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- [00:07]
Ryan Knudsen
Molly, welcome to our new show, Red, White, and Donald Trump.
- [00:12]
Molly Ball
I feel like there might already be a Red, White, and Trump. Have we checked?
- [00:16]
Ryan Knudsen
Well, we don't really need to because this is our last episode of this series.
- [00:21]
Molly Ball
Well, all good things must come to an end, Ryan, but there's a lot to talk about.
- [00:25]
Ryan Knudsen
I want to. A lot of people are trying to understand how did we get the result that we did. So there's so much to talk about and we got a ton of questions from listeners we want to go through. So let's just do this one last time for old time's sake.
- [00:38]
Molly Ball
I'm so excited to answer all of the questions and put everybody's qualms to rest.
- [00:49]
Ryan Knudsen
From the Journal, this is Red, White.
- [00:51]
Molly Ball
And who, our show about the road to the White House.
- [00:54]
Ryan Knudsen
I'm Ryan Knudsen.
- [00:55]
Molly Ball
And I'm Molly ball.
- [00:56]
Ryan Knudsen
It's Friday, November 8th. Coming up on the show, we dive into the 2024 election results and start to think about what comes next.
- [01:17]
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- [02:21]
Ryan Knudsen
All right, Molly, so this election is over. Donald Trump has been declared the winner. And while Nevada and Arizona have still yet to be called, it's looking like Trump is going to end up with 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris. 226. So your prediction that at the end of the day we'd end up with a blowout in the Electoral College turned out to be true.
- [02:43]
Molly Ball
I don't like to use the word blowout or landslide. I mean, I think those are subjective. But it was the case that all of the swing states ended up going the same way. And so, yes, that prediction was correct, I suppose. I will take the credit and stop arguing.
- [02:58]
Ryan Knudsen
Well, so we have a couple of days now to dig into the data and start looking at the exit polls. And I know exit polls are not entirely accurate because they are just polls. In the coming months, we will get more granular and more accurate data about how people voted. But what are you seeing so far about this political realignment that we've talked so much about on the show? Sort of. What do we see in the data about who delivered Trump this victory?
- [03:23]
Molly Ball
What we saw was that he made gains more or less across the board. There were some exceptions. Kamala Harris actually did better with white voters than a Democratic nominee has done in the last several elections. But Trump gained with a lot of minority voters. This was something we had reason to anticipate. It was a result that was showing up in a lot of polls. A lot of Democrats dismissed it. They thought this couldn't possibly be true. But in fact, we did see in the end, it does appear that Trump won with the most diverse coalition of any Republican candidate in living memory. And he really made remarkable gains with black voters, with Latino voters, with young voters, with men. But he also did better with women this time than he did last time, where a lot of people were saying we were going to have a historic gender gap because he would run up the score with men and she would correspondingly run up the score with women. That didn't really happen. What happened was that Trump did very, very well with men, but he also did slightly better with women than before, with the result that the gender gap was actually smaller.
- [04:33]
Ryan Knudsen
Do you think there's anything that Kamala Harris and her campaign could have done differently?
- [04:38]
Molly Ball
This is the question that Democrats are debating, not to say, ripping themselves apart over right now. I do think a lot of the criticisms that we heard of the Harris campaign while she was running seem more significant in retrospect. The fact that there was never really an animating message to her campaign. And I think beyond that, she ran a very cautious, very scripted, very inauthentic campaign. It was very reminiscent of the Hillary Clinton campaign in a lot of ways. You know, not speaking to the media very much, not opening herself up to questions. We talked so many times on this show about how voters often did not feel like they knew her or had a sense of what her vision or her worldview was. And a lot of that was because she really confined herself to giving speeches, giving the same speech over and over again. And that was sort of all she allowed people to know about her. So there are tactical things that she might have done differently in terms of which segments of the electorate she targeted and how she communicated with them. But I think there's also, at the end of the day, the fact that the electorate was in the mood for change and that that was something she really refused to give them. She really refused to separate herself in any substantive way from Joe Biden and the Biden administration. The last thing I'll say, though, is that she really fell victim to a broad anti incumbent mood that we have seen on a global scale. Incumbents all around the world are dismally unpopular and have been losing elections over the past year or two. And a lot of it has to do with inflation. But there is a broad feeling among people worldwide that something has to change, that there's a dissatisfaction with the status quo, and that has been bigger than even just America. And so she clearly was a victim of that as well.
- [06:44]
Ryan Knudsen
There were two big messages that the Harris campaign seemed like they tried to talk about. The first one that I want to ask you about is abortion. What's your sense of how well that issue resonated with the voters, given how things turned out?
- [06:57]
Molly Ball
Well, it was important to people. It wasn't the most important thing, but it was definitely up in the top few issues in most exit polls. But one thing that was interesting, I mean, we talked about how this was the first presidential election post Dobbs, and that that was a sort of unpredictable factor. And we also talked about how Trump had tried to moderate the Republican Party's position on this issue, even though it was his Supreme Court that was responsible for taking away abortion rights. And a really interesting result in the exit polls here is that while the majority of voters said that abortion should be legal in either all or most cases, among the plurality that said abortion should be legal in most cases, the candidates actually split that vote. 49. 49. So there were a lot of voters out there who wanted abortion to be legal and did not think that Trump would ban it, believed him when he said he would not enact a national abortion ban, and did not believe Kamala Harris when she said that that was something that Trump would do.
- [08:02]
Ryan Knudsen
And they also, in several states, had the opportunity to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions while also simultaneously voting for Donald Trump.
- [08:11]
Molly Ball
In the 10 states that had abortion ballot initiatives, seven of them succeeded, and some of those were in red states that voted at the same time for Donald Trump. So there were quite a few voters who were Trump voters who also voted for abortion rights.
- [08:30]
Ryan Knudsen
The other big part of Kamala Harris campaign Especially toward the end was this idea that democracy is on a ballot, that Trump is a fascist. You also saw a lot of people that were in Trump's cabinet throughout his first administration that were sort of saying the same thing. Do you think that that fascism argument was something that voters just didn't believe or that they believed but were okay with because they're so hungry for change?
- [08:57]
Molly Ball
It clearly wasn't persuasive to enough voters. There was evidence that the idea that democracy was on the ballot was widespread and that it was an important issue for people. They just weren't necessari, necessarily all Kamala Harris voters. The exit pollsters asked people whether they thought democracy was under threat. And the vast majority of voters said that democracy was very or somewhat threatened. But Trump won those voters. Trump won the majority of voters who said that democracy was either somewhat threatened or very threatened. So people did internalize the idea that democracy was on the ballot. But many of those people were Trump voters.
- [09:38]
Ryan Knudsen
That's pretty remarkable that Kamala Harris and the Democrats made democracy a centerpiece of their argument. And voters seem to have heard that and said, yeah, and it's you, the Democrats, that we're worried about.
- [09:53]
Molly Ball
Absolutely. And I heard this all year long from people at Trump rallies that they believed that it was the Biden administration that was a threat to democracy. Whether it was their false belief that the 2020 election was stolen or their opposition to what they viewed as the politically motivated prosecutions of Trump, the so called lawfare weaponization of government that they believed led to Trump being criminally prosecuted. Another argument that I heard commonly from Trump supporters was that they believed that the naming of Harris to the Democratic ticket was undemocratic, that the fact that Biden had won the primary, but then it was Harris who became the nominee after Biden dropped out. A lot of Trump voters saw that as undemocratic. It was perfectly legal what the Democrats did in switching the ticket, but it was arguably not small d Democratic in the sense that the people got to choose who their nominee would be.
- [10:54]
Ryan Knudsen
Do you think that looking back now, Democrats have any regret about pushing Joe Biden off the ticket and and Harris getting the nomination?
- [11:02]
Molly Ball
That is not a major argument that I have heard now in the swirl of Democratic recriminations that are only going to grow, I think, in the coming weeks and months, there is a lot of blame being directed at Biden for having run for reelection at all, for not having passed the torch sooner and allowed the party to have a competitive primary that might have led to either a different, stronger candidate being elevated or a Kamala Harris nomination that would have been earned and she would have been sort of put through her paces. She would have more practice. She would have been sort of vetted in a more robust way. So a lot of Democrats are angry at Joe Biden, but I have not heard anybody arguing that had Biden stayed on the ticket in the condition that he is in, having seen what we saw in the June debate, that he would have done better than Harris. Don't think very many people believe that.
- [12:01]
Ryan Knudsen
All right. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to get to some listener questions about what happens next.
- [12:08]
Molly Ball
I can't wait.
- [12:16]
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- [12:52]
Ryan Knudsen
Okay, so we asked our listeners to send in questions and we got quite a few. So we're going to take this first question from Reid Lawrence in Pennsylvania.
- [13:00]
Molly Ball
Hi, Molly.
- [13:01]
Ryan Knudsen
Hi, Ryan. My name is Reid Lawrence and I'm a registered Democrat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
- [13:07]
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I didn't think some of these thoughts.
- [13:09]
Ryan Knudsen
Would be running through my head, but for the sake of asking someone like Trump has many of the world's richest people and largest countries seemingly in his back pocket and has for a while, is it still unreasonable to think that there is anything nefarious about this election?
- [13:24]
Molly Ball
Thank you so much, Reid, for your question. I believe the answer is it is unreasonable to think that there was anything nefarious about this election. From what we can tell, this election was free and fair and secure. Now, did those billionaires potentially have an influence on it? Sure, but they're allowed to do that. And I would point out that more billionaires supported Kamala Harris than supported Donald Trump, even if not all of them them were going on stage and jumping up and down with her like Elon Musk was with Trump. There were also there was a rash of bomb threats that apparently originated in Russia that were called into polling places on election day. But this was something that election officials noticed, dealt with, still allowed everybody to vote. There were some polling places that were shut down very briefly, but we don't have any reason to believe that any kind of foreign interference had a large effect on a large number of voters or led to the outcome being changed in any way. And I would be saying the same thing if Kamala Harris won and Trump was out there trying to sow doubt about the election result. We have every reason to believe that this was a free and fair and secure election, and this was, in fact, the will of the people being expressed in the result.
- [14:43]
Ryan Knudsen
So do you think that this result in this election will have any impact on Republicans faith in election integrity? Because, as we've seen from a lot of surveys earlier, that Republicans largely had lost a lot of faith in election integrity.
- [14:59]
Molly Ball
To me, the important thing is people being willing to accept losing elections. That is really the key to democracy and trust in democracy, is that people believe in the elections that they have lost, that someone like Reid, who was apparently on the wrong side of this election result, nonetheless believes that this is the legitimate outcome and goes forward on that basis. So, no, I will not be convinced that Republicans have their faith restored in elections until they lose an election and believe in that one.
- [15:33]
Ryan Knudsen
All right, the next question comes from Adam Hartman in Texas.
- [15:37]
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My question for Molly is, do you believe that Trump benefited from adding RFK and Nicole Shanahan and Tulsi Gabbard, you know, all recent former Democrats, to his inner circle? It actually got my vote because I'm looking forward to seeing what RFK can do within Trump's administration. Thank you.
- [16:05]
Molly Ball
Thank you for your question, Adam. And once again, I think the answer to your question is yes. I think that Trump did benefit from building this coalition that was broad enough to include RFK and his voters and the large number of voters who are skeptical of vaccines, the public health establishment, the national security establishment, and so on. The Democrats dismissed the RFK supporters as this sort of tiny fringe, but what we've seen is that there is a larger and larger group of voters who believe in these conspiracy theories and that their votes count just as much as anybody else's. And Trump was probably wise to accept their support and to, in fact, court that segment of the electorate.
- [16:52]
Ryan Knudsen
So now that he has won, what's your sense of what Trump and his team will do on day one once he gets into the White House? Yeah.
- [17:01]
Molly Ball
So there's four main things that I will be watching for Trump to do on day one or even before. Number one, eliminate the traditional independence of the Justice Department and make it an arm of his will. We are already seeing the criminal cases against Trump get wound down. I expect he will fire or accept the resignation of the FBI director and seek to make the entire apparatus of federal law enforcement far more loyal to the president and use it as an instrument of his agenda, whether that's helping friends, punishing enemies, what have you. Number two, he has said that he will end the war in Ukraine before he even becomes president. We don't know exactly how that's going to happen, but it is something he has promised to do. His critics, of course, believe that he will do this by giving away the store to Putin. We'll see whether he manages to achieve that. But that is something that he has said he will do before he even gets inaugurated for another term. And then mass deportation. This is we expect him to reinstate a lot of the immigration focused executive orders that were in place before Joe Biden came into office and got rid of them. And tariffs. This is something that is largely within the power of the president to impose tariffs. He has said he wants sweeping across the board. Tariffs. Economists pretty much unanimously believe that this is a bad idea and will make inflation worse. But it is a part of his agenda. He thinks the economists are wrong. So we're going to find out.
- [18:46]
Ryan Knudsen
And then of course, it will probably be easier for him to enact a lot of these policies because Republicans have won control of the Senate and it looks like they're on course to retain power in the House of Representatives, too. So all the branches of government are going to be held by Republicans.
- [19:01]
Molly Ball
Not only that, but the Republicans who are in control of the House and Senate are much Trumpier now. Right. He came in with a trifecta in 2016 as well. But a lot of the Republicans were not Trump Republicans. They were more traditional conservatives and they really rebelled against a lot of the things that he wanted them to do. Now he is going to have a Republican majority in the Senate and most likely the House. That is much more on board with his agenda.
- [19:34]
Ryan Knudsen
All right, so switching gears over to the other side of the aisle, where does this election leave the Democrats?
- [19:42]
Molly Ball
Well, they are in the wilderness. They are really going to be doing a lot of soul searching. Now, I've covered a few elections. Now this is something that always happens at the losing party, particularly when they didn't expect to lose. Has to sort of go back to the drawing board and think about what did they get wrong. And you're going to have a lot of hand wringing among Democratic leaders and a lot of discussion and debate about how they can change their message to be more appealing.
- [20:15]
Ryan Knudsen
Where are the sort of lines of schools of thought right now about what needs to change. Bernie Sanders put out a statement the other day saying, quote, it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and black workers as well.
- [20:34]
Molly Ball
So I smiled when I saw this statement because I feel like every four years, like clockwork, Bernie Sanders puts out a version of the same statement. But I would say this is something that I'm hearing from a lot of Democrats, because Democrats do flatter themselves that they are the party of the working class. And it was clear in this election that particularly voters without college degrees across age and racial lines did not see them that way, did not believe that their policies were actually better for working people in a lot of cases. So I think that's going to be a lot of the conversation among Democrats. Now, some of this will fall along ideological lines. Already you're hearing progressives say Kamala Harris was too centrist. She was out there campaigning with Liz Cheney when she should have been up there with aoc. She should have done more to speak to the Gaza protesters. But centrist Democrats believe that Harris didn't do enough to distance herself from the far left. And while she took a mix of centrist and progressive positions in her campaign, she never explained why she had moved away from her far left positions that she took as part of the 2020 campaign. And she never distanced herself from the far left, whose positions are quite out of step with the mainstream. So I think we're going to hear a very lively debate between those ideological factions about which course the party should be on.
- [22:03]
Ryan Knudsen
How do you think Kamala Harris, gender and ethnicity played into this outcome?
- [22:09]
Molly Ball
This is certainly something that a lot of Democrats are saying is that this election proved that it was just too much to expect America to elect a black woman. Of course, we still have never had a woman president, and the two who have tried have both been defeated by Donald Trump in elections that were very much about gender politics, elections where Trump was accused of all kinds of misogyny and being opposed to women. I will say that that is a harder argument to make after we saw Trump gain in vote share among both women and minorities. So this is the kind of intangible thing that we can never really. But I will say that to the extent that Democrats are tempted to blame this as a factor, it is still something that they have to deal with.
- [23:00]
Ryan Knudsen
So, I mean, I know Democrats seem to lose just across the board here, but is there any Good news for Democrats. Is there any silver linings?
- [23:08]
Molly Ball
Yeah, I think there are actually a lot of bright spots for Democrats in this election. Remember, they lost the national popular vote by 3 percentage points. So this wasn't a wipeout. Right. This wasn't 49 states like Reagan in 84 or something like that. In fact, many of their Senate candidates were able to outperform Kamala Harris and win their races. So in Michigan and Wisconsin and Arizona, and it looks like possibly Nevada, Democratic Senate candidates were able to narrowly win in states that Kamala Harris narrowly lost. They still have quite a robust bench. A lot of people saw Kamala Harris concession speech as her saying that she wants to be still considered part of that bench. She wants to potentially be a candidate in the future. But there's also a lot of other strong Democratic candidates down ballot who we got to know. Well, in this election, some of the Democratic governors, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, potentially Tim Walz, although he's not someone who has been thought of as having national ambitions. But the Democrats do have a strong and a lot of Democratic candidates proved that they could win in a very, very difficult national environment. Democrats are also celebrating several historic firsts in this class of newly elected officials. For the first time, there will be an openly trans member of Congress. They got the first Korean American senator in New Jersey, Andy Kim. And for the first time in history, two black women senators will serve at the same time.
- [24:48]
Ryan Knudsen
So I want to sort of finish by talking about the realignment again. The big thing that we've been talking about, the Republican Party is very much Trump's now. But Donald Trump, of course, will only serve one term. He is the oldest person to ever be elected president. So where do you see the future of the Republican Party? Do you think that this coalition that he has put together will last and be kind of one of these generational shifts, that this is gonna always be the Republican Party, or do you think that there's a chance that it might flip again?
- [25:17]
Molly Ball
We've talked a lot about how Trump has reshaped the Republican Party both ideologically and demographically. And those things are, of course, linked. But you know, those working class black and brown voters who have now voted for the Republicans, do they stay in the tent? And I think it depends on what the Republicans offer them and how they govern and whether they're able to provide the peace and prosperity that Donald Trump has promised. But I think we are potentially in a fascinating political moment for this country where the parties have sort of shifted on their axes and A lot is up for grabs, and that is what I'm going to be interested in covering over the next four years.
- [25:58]
Ryan Knudsen
You know, Molly, I have a new counter that I set up over here which has 1,460 days on it until the next presidential election.
- [26:07]
Molly Ball
I can't believe you're not just counting down to Christmas, Ryan.
- [26:09]
Ryan Knudsen
Oh, I'm doing that, too. I think it's only like 50 days until Christmas. Yeah. Even fewer to Thanksgiving. Only about 20 days until then.
- [26:16]
Molly Ball
Good to know. I'll have to set up my own counter as well.
- [26:22]
Ryan Knudsen
Well, thanks so much for your time today and all of your time throughout this campaign season. I feel so much smarter having had all these conversations with you.
- [26:31]
Molly Ball
Right back at you, Ryan. This has been so much fun. It has been so gratifying. And thank you to all of our listeners who have really made the podcast. I have loved all the feedback we have gotten, loved all the questions we have gotten, and just loved knowing that this show has resonated with so many people. That's incredibly gratifying.
- [26:49]
Ryan Knudsen
Yes. Thank you. And thank everybody who's been listening.
- [26:52]
Molly Ball
Thanks you guys.
- [26:53]
Ryan Knudsen
Yes, we love you back.
- [26:55]
Molly Ball
We love you back.
- [27:02]
Ryan Knudsen
Red White and who is part of the Journal, which is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Our senior producer is Rachel Humphries. Our producer is Pierce Singey. Our editor is Catherine Whalen. I'm Ryan Knutson. This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by so Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional scoring in this episode by the one, the only, Peter Leonard. Fact checking by Amelia Schonbeck. Artwork in this series by James Walton. Special thanks to Kate Leinbach, Sarah Platt, Ben Pershing, and the whole Journal team. And thanks again to all of you, our listeners, for sharing your thoughts, feelings and voice notes with us during this election cycle. We loved hearing from you and we hope to keep seeing you in the Journal podcast feed where we'll continue to closely cover the next administration.