet soup of new government agencies. We have had our revolution, one magazine reported, and we like it.
- [10:10]
Host/Political Analyst
But also implemented Japanese American internment in concentration camps during World War II.
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Historian/Political Commentator
More than two thirds of these people were native born American citizens abruptly forced.
- [10:20]
Host/Political Analyst
To abandon or sell their homes and businesses. Many lost everything that they owned. Similar wartime fears led Canada and nations.
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Historian/Political Commentator
Throughout Latin America to adopt comparable expulsion.
- [10:31]
Host/Political Analyst
Measures against residents of Japanese ancestry. This kind of analysis could be done for every president that the country has ever had. Meanwhile, two elections in the last quarter century have hinged on electoral college victories where the popular vote went to the losing candidate. It's an outcome clearly made possible by the US Constitution, to be sure, but one that nevertheless undermines democracy as a whole.
- [10:57]
Historian/Political Commentator
Now, the US Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt. While I strongly disagree with the Court's decision, I accept it.
- [11:08]
Host/Political Analyst
So while elections, I believe, remain our best tool for now, it's a mistake to see them as the only tool that can deepen our democracy and and protect everyone's rights. Think about the popular demonstrations in South Korea that undermined an elected president's attempt to overthrow democratic rule there. Think about the 1988 referendum in Chile that marked the beginning of the end of Pinochet's rule. When they work well, as they seem to have this week, elections have the potential to be a real guardrail against more violent and unjust societies but sometimes other tactics are necessary. If you don't understand how successful campaigns work, it's easy to mistake what's happening in them. In the run up to Tuesday's vote, there was what felt to me like a strange attempt to portray Virginia candidate for governor Abigail Spanberger and New York City mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani as polar opposites. I think the message in Virginia is that we chose pragmatism with fundamentally different strategies.
- [12:16]
Andrea Pitzer
Billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.
- [12:26]
Host/Political Analyst
In terms of backgrounds, there are definitely differences. She is a former CIA operations officer from Virginia and is more than a decade older than Mamdani. He is an immigrant of Indian descent hailing from Uganda, who's lived in New York City since grade school. But they have similarities, too. Spanberger has represented the 7th district of Virginia in the House of Representatives for the last six years. Mamdani was elected to the New York State assembly in 2020 and has been there ever since. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Spanberger has at times been quick to disparage the language used by other Democratic candidates, sometimes criticizing any appearance of the word socialism in their speeches or calls to defund the police. Is it Zoran Mamdani? Is it Abigail Spamberger? Who is the face, the soul of the party in your view? Or is it all of them? Yeah, you know, it's funny. This is a similar debate that I saw happen when I was first elected. Just this week, she told a New Yorker that Democrats need to be listening more. But it seems to me that they both conducted stellar listening campaigns. At the end of the day, I don't think that our party needs to have one face. Our country does not have one face. It's about all of us as a team, together. And we all understand the assignment not so much to reveal to either what their own core principles were, but instead to understand the hopes and fears of constituents, whether they live in central Virginia. What we need is a president of the United States who actually wants to have a functioning government or New York.
- [14:02]
Andrea Pitzer
City, because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation.
- [14:18]
Host/Political Analyst
And in truth, both candidates listened to voters and spoke to them in ways that mattered to those constituents. They had basic principles, concrete policies to which they returned again and again. I pushed out very clear plans on the steps that I plan to take both in concert with our General assembly, where we had some extraordinary wins as well. And each made their case in a way that the voters could hear.
- [14:41]
Andrea Pitzer
New York, we're going to freeze the together New York, we're going to make buses fast and freeze together. New York, we're going to deliver universal.
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Host/Political Analyst
And in some cases, as with Zoran Mamdani and New York City's black community, he paid them the respect of time and attention. After that community made clear in the Democratic primary that they knew and understood Cuomo far better than they did the democratic socialist upstart. He listened and met with them.
- [15:16]
Andrea Pitzer
You know, I was at a church in Harlem not too many months ago where I spoke to the pastor and he asked me to look out on the pews and see how few parishioners were there. And he said it wasn't because they didn't love Harlem or they didn't love the church anymore. It's that they couldn't afford the city.
- [15:30]
Host/Political Analyst
Berger voiced some distrust of ambitious policy planks, fearing that voters would punish candidates and the party if the candidates the people elect can't deliver everything that's promised. On the topic of government run grocery stores, she said she wouldn't campaign on that issue, quote, because I couldn't ever pass it.
- [15:48]
Historian/Political Commentator
She said, when we talk about things that this Democratic Party is talking about, we have to not say we tried it and it didn't work. She said to me, people believed you. Vulnerable people believed you. And that is something that Democrats need to watch out for.
- [16:02]
Host/Political Analyst
But I'm not sure that they aren't both running the best campaign they can for the electorate that each one has. They seem to have listened, focused on policies that will have a real impact, and spoken in a language that people were ready to hear. It's a way to make elections lead naturally into the next policy steps, which allows elections to function optimally as a tool for democracy and sound governance, rather than a means by which to dupe the electorate. So this week's election is just a start, and we'll lock in some immediate political benefits. In many cases, change will still have to be fought for. In any non presidential election year, we would expect to see a normal swing away from whatever party is in power nationwide. But my sense is that we're seeing a larger shift away from Trump and the unpopular policies that he represents.
- [16:53]
Historian/Political Commentator
Democrats found momentum across red states as well. They won two seats in Mississippi, a feat that is their best performance there in over a decade. In Georgia, the voters ousted two Republicans from a key Local commission. A Democrat hadn't won that office since 2007.
- [17:08]
Host/Political Analyst
But we still have so much work to do. No good part of our existing system can be safe until no civilian can be beaten on the streets by masked men. Whether those beaten are citizens or not. We have to move past a point where a Supreme Court justice writes in an official capacity that law enforcement can stop any person for their skin color or for the language they speak with no recourse.
- [17:32]
Historian/Political Commentator
Brett Kavanaugh wrote a short conferring opinion saying there is absolutely no problem whatsoever with racially motivated stuff by law enforcement. Quote, if the officers learn the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the US they promptly let the individual go.
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Host/Political Analyst
We cannot have a court that allows immigration agents to detain even US citizens at will in a Kavanaugh stop for a long time or even a little while, as if it were some harmless treat for law enforcement.
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Historian/Political Commentator
Vargas showed the agents his real ID as proof of citizenship and they told him he was lying and it took hours to get him out of custody.
- [18:00]
Host/Political Analyst
We need a system that doesn't allow a state of exception in which the President and his lackeys get to set all the rules.
- [18:06]
Historian/Political Commentator
Plaintiffs want the public to see Bavino's deposition and body camera arguing they show how federal agents handled immigration and frank enforcement in residential neighborhoods. The government says releasing that could expose tactics and jeopardize agent safety. But the judge said she is not inclined to seal agents identities, saying that is part of their job.
- [18:26]
Host/Political Analyst
My belief is that we have never dealt with the fundamental denial of rights to whole groups of people having built a country on disenfranchisement from power for whole groups from our founding forward. This is the deep abyss in our country into which we have thrown countless communities, but especially Native Americans, black folks and immigrants.
- [18:46]
Judith Butler
I remain convinced that one does need to know history in order to make sure it does not repeat.
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Host/Political Analyst
It is the kind of deep flaw that antisemitism was in Nazi Germany and.
- [18:57]
Judith Butler
That one wants justice not just for the group to which one belongs, but for any group that suffers in a similar way.
- [19:07]
Host/Political Analyst
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, I saw a lot of rage about people refusing to vote for Harri of Gaza or because they had given up on politics entirely, feeling that elections had never benefited them. As someone who tried to persuade some people, not all of whom ended up voting in the end, I know it's hard to see someone refuse to take a simple action that you think might make a huge difference in their life. Or others. But for many people, elections feel like a dead end. They feel like the goals that they have will never be delivered by any politician who can win in our two party system.
- [19:46]
Andrea Pitzer
To every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for one of my opponents, or felt too disappointed by politics to.
- [19:53]
Host/Political Analyst
Vote at all, I have enough hope that belief may not be correct that I'm willing to participate and encourage others.
- [20:00]
Andrea Pitzer
To thank you for the opportunity to prove myself worthy of your trust.
- [20:04]
Host/Political Analyst
Again, with the understanding that elections are only one of the useful tools available to society, I might put a little energy toward encouraging people who feel differently than I do encouraging them to vote, but I see a lot of people hectoring that group and blaming them for election losses. My sense is that it's on you to make it appealing to vote, to persuade people it's worthwhile. Castigating them or trying to make them responsible for losses is really unhelpful because it doesn't lead to a better outcome. It's pretty clear that my demographic peers, Gen X white men and women, are the electoral villains in this narrative. Don't try to shift that on to anyone else. But even understanding accurately how we got where we are, I think generally it's just most helpful to focus on the place where you think you can make actual change. And some people who don't vote are just going to be using other tools than you. You may not even know what they're up to. They might be a critical part of a library board or the major donor to a diaper bank. They might be organizing protests that will raise awareness of wrongs in a community. They might be filing lawsuits. Your anger isn't likely to get them to vote, but your persuasion might. And if it doesn't, there are millions and millions of non voters out there on whom you can use your best arguments.
- [21:29]
Andrea Pitzer
We won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now it is something that we do.
- [21:38]
Host/Political Analyst
We should celebrate what happened Tuesday. We can look to it for strategies in the next year and beyond. But it's worth remembering that the election of November 4, 2025 that happened this week is just the wave. We are the water and that's it. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with anyone who's looking for ways to help each other survive this mess. To support this podcast, Please subscribe@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.