Hey, guys, ready.
Or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, Let's get to the show. Donald D. Trump officially declared president of the president elect of the United States. He won the election last night. The AP called the race around four in the morning or so.
He took to the stage roughly around two thirty to declare victory in a speech. We have some of that speech. This is the correct one this time. Let's take a listen and let's queue it up and watch.
Well.
I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends in this incredible movement. This is a movement nobody's ever seen before. And frankly, this was I believe the greatest political movement of all time. There's ever been anything like this in this country and maybe the all and now it's going to reach a new level of importance because we're going to help our country heal. We're going to help our country here.
We have a.
Country that needs help, and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders, We're going to fix everything about our country. And we made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that we overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible and it is now clear that we've achieved the most incredible political they look, what happened? Is this crazy? But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing
like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your forty seventh president.
And you are forty fifth president, and.
Every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day I will be fighting for you, and with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve.
So there we go. That was the victory. Speech continued for a little bit while Kamala Harris will be giving her concession a little bit later today. Guys, we can put that up on the screen. Roughly around four pm Eastern time here in Washington from Howard University, where she spent some of election night at her party on Tuesday, decided the news leaked out roughly around two am that she wouldn't be taking the stage to give her concession
at that time. But yeah, I mean yeah, for those who were not watching live, we had a fun like you know, joke about the fact is the right is very upset that she is not giving a concession. And I mean, like, on principle, I do agree that she's just conceded like last night and or this morning, like Hillary Clinton. But yeah, she's decided to drag it out a little bit. Also, we have never heard a word from the White House. The pile weren't crazy.
The people weren't.
Therefore, sorry, God, let let him hear our decent counter, which is that be my guest. Trump still to this day has given his concession speech for twenty twenty.
Well now he doesn't have to. Now he never has.
He should give one the time.
What does he have Towell?
You know what, I actually I actually did lose in twenty twenty.
It was just what did he say? It was being sarcastic or something.
He was being sarcastic, Yeah, because he did act she sort of kind of admit that he lost. And then when he got asked about it the debate, he was like, I wasn't being real. That was just now he could do the reverse if you like, that will stop this deal.
So that wasn't I didn't mean it anyway.
It's over.
But I will say this is legitimately a huge lingering question for the MAGA right, which poured millions of dollars everyone knows. I mean, if you were in the conservative space for the last couple of years, all the donor energy and money was behind election integrity, and they were. Yesterday Donald Trump was saying, he's pointing to alleged I regularities all over the country, and so this is going
to be a huge, huge question, did it. Are they going to claim that the election integrity counter efforts worked?
I mean, seriously, let's all be honest.
But this is actually the part I woant to elaborate on because I was just on Peers Morgan with that guy Vinni from PbD and he was saying, all this the number one priority and the Trump administration needs to be election integrity because the Democrats flew all these illegals into swing states blah blah blah.
It's like, well, if they did.
That, why didn't it deliver form like what happened.
Trump?
That's it the Latino shifts like you ended up winning them. So I guess you're welcome.
So we do have an element that I think really hammers home just how titanic of an election this was. Let's go ahead and put the at Financial Times chart please on the screen. It's in the rundown called the red wave chart. And basically Donald Trump gained ground in all forty eight out of fifty states or Washington, Utah and Washington where he did not improve his performance from last time around.
And if you look at the map like coast to coast, I mean it is just a siege. That Washington Post map we kept pulling up last night and referring to that shows the shifts in every county. It's like just a wash in red. And so it wasn't just the biggest ships were among some of the demographic groups we talked about, Latinos in particular.
That's the big the big thing of the pro demographic two.
You know, young Men and jen x Men actually were big showed up big for Donald Trump as well.
Jen x Men. That sounds like a TV show, a really bad one, Yeah, coming to TV land.
But you know, the games were almost across the board.
Yeah, I mean, it really was every demographic.
Yeah, and so it makes it very hard to you know, so we're going to react to some of the media stuff later, but it makes it very hard to feel like, oh, it was you know, Arab Americans, it was this, It was that. It really was a sort of national movement repudiation, which I think, you know, also makes it more difficult for liberals and Democratic Party supporters in certain ways to deal with in twenty sixteen, because twenty sixteen it was like call me Russia, sexism.
She didn't go to Wisconsin. Next time we'll get them.
Yeah, this time, it's like holy shit, yep, yeah, you.
Know what, Now we have our election guru, Logan. By the way, we're going to bring Logan in here, now, go ahead, Logan.
I think you're right about that, Crystal, and this is
a tough day if you're a Democrat. But I also would say there's been like five times in the last twenty four to twenty eight years where a party thought they were completely out after a bad election, you know, from nineteen ninety six for Republicans to after nine to eleven and two thousand and four Democrats thinking they were hopeless Publicans feeling hopeless in a way like we just go through this all the time, and I'm just starting the list, but I'm gonna finish that.
Some one, well what were you, Well, no, you're not wrong that we should This is not this is not an obituary forever, but it is a near term problem. Like it's a shake problem, not only problem, it's a narrative buster in so many ways. Like we have the Latino men who over they went majority for Donald Trump. We had white suburban women who they bet the house on who also went majority for Donald Trump. So we did see an overall increase in some of the female vote.
But one of the things actually that was incorrect was this idea that the gender gap was going to be exclusive amongst Gen zs. Not Actually it was just roughly around twenty points, which is normal. It was just up and down the chain all the way from senior men to senior women.
Total mirror image.
Absolutely in terms of the retrospective too. It's really interesting, you know, thinking about polls and modeling and kind of like what went wrong here. I haven't looked at the exact number, but I believe that the poll on average in the battleground states off by about three point five
percent away from Donald Trump's direction. But really the big failure here, no offense, logan, because it's not your fault, but it's everybody for all of the modelers was they simply had no idea how to facilitate a model where you had such major independent, young voter, Latino voter, and even black mail voters all breaking for Trump in a way that they have never voted before in modern history. So curious.
Yeah, and let me toss that to you look at it with a slight defense as well, like counter to sagers that if we're looking at like the RCP battleground averages and going back to where they actually ended up, it was still these counts in these states, it's looking like it is marginal. To be fair, it's looking like maybe a three point victory in Pennsylvania.
What a one point.
Five that's pretty big, you know, but I mean based on.
Where the poll was a margin of error.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, if if you had a bunch of polls that.
Were like Ti trumpless one hot one, you're looking at a margin of er kind of race.
Yeah, I say it's on the on the outer bound to that, right, but not in like Wisconsin.
So if we're looking at Wisconsin, if we're looking at I guess Georgia and North Carolina is looking more likely Pennsylvania, Michigan. So logan, I mean, what does that tell us about how well or how poorly the posters actually performed here?
I think the posters did an okay job when it came to showing the shape of the electorate or the shape of the election, I should say in that they were saying, hey, the swing states, they're way more competitive than the popular vote would suggest. And the popular vote ended up, you know out Democrats ended about right losing it. But you know it could be to the point that even a one percent loss for Democrats could lead to a popular to an electoral college victory. And really what
happened is was just a few points off. But this shape was roughly right.
I mean, they did pick up some of the trend, you know, the Latino shift, ye, the African American shift.
The gender gun.
Yeah, I mean there were us from there.
But I think you just have to say, after three election cycles of Trump outperforming the polls, that they just can't totally capture his coltion exactly. And so the ones that were like trying to clude like, well, we're just gonna spot them a few points in Hinzeier, well, I guess that was the right thing to do.
Well.
Also, it's a couple of things because it's not only was his strength and rural voters so strong last night, it was his ability to drive it out everywhere across the board. So I have some fascinating numbers that actually show his blue state strength, which is, by the way, this is crazy just for popular vote purposes considering that he won that, but also for how the GOP will conceive of itself in the future. So in New York, for example, it went from Democrat plus twenty three to
Democrat plus twelve. So that's almost what a twelve points wing. Almost New Jersey went from D sixteen to D plus four. It's only a four point margin. In Massachusetts D thirty three, D twenty six, Rhode Island went D twenty three D thirteen. Connecticut d two eight, Vermont thirty six thirty two, that's the only one that state, relatively flat Maryland even had a ten point swing towards Donald Trump, and even Joe Biden's home state of Delaware had a five point swing
towards Trump. So one policy implication I tweeted this morning is, by the way, Salt Cap, it's back on the table. There's no way if you blow it out like this and you win. I think he did better in the City of New York, in Manhattan than any Republican since like nineteen ninety two something like that. Over thirty years, actually in AOC's district in the Bronx increased his Hispanic
vote share. So I mean, it's just wild if you look at all of the if anything, to me, the swing state swing, the demos there and the movement is even less interesting than a lot of this stuff happening in California, in New York. In Texas, for example, we saw Star County, the most Latino county in the entire state, swing towards Donald Trump. I think it's a fifty or sixty point swing from how they voted in twenty sixteen. So I mean that is to me true like shocking thing.
And you know, the only mistake I think I made in my election prediction was not betting hard enough on the Latino realignment, remember, because that was my justification. I was like, well, it's gonna be a problem and all of this. But to be honest, a lot of these traditional political people, like our posters, people like Anne Seltzer, I mean, she was wrong by what fift something.
It's like the Marquette No, this is like the it's like the Marquette Pole twenty no.
No, but this is the Marquette poles.
Talk about Moody Day indicated alive totally.
Maybe no, no, no, no.
It reminds me of when the Marquette Pole came out in twenty twenty. Everyone in DC thinks of the Market Pole as the quote unquote gold standard. People Wisconsin are very proud of it. I've seen it be wrong many times. And that market pole that had Biden up at like
fourteen points in twenty twenty. He won the state in Wisconsin, but it was not a fourteen point victory, right, And so there's something really wrong in some of those polls that led I mean, I think women This is probably one of the interesting stories to come out of it is if you're looking again at suburban Atlantis and Milwaukee, Trump did.
He just did better with women than people expect it.
So let me say what I think happened, and also why I got it so wrong, because I think I overlearned the lesson of twenty twenty two, where we were going in like this is going to be a run, where like.
It is a wrap. Look at these numbers, the economic numbers.
Inflation's bad, Biden's unpopular, like this is going to be a bloodbath, and Republicans won the popular vote, but it wasn't, and you know, bucked historic trends.
Democrats really outperform.
And you look at, you know, at who did the worst, and it was people who were really bad on abortion and states that had you know, abortion as a live issue, and you also had, you know, this issue of extremism and the stop the steel can a people like carry playing, et cetera. And so you look at that and I'm like, oh, I need to adjust my view because I previously was saying, like this stuff is not really a good thing to
run on. Stick to the bread and butter economics, populist economics, like that's been the mantra, I look at twenty twenty two, I'm like, my view was wrong, so I need to adjust, Like these issues are more important to people than I thought they would, and wrote really reshape the electorate in a way that was much more precipitous than I expected. But you have two things that are different in twenty three things. Number hopefully I can remember three. Given that number one high.
We're actually tired. I'MI like Rick Perry, who was just on painkillers at the time.
I don't know what Ryan's over there.
Number One.
Difference between general electorate and midterm definitely right, so much broader turnout. You know, in twenty twenty two the ladies were fired up.
About abortion, low propensity voters.
Yeah.
Number two, that's exactly right. Number two, you just have more distance between these events.
And now, right it's been several years.
Number Three, the Donald Trump effect, Like we're just talking
before about the how he overperformed every Republican. I mean, Carrie Lake is still going to lose again even in a Republican wave year because other republic he listen, you know, Kamala, I'm going to I'm going to give the Democrats a hard time here in a moment, but you also have to give him his credit that he is a uniquely compelling, charismatic figure, and that may be some I mean, you know, that may be something Republicans have to grapple with in
the future, given this will be his you know, last term in office. But you know, as I was thinking about, okay, well, what went wrong here? And you could certainly pinpoint, you know, micro campaign decisions that I think are consequential, the choice of like Mark Cuban and Liz Cheney over like Bernie Sanders and Sean Fame as those two different you know, potential directions and who you're signaling to. And you did see, Hey, Kamala, she won voters over who make over one hundred thousand dollars.
So this all play it into.
The view that, oh, this is the party of like the well off and the rich and these elite concerns, et cetera. But I really think it's almost unfair to her to lay it all at her feet, because the truth of the matter is, I think the Democratic Party has screwed themselves ever since they've blocked Bernie Sanders back in twenty sixteen.
And I know this sounds like ultimately it's no.
It's an interesting take, but the reality is that the neoliberal era is dead, and trump Ism represents the right wing response to that. It's a response I disagree with. I think it scapegoats the wrong people. I think it's bad for the country. I think it's anti democratic, But it represents a coherent vision.
On the left. In the democratic side, they moved heaven and.
Earth to block the left wing populist response to the death of neoliberalism and the manifest failures of neoliberalism. And so you ask yourself, okay, well, you know what would be the evidence for this? And when I think about it, like who were the parts of Bernie Sanders coalition, Like where he was the strongest Latinos, working class bros.
Like AOC's district looks right now according to Ryan Gardusky, like it is having one of the biggest wings towards Trump right in the country.
Literally, you know, literally Joe Rogan right, and those are all the people who who are fleeing the fastest. So you know, previously, this idea that was put out by liberals of like the Bernie de Trump pipeline as a way of deriding the Bernie Sanders movement and saying, oh, this is just like a sort of glorified like way to you know, to actually shift people to the right.
That was wrong.
But what is.
Correct is that many people when they who were Bernie Sanders part of that coalition, have gone to Trump. And the other thing you can say about that is that only thing you can never know if that like alternative left populist vision would be able to defeat the you know, right populace.
I would say authoritarian vision.
But you do know that at the time when there was an ongoing choice between the Bernie Sanders model and the Trump model, those voters were going with the Bernie Sanders model. So I think Democrats by completely blunting that movement insulting the earth.
And Ryan has written.
Literally the book about how that worked, not just with Bernie but with the squad and with all of that. By really blocking that movement insulting the earth, they have screwed themselves. And you know, I want to say, like Biden has had in his administration some important breaks from the neoliberal era, Kamala ran some populist economic ads like really focused on that. So it's not like they've done nothing.
But you cannot say what a coherent Kamala Harris vision, like post neoliberal vision is because ultimately she is a neoliberal. All these people are, and that's what the you know, Mark Cuban and the I won't say what I'm going to do on Lena Kahan and the embrace of Liz Cheney.
That's what that all communicates.
And Tim Walls and Ryan, what do you make of this?
Because I remember you guys were like feeling very happy with the Tim Walls because it signaled a sort of a bone to the burning braide, who said, let's run boldly on full progressive policies and not run in the opposite direction the milk past. Let's go all in bold colors, not pal pest point, Ronald Reagan said.
From the right.
So her polling at that point was like four or five points.
That was when it was.
Yeah, and well was she though?
That's the that's the end. The ultimate question is whether any of her polling collapsed.
Yeah, over the next we did see that.
I Mean, here's the thing is, no one can say for sure, but you can say at that point there was a lot more energy and excitement around the canteen. You can say, also, you know, Tim Walls right after he got selected, and he went on I think it was with Azraklin actually and was like, I think we need to do paid family leave.
As a first act, and then you never heard about it.
Again.
Part of why people like Ryan and I were excited is because Tim Walls came with this sort of like package agenda, which was basically the parts of build back Better that didn't get done and wasn't the Bernie Sanders' agenda, no, but it was something like it was Okay, I can and I can sink my teeth into this, I can understand how this would relate to my family. And again, I don't want to discount they ran a lot of ads on some solid economic plans, but that was not foregrounded in terms.
Of the media conversation.
I actually think that the earned media piece, which was war focused around Liz Cheney, democracy, et cetera, ended up being much more significant than what any of the paid ads were.
Look At the results in Minnesota, like Donald Kamala will win Minnesota by the margin that Donald Trump won the state of Pennsylvania. That's nuts, you know, considering the Tim Walls pick and what that ultimately means. I do think you know, to a certain extent, it's difficult to diagnose it.
I think twenty sixteen definitely is the demarcation point. How though, you know, I really can't think of anyone but Andrew Breitbart right now in terms of politics is downstream from culture, and like, the truth is, like twenty sixteen was a major cultural demarcation point in which the Democratic elites and others like pioneered and decided to like really focus on identity politics as the way to defeat Donald Trumps. And it's their explanation defeating.
Their say it was actually to defeat Bernie.
The sloppy media conversation is like, oh, the left is responsible for all this cancel culture and wokeness and identity obsession. The reality is this was a tactic used by Hillary Clinton and her allies to you know, and like Bernie Sanders was a racist and sexist because he talked in class versus universalist language versus fixating on different demographic groups.
Yeah, and one thing people don't quite realiz I don't think is that Democrats kind of jiu jitsued themselves into an unelectable position by their embrace of identity politics in
an effort to target Bernie Sanders. In other words, Hillary Clinton made the She sensed that there was something populist going on, that people were angry about something, and that the left was kind of a sndment within the party, and she decided that instead of saying, look, I'm the electable candidate I have, I'm more experienced, and I'm going to beat whoever the Republican is, she decided, bizarrely in the Democratic primary that she was going to claim that
she was actually the one that was on the left, that was on the left, the left of Bernie Sanders, because Bernie Sanders is out of step with the rise of what they called the Great Awokening at the time.
Breaking up she.
Said, breaking up the big banks won't end racism.
And that's the start of my book of her saying that Bernie Sanders is a single issue candidate and his single issue was the economy, and then she goes in breaking up the banks won't and sexism and won't then raise it, and so you then had this interesting perception where a bunch of people in the primaries actually thought Bernie Sanders was more moderate than he was because Hillary Clinton was attacking him from this woke left right, And so when people now say that Kamala Harris was too
far left, they're referring to that. And so that's how they jiu jitsued themselves into this position of taking positions that are unpopular on the economy and kind of pragmatic, as Kamala Harris would call it, but basically, you know, friendly to Wall Street and friendly to business, but still being pegged as too far left in ways that nobody actually wanted.
I'm curious, I'm curious of the identitarian left will be dealt like they've been sass okay, but maybe Ryan, I mean, these are very very powerful, but will they see it that way? Will they see it that way?
And what's the guy's name?
Ellie Misel? Is that his name? Yeah, so you know already being like, oh the Latino, I mean, let our black Ryan's right, they've.
Been routed because I think even how Kamala ran this campaign, like she did not talk at all about.
Like I'm a black woman and here's blah blah blah.
She only had the hens still paid the price for and.
They also, yeah, she had the hangover of it. That's exactly right. And also I mean already if you look at all the commentary on Morning Shoe and whatever. This is what they're blaming that, and you know, any other position that they could characterize as coming from the left, and you know, in terms of the future electoral prospects,
like I think Logan's point is apt. Like, you know, to go back to when Democrats were in the wilderness after the Ronald Reagan era and George hw Bush and they thought, God.
We may never be able to win again.
What their response was just to basically adopt the Republican framework. And I personally think we're already seeing that being the response from the Democrats. That's what embracing effectively the Republican view on immigration. I know you guys might dispute that, but that's the reality. Is ditching the idea of a
path to citizenship, that's what that looks like. You know, Gavin Newsom, who was the most ambitious person in the entire world, is out there saying, hey, I'm going to go and personally raise homeless encampments and signed tough on crime legislation into law. So I think the response from the Democratic Party is going to be to help to cement in the same way Bill Clinton helped to cement the neoliberal era. I think it's going to be to help to cement this sort of right wing populous.
Running out of things that can hit him on.
He just won the popular vote on this. Also, Gascon in Los Angeles just got blown out, and the Gatskan is one of those progressive das. So I think what I'm.
Saying, I'm saying they won, like this is what we need to do, because we would rather do that than like there's almost no going back for them to that Bernie Sanders moment to offer the alternative, like left populist vision. So what I'm saying basically is like, you know, the reason I'm depressed is not because I don't think Democrats will ever win.
I don't really give a shit that much about whether Democrats win again.
It's because I think the ideological battle is basically done.
Like there was a.
Question after the financial crisis. You know, there was this this stirring of popular sentiment on the left and the right, and there were truly competing visions for Okay, neoliberalism, Like people are rejecting it and we're you know, there needs to be something different moving forward because they see the way that this was destructive to themselves, their lives, their communities,
et cetera. You had two competing philosophies, and you know, one of them, on the right, was successfully able to take over.
The Republican Party.
And now I could talk about like the fake populist aspects and how there's a lot of overlap actually.
With Mitchell Colle et cetera, et cetera.
But you know, let's just leave that aside for the moment and the other one because it was so oppositional both to democratic elites but also to capital elites who backed.
The party and own the networks and own the networks and all of that.
And you know, the Jeff Bezos doesn't like and owns the loh and all of those things.
They pulled down every stop.
They could, both legitimate and illegitimate, to make sure that did not take root. And the vestiges of that, like the squad members that get elected to the House. Number one, they embrace too much of the like identitarian view and that makes them like not that popular. And number two, there has been just a war that you wrote a book about, waged on them to make sure that they either fall in line or they're kicked out, and so
that's that's why I'm saying, like, yeah, I'm not. I think that a much better direction for the Democratic Party would be to look at the guy Bernie Sanders who was winning these coalitions and say, what can we learn from him? I have zero expectation that's what they will do. I think instead they will just be the like, kinder, gentler version of Trump.
I think there will We'll see, all right, because I think there's still quite a bit of the identitarianism that is in the vestiges of MSNBC and CNN, which we're going to get to in a little bit. For their overall response, I think in general what we have seen with the popular vote and specifically actually this really is a question to the Republicans as to whether they can follow through. I mean, voters now basically been begging them for twenty years to shut the border and to stop immigration.
So will they actually do it? I mean, you know, narrow house majority, we'll.
See even with and it could deal with them on it.
Not many call it right now.
But if it's an if it's a deal, If it's a I mean.
What is a gang of eight? Or the game is not going to fly like went need to see like actual, I mean, look, and this.
Is with the budget under Obama. That's what this is going to be.
Wed this like several weeks ago and I was like, I think if Trump wins, it will just be like quote it's immigration stupid. And I look increasingly just believe that because if you look at the tone of the campaign and behind every Donald Trump press conference, there was you know, in the stuff behind him, like for example, like the image right behind us. If you look at the I'm forgetting what the thing is called, Like whatever they put behind the candidate, it would be like n
migrant crime and mass deportation. Remember at the RNC, the big the number one sign was literally just mass deportation. I'm like, okay, this is the uniting element of the entire Republican argument that went into this election. Now, is
that the main reason they won? Maybe, but like I think very clearly it is the number one thing of why Donald Trump won twenty sixteen the primary, because he was the most vociferous on immigration and now has won a popular vote mandate in addition to a Republican advantage in the House and the Senate, likely at least for what we see right now. But The question of how that actually manifests an office is huge because this is
what Crystal was just talking about. The capital, you know, pushed back to mass deportation and to immigration reform and Everify and all that. It is going to be crazy from what the I mean, the Chamber of Commerce and all these folks, they are licking their chops and they're ready to roll. They got billions of dollars to be ready to throw at Everify. They've also there's big questions here around the actual like how the Trump administration will
staff itself and what it looks like. Is it going to look like the party that's just going to give Bill Ackman and elon his tax cuts and not follow through on immigration, because that's how you actually would lead to some sort of Bill Clinton what was it called, like the New Democratic Coalition put you know, the way that they could you know, the DLC, that's right, the DLC. How a DLC style like candidate would be able to come in And I would not necessarily bet against that.
You know, corporatism is a deeply strong force, especially in the immigration lobby, and I do still think they could still win on this. Even though Donald Trump did win the election. Now, so it's a question actually of Republican
governance and to what direction that looks like. But it's also a big question of the media elites and the Democratic Party for how they respond to it, because as you guys know, you know, you were both booted off basically have you seen we're talking about right now, you know, so they don't even have the bones for it like that, that institutional memory is gone, like it's it's it's what it's been almost a decade, you know, since that's happened to even to even acknowledge so many of the things
that we've talked about here in the first hour on our show is we're boten, you know over there, except for like Joe Scarborough in a while, no sorry, Chris Matthews actually said some of this this what I'm what I'm talking about on immigration, but of course he framed in a very different way.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's why I think that the Democrats are I mean, they're already their analysis is basically like we need to move to the right, like that's what we need to do, and specifically on the issue of immigration, and so you separated out from economics and that's the only that's the edit I would make is that, you know, as I was saying before trump Ism and the you know, right, populism, I'll use the that that label to keep from offending anybody. Right, Populism
has a coherent ideology. It has a set of villains, one of those prominent villains being immigrants, and it has a set of victims. It has a collective like that you know that we're all in this together. And these are the groups, and it's predominantly you know, it's the deep state, it's cultural elites, which overlaps but is not entirely you know, consistent with rich people in capital.
Yes, and it's immigrants, yell media and yeah.
And the idea is like, these are the groups that are keeping you down, and that means economically, that means like they're the ones who are imposing things on your life that you don't like. They're changing your town, you're changing your culture, like whatever you're not happy with that's going on in your life, these are the people to blame.
And so I don't think you can.
I don't think you're wrong, Sagar that immigration is an important part of that, because that is part of what coheres the story. But it's not just I reject the idea you can neatly separate like that's a cultural issue and that's an economic issue. Voters said their number one issue was inflation economics, and I believe them, but I think, you know, Trump has presented this vision. I don't agree with it. I find it ugly. I think it's bad
for the country. I think it's anti democratic. But he's presented a coherent vision for if we go after these people, your life is.
Going to go get better.
And Democrats rejected the alternative vision that was on offer from Bernie Sanders, and so I think all they really have left to do now, because they're not going to now be like you're right, Bernie, sorry, is to move right and try to you know, try to be the softler, gentler version of what's.
On off of the Republicans.
I'm curious for you a take, Okay, well, curious for a take on this real quick.
Then well we just just ended on that thing.
Well, go ahead, Emily, sound off, last time off to get to the dearborn mayor.
All I was going to say is that immigration is the issue and Republicans, and you know, to some except Bernie Sanders understood this on other issues. It is the bridge between economics and culture. And Bernie understood that in terms of like tax cuts for the rich and all of it, Like there are these points that are you know, Occupy Wall Street was not just an economic movement, that was a cultural movement. That Tea Party was not an
economic movement. It was a cultural movement. That's what Bernie Sanders understood. And so Ryan, just a quick flashback to twenty twenty two midterms.
We were interviewing Terry Schilling. He runs a group called the American Principles.
Project that was running up ads all over the suburbs on trans issues.
Remember that.
They them add that a lot of Republicans were running in swing districts and Trump was running.
In fact, he said that was working.
And when we're looking at low propensity voters coming out in a big way. It wasn't enough in the midterms obviously for the red wave, but in this election we had a big turnout. It looks like low propensity voters
voters Trump made massive improvement. As Jeff Stein says, with voters under fifty thousand dollars, that is not just an income that is not just about the economics, that is, about the marriage of economics and culture that Donald Trump understands in a way that Ron De Santis and Nicky Hayley and other Republicans don't, and in a way that Kamala Harris absolutely could not tap into either.
Yeah, I think that that's very true, and you're not wrong, Crystal. A lot of it is separate. But as I often say, and you know, people get mad at me as like, I don't believe a lot of voters sometimes whenever they talk either because you know, people say, oh, democracy or economic and you know, when one services as economic, like what are they really trying to get at it? And I just think the beating heart of trump Ism is you know, you even use the word right, populism. I
don't even know if that's accurate. I think it's just straight up nationalism at this point, Like that's what it is. We have literally autarchic trade policy, like mercantilist eighteenth century philosophy, we have anti you know, immigration in terms of populist
it's a flavor of it though. And so when I say nationalism, saying the coherence between it and like what actually separates all of that is specifically what you just said with the cultural elite of where there may be some overlap, but is genuinely distinct and cltically the average guy on the street, he knows what I mean whenever we're talking about the Hollywood elite or the people who decided to come out and to vote for Donald Trump.
And so I think that actually and whether it is able to be fulfilled in legislation, which is the ultimate big question mark for me, because I have, you know, I know a lot of people who are very pro Trump.
We met some of them yesterday, Ryan, and they're very enthusiastic, And I remember telling you as we were leaving, I was like, listen, bro I was here in twenty sixteen, and I remember this whole thing and didn't work out so well for a lot of those folks on that point, because there's this relationship between the culture and the economics, such a imagine four years from now people are still angry, Like I feel like the only hope that Democrats have
is baked into the fact that Republicans also suck and that they are not and our system sucks and it's not going to be able to deliver anything. There makes anybody happier four years from now and feeding them immigration stuff four years from now and beating up on CNN and MSNBC isn't going to satisfy the it's when they're
the governing. What dem should pray for is a repeat of two thousand in seventeen twenty eighteen, where Trump fails on immigration, fails on the border wall, and his only accomplishment is to just pass max tax cut for corporation to enrich people, right, Like, that's what they should pray on on their hands and knees for just making sure that the only corporatism basically succeeds and it becomes some sort of major giveaway that leads to a lot of
deep satisfaction in there. If he does accomplish a lot of this stuff, it's going to be a problem they're going to do.
If he does shut down immigration, he will drive up prices for one.
But two then he will also then he'll then he'll take.
Then he'll take away that that arrow as well, Like, how do you like it's possible?
I mean, look, first of all, yeah, anyway, go ahead.
Well, I mean in the short like, if he enacts his agenda, his stated agenda, we've had this debate many times.
He he won't do that, Like he's he's gonna have Lightheiser back in the pink.
He'll be fun huge number of tariffs, mass deportation, mass austerity, which is.
The Elon Plan, splashing the bureaucracy.
It would be.
A economic catash catastrophe, right, Prices would skyrocket across the board, housing people, works about all that stuff right now, Do you're right? Do I think that he's actually going to like do all of that stuff? No, But you know, I think I think Ryan's point is an apt one, which is why, like I'm not, I don't feel like this is doom and gloom for the Democratic Party because I think there's a very good chance that, especially next time around, it's not going to be Trump.
Making the case.
It's going to be JdE Vance probably who you know, hasn't shown the same electoral prowess as Donald Trump has, who's just this like uniquely charismatic figure.
So in any case, sure, but you.
Know, in any case, it may be tougher for him because then he has to defend trump Ism and the people who have had to do that have not buy and large done all that well too, are not themselves done.
It's a tough position. You basically find himself like HW and the Reagan consensus. You want to be a different person, but you also have to defend like Reagan. It was very complicated and part of the reason why he ended up losing the BA