← The Focus Group Podcast
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- [00:00]
Sarah Longwell
Foreign hello everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're continuing our autopsy of the 2024 election results. We've got several angles on this election that we didn't get to last week. Stad Herndon and I talked for 90 minutes and only got through about half the focus group sound. And so this week we've still got to get to Kamala Harris's inexorable ties to Joe Biden, the culture war, and why abortion didn't seem to be the decisive issue that it was in 2022. And I swear we're going to do a show about what people found appealing about Donald Trump. But that's not today. We're taking this particular struggle session in house. I'm excited to welcome back to the show against his will and I guess mine, my best friend Jonathan Vlast, editor of the Bull Work and my co host of the Secret podcast and the Next Level. Hey, jbl, thanks for coming back, buddy.
- [01:05]
Jonathan Vlast
Sarah, I'm so glad that you were forced into having me for this.
- [01:08]
Sarah Longwell
You know, the people want this content. Unfortunately, they do. All right, I want to talk about the takes you've been putting out about these voters in a little bit because you've got lots of takes about the voters, but I actually made you listen to some for real. So just for the moment, why don't you paint me a picture of your mental state after listening to these groups?
- [01:28]
Jonathan Vlast
Well, I mean, I always try to come on this show with a sort of a big picture theme. And there are like three things that I think are small bore that are worth talking about because they're persistent things that came up in these groups over and over again. One of which was people not liking Kamala Harris running on abortion. Another of which is that a bunch of people talked over and over again about not liking the fact that she wasn't nominated through a primary process. Another was a lot of RFK love. A lot. A lot of RFK love.
- [02:01]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [02:02]
Jonathan Vlast
And this is interesting to me because there isn't a lot of RFK love in the voting public. And we know this because he was polling at 2%. And yet all of a sudden these people are very RFK curious. And then the final thing here is surprisingly little about immigration. People in these focus groups mentioned immigration sometimes, not often. It does not seem to have been an important driver and they did not seem to have specifics like immigration was just sort of thrown in as an afterthought. It Wasn't a, well, we got to do X, Y and Z about immigration. It was just like, yeah, that's one of the other things I'm unhappy about. And so those are the four small bore things that stuck out to me listening to these three groups. The big overarching theme is that this is an unserious country filled with unserious people. And we will get into that over the course of the specific sound. But the extent to which these people are utterly unserious about government, America, themselves, their lives, it was shocking to me. And I don't easily shock on this stuff with the people.
- [03:09]
Sarah Longwell
As you note, this 2%, I mean RFK, depending on the state, was polling some places better than others. 2% might be a little low. But I do think that in the small percentage of people for whom RFK was very relevant, it is probably overrepresented in people who went from Biden to Trump, which is who we talk to. Right. So in these groups, you're talking about people who have previously in their lives really voted for Democrats. Not always, but in a lot of cases the individual voters, as I was listening, I'm like, they also voted for Hillary Clinton and sort of were like casual Democrats. And so you can see how an Elon and a Tulsi and an RF case, especially seeing those people welcomed into Trump's orbit, how it had a real effect on these types of voters making their latest decisions. We certainly talked to voters like this the whole way through, but because strategically I focused much more on the college educated suburban voters who had gone from Trump to Biden, I do think that there ended up being just in the voting population, more of these types of voters, not committed Democrats at all, but sort of typically vote Democrats who are more low information, more just general election voters, not people who follow politics closely. They were the late breaking independents. Kamala Harris held still steady with our kinds of people. Basically the only group she didn't lose ground with was our people. And by our people, I mean these sort of Trump to Biden voters who consider themselves kind of center. Right. College educated suburban voters. She did fine with that. She did a little bit better in some places and otherwise held steady everywhere else. She backslid Hispanics, black men.
- [04:58]
Jonathan Vlast
Yeah.
- [04:58]
Sarah Longwell
Young people everywhere. Right.
- [05:00]
Jonathan Vlast
And this fits with my unseriousness argument. There are at least three people in these focus groups who said specifically that they didn't vote for Trump, they voted for rfk. There was a prospect of RFK being in Trump's cabinet running HHS that made them vote for Trump. They even said some of them were like, you know, I don't really like Trump. I think he's a bad guy. But yeah, and I am sorry, but that makes you an unserious person. It just does. It is not hard to understand that the MMR vaccine is in that good. It's not hard to understand that the polio vaccine is a net good. It is not hard to see that the guy who like has a brain worm and played footsie with plandemic and all that is an insane person. And I think this is something you, Tim and I talked about. RFK's net positives are very high in America. Like his favorability numbers are very high. It turns out that there are more just flatly unserious and crazy people in America than we really reckoned with.
- [06:00]
Sarah Longwell
I don't think that that has changed exactly. Although the proliferation of social media I think has like amplified this has had a sort of a network effect of having people that are more conspiratorial, less trusting in everything. And I do think like his wellness culture, it fits into a piece that exists online that is sort of like a neat category for his appeal. In any event, we need to get to the sound because this is where Asted and I went south last time. So I'm just cognizant of the fact that we need get into it. Although I'm going to push back on this probably the whole way through. You and I are going to have to do this, but. So I guess I might as well get one out of the way, which is I'm not willing to call people unserious as much as I am.
- [06:42]
Jonathan Vlast
That's my job, not yours.
- [06:43]
Sarah Longwell
Sure. But they're just not paying super close attention. And I saw this in groups of people who were kind of out on Trump. I remember specifically this group of Arizona women where we talked about abortion with them after that abortion referendum and Democrats really bailed them out. They had the like 1872 law that got reinstated and these women were very upset about it, but they saw a through line between their sort of libertarian bodily autonomy and RFK's vaccine positions, like I should get to decide. And in the groups there was one of the people who had voted Democrat most of her life who got red pilled on this stuff over there being a vaccine mandate at her job and saying that she had adverse health effects as a result of the vaccine. Now obviously that is a sort of unverifiable in the context of the conversation, but that is not an unusual thing to hear in the focus Groups used to be that the crazy people were kind of evenly distributed across politics. Yes. This is such an important point between the two parties. And I do think they have now found an ability to consolidate more or less in the Republican Party. I've told you my story about when I went to this woman that I found on the Internet when I was, I needed like an emergency, like therapeutic massage. Like, my back was jacked. And like this woman like handed me a crystal and a volcanic rock to.
- [08:02]
Jonathan Vlast
Hold and like to help with your chakras.
- [08:05]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Right. And you know, she's asking me all these questions about work and so at some point I talk about politics and she googled me after the thing and she texted me, oh no, to say yay Republicans. Like, she clearly didn't read very closely, but just was like, yeah, yay Republicans.
- [08:18]
Jonathan Vlast
Saw Republican voters and then like the next words.
- [08:21]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And then like texted me a bunch of like QAnon pedophilia stuff. And like, obviously I immediately blocked this person and didn't go back. But like, that person is not a Republican in like any way of thinking about it, but is part of the new sort of Trump MAGA RFK coalition.
- [08:39]
Jonathan Vlast
So here is just another way to think about this. Our colleague, my other best friend, Tim Miller, wrote many years ago that there was a big realignment going on. It was a trade. He called these the red dog Democrats. And the idea was that you're getting a bunch of blue collar, low education whites moving into the Republican camp and in return a bunch of college educated suburbanites coming to the Democratic camp. It is possible that another way of viewing that is you're getting a bunch of college educated suburbanites coming into the Democratic camp and you're getting a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists, what I would just euphemistically call unserious people moving into the Republican camp. And that this trade is a very, very bad trade for Democrats. And that's something we don't really want to think about too hard. We'll get to the sound, we'll hear all these people talk. But I'm going to try to make the case to you and your listeners over and over that these people are not serious, but we have to take them seriously because they're a big block.
- [09:39]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And also, like, what it means to be serious. Like, are people seriously invested in civic discourse and politics? Like, no. But one of our fundamental differences is that I think that the benign influence of good government. And as a Hamilton listener, you will notice I'm quoting Hamilton, quoting Washington, but the Benign influence of a good government is supposed to allow people to go ahead and live their lives without being like routinely invested in the day to day machinations of our politics. And so I don't hold that against voters and I hold it against politicians in terms of their ability to communicate with people like this because they, they're a voter and they get to vote and they exercise that right. And there we go.
- [10:20]
Jonathan Vlast
But that is different. I mean, being low information because you're like living your life is different than being incredibly high information on the subject of RFK and vaccines and having all the information be insane. Right. I mean, that's different. Like I can understand like, you know, this is a single mom who works two jobs and she doesn't have time to really figure out whose plan to get the economy moving is, is best. But then you get like Jay from one of your focus groups who's like, I've always been a lifelong Democrat, My family has been, you know, I'm not a Trump fan. I think he is divisive. He inspires hate and disrespect. However, the things I appreciate about him, first of all, is him putting Kennedy in his cabinet. I have mad respect for Kennedy. I feel like he's a real asset to the administration with trying to improve our food supply and just make America healthy again. Like that is somebody who has consumed a lot of information.
- [11:07]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, but not political information necessarily. And this is where Trump's media strategy, I think worked especially well, which when we talk about non traditional media environments, and this is where I was picking up, this RFK wellness stuff, is that, that is a vertical of information for people who are juicing and lifting weights and thinking about ways to optimize their health. And there's all, there's supplements and all this stuff. It's a whole world unto itself. And it's not one that is political necessarily. Barstool sports, not political. But these spaces have become political by people who do not follow politics. Exactly. But more think about how politics influences the things that they do care about. And so you got a guy who's been a, you know, nominal Democrat or voted for Democrats, who's a wellness guy, who sees rfk, likes his wellness positions, doesn't have the context in all the other ways. And like votes for Trump because of that. These are the kinds of people who put him over the edge. Okay, let's get to the sound. These are first time Trump voters. Not first time voters, but that's the first time they voted for Trump. And all of them had voted for Biden in 2020. So it seems obvious, but it is super important to keep in mind in light of the controversy around sort of Biden pardoning hunter voters have become extremely jaded, not just about the current state of the economy, but about politicians and the system as a whole.
- [12:30]
Jonathan Vlast
Whole.
- [12:30]
Sarah Longwell
Right. Like when people talk about institutions and anti institutionalism and also like the sort of absence of a sense of truth and an absence of a sense that these systems work, that these institutions are valuable pervades this type of voter. And so let's listen to a sample of what they've told us over the last couple weeks.
- [12:48]
Jonathan Vlast
I think like maybe 10 or 15 years ago, the elites, like the zeitgeist who runs the country, who put that money to the politicians to get them elected, I think they were Republican, but they decided, hey, maybe we have a.
- [13:01]
Sarah Longwell
Better shot being Democrats. So I think they switched to the Democrat side. If it was up to me, I get rid of every single one of them in Congress because it's, it's just the same thing over and over and over again. They're out of touch with the American people. I think that that's why Donald Trump, even with 34 felonies, even with indictment after indictment after indictment, are so many underserved communities, ethnic groups that are wrongfully charged. There's people that have records that have been attacked for no reason. And watching him go through all that, I think that that resonated with a lot of people. I'm tired of the rhetoric. I'm tired of the let me tell you what I think you want to hear. Let me tell you some lies.
- [13:50]
Jonathan Vlast
It's like Democrats became the party of.
- [13:52]
Sarah Longwell
Bait and switch because if you go back to Joe Biden when all his promises and things that he promised to do, I don't think any of those actually panned out. I'd rather be hard true than to be, you know, lied to. So here's the thing, okay. One of the reasons that I guess I think I got a little frustrated myself about Biden for the hunter pardon is that you sort of can't give people more reasons to be cynical when the median ish level voter already believes that like politicians don't just mean it. You know, according to exit polls, about 70% of the country thought the country was on the wrong track. And that group voted for Trump about 2 to 1. And look, you can make your points about it's not fair the asymmetry. These Democrats have to play perfect baseball while Republicans burn things down. I agree with all that. But now you're asking them to really make a discernment between bad and worse versus good and bad. And my hope is to give them a choice between good and bad. Does that make sense?
- [14:51]
Jonathan Vlast
It does, but not only works when you're dealing with, like, rational people. There's a woman named T who I'll talk about the fact that Kamala Harris was in office for that long, and if you ever looked at her schedule, she never really had anything going on. I'm sorry, Ms. T. You never looked at her schedule. Like, the vice president has stuff going on from, you know, dawn to dusk. They are run around raggedy. All vice presidents are. There's an endless, endless amount of obligations you have to do. She then said, I watched Trump change from this, you know, outlandish, over the top, almost comic figure to the most presidential that he has ever been in his whole life. I'm sorry, but in the last two weeks of the election, Trump was talking about Arnold Palmer's dick and then fellating a microphone. And then this woman, this woman T, she is Puerto Rican, and she is in favor of abortion rights. She says she has a trans daughter, but she has absolutely no concerns about her trans daughter in, you know, Trump's America. But she was, like, super happy to vote for Trump. Like, I don't even know what to say. It's just unserious. And again, I'm trying to use that descriptively and not pejoratively.
- [16:01]
Sarah Longwell
Well, but even descriptively. I mean, I'm trying to grapple with what they said because it mattered. Their vote mattered.
- [16:06]
Jonathan Vlast
Yeah.
- [16:06]
Sarah Longwell
And so how do you persuade this person? And actually, I got several emails about this. There was a number of people who were like, you know, this woman who was just mispronouncing Kamala Harris's name, and they were just doing it on purpose or whatever. It was a young black woman who was mispronouncing her name, like, aggressively talking about how she wanted to be seen as a full person and not as a token, and that she had a lot of anxiety about being tokenized in her job. And I don't find that unserious. And I think she was mispronouncing her name because she just clearly didn't know how to say it. Right. And you know what? I used to mispronounce her name until I said it enough times that I understood where the emphasis was. It's not like where Trump knows exactly how to pronounce it and does it on purpose, incorrectly, to be insulting. You know, there's a reason at the convention, they did like a little bit about where you put the emphasis, and it was cute with kids. But anyway, I. I think that just dismissing them as unserious is in itself a little unserious. You have to engage with the fact that people made a choice, that choice resulted in an outcome that is very bad. And to just dismiss them is to rob yourself of the ability to correct what is a problem.
- [17:14]
Jonathan Vlast
I mean, I'd like to push back on that.
- [17:16]
Sarah Longwell
Sure.
- [17:16]
Jonathan Vlast
I think it is delusional to believe that there are substantive things that you can do to appeal to people like this. The idea that there is like, some. Well, if, you know, if only we put out this white paper with policies X, Y, Z, then they'll come. No, when I say that people are unserious, I think the answer to that is then that, well, you've got to court them in unserious ways. You need your own demagogue. You need a candidate who is gonna love to go on Joe Rogan and is gonna nod and wink with the flat Earthers. And.
- [17:50]
Sarah Longwell
No, you don't.
- [17:51]
Jonathan Vlast
Yeah, I think you do.
- [17:53]
Sarah Longwell
Absolutely not. No, you just. You do need somebody who seems authentic, who doesn't seem like a regular politician where people have a clear sense of what they stand for and who didn't have only 100 days to campaign because the guy who was running before was totally not in a position to run and did it anyway. And look, we've got to get to more sound. I'm going to talk about Joe Biden a little bit here.
- [18:19]
Jonathan Vlast
Yeah, let's do it.
- [18:19]
Sarah Longwell
And. Okay. Because one of the main headwinds for the Biden. Harris administration and for both Biden and then ultimately for Harris was Biden's age. Right. So people did not think Joe Biden was up to running the country. And before the. The switcheroo, they didn't think that Harris looked much better, which was actually one of the things she really overcame and one of the things that she deserves credit for. But I want to listen to what Trump to Biden voters said to us in the summer of 2023 to the summer of 2024. So in that span about both Biden.
- [18:50]
Jonathan Vlast
And Harris, my biggest fear, fear with Biden running and possibly winning, is that he will not last through his next term, which means Kamala will be the president of this country, which frightens me to the core.
- [19:09]
Sarah Longwell
When my grandmother was pushing 80, we were not sure if she should have the ability to drive anymore. We're letting people run our country, and that's terrifying for Me, it's not age, right?
- [19:23]
Jonathan Vlast
Because Ronald Reagan was very old, but.
- [19:25]
Sarah Longwell
He was very capable. I don't really care how old somebody is if they're all there and they look strong. Biden doesn't look strong. He looks like he could fall over at any minute. And that's concerning to me. He just doesn't seem mentally stable. He looks like he's really struggling mentally and physically. I mean, he's fallen down what, three, four times in the last couple months. I mean, come on. Yeah. Can't find his way off the stage and things like that. It's not the age, it's their mental acuity.
- [19:54]
Jonathan Vlast
Biden is basically a walking CTE head.
- [19:56]
Sarah Longwell
Injury at this point. The guy stumbles, he fumbles over things he's checked out. I mean, you look at him, I'm surprised they have not used the constitution.
- [20:06]
Jonathan Vlast
To try to take power from him.
- [20:08]
Sarah Longwell
And shuttle them off to the old folks. If Kamala Harris wasn't such an absentee landlord, I think I would feel a lot less worrisome about Biden because my grandfather was 86 when he passed away. So, like, if Joe were to go and you had somebody capable or at.
- [20:30]
Jonathan Vlast
Least visible, I would feel so much.
- [20:33]
Sarah Longwell
Better at this point. Who? Who friggin knows? I feel like Michelle Obama was way better and was way more visible. I never see Kamala Harris anywhere and I personally am extremely disappointed. I feel like she wasn't very visible.
- [20:50]
Jonathan Vlast
At all during Roe vs. Wade, something.
- [20:52]
Sarah Longwell
That majorly affects women in our country. She's been put in charge of like, the border and she was on like a gun violence task force and none of that's improved. I'm wondering what she's done after the election. She vanished. Yes. So I can't put my trust in the invisible woman. Now. Longtime listeners of the show will recognize some of that sound because one of the weirdest comments I've gotten, not a lot, but some people who are like, your focus group said Kamala Harris was gonna win. And I was like, no, they didn't. I mean, the last episode we did, I was like, I could use the focus groups to make a case either way. But I'll tell you what, they did show as clear as day. And I mean, if you go back and listen to shows from, you know, the year or 18 months ago, it was just, it was all over the data, which makes me so angry. And this is where I really want to push back on your idea that they're unserious and candidates matter a great, great deal. And the extent to Which Joe Biden had broken faith with people by running again. And the extent to which people felt lied to by both him and Kamala Harris by hiding his age when they saw that debate, that was so catastrophic and this stuff was already in there. Like, they already had to overcome this idea that, like, the guy was too old. And one of the things in my analysis that I also think was, like, a little wrong, because I listened to this kind of talk from swing voters for so long that was so negative about Biden and so negative about Harris that in that last hundred days, as she was getting people on board with her, the way that people sounded about her was so much better than it had been about him, that it really felt like a shift because it had been so dismal for so long that I think it was a bit of an overread, that shift in that I thought that she could win ultimately. What she did, I think was allow like a two or three seat margin in the House and a bunch of senators, Democratic senators, overperformed Kamala Harris and held onto their seats so that Republicans don't have a massive majority in the Senate. And I think that's the gift Kamala Harris gave to Democrats, which is that Donald Trump doesn't have an overwhelming majority in Congress because she got in there. Because if Joe Biden had stayed in, it would have been an absolute blowout and everybody would have gone down with him. And everybody's data shows that. All the focus groups show it. So anybody arguing, oh, no, Biden would have won if he stayed in. Like, no, no, no, I promise, I promise.
- [23:22]
Jonathan Vlast
One of the people in the focus groups actually made that argument. One of the people in the focus groups was mad that Biden stepped down and said that Biden absolutely would have won.
- [23:32]
Sarah Longwell
There's a couple like Biden.
- [23:33]
Jonathan Vlast
No, I'm agreeing.
- [23:34]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [23:35]
Jonathan Vlast
I'm agreeing with no. But this person voted for Trump.
- [23:37]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [23:37]
Jonathan Vlast
This is a person who voted for Trump and whose excuse for it was that it was because Biden was pushed out. I agree with you absolutely. Trump ran ahead of congressional Republicans for the first time ever in this race.
- [23:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [23:50]
Jonathan Vlast
And that is because Kamala Harris freed up space for congressional Democrats to do better. So exactly as you say. Had Biden been at the top of the ticket, I think this would have been an absolute wipeout for the Democratic Party.
- [24:06]
Sarah Longwell
I'm glad we agree on that.
- [24:09]
Jonathan Vlast
All right, that's it. No more shouting into the void, because the void isn't listening. In this post election moment, there is a subreddit, a meme page or newsletter for every one of your opinion bubbles. But if you want to stay involved with political news by understanding why the other side feels the way they do, you need Left, Right and Center. It's a weekly roundtable with representatives from both sides of the aisle because you want to understand, not just hear someone agree with you. I'm David Green hosting Left, Right and Center from kcrw. New episodes drop every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I'm sorry, can I say something else, though?
- [24:50]
Sarah Longwell
Go ahead.
- [24:50]
Jonathan Vlast
Because this, again, it's just unserious. Right. So all of these people, they're talking about how important mental acuity is and stability and age and all that. And the truth is the Democratic Party listened to them. Now, maybe they listened too late, but they listened.
- [25:04]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [25:04]
Jonathan Vlast
And Joe Biden stepped aside and they nominated a then 59 year old. And you know, when 60 year old nominee who was energetic, who waged a very energetic and vigorous campaign, who absolutely destroyed Donald Trump and exposed him as being totally out to lunch in their one debate. And it's not like down the stretch, Trump was like doing the thing where he's really dismayed. This is the guy who, remember he was just like dancing wordlessly for 30 minutes at a rally and you know, bobbing up and down on the mic. And so again, all the voters concerns were heard by the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party took a substantive measure to address it. And then you would have thought, well, then the entire, well, hey, hold on, mental acuity, look at how old this guy. Concerns would shift to Trump. And they never did. They never did.
- [25:56]
Sarah Longwell
I'm glad you brought up the switch because the voters, there was always a group of people and Republicans made a big deal out of this and it landed with people where they were not happy actually about the way that it was done. Right. Like, this is where I have a lot of residual frustration on this point because Joe Biden needed to step aside and allow there to be a Democratic primary. Like, I mean, I think that there are things that the campaign could have done differently. There was such a narrow margin in three states that like there are potentially things that you could have done here and there that would have allowed you to win that. But like the movement is so big and so broad. They're just like a lot of big factors that were difficult to overcome. And I think the only real way to have done that was that Joe Biden steps aside after the 2022 midterms, sometime in 2023, allows there to be a Democratic primary. He recognizes that he is unpopular and that people think he's too old to do the job. And Democrats are able to basically break with him, have their own primary. Whoever comes out of that, you know, is in a different position. They've been vetted. They felt like it was just handed to her and they didn't like it. So I want to turn back to these first time Trump voters. Obviously, I think the Biden administration created these massive headwinds for Harris. But two things were clear from the voters we talked to. They thought she was too tied to Biden and they didn't like that she was swapped in on the ticket. So let's listen.
- [27:14]
Jonathan Vlast
There was nothing that gave us any.
- [27:18]
Sarah Longwell
Idea something was going to change.
- [27:19]
Jonathan Vlast
She never said what was going to change.
- [27:22]
Sarah Longwell
And all those ads toward the end. And yeah, seeing the interviews where she.
- [27:28]
Jonathan Vlast
Didn'T say anything, Kamala seemed like she was more about the same of whatever's going on right now. She even said she didn't really see anything, you know, that need much improvement. So that just made me want to go for a change. Could have done anything that you guys.
- [27:45]
Sarah Longwell
Said you wanted and you didn't do anything. And now after we're in the situation, you oh, oh, give me another try.
- [27:50]
Jonathan Vlast
So I'm supposed to give you a.
- [27:51]
Sarah Longwell
Promotion after you failed. She had no policy. She brought nothing to the the discussion. So it was very obvious that when she was put in the position to run for president that she was being fed things and she was just doing what she was being told. If you're going to protect democracy, when was the last time that somebody was just put in election that nobody voted for in the primary and was allowed to run on the presidential ticket? Basically that's telling me that there is no democracy. It's either that's the candidate and deal with it. And I think almost like it was like, are you kidding me? Like when has that ever been a thing? Then I listened to Judge Joe Brown on these YouTube channels and I'm saying, wait, I'm getting a different perspective. And that perspective included the fact that she was never voted in to her positions. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, this is not the democratic process. And so I'm thinking, don't you have to go through the whole process of being vetted? But he lays out her whole chain of events of how she moved up the ladder some good and some way out there. She just kind of was placed into vice presidency. And I'm thinking, what is going on here? So I was looking at the process and I'm thinking something's not right here. You know, it's like a rat in the kitchen.
- [29:09]
Jonathan Vlast
When she was in the primaries last time, she hardly got any votes.
- [29:12]
Sarah Longwell
So I was like, okay. They kind of just put her in front of everybody. Jbl since the Harris high command gave interviews to the our friends over there at POD save one of the things that jumped out to me is just like their unwillingness to break with Biden. Like, and why Kamala Harris felt like she couldn't. And I sort of actually misstated slightly what Stephanie Cutter said in that interview. In the last one, I was saying to a stead that she was saying, look, there would have been all these stories, then it would have been this huge news cycle about breaking with Biden. And I was like, that probably would have been good. Like you needed a big news cycle. Talking about how Kamala Harris was breaking with Biden because people wanted that. They wanted to believe she had good ideas because Biden was super unpopular. What she was actually saying though, there would have been a bunch of leaks coming out of the Biden administration saying, well, wait a minute, she was in meetings. She didn't speak up and say this was a bad policy. She didn't say that, you know, we should be doing something different. That to me is like actually way worse as a reason because like the people inside the Biden team, we're going to leak and crap on her for that. Like, why? Geez, that speaks incredibly poorly of them. Like, let her break with him. It made me so angry. And I do think that if I had to point maybe to just one real mistake. It's not the View interview. It's what the View interview stood for, which was an unwillingness throughout the whole thing for her to break with Biden and say, like, no, no, no, I'm going to do things really differently and be my own person. What do you think? Do you think that voters thinking that this was kind of a last minute tactical maneuver being foisted on them left a bad taste in their mouths. What do you make of the argument that it was anti Democratic? Because I think that's been a pretty interesting. I move in a lot of democracy community spaces where they don't realize how much. Now Republicans are also saying things are anti Democratic that Democrats are doing as a way to push back on Democrats, saying Republicans are anti Democratic, which is causing Democratic as a thing to lose all meaning because it's polarized.
- [31:11]
Jonathan Vlast
What do you think it is possible that this is a legitimate complaint? And by a legitimate complaint, I mean this is A complaint that really matters to people and that move their thinking rather than this is a smokescreen they're throwing out just to alibi whatever their gut decision is. I mean, I would be surprised if this is like the first process argument in the history of America to actually matter to people that all of a sudden this process really matters. And I would say none of the people who we heard really sounded like Democratic primary voter types to me. Nobody seems bothered by the fact that Donald Trump didn't participate in any of the Republican primary debates and that that primary campaign was over after New Hampshire. I agree that Harris had a real problem trying to figure out what to do with Biden. And it's possible there was a better answer. It's also possible there wasn't a better answer, that doing things differently would have caused more harm than good. I'm saying that I'm open to both arguments on that, but I want to go through just some of the other things that people said about Harris here. I'm just going to go through some of the ones that I pulled out. They were trying to keep Kamala from being out in public and not being very responsive. Not, as somebody already mentioned, she couldn't carry on a conversation on tv. Like, I'm sorry, this is.
- [32:32]
Sarah Longwell
Oh, you hear this all the time.
- [32:34]
Jonathan Vlast
She was out in public constantly. And she was on podcasts constantly. And she was pretty.
- [32:40]
Sarah Longwell
Well, no, she wasn't.
- [32:41]
Jonathan Vlast
She was.
- [32:41]
Sarah Longwell
No, she wasn't. No, this is. I'm sorry, no, she wasn't. J.D. vance and Donald Trump, they were on podcasts constantly. She did big tent pole events and did them well and then would retreat. She crushed it at the dnc. Then she basically disappeared for a period of time while she was prepping for what, that 30 minute CNN? No, no, the 30 minute CNN.
- [33:03]
Jonathan Vlast
There was a big debate. She absolutely did. There was a lost week or 10 days between the end of the convention and the.
- [33:09]
Sarah Longwell
The only podcast she did was the Call her Daddy and it became a huge.
- [33:12]
Jonathan Vlast
She. She did the. The Golden State warriors podcast. She did Howard Stern.
- [33:15]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, she did like three. Like, the fact is you can name them. You can't even name all the ones. Donald Trump and J.D. vance lived in the alternative media ecosystem and she did it.
- [33:24]
Jonathan Vlast
Vance did. I mean, Trump did what? Rogan, the Lex somebody or another. I think you can name. Name them both. I don't think so, but here, I'll just read you some more. I hate her laughter. I can't stand her. She sounds like a witch. I can't stand to hear her speak like, you know, okay, here's one. When Kamala Harris had that interview on 60 Minutes, they edited her response. And I was just like, this whole system is rigged. Newsflash. 60 Minutes edits interviews. When they put like, you know, like, these are justifications. And then the woman m. Who, the Judge Joe Brown woman. You know how she had just been placed into all these jobs and never won elections. She was elected attorney general in California, she was elected to the Senate in California. She was elected to the vice presidency. That has a constitutional office for which people vote for you. You are on a ticket. I don't know what to say to people who listen to Judge Joe Brown on YouTube and then say, well, I couldn't vote for Kamala Harris because she's never been elected to anything in her life. She's just been appointed to things like. What do you say to that?
- [34:24]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I'll tell you. The number of times people reference where they get their news. Like, they'll say something like this. Where it's like listening to. And I'm like, I've never heard of this thing. Is all the time. Is all the time. So, you know, the. The chatter out there, the people who have their own YouTube channel, their own. This is where people are getting their information. And this is why I think, just like understanding that we live in a. Just an entirely new media environment is really important. And I do think that the Biden team, then by extension the Harris team, never really got the memo about how they had to be able to go into all these non traditional spaces and sort of authentic, non political ways.
- [35:04]
Jonathan Vlast
She did Charlemagne the God as well.
- [35:05]
Sarah Longwell
She did like a handful, but it was. It was just. It was not nearly enough. And look, when I was listening to the Pod Save America thing, they kept emphasizing we only had 100 days. We only had 100 days. Like, Biden was never going into any of these spaces. Like Biden passed on a Super bowl interview. And then they didn't quite have that muscle memory, right? And so they were basically trying to find her these big tent pole events where she could thrive. And she did in those, right? Like she would hit them and then you wouldn't get. And I complained about this at the time. I mean, I was like relentless on the. No, she needs to be out there getting her reps and getting good being talking to people.
- [35:38]
Jonathan Vlast
I think we all. I couldn't agree with you more. I just want to say I couldn't agree with you more. And we all. We said this at the time, right? I mean, we Were out every week saying she should do more, more, more, more, because she's good, the candidate is good, and the candidate is appealing. So the candidate should simply be out there 24 hours a day. But it isn't the truth that she didn't do anything. It isn't the truth that she couldn't carry on a conversation. She did do a bunch of high profile broadcasts and her performances were good on her.
- [36:05]
Sarah Longwell
Of course, I mean, the people saying, I didn't do anything, what they mean is like, Trump dominates the space in this way. And I think, you know, you got to figure out how to compete in that arena. And Democrats haven't, not quite figured that out yet. Okay, I got to move on because we, I need to talk about abortion and we haven't yet. So I want to just throw this in here. I've said for the last couple years that abortion isn't the most salient issue for voters. Right? I talk about this all the time. On how you say, how do you think things are going in the country? It's the opening question. Every single focus group, we do multiple a week. People are always like, bad. And the issues that they throw out just out of the gate are always inflation, economy, cost of living, my rent's too high, this or that, immigration, crime. Those are the things that come up. Abortion rarely does. But when you ask swing voters about it, it becomes clear that it's a deeply personal and emotional issue. I've done a couple over the years now. I've done several episodes specifically on abortion. And every time they end up being deeply emotional, people tell their personal stories. Especially if you have all women together, it, like, reaches into something deep. And so a lot of people, including me, thought that meant that running on abortion, you know, would help Harris because the campaign could raise the salience of that issue. Because when it is high salience, it works for them. But for the first time since Dobbs, like, that just turned out not to be the case, it was not as motivating to people as one would have hoped. Sometimes people are just like, they're talking too much about abortion, and it's because they wanted to hear about plans on the inflation, the economy, immigration, crime, because those were the things that mattered the most to them. So these are Biden to Trump voters who were unmoved by the Harris campaign's messaging on abortion. Let's listen. Who's running our country? I just can't base it off of women's right to get an abortion as wild like, yeah, that's important. But I Don't, I don't care about that. Like, close my border, help my, Help my neighborhood. Like, that's wild. Like, that was all her campaign was about. I think Americans are concerned right now if we're going to make it till tomorrow. You know, the state of the world. Abortion does not matter if we are in nuclear war or if we don't have anywhere to live or those things. Poverty, inflation, the economy, the state of the division in this country, those are the most important things right now. The focus on abortion the way it was was almost like they were fear mongering. They were making people think that women are not going to have control or say so over their own bodies, you know, that they're out of luck. And that's not, absolutely not true. And I felt like the more that they were losing in the argument, the more the embellishments were happening and it started to be almost like a copycat game. So if the abortion didn't work, then they were going to cut Social Security taxes and no taxes on tips. And I was just like, are we serious right now? I mean, she seemed to focus on Planned Parenthood a lot. And that's only affecting, what, 25% of people who actually use it.
- [39:07]
Jonathan Vlast
And then it was like, oh, oh.
- [39:08]
Sarah Longwell
Wait, I'm not resonating with black voters. Oh, we'll give you free weed. And I'm like, what is that going to do for me? Trump said from like the very beginning, he's going to leave it to the state levels. There's not going to be a nationwide abortion ban. You know, like, it's to your state, vote in your state. He made that very clear from the beginning. And it was amazing that that was the main thing that Kamala's campaign was about, was like, he's going to take your rights. He's going to take your rights. He's going to take your rights. And it was like, I see what you're doing. You know, you're trying to scare all the women. Like, we're going to get all of our rights stripped and everything. I think people really needed to do their research. It's by your state. If you don't like how things are going in your state, you need to go to the smaller elections and vote. That's just how I feel. But again, having the option to vote and have your voice heard is important. And I think if you're pro choice or pro life, vote that way in your state, so that way you can get what you want. It's not a Trump issue. It's a state issue. So for me, it just, it didn't impact anything for Trump. And I think that's another issue that I had with the Democrats is they kept forcing it. All Harris's campaign really was about was abortion, abortion, abortion, and that Trump doesn't have anything good for it. But we never actually heard Trump's whole plan for it because I don't think that he's actually going to be like, 100% harsh about it. I still think that everyone's gonna have their own choice, but that shouldn't be one of the hot topics. And it's not in, in the top five at all for me. Like, I think that Project 2025 thing was a scare tactic that was used, and it included LGBTQ rights and transgender rights and included all this stuff that I don't even think is even real. But anyway, I think with the whole abortion thing, I just, I think it kind of foreshadowed, I think something that was going on this country was just lack of accountability for one's actions, which is why I think that the Democratic Party felt that they weren't, they weren't pinpointing on, on topics that real Americans and real citizens wanted to hear. So they, that's when they threw out scare tactics and like, oh, well, you're gonna have the right to your body. So I want to tell you, after listening to all this stuff, I just want to say one thing that is like a big takeaway for me. Maybe two things. One is federal versus local on abortion matters a great deal. Like, people see it. They see the ability to vote on this locally as mattering a lot. Nationally, they can't make it the issue. That's one. The other one is that, and this is one that I did know and talked about all along, which is, like, I was pretty worried after listening to voters, they were never going to see Donald Trump as somebody who's a real threat to abortion because voters just don't see him as like a pro life type anyway. That's my read on that. What is your assessment of how abortion was used? And do you think that some of what people are saying about, like, it felt like they were trying to scare us. They weren't talking about what we cared about. Do you buy that or no?
- [42:19]
Jonathan Vlast
No. No, I don't. I'll explain why in a minute. Yes, Trump was able to run an abortion in a way that I don't think any other Republican can because he is a social libertine who has clearly paid for abortions probably. I don't know that for sure, but I don't know the chances that Donald Trump has never paid for an abortion or like, you know, and he was able to say like, oh, I kicked it back to the states, like he ran away from the question of would you support a federal ban and all that. And you and I said this all the way through the Republican primaries. We thought that he would be able to skate on abortion. And he did. I want to talk about a couple other things. And the woman who's like, you know, I couldn't care about abortion because I'm worried about nuclear war. What?
- [43:04]
Sarah Longwell
World War Three is a big, big strain of conversation.
- [43:08]
Jonathan Vlast
Like, I am sorry, but if you think that you can't worry about abortion laws because you're much more concerned with the looming nuclear war, I don't know. Okay, well why aren't you worried about the asteroid hitting us to like, I mean, again, just unserious. The guy K who talked about free weed that the Harris campaign pivoted to giving away free weed. Where was that? I missed that. I don't believe that that was ever something that was part of the Harris campaign. Free weed. But here's the thing. So you heard all throughout these focus groups and there was even more than just in the sound here, fear mongering, scare tactics, trying to scare us over and over and over again. And it was all about the Harris campaign and abortion. And here's what I find so interesting about this. The entire Trump campaign was based on fear mongering and scare tactics. That's why he ran the ad about transgendered surgeries for prisoners, of which two have ever happened. And I promise you, nobody who has ever been in one of your focus groups would ever have anything like that cross their field of vision in their real lives. Just not going to happen. And the scare tactics and fear mongering absolutely worked on that stuff. So it isn't that people don't like scare tactics or don't like fear mongering. It's just people exposing what their prejudices are, what their priorities are. Let me say a little more non judgmentally. And their priorities are the trans stuff and nuclear war, whatever that means. And the terribleness of vaccines. And their priorities are not about abortion. I think, I think that's what they're saying.
- [44:46]
Sarah Longwell
I think. Yeah, I mean, I don't think their priority was abortion. I think that's pretty clear. I do think it's more like you and I fought about this and I actually didn't even. It's not even in the sound because it's like, not really worth you and I doing our thing again. We've cut maybe a thousand hours on the economy and the state of it. But, like, this is where I kind of disagree with you on the. There was no policy and it's all seriously people, like, tell me what you're going to do to make my life better on cost of living, because that's my big pain point. And I will tell you. And I'm glad you brought up the trans ad because that is our next piece of sound and we're going to kind of wrap up with that because I do want to get into it.
- [45:21]
Jonathan Vlast
I'm sorry, we're going four hours on this show. You're not going to wrap me up that fast.
- [45:25]
Sarah Longwell
Fine. We can circle back to a couple of things and I'll just let you go toward the end. But on the trans ad, the trans ad is not about just trans stuff. The trans ad is good as a piece of political craftsmanship because it hits people in a lot of different places. It hits them on crime. These are criminals you are paying for. Right. It hits them on taxes. This is what your taxes are going to. It hits them on their sense that Democrats don't value like regular working people. They only value sort of these fringe cases, like a transgender person in jail. That's where. Where my tax dollars are going. You're right on. Like, it's only happened twice. But they understood how many of the places in a person's brain and anxieties they could hit with this. While overall the line of Trump cares about you, Kamala cares about they them is also a statement of priorities. It is a statement about who each candidate will prioritize. Listen, good advertising doesn't persuade. Good advertising unlocks something that you already kind of believe and raises its salience. And people already believe that Democrats are in some way out of touch on these cultural issues. And so this went to one of the most sort of outlandish. And then it had one other quality that was incredibly important, which is it included Kamala Harris's own words. And this is where the debate about progressive Kamala versus centrist Kamala, and she ran as a centrist, and it was a complete failure. And this is where I lose my mind. Because the extent to which people did not believe when they voted against her that she was a centrist, they believed she was a California liberal. This ad hit that so hard. The 2019 Kamala Harris or the 2020 Kamala Harris in the primary, the Democratic primary, said a bunch of things that were on tape, and those things were the majority of what voters heard about her. And it crushed her.
- [47:33]
Jonathan Vlast
I should say that in that clip, all she was doing was affirming her commitment to uphold existing federal law at the time. But, yes, I just want to, before we move on. So this voter s. Look at me. I'm being so good with the first initials that you're adding.
- [47:46]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, we just bleep you otherwise, so whatever.
- [47:48]
Jonathan Vlast
Right? So she, in. In the space of a very short period of time, she first uses the word fear mongering and is talking about the abortion stuff and says it was a whole lot of fear mongering. And then like 45 seconds later, she's talking about transgender stuff and she reveals her brother is transgender. And then she says, but they're not going to take away his rights. She says, they're not. Then she explains what it is that they're going to do about trans stuff. What they're taking away is the opportunity for you to come into schools and have drag shows. So she's worried about fear mongering and things that. Fear mongering about cases that have actually happened with abortion and like, 10 year old rape victims getting pregnant, having to, you know, those things are fear mongering. But what she's really worried about is the schools having drag shows. Are schools having drag shows?
- [48:38]
Sarah Longwell
You know, here's the thing. Well, this is where Libs of TikTok has done some real work. I saw one of them. It went super viral. Look, is it a thing that happens?
- [48:48]
Jonathan Vlast
It's been happening for hundreds of years, right? This is like, it's a funny thing that kids will do.
- [48:52]
Sarah Longwell
No, no, no. This was actually something that I was like, this is wildly inappropriate. Why is this happening somewhere? And the drag story hour thing that became such a sensation was like, you know, there's some town in Berkeley or, you know, San Francisco that did this. So it happens in one place and it becomes this totem of a cultural shift that's happening that people freak out about. So.
- [49:14]
Jonathan Vlast
But it is fear mongering. To raise that as the specter of the things that are happening everywhere is in fact itself fear mongering. Right?
- [49:21]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [49:22]
Jonathan Vlast
This is what I'm saying. Like, for this woman to go in the span of 45 seconds from castigating Kamala Harris from fear mongering to herself performing fear mongering, I mean, if what.
- [49:31]
Sarah Longwell
You want to do is spend a lot of time pointing out the inconsistencies in the way that average voters unserious.
- [49:37]
Jonathan Vlast
I want to point out their unseriousness.
- [49:39]
Sarah Longwell
Sarah, but what does that even mean? I mean, you now have said this like, they're not serious.
- [49:43]
Jonathan Vlast
That's right. They're not serious.
- [49:45]
Sarah Longwell
They're not all scholars who, like, follow politics. See, like, if they are marinating in libs of TikTok kind of world, they're seeing tons of examples of culture that shocks their sensibilities and that they find, like, a world they don't want to live in.
- [50:02]
Jonathan Vlast
Okay. I mean, again, I don't know what to say. People who can't, like, proportionally analyze and understand the world around them and like that in a country of 330 million people, there are going to be people who dress differently than you or do different things than you. And if it's not happening in your local school, which is, by the way, the only thing, you have control over the president. United States does not have control over the Berkeley school board, then you're not a serious person. You're just not a serious person. And I don't know what else to say about that.
- [50:30]
Sarah Longwell
Well, look, I'll mount the defense on their behalf just because I hear it all the time from the voters in the focus groups, which are. This is a party that can't tell you what a woman is. And so, like, they're reaching for fringe examples, but, like, let's take one that's pretty mainstream, which is just like the use of the phrase birthing person or some of these other ones that are much more mainstream. And so the point is, is that they're taking a signifier, right? Something that does tag to cultural things that they can see with their own eyes.
- [50:58]
Jonathan Vlast
Have these people ever come across the word birthing person in the course of their actual lives? I have four kids. Never in the course of our hospital journeys through various obstetrics departments and ob GYN offices, did we ever encounter the term birthing person. I understand you may have seen it on Libs of TikTok.
- [51:15]
Sarah Longwell
No, I've seen it on empty. There are media outlets now that have used it as, like, in a style guide kind of way.
- [51:21]
Jonathan Vlast
Well, great. If that makes you want to vote for fascism, then, like, have at it, I guess. But again, that is an unserious position.
- [51:29]
Sarah Longwell
Obviously. The Democrats, I think, have been on the losing end of the culture war conversation, where they dominated like, they were on the winning side of this for quite some time, primarily with gay marriage. But they're struggling now. And so let's listen to some of these voters talk about some of these culture war issues. They want us to be very tolerant of their more trendy beliefs and. And their values. But they're not willing to be tolerant of our values. Even though ours may be a little more traditional or conservative. They're not tolerant of that at all. So I feel like it needs to go both ways. If they expect us not to judge.
- [52:14]
Jonathan Vlast
Them for something, they need to respect.
- [52:17]
Sarah Longwell
Our beliefs and how we may have been brought up as well. It's hard to see my son feel guilty for being a man and being a white man, and he feels guilty for that.
- [52:30]
Jonathan Vlast
And he's very liberated and artsy, and.
- [52:33]
Sarah Longwell
He feels guilty for that. And that makes me so angry that something made him feel that way. And that's making me realize I. I can't keep supporting that direction anymore. I mean, nobody should feel guilty for what they're born as, what gender, what color, nothing. And the Kamala thing where she said that our taxpayer money was going to go to changing people's identity in jail, that really ticks me off, because you have all these homeless people and all, but then you're talking about taxpayer money going to people in jail, getting surgeries. That's completely wrong. The Democratic Party that I grew up with is not the Democratic Party of today. It feels like it's become much, much more liberal. Everything's woke. It's a canceled generation. It's things that we didn't grow up with. I'm not comfortable with the direction that it's taking. It doesn't feel like it's in the best interest of the safety of America because I am a black woman, you know, and I'm going into a field that's mainly dominated by white men. I have no prejudice against white men. What I have a fear of is being looked at and being hired as a diversity hire. I'm not trying to be hired for that. I want people to look at me, to see me as a functioning human being and understanding that this is why we're hiring you. And so I think that he definitely can pull those reins in, take all that crap out. We're people. Look at me as a person, please. Don't see my color. Don't see my gender. Stop. So I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you and I talk all the time, so I sort of have some sense of how you feel.
- [54:28]
Jonathan Vlast
You know me.
- [54:28]
Sarah Longwell
Let me ask it this way. Do you think there is anything Democrats need to do to change the perception that they are prioritizing the wrong things? Because I will say I have a tremendous amount of Sympathy for the idea that voters are kind of tired. I agree that white identity politics has become a thing, and that's bad. But I'm sort of on the side of anti identity politics. We all got to be in boxes, you know, we'll have to identify a million ways. And we got to have our pronouns like, I'm not, you know, like ragingly hostile to it. But I also do not find it compelling. I think it has ultimately done more damage than. Than it has helped. What do you think? Should the Democrats change on some of this stuff?
- [55:12]
Jonathan Vlast
I mean, I don't think the problem is Democrats. I think the problem is that it's a country of 330 million people. And in that country, there are a lot of people on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. And some of those people, I know this is shocking. Are annoying. Some of those annoying people are like weird identity obsessed progressives. And they themselves can be quite annoying. And I get that, I guess. And I'm sorry for the people who want to take out their frustrations with those people on Twitter, on Democratic politicians. But Joe Biden is President of the United States, and Joe Biden was not obsessed with identity politics. Right. Kamala Harris ran for president. She was not obsessed with identity politics. She barely ever mentioned that she was a black woman running for president. She sort of let that sit there. I talk about asymmetries a lot. You have Republican politicians explicitly embracing white nationalism and Christian nationalism, and then you have Democratic politicians being basically normies, but getting blamed for everything that some annoying progressive person on Twitter ever says. That's a real problem. But I also want to say that some of these complaints, I'm sure, are legitimate and not born of bigotry. But the woman who talked about how angry she is that her white son feels guilty, like, I'm sorry, go work that out in therapy. That is not Kamala Harris's fault. But there is another woman, and you didn't run the sound on this. Her name starts with a B. And I want to read something about when she talked about. Because she was talking about how, you know, she's a Christian. She's a real Christian. And for her it's not just the economy. It's just standing as a Christian knowing what's right and wrong. And she then says they really seem to be pushing a narrative of same sex marriages or same sex couples. I went into a kindergarten classroom and the little child had, at five years old, had on a T shirt, just had the word pride with a rainbow. So I said to the person that was working with him. I said, does his mother know what that means? Because if you're an older person, you might not know what pride means. And the worker said, she knows very well because she's married to a woman that's just, you know, that's horrible. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That is not somebody who is frustrated with overbearing progressives on Twitter. That is somebody who doesn't like what America is. And that's a different problem.
- [57:40]
Sarah Longwell
She was an older black woman who was very Christian who is against same sex marriage. And because she's against same sex marriage, seeing a kid who was a child of same sex couple wearing a PRIDE T shirt, you know, she felt like was very bad.
- [57:54]
Jonathan Vlast
But that's not a Democratic problem. You see what I'm saying? Like, there are people who just, they don't like what America is anymore. And I don't know how Democratic politicians are supposed to. To respond to that.
- [58:05]
Sarah Longwell
I disagree with this. I really do. Look, you're right. We didn't play the sound. And this comes through. You know, you hear somebody talking about gay marriage or gay people and they don't like them. But actually, that's not the majority of what you hear. The majority of what you hear is sort of the person who is like, I believe in everybody. I want everybody to be cool and I want everybody to be all right and I'll respect them. I just want them to respect me. That's more of what you hear. I think you are correct in the sense that Kamala Harris really tried to stay away this time from identity politics. That said, the reason that the Trump campaign puts so much money behind that trans ad was to make sure that she was dragged into the identity politics stuff. And they had her on tape saying something that really fit into whatever people's anxieties are that forms this big cloud called woke. And I think that the way that woke hits them usually is where they live. It's in their daily lives, right? It's people either saying, well, like, you need to put your pronouns in your email or you say Latinx now. And those are the kinds of things that, like, bug people. Or they're told that they said something offensive that or like, why is this offensive? I've said this all my life. And you're right that oftentimes sort of taken singularly, you're like, this does not justify voting for this psychopath. And obviously I agree with you on that. However, people are always going to rebel at change that they think goes too far outside of Things. And I think that there's a bunch of this stuff that does go too far, and a lot of it is in schools, and parents are dealing with it like it is in their lives. It's not just one crazy person online. And so I think it matters.
- [59:47]
Jonathan Vlast
Really question that. I really question whether it's true that people are seeing that in their lives. I think it's much more that they're seeing it through the lens of social media. They're seeing it on Facebook. It's like the litter boxes in school nonsense, Right? And they either believe that stuff or they believe that this one thing they saw is everywhere and that however normal things might be in their world, in their neighborhoods, in their county, in their schools, the fact that somebody out there somewhere has different values and is running their school system differently, like, really makes them angry.
- [60:25]
Sarah Longwell
So let me just ask an analytical question.
- [60:27]
Jonathan Vlast
Remember when the San Francisco schools were, like, renaming schools and we were all like, yeah, it's crazy and stupid. Right. But on the other hand, like, I don't live in San Francisco. That's not my school board. Like, that's there to say, this is what subsidiarity means. This is what localism means, is that, like, people get to govern closest to home. And so it is weird to sit in, you know, Georgia and say that the people in San Francisco shouldn't be able to do whatever they want with the names of their public schools.
- [60:53]
Sarah Longwell
But, buddy, this is my point. That's when they look at Kamala Harris and see her as a function of a person of San Francisco, and they say, I don't want that nationally. I think that's a big piece of it.
- [61:06]
Jonathan Vlast
Very possibly. Very possibly.
- [61:08]
Sarah Longwell
Here's the thing, though. We are more or less at the end, but I do want to give you the chance because I know I'm doing this because I want to hit the sound. I want to hit and sort of talk through the things that I thought were thematic about this race. But you've got strong feelings after watching these. Are there things that you think I missed or things about these voters beyond, you know, you saying they're unserious? Like, are there things that you, I don't know, want to talk about? I'm going to give you free range to go full JBL on the voters.
- [61:35]
Jonathan Vlast
Yeah. You want me to. Can I open my notebook?
- [61:37]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [61:38]
Jonathan Vlast
When I say unseriousness, I just mean that over and over, you would hear people saying things that made no sense. So, for instance, here is m. I'm more concerned that we're going to become like Rome and all these umpires that fall because we don't have people having jobs. Unemployment was under 4% for like the last 70 months or something. Okay, whatever job. She goes on to say they need to work on infrastructure and that includes transportation and that includes healthcare and that includes jobs. Under Joe Biden, we had one of the lowest sustained periods of unemployment ever. He passed the infrastructure bill and spent a bazillion dollars on infrastructure. He passed the CHIPS Act. I just don't understand how somebody whose stated concern was infrastructure and employment could look at the Biden administration and be unhappy with it. That does not make any sense. Another person r talked about how she is a New York City native and that the reason she voted for Trump was because a few months ago she went home to New York City and she could not believe what she saw. It doesn't even look like my city. I felt unsafe and you know, I was armed. How did you destroy the city in four years? First of all, you're not voting for mayor of New York City, ma'am. Second of all, I live in New York City. What are you talking about? Is it the Slims?
- [63:03]
Sarah Longwell
People do not know this joke of yours. They don't know this bit on this show. They don't know.
- [63:07]
Jonathan Vlast
Is it the string of hit Broadway musical like New York City is humming. Crime is way down in New York City. And by the way, if this woman was in fact armed in New York City then I suspect she was breaking the law because you need license to carry in New York. There are lots of areas which are designated safe gun free zones like Times Square. You cannot go into private establishments carrying unless you have the express permission of the owner. So like again, just an unserious human being, you know. She went on to say that New York City looks dark and poor. I thought I was in Detroit, Michigan. I'm sorry, that is simply an unserious thing to say. Nobody who has ever been in Detroit and New York within the last month could say yeah, sames. It's just, it's crazy. There's another guy, C who was making the point that he's, he's just ingrained in Democratic politics. I'm just going to read you his quote. Our newspaper in Georgetown, Ohio is called a news Democrat. So I've just been ingrained to be a Democrat. But this time around I voted for him because blah blah, blah, blah blah blah. So I was thinking to listen to that. I was like, huh, is that an accurate description of this guy's upbringing? And So I went and looked into Georgetown, Ohio. It's a little tiny rural hamlet in Brown county, Ohio, of 4,400 people. This gentleman said that he was raised to be a Democrat. So 2024, Trump got 80% of the vote. 2020, he got 78% of the vote. 2016, 72% of the vote. In 2012, Mitt Romney got 61%, McCain got 60, Bush got 63, Bush got 61. Like a Republican, hasn't gone below the 60% mark there in at least a generation. Like his own self, ID is just kind of wildly at odds with reality. And you see this over and over again with these people. As I was sitting around listening to them, they got to the section where your moderator asked them for advice for Democrats, which I thought was like, okay, well, this is a great, great moment to see, well, what do these people say? And their advice was just non sequiturs. Here's from a woman. S Her advice was just stop it. Stop. Take some time, go in a corner, regroup. Let another party emerge. Okay, great. That's what Democrats will do. Here's K. Fire everybody. Start from scratch and just fight like, you know, send everyone some nice pink slip and a two month severance package. J get a backbone and start to run the government like you would if you had your own small business or your family in your family. Okay. By the way, that's what Trump is going to do. He's running it like it's a family business. I hope you enjoy that. And then T said, I think at some point they stopped becoming Democrats and they became liberals. They needed to stop doing like those liberal policies. What liberal policies did Joe Biden pursue that she didn't like? Was it the CHIPS Act? Was the family child tax credit? Was that what she didn't like? I understand what you say or what you mean when you say that you gotta figure out a way to win these people because they all get a vote. God help us, they all get a vote. But there aren't rational answers to this. There are only communications answers or emotional answers. Because basically what you're doing is you're saying we've got to trick these unserious people into voting for us.
- [66:21]
Sarah Longwell
I don't know that you have to trick them.
- [66:23]
Jonathan Vlast
Yeah, no, I think you do, because these are not people who are going to make rational decisions. They're not people who, who are going to ever understand the world as it actually lives. We live in such a decadent, rich society that these people can float through life exactly this informed and be just fine. And I don't know what the answer to that is, but I believe that the political incentives it establishes are very bad. And it is why, when I look at what the future of the Democratic Party is, if the answer is that you have to start winning unserious people, then it means Democrats are probably going to figure out that they need to find themselves a demagogue, and that's not going to be great.
- [67:04]
Sarah Longwell
I really disagree with this premise that you have about they have to have their own demagogue. I do think they need to have a much better communicator. I think communication skills are now at a much higher premium than they used to be. And I think they have to have somebody that is both a very good communicator and communicates in a way that is engaging to people who are not interested in reading the Wall Street Journal or the Bulwark every day. And that the actual democratization of information in the absence of gatekeepers has made the necessity of appealing directly to people who aren't deeply engaged in politics more necessary. And that it's something that Democrats are going to have to figure out how to do, because that is how you're going to win elections going forward.
- [67:51]
Jonathan Vlast
Let me close with this from S who talked about how what really made her decide to vote for Trump was that somebody tried to shoot him. When he got shot, actually, it told me that someone really didn't want him to be in place. And usually when someone's trying to keep someone away that bad, that means they're possibly going to be that good. Good luck, America.
- [68:12]
Sarah Longwell
It's funny, that is a real common sentiment, actually, about Trump's prosecutions. I heard that argument over and over again. You know, when they went into Mar A Lago for the documents, everything, people were always like, they must really be trying to keep him out because they're really scared of him. And that made them like him more. And so, yeah, look, voters are complicated, but Democrats gonna have to figure out how to win.
- [68:33]
Jonathan Vlast
Voters are unserious. And if the answer is that you need to capture unserious voters, then you're gonna have to do unserious things to capture them.
- [68:41]
Sarah Longwell
Voters used to do this and they couldn't read. America is premised on the idea that, right, that we are against having to take a test to be able to vote. Everybody gets to vote. That's their right as Americans. And I think it's incumbent upon us, people who care about figuring out how to have this country be in a better place, how to convince them it's not on them to start reading the stuff we want them to read or to get the information we want them.
- [69:07]
Jonathan Vlast
To have that paternalistic I don't think so to say like I can't expect them to to on their own be serious like we've got to go meet them where they are I think it's realistic oh it is real I'm not disagreeing with that okay well but it's a it's an admission that they are.
- [69:23]
Sarah Longwell
What they are and have always been right humans people people are people they're complicated non linear a whole basket of of different thoughts and emotions and that's why pluralism and anyway okay good show long show JVL thanks for sitting through some of these again buddy I know it's hard on you we will be back next week in the meantime remember to subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bulwark plus member at Bulwark.com See you next week guys.