Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Governor JB. Pritzker says, you come for my people, you come through me. We have such a great show for you today. Semaphore's Dave Weigel tells us what he's found in his examination of the twenty twenty four election. Then we'll talk to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson how about how her state will fight
back against Trump's next term. But first the news.
By why don't you tell us where the House is at in the election? Right now?
Right now, Democrats have two hundred and one seats and Republicans have two hundred and twelve seats. They flipped six seats, Democrats flip five seats, so there's at this point Republicans have a one seat net gain. There are still thirteen uncalled races to watch that are just not finished being counted. Some will go to recount, and so if Democrats can net seventeen of those thirteen seats, they will have the majority. That seems unlikely since that math is not mathing, but
it will be a very slim majority. That Republicans will have in the House. So we'll see what happens, but it certainly Democrats will pick up a few seats, probably main second district, Washington's third district, a couple of seats will be picked up, so it will end up being very close. There's still a bunch of Senate seats that aren't caught, so there's one seat Nevada. Rosen is going to win Arizona. Ruben seems like he has it. In Pennsylvania.
There's a chance because it's point because the Republicans leading by point five, that there might be a recount, and there's a possibility that McCormick might end up. If they recount and they find enough ballots, it's possible that the case will keep his seat.
Smile. This is what I'm coing the mask off section. It seems the Republican were so giddy about Trump's when that they're already showing exactly what many of us knew. They were already. But these attacks on women are really something else. What are you seeing here?
White supremacist Nick Flint has said your body, my choice forever. He posted that before the race. We saw a text campaign of obvious hate crimes, issuing a threat to students of color across the nation, claiming they had been selected to be slaves and appear at plantations. Pretty horrendous, misogynistic claims of you know, wanting to do horrible things to women. It's really not surprising, but it's this is what trump Ism does.
And then of course we have all the right wing influencers who are taking their mask off about Project twenty twenty five and other things. What are you seeing here?
So you'll remember that Trump said he had knew nothing about Project twenty twenty five and that Project twenty twenty five was not at all connected to him. So basically, mediately after Trump onon, Matt Walsh She's a right wing podcast host wrote on X now that the election is over, I think we can finally say that, yeah, actually Project twenty twenty five is the agenda. L ol.
Matt waalsherre. You will all be know from making a documentary reason called Am I Racist? Where he shows how racist he is.
Ex Trump White has advisor Steve Bannon praised Walsh and amplified his post during his war Room podcast Wednesday, telling his staff to promote Walsh's comments on social media. Right wing influencer Bennie Johnson also posted an on X it is my honor to inform you that Project twenty twenty five was real the whole time.
He wrote, you may know Betty Johnson from the Justice Department, saying he was a recipient of Russian disinformation money.
That's right, he got a lot of money from Russia to spread disinformation. Bo French, a Texas GOP official who came under fire recently for using slurs to describe gay people and people at this abilities, wrote on X Wednesday, so we can admit now that we're going to implement Project twenty twenty five. So there you go. They'll say they were kidding, but they always say they were kidding. But we know the truth. And you can see the documentary we did on Project twenty twenty five. It's on YouTube.
Just google it. It's I think a very worthwhile use of your time, MILLI.
So we have the first hint of at least what we'll start as a romance. Elon Musk was on a call with mister Trump and Zelenski today. What do you see here?
Donald Trump won the presidency on Tuesday, and almost immediately the richest people sixty four billion dollar gain for the world's ten richest people, so Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Allison all among the top gainers. US stock surge dollar gained on US election result. The net worth, led by Tesla's CEO, the world's wealthiest person, surged to sixty three point five billion dollars on Wednday Day. Musk added twenty six point five billion to his pot. Amazon's Jeff Bezos
Oracles Larry Ellison were all among the top gainers. It's the biggest increase since Bloomberg's Wealth Index began in twenty twelve. Look, Trump is going to pick the winners and losers in this economy, and he's going to make big tax cuts for very wealthy people. And I think that these people who decided to support Trump made a bet that he would deliver for them, and he already has. So it's pretty grim. Sometimes I want to just talk for a minute to our listeners about sort of where I am
right now and just be honest. This was not the result I've talked about a little bit, and I really did think Harris was going to win, and I really was quite devastated and sad for what happened, but I want to just point out that it was really, you know, a couple one hundred thousand votes in a few swing states that did this for him, and a lot of us in this country don't agree with Trump or trump Ism, and at this moment, really the goal has to be
to protect institutions, to protect the rule of law, to make sure that we continue to bring sunlight to the stuff that people aren't covering. Trump has a bold and deeply unpopular agenda he's going to try to implement, and the only way that it can be gummed up is by sunlight, is by talking about it, is by covering it.
So as much as there's a feeling like we all want to just turn off the news, and maybe we should take a week or two to do that, but this is going to require vigilance on all of our parts in order to make sure that we do have elections in two years and we do have a functioning democracy and we do protect the rule of law. So I think every one of us, including myself, needs to
watch some Netflix and eat some cookies. I'm planning on that later, But I feel very heartbroken for like a lot of young women in this country, But I feel more than ever that the importance is that we continue to not engage in false equivalencies, really give you the news as you needed, and try to do our best and be transparent with you as listeners. I'm so grateful that you guys come to us four times a week or three times a week or no. I know, but
you might not listen to every episode. But I'm really grateful, and I really feel that it's a responsibility of mine to try to do the best we can, including to be transparent, and to just continue to bring you things so you can really stay completely up to date with the news and to know what's happening. So we're really grateful.
And I know you're hurting, and we're hurting too. I'm hurting too, and I know Jesse's hurting too, and it's really dark, but I do want you to know that there is hope here and that there are federal governors who are committed to taking care of their people and do not give up. Dave Wigel is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Dave.
It's going to be back. Thank you, under great circumstances.
So I want you to talk to us about what went wrong. First of all, my whole place is that I want I'm going to this is we're going to just do therapy for me.
I see.
Now. My whole place is I want to know what happened in this election and how I got it so wrong in my mind, like, I just want as much information as possible. So I have seen that you have been sort of parson through what happened. So can we start at the macro and then go to the micro? So what happened in this election? Broadly?
So I'll start by saying a lot of people are looking at the numbers on their screen and assuming, oh, Kamala Harris turned out fewer voters than Joe Biden. Therefore she didn't excite Democrats. It looks in the swing states, we already know she basically hit the Biden numbers. In the swing states, they executed their strategy, which was knowing that some voters were moving toward Trump, replacing them with other voters turning out as many persuadable people as possible.
It was Consin's one example of this. Harris got more votes than Biden did in Wisconsin. She got almost as many votes as Barack Obama did in two thousand and eight, which was the biggest Democratic landslide in Wisconsin since the sixties, and the state's population's been pretty static. That's why I focus on that one. But she didn't win it. So what happened it was that Donald Trump was not discredited for ninety five percent of Republican votvoters, some had already
left the party. He saw this at the convention, Right, They're just people who weren't for toront like Mike Bends, who were never a lot back in the tent. They left and he was replacing them with voters who he promised everything to. And I had This part is important because what Donald Trump does differently than other candidates, and he does it because of a very friendly mediate environment that he helped create but that he also lucked into,
is just promising everything to everybody. So if he did, he's not hide bound by saying, well, if I get in there, I might have a deficit to deal with.
Well he will.
He's just not going to. He just will pretend that he's going to fix it all with terrors he appointed, the justices that were turned to row. He just says that he's actually not going to do anything else. On abortion, he proposed a suite of new tax cuts that are not paid for and that would shrink the lifespan of Social Security. But this came up with Democrats. I was talked to this week, just a narrow focus on this point. Trump proposed tax cuts that would make the Social Security
Trust Fund run out faster. But because he said I want to cut taxes on social Security, lower information voters. I'm not trying to be too negative or insulting, but lot lower information voters back and said it sounds like I heard the word social security and I heard tax cut, and they just and I didn't really say, that's a risk.
He is hard to run against. And Democrats went from in twenty sixteen thinking this is a fluke, we never should have lost it to thinking a candidate this brazen, who doesn't care about being called out for criminal convictions or offensive things or not being honest. A candidate who's just that that brazen is very hard to run against. And they've now seen in two midterms. I would be surprised as the next midterm their coalition will turn out
better than the Trump coalition. But when he is there, five hundred thousand worket pople come out of the woods and vote for Republicans.
Explain this to me again, because this is so interesting. So let's just go back to Wisconsin. This is super interesting. So she actually did grow her coalition, but it wasn't enough.
Yes, So the difference here is nate. If you look at swing states where all the money was spent, Harris is at above or right below the Biden numbers from twenty twenty. We haven't do We don't have this from Arizona and of Etiot and I think that like those might be outliers. Because of the shift in the Latino vote in states where the campaigns did not spend money, and New Jersey's one of these, New York is one
of these, Florida is one of these. There were a huge shift towards Republicans of every vote, every group of voters except white women with college degrees, and even then that wasn't much of a shift. That is where the
simple story of the election is. People were still angry that prices were up after twenty twenty, no matter what Democrats did on the economy, the fact that the economy had proved a lot, the fact it's very easy to imagine Donald Trump, if he had been president this week, would have said, no one thought I could do it, but we've beaten inflation, and strong men come up to me with tears in their eyes and say, it's the
best economy we've ever seen. They know that he would have been able to sell that economy, but they couldn't. Those are the model causal things happening here. There's a lot of discourse which I'm listening and skimming, some stuff about how the party lost its lost its connection to
working class voters culturally, and that's complicated. The one part I think the Democrats are actually moving towards agreement on is that for years they thought they had an emerging majority and they didn't need far right media or alternative media or offensive media. I'd say that they could take the high road. Well, then they didn't need to talk
to those people. The Harris campaign, if they did some subtraction from the coalition, not totally intentional, but for example, the RFK thing, their bet was we are not going to be the party. We're going to lose people if we are the party that just will say, oh sure, we'll totally blow up public health because of conspiracy theories, so they let him out of the coalition. The thing that is more fixable is they hadn't prioritize going on new media that people who don't trust the mainstream media
listen to. Some Democrats did, and every diperary did, like Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, John Federando, I talk to you this week. All of them say you just need to do that, like you're not going to go in there and get eaten alive. If you're getting eaten a live, you shouldn't run for office because you should be better at talking. You can't live in the bubble anymore where some people are just beneath you. Maybe none of them
vowed for you, but you need to try. Maybe they don't vote for you, but they don't hate you once you get.
On there, right or they know you exist.
Sure, because when they talk about messaging, the messaging means earned media, which is you doing interviews and speeches. It means paid media, which is you buying ads. And that's the thing where they're running ad That's why I talked about swinges stays where they're runing ads and people saw the ads they held a lot of ground and where people were just watching the news on their phones and tuning out. They lost a lot of ground, and that.
Seems so important because there's so much blame going around, which is I think normal winn a party loses, But that is so important because it sounds like in a weird way, because Democrats probably held those Senate seats, almost all the Senate seats in swing states that were up, and it almost sounds like the campaign helped those down ballot races.
Yeah, that's the thing in the Senate seats, the almost irony of this, just like I get I can see if the key like Montana is a testa ran ahead, bear around, right ahead. Well, I don't want to get it too over complicated about what happened, but it was Democrats were able to win and outperform Harris in a number of places, which suggests to me that Republicans less well owned than Trump, but running on the same stuff as in twenty twenty two, just do not have the same appeal. It's very clear.
Trump Ism does not scale right.
Not right now, And even JD. Vance is less popular than Donald Trump. He doesn't get the same crowd, he doesn't have the same peal. There are not people having JD. Vance voat grades, et cetera.
Now, can you imagine Not.
Really, I can imagine a lot of things, but that it's kind of hard to imagine, but very a. Goosy is a unique candidate because he's a Latino veteran in Arizona and he spent three years moving to the right. He'd been much more progressive and he moved to the right. You can do that in three years. You can't do it in one hundred days. That's a harder test of this because Kerry Lake is pretty well lothed and known
for trying to overturn elections and nothing else. But that was a good example where where Democrats kind of filled the soil for a long time, and by the time voters are paying attention, they had seen Ruben Gegel on Bill Maher and they'd seen him say that Democrats should stop saying LATINX, which he did three years ago. I mean, I did, like there, go I not been saying that, but he said three years ago, stop doing it.
Yeah.
That example of a Democratic campaign that made some compromises and said hey, if you're a moderate voter, I'm not going to do anything super crazy that you hate. That was pretty successful and Harris did a lot of that, and again, we're voters saw her saying, here's my economic plan, and I'm supported by some Republicans, so I'm not actually at left winger. That was in competition with the ads about her being a crazy left winger and her letting
the border explode, et cetera, et cetera. But that actually did move some people. Just they're missing the people who don't watch TV except for when they're seeing sports, they didn't hear that. And the messaging because there's so much of a post to discuss on messaging. That's where I've come down on this was seeing what they were actually spending money on in the States.
So explain this to me. The messaging it sort of worked.
Yeah, that's why this gulf between On average, it hired you on average. But for example, Democratic support collapsed to New Jersey, it just didn't matter because they won their house seats. They could. They were's one they want to flip and they did. If that collapsed up around the country, Democrats would have lost New Mexico and Minnesota and Virginia, and it didn't. It was where they had targeted messaging to burnish Harris's image. It was pretty successful. Harris's favorability
improved throughout the campaign. I think the issue here is that Democrats did not correct quickly enough, because these things move very slowly. I see news stories as a second hand on a clock, and campaigns as the as the hour hand. It's really what because they had done differently well given that they were running on we're going to kick out asylum seekers more than we were two years ago. They were running on expanding medicare in pretty incremental ways.
They're running on fighting price gouging. Had Joe Biden said in June twenty twenty three, not twenty four, I have to pull the cord on this, and I think even Kamala Harris been the nominee, they would have had the time to do that. Inflation would have continued to be an issue for them. But every Democrat owned part of
the inflation situation because they owned it. They didn't own all the immigration situation because that's controlled by DHS and the executive, so some of them took some damage over it, and the damage is usually you didn't stop Biden from making things worse. But I think inflation would have been survivable, and by survival I mean Democrats running one and a half points better in a few states, they would have
narrowly won the election. They would sto would have lost the Ohio Senate race, in the Montana Senate race, like they were fighting for a very, very, very tough race. But I think could they have gotten over the line with a similar strategy that started a year earlier. I think they could have.
Yeah. What's so interesting to me about all of this is that it seems to me like New York State Democrats won seeds, right, I mean, they flipped two seeds.
Yeah, So there are the green shoots for Democrats in a lot of places that we're going to figure out more after the election. And this happens. For example, two thousand and four, Georgie Wish wins and Republicans win most of their closed races. And the exception is Colorado, where Democrats win a Senate seat they flipped it from Republicans. They do much better in local elections. They were hopeful maybe the whole country is like that. It turns out
it's not. There's parts of the country that are like Colorado. The key it turns out in the long term is do people there have college degrees that is definitive. But there were going to be places where Democrats did. North Carolina is one where they lost the presidential election state wipe, but they actually picked up some lower offices and broke their replicans oup majority. Even in this electorate, they were
able to make some gains. When I talked about this electorate, I mean just Trump persuading people and adding votes from twenty twenty. Had Trump gotten exactly as many votes as he got in twenty twenty, if you listen to him, he says he wonted because no one had ever won that many votes. He wouldn't have won. Harris got more votes in a couple key states, and she would have edged past him. He did more persuasion, And so that's part of it. Two Democrats are not the only actors
of history. Trump made decisions, and I think I talked about lying, et cetera, but he made even other policy decisions. To this say, unlike every other Republican, and hey, maybe unlike what I'll actually do and I take the power. I'm never going to touch Obamacare, I'm never going to touch Medicare, I'm never going to touch Social Security. I'm going to defend them. All that does matter. I don't
think even the exact same alignment. If Trump had said, you know what, I'm bored about running and they had nominated run to Santus, I'm not convinced a Santus would have won because I think the rest of the Republican instinct is pretty tied to and we're going to get in there and shrink the deficit. Trump's decisions are very potent. Also,
what was the story he's able to tell? Again, it involves some bs, which is when I was president, which a presidency that ended in February twenty twenty, and nothing else was my fault. The economy is really good. Well, another Republican couldn't have run on that. He ran a very good campaign with a combination of a record he could defend and some stuff he made up and could very easily defend.
Right, I want you to put this together for me. In the states where they didn't have the campaign apparatus working as hard right, the non swing states like New Jersey. Let's talk about New Jersey. How much do you think disinformation played a role.
Well, depending on what type of disinformation. There are elections that happen in fairly tough circumstances, and one of them is which we all live through you and me, And I assume I was listening as twenty twelve and it objectively voters in October twenty twelve were paying more for gas than they had been four years earlier, based on time. Uneployment was not what it was four and a half years earlier. There wasn't a good You just have to stick through it. We are the party that's going to
get you through it. Things are improving, keep trusting us message that was successful for Barack Obama. And I think you can disaggregate form that from even his own talent because Democrats across the klairemccaskill was winning and John Tester is winning, and for a lot of Democrats it's like, Yep, we didn't turn things around yet, but we're turning them
around and those other guys are terrible. That's the part that I think Trump makes more complicated because he wasn't running on Paul Ryan saying we're going to shrink the deficit and black Art Medican and he might, he just wasn't. This was running on it. This is the success he had. This is why I not overwripe it but just really like, if this was Jdevan's running on the same campaign without
that record, I don't think it would have worked. I don't think you would have the same people come out of the would work because the overall democratic message of returning the corner that has been successful before it was actually round Reagan in nineteen eighty four, things were in some metrics, including inflation, unemployment, things were worse in morning
morning in America than they were right now. The final thing, though, the final thing, I'm adding like twenty to twenty things, this daisy chain of takes, but this media environment, when you have to be talking about disinformation, I'm cautious say what's different information? What it is? And I think what's important is not just people not quite getting what's happening in the economy. It's that there's no objective source that a lot of people trust that's telling what's actually happening.
Some of that is people who'll say, oh, the TV told me to wear a mask outside, and I don't trust that anymore. Some it's that, but it's also just people have moved on other media sources and they just not only do they not hear positive democratic messaging, but when they hear Trum's messaging. No one's really pushing back some way. Am I the hardest interviewer in a world? Probably not, But I would notice when kamal Aris goes on MSNBC, the first question is why are you struggling
on the economy? Why don't people trust you on the economy? When Trump goes on like Joe Rogan and the note Boys, that's not the question that it's a lot of let's talk about how cool and fun you are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've really been.
I don't think even the media environment of twenty sixteen hard to recreate all that stuff, but that one where just people who are still getting most of their news from newspapers and TV, local TV, cable. The political discourse is more shape by what's on the a one of the New York Times. That was tougher for him, and this is much easier.
So interesting, I mean, that's a really important point that he has a sort of propaganda network that Democrats don't have, right, I mean, basically that's what you're saying, and that propaganda network pumps him up and makes him seem But I also think the secret sauce about Trump has always been that he is just a uniquely talented I mean, like him or loathe him, certainly, I am not a fan, but he is uniquely good at connecting with his people.
One of the things that Trump did, which I thought would doom him but actually has really delivered for him, is that he was so laser focused on his base and Harris was more interested. Obviously, again it's not a fair comparison because she had three months and he had, you know, our whole lifetimes. But he was committed to just turning out his base and thinking and making the gamble that that would be enough, and she was trying to practice conversion and ultimately the bass play one out.
I mean, can you talk about that?
Well, I do not know if he was trying to reach his base. It's a very complicated question because I don't mind you in the word wrappaganda. But one thing I'll positive here is that whenever a democratic president, Fox News drives the truck down to Del Rio and Eagle Pass and covers people crossing the border. And when Donald
Trump's president, they talked remov is present. So because there were illegal border crossings under Trump, and I'm not being good because there were policy changes, bind did that led to more people across the border. There also were just worse conditions in places like Venezuela and Haiti that led to more migration out of there and people trying to
get into the country. But it was not false that the Trump policy was a very unsympathetic were full go away approach, including saying you're in a campaign that yes, there are people who have legal temporary status from Haiti that live in Ohio and we should take your status away and kick them out. The Trump approaches just kick
them out. That is a policy difference. And the promise of instead of you coming across the country and getting a court date, We're going to immediately deport you, We're going to process you in Mexico, just get out of here. That is significant change. It just helps that even when border crossings are falling under a Democrat, the stories are still about who's coming across the border illegally. One thing that stuck with me it wasn't my reporting, it was politico.
But one reason the Teamsters didn't endure in the presidential race and just stayed neutral, which actually was kind of victory for Harris not norsing Trump, was that there were some heads of locals who sorry, not the teasers, the firefighters, firefighters. There are some heads in their locals who blamed the border for fentanyl and said, fentanyl's coming over and it's
putting our firefighters at risk. And there is an example of something because if you if you know about how drugs smuggling works, as everyone listen to this podcast does, that's not like somebody that comes from Haiti with a bag of fentanyl and crosses the border. Drug smuggling is very sophisticated. Happened everywhere. It happens on planes, like we're not stopping all flights through Mexico. This is this catch
twenty two that Democrats are in. You would see Republicans every time law enforcement announced a fentanyl seizure and say, look at how much fentanyl they seized. This is not working. Whenever Republican is president, he goes down and says, look at this, we seized a bunch of fentanyl. The policy is working. I'm not convinced that Democrats wouldn't do that.
I do think Democrats are going to start revisiting not just Bill Clinton's politics, with Barack Obama's politics and how you just need to actually one be tough on rule breaking and things that are disruptive to normal people's lives. And you need to say that you are all the time and show up all the time. Like the people that I think are most out of the conversation that Democrats want to have right now in every way are
the people who in it. And I was there covering this for twenty four thirteen, fourteen fifteen, the Black Lives Matter movement and also crim adjuster performers on the libertarian left and right who were saying, we actually can start removing some people from prison and being more tolerant about getting people rehabilitated, maybe not doing as many homelessness sweeps. We can be less cruel because crime is down. And one thing to happen this election below blow the claridential level.
Well at the presidential level. Kamala Harris is running as to talk about being a tough prosecutor and for one example, and how just they've a party abandoned the that approach. I keep want to say, soft on crime, just try not talk to cliches. But also just in her state where she lives in Los Angeles County, voters got rid of the Progressive DA where she was born in Alameda County. Voters got rid of the progressive DA Oakland, where she spent some of her life. Voters kicked out the mayor
San Francisco, where she was DA. Voters kicked out from there and statewide, and she never said how she voted on this. There was a ballot measure to get rid of some of these primo dust reform. They're the ones that had passed and passed life, and the original one passed with Republican support. I remember I talked to Gingrich, who dedorsed it, for a story recently. Grige ten years ago was saying, Hey, Californians, we need to get people
out of prison. Let's pass this bill, and people who are just doing teddy chocolate lifting will be clogging up the jails. And then ten years later people say, I am tired of watching videos on TV of guys walking out of stores with bags of goods. I'm tired of going to Walgreens and there is shampoo behind the lock gate. You might stop and say, like, is that really the most important thing happening? Look, quality of life matters.
Thank you, thank you, thank you so interesting. I really appreciate you. Jocelyn Benson is the Secretary of State of Michigan. Welcome to FoST Politics, Jocelyn Benson.
Hi, thanks for having me.
I wanted to have you on the podcast because a lot of the listeners of this podcast, and by a lot of listeners this podcast, I mean myself, are full on freaking out about what this is going to look like another Trump presidency, and so I figure because you are part of the trifactor of fabulous women who lead the state of Michigan, you could talk to us a little bit about First of all, I want you to first talk to us about the election and what you saw on the ground and how that was, and then
I have many, many, many other questions for you.
Well, thanks for having me.
I think what I saw on the ground in the lead up to the election and throughout was a lot of enthusiasm across the board. And basically the enthusiasm ended up truly being across the board because we had the highest turnout election in our state's history. Five point six seven million people voted, which blew through our past record of five point five from twenty twenty which and that one blew through our previous record of five million in
two thousand and eight. And so we at the time when our state population has been decreasing, we've seen voter turnout increase and really just go through the roof.
This past Tuesday. That's not a terrible thing, and that's sort of that's a good thing for our for our democracy. It really illuminates also the reality that the two party system or is perhaps not fully equipped to reflect the diverse perspectives in the electorate, in the electorate that large. What we also saw on Michigan were two things.
One extraordinary celebration at the polls, more energy than I've seen. And this was in you know, I went to ham Tranmek, I went down river places where our Democrats lost. I still saw extraordinary turnout, extraordinary enthusiasm. People were really determined to vote. The second thing I saw in Michigan was, you know, other than that, the at the top of the ticket women Wan. Our entire congressional delegation on the
Democratic side is almost entirely women. Now, we elected Alyssa Slack, We elected two women to the Michigan Supreme Court who ran as Democrats. So there's I wouldn't call it silver linings, but I would add that to the lessons that we need to take from this election to recognize that still it's clear that women voters have something to stay. They're supporting female candidates in our state. The women of Michigan
continue to expand. But at the same time, we also have to listen to the economic message that voters who supported Trump in Michigan and throughout the country are sending to everyone. They are hurting and they are looking for someone to listen and hear them at least make them feel hard, and who can convince them rightly or wrongly, accurately or not that they have the plan to heal their pain.
But Alissa's Slatkin is going to the Senate. She is that is particularly exciting. And there are other Democrats in you know, Jackie Rosen and rub and Diego and who did in fact overperform the top of the ticket and maybe also benefitted from the top of the tickets campaign.
Yeah, I think so. You can make that argument. Certainly, all throughout various local districts where we saw a high turnout that we otherwise wouldn't see. The West Side of Michigan is an example of that too. But you know, we're still picking a part all of those all of
those things. The other piece we know protecting democracy was a critical factor for a lot of people who did show up, and I think it's important to know that that work is going to continue and the fact that democracy thrives when we demand that it does.
And so for us to give up.
In this moment, at a time where we do have someone who's an avowed authoritarian, you know, about to ascend to the highest office in the land, we're needed now more than ever to stand firm and speak out against anyone who tries to take away our voices and our freedoms.
Yeah. So, I mean we're already hearing, thankfully from Newsome and also from Governor Pritzker, these statements of like how federalism can in fact protect American citizens and blue states. Talk to me about what that looks like in Michigan.
The power of people to stay engaged and stay involved and to hold people accountable, no matter how powerful, is a critical component of what democracy is. And especially in this moment, we have to still wave that flag and
march into battle with that as our charge. And so I think you'll see young people, women in Michigan, people of color, continue to lead that if we allow our grief and despondents in this moment to turn into an energy, just like it did after twenty sixteen, to push for freedom, to push for an expansion of freedom, and really again also take on that economic opportunity message as well that
the vice president attempted to. But for various different reasons that we can unpack, I didn't resonate as strongly as the one her opponent and the ones in future president and was able to sell.
Yeah, I actually think this election was hardest on younger women because for some of these younger women, I don't know if they understood just how much America could reject them, right.
Yeah, I think that was really certainly a message you could see. And yet, you know, we only lose when we allow others to make us believe that our voices don't matter, you know, and so to young women, to all women, our voices matter.
And it's up to us.
To continue to stand with these young women as well, who will inherit what we leave behind and ensure that they remain in a country that protects them and protects their freedom and protects their voices, protects their bodies, protects their safety. That work is still on us to do, and the loss of that work on Tuesday that we endured doesn't change that. It just in my view, makes
it all the more urgent. And history teaches us every time we as a people have reacted to setbacks with a stronger organization, with a stronger determination to push forward. We have one and every advancement throughout our history has involved setbacks. So we have to see this as that, and not a lot not to see it as a reason to give up. I know a lot of people want to walk away. It's a lot easier to just least say I want to leave the country. You know,
I'm done. It's okay to feel that in this moment. We all felt that in twenty sixteen. But we also have to at least and a lot of people I'm CaCu in Michigan are seeing this as an opportunity to say not on our watch.
And this story is not over, you know, the story of.
The Women of Michigan.
It's not over.
This maybe the sequel to twenty twenty, but it's not the end of the trilogy. And we're coming back.
Yeah. I think that's really important, and I think it's important to be clear that it was the setback, but that also it is an opportunity to learn a lot of stuff and then to keep.
Going right, Yeah, and to learn from everything. And we do this and on my team, whether it was the after math of the twenty twenty election, whether it's you know, twenty twenty four and the aftermath we're about to experience. Use everything to get stronger, use everything to get wiser, use everything to get to get better, because that's what the issues and the people that we fight for deserve and require. And so for me, it's really hard in
moments like this. You want to give up, who want to walk away, You want to say this is too hard, and they ever go to win. I'm up against too many powerful forces. The richest guy in the world and soon to be, you know, one of the most powerful elected people in the world.
How do we fight that?
It's easy to feel small, But those forces that want us to feel small will win if we allow them.
To make us feel that way.
If we don't give up on the ideals that brought us to the fight to begin with, we can keep going. And I would argue that if we do give up on the ideals and the values of inclusion and equality and freedom and protecting the vulnerable, everything that that brings us to the arena. If we give up on that, then it's a guarantee that those ideals fail to define
who we are as a nation. But if we stand in the arena and we keep fighting, that's our best shot and our only shot to ensure that we have a chance to ensure our nation and our republic reflects the best of what we've always been since our founding. Yeah, I have a book coming out in May. I'm not like saying this to promote it. I'm just saying that
this is like for me. This is why I wrote that book after twenty twenty, is to say we all have to be warriors, and we can't allow setbacks or things out of our control or losses to do anything other than make us better warriors for who we are and the communities we fight for. So in this moment, we have to ask ourselves, how are we going to pick ourselves back up, dust ourselves off, keep going, and use this as a moment to build our stronger muscles
to you know, just like athletes. I'm a marathon and we run long distances, our muscles break down and then they come back stronger. So this is a time in which we is a community, can feel that weakness, and let's use that weakness to come back stronger. And if we can focus our energy on that, then we can and will succeed. History teaches us that unequivocally.
Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, the other or bright spot if we're gonna feel better about this rushing electoral shit show, is that the Republicans have controlled the House for two years and they have been absolutely awful at it, and every piece of legislation they've managed to pass has been they've had to have democratic help. So you know, they'll have an equally small margin if they don't lose the House of Representatives. So there is some bit of good news there.
Yeah, there is always reason to help, and there's always a reminder that the reason why these issues, whether it be reproductive freedom, or whether it be just sort of keeping our kids safe in schools, or you know, everything that making sure we can have clean water, drink, clean air, and a breathe, everything that we fight for, there's a reason we have to fight for it.
It's because the infrastructure.
Of the world is not set up to make those things automatic guarantees They're only given to us when we demand them. And just like democracy only survives when we fight for it. So this is an opportunity for us to all ask ourselves, you know, what are we going to fight for? What are we going to stand for?
And the power of the people will always be more powerful and greater than the people in power, And we can't forget that in moments like this, Even though there's so many different reasons to forget it, there's many more reasons to remember the strength that we come when we come together and don't give up. And I think we can push forward with courage, with dignity and with grace and you know, living all of our values and fighting
for what we believe in. If we continue to build solidarity, to build unity, and to be there for each other, to stand up for each other, that's when we as a country are at our best and no one leader gets to define us in a way that doesn't reflect those best ideals. We can still maintain the ability to show the world who we are. It's only if we give up on that then truly we have lost.
So are you going to be able to push back on Project twenty twenty? And what does that look like.
Yeah, I mean, we have to see how things play out, and I think there are a lot of entities and organizations planning out. We still need to yet see what Congress looks like. Here in Michigan, we still have the executive branch, we have the state Senate. So there's a lot we can do to define what that pushback should look like, you know, whether it's in the environment, whether
it's in education. And then there's also, you know, a parallel track of just keeping notes and planning for the next opportunity to lead the country and what that's going to look like. And I'm sure there's again a lot, there's a whole cohort of people doing that. It's about staying vigilant, staying engaged, people who have scoured through Project twenty twenty five, scouring through it now on coming up with a plan in response for every action it telegraphs.
That's the type of work we all need to be doing, and doing it together. You know, this is not the time to descend into our own disunity. I guess, for lack of a better word, this is not the time to point arrows at each other. This is not the time to say you did this wrong, or you did that bad and use that as a way to kind of demoralize us even more. This is the time for us to say, yeah, we all messed up, we miss
the mark. These are the reasons why. This is what we're going to learn from it, and this is what we're going to come back stronger. That's what the winning team does, right every I've thought about this a lot over the last few days. Everyone who's ever accomplished anything has face setbacks. That's that's reality. The question is always what do you do next? And that's what we as a like as women, need to ask ourselves. What do we do next? That's really the question, And what do
we do next? Given Project twenty five? What alliances we do we build, what solidarity do we build? And if we can stay in that space as opposed to space about tearing each other down or picking things apart, Like I'm not interested in that. Let's not waste understand that, let's learn together from our mishaps, show grace to those who perhaps fell short. But everyone still has to stay in the arena because if we leave, we lose. But if we stay in it and we fight, we can still win.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good point.
As the Vice President so beautifully articulated right in her concession speech, which was as much as a concessiant speech as it was a call to action for the nation to stay vigilant and stay engaged and stay in the fight. Maybe that's also just how I respond to things, like I take the hit, but then I say, Okay, how do I punch back stronger?
Right?
Like, That's that's what being a warrior is than a fighter. But at the same time, I think, you know, there's a clear message that was sent in this election, which is that people are hurting and they're looking for people who will fight for them. And in this case, Trump made the case, even if it was disingenuous, even if we could pick it apart, they felt he would fight for them, and they showed up for him. And so how do we what lessons do we learn from that?
That's the type of conversation we need to have right now. Yeah, are you feeling.
I feel like shit? I don't know. I had the last episode. I apologize to everyone from getting the election so wrong. I personally just really like Vice President Harrison thinks she's smart and they did. Actually, I mean I was just talking to a straight reporter on this who was talking about how in many ways the campaign did a lot of very smart stuff which helped the Senate candidates in some of these swing states, which is really interesting.
I'm very disappointed. I also think black women they did so much much for us, so it is very I feel like it's just a very bleak. It just feels very painful to watch the group that you put together who really did come out have to watch that disappointment
is I hate. And then also it's just hard. I also am really scared because I've asked, like between feeling a little better because I know how bad Republicans are at governing, and also I know how wildly unpopular a lot of the ideas in Project twenty twenty five are, right like, you know, it's all fun and games until a concentration camp ends up on your block, right Like, So a lot of that stuff is not popular. And I know how ambitious a lot of this agenda is
and how hard it is to implement. It's hard to implement good stuff, it's equally hard to implement bad stuff. So that makes me feel a little better, but you know, it does not feel good.
I know, you know, I would say, yeah, I think it's and it's important. I think to give space to all that in this moment.
I really appreciate you coming on yeah, onward, I think is the most important thing to feel to just, you know, make sure we don't give up and make sure we continue to fight.
A moment.
Jesse Cannon Somali, this is a sad story. What are you seeing here?
So Trump received forty six percent of the Latino vote compared to thirty five percent four years ago, and Associated Press poll shows, and that's the most support Latinos have ever shown a Republican presidential candidate. And this is Donald Trump, who is calling for mass deportation, who is saying that Mexicans in many cases are quote criminals, drug dealers, rapists, et cetera. So he's also said that immigrants poison the blood of our kind. A lot of these Latinos will
be targeted for deportation. So it's a pretty bleak thing to see people vote against their own interests so profoundly. And I wanted to bring it up, not because it's fuckery in the fact that it's funny, but fuckery in the fact that it's so dark and profoundly and disheartening. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.