The Suburban Women Problem - Season 2, Episode 48
Jasmine: Hi everyone, and thanks for listening to The Suburban Women Problem. I'm Jasmine Clark and this holiday season, we're doing the podcast a little differently. For the rest of the year, my co-hosts and I will each take turns going deep on what we learned from the midterms, talking with experts and women who worked hard in their own communities. There's so many victories to celebrate and so many lessons to learn.
So I'm kicking things off today with one of our favorite guests and political experts, Jess McIntosh. Welcome back to the podcast!
Jess: It's so nice to be here. Jasmine. We're still standing!
Jasmine: I know, I know! Well, in Georgia, we don't really have much of a choice because our election is still happening. I know some other states are still counting or something, but like we have a whole election happening right now in Georgia and I definitely have some opinions about what we are seeing right now.
But before we start talking about Georgia, cuz I could talk about that pretty much all day, let's talk a little bit about the midterms. So what do you think, like what were the results that maybe surprised you the most?
Jess: I think the result that surprised me the most was the one that happened to my own mental health. I feel better now than I have since 2015. Because you gotta, you gotta stack it up. Like we have 18, we have 20, and we now have 22 almost under our belt. And, and what we saw, since the rise of Trump and MAGA and the extremism is, is that America rejects it. The vast majority of us reject it. We reject fascism in red states. We, you know, we reject book bans in, in conservative neighborhoods. We kept fascists off of school boards.
We managed to hang on to the Senate and make the Republican House majority so small that it's gonna be damn near impossible for them to actually screw with our democratic process before 2024. We weren't supposed to do that, like this was not supposed to happen.
I know the last time we talked, we talked about the history of midterms and how deeply unlikely it is that the party that wins the White House also wins the next time around. And, and we, we beat those odds massively.
And is it because I think that Democrats are doing the best job ever? No, it's not. I think it's because regular ass people were like, wait, what? They're doing what? We don't want that.
Jasmine: Exactly. I definitely agree with you. I think that, you know, since 2016, we kind of had this eye opening moment in our country where it was like, “oh wait, elections actually really do matter and we actually need to show up for these things.” And “oh my gosh, what is happening to our country and how quickly things are starting to go downhill.”
And I think there were enough people that were finally like, you know, “No, this is my country. I love it. I am going to do all that I can to claw it back and, you know, get back to some semblance of normalcy.” I think that Trump really broke a lot of norms and molds and, you know, expectations and all these things. So since then, the conventional wisdom just has not prevailed. Like you said, history says Biden should have lost handily during these midterms, and instead, like honestly, he has performed better than pretty much most presidents in their first term. You know, the midterms of their first. I mean, it's like everything that should have happened hasn't happened, but I think that started with Trump getting elected. That shouldn't have happened.
Jess: That should not have happened, and I think the entire country went, “whoa wait. That shouldn't have happened. How do we make sure that never happens again?” And what we have done in 18, 20 and 22 is put up as much of our own bricks against the rising tide of fascism and extremism. We recognized what was happening is scary. I mean, America has always been a little complicated, right? Like, we–
Jasmine: I love it. That's a nice way of putting it. That's a beautiful way of putting it.
Jess: You know, it's, yeah. It's nuanced. We love it in an adult way where we want it to get better, right? We want America to become the thing that we are taught as children, that it is. And then we spend the rest of our lives sort of learning how that America really only is for a few people and not–
Jasmine: –if you ever learn it. If they don't try to ban it from your curriculum.
Jess: Yeah, and obviously why they're trying to ban it. Like they don't want a bunch of little kids who fully understand that systemic racism is a problem and that they have a role in solving it. They don't want that. Right? Why would they want that? Those kids are gonna be really reliable voters and like, let's talk about kids being reliable voters!
Jasmine: Yes! I think that's my biggest surprise of this election. You know, they still have a long way to go, but to me it's like the potential is there, the ball is rolling. But just to see them starting to make their voices heard more, they're starting to say, “no, we are going to vote and if you try to stop us from voting, we will vote anyway. And now we're mad cuz you tried to stop us from voting.”
We saw that here in Georgia. Like I, I just think that right now we are seeing this next generation kind of say, “you know, I'm tired of everyone else having a say so and completely ignoring us as. We are the ones inheriting the crap that y'all are leaving us.” And so I am so excited about the enthusiasm of that 18-29 group of voters. A lot of them first time voters. Yeah. Like super exciting.
Jess: No, I've been working in politics for almost 20 years now. “Young people don't vote” is a thing that I have heard in every room that I have worked in. And it is, it's largely, it's a lazy thing to say and it's always been a lazy thing to say, because if somebody doesn't vote, it's because you are not working hard enough to get them to vote. It's not a them problem, it's a you problem. So “young people don't vote” was a lazy maxim all along. We should have worked harder. Now it's just incorrect. It's just incorrect.
Jasmine: Yep. And for me, as an elected official, it also tells me that I need to be listening to them. I need to be hearing their voices, hearing their concerns, addressing those concerns, because eventually they're going to be the new 60-65+. They are just as powerful a group. And I can tell you from sitting in the rooms, if the 65 and older cohort says, “we want this,” people listen. You know why? Because those people vote and I wanna get reelected. If 25 and under cohort of people say, “I want this,” people say, “that's cute, but you're not the one who's gonna send me back to the seat.” Now all of a sudden it’s… “I gotta listen to you.”
Jess: That is such an important point because we're not, it's not just like, it's fun that young people are voting. It matters because of the power dynamic. Like it matters. And I think one of the things that the really good campaigns, the Fettermans, the Warnocks, did was create a real intergenerational coalition. Like young people are always told that we have to learn from our elders and we do. I mean, they're the ones that have been fighting the fights. They know a lot more than we do. That's that.
But older people also need to learn from younger people. Because they're the ones navigating today's world. Today's world is weird, right? And as a 40 year old, I barely feel like a native in today's world. Like, I don't understand most of this stuff. Are you kidding me? But like the kids, they live it, they breathe it, they grew up in it. They're, they are native to the world that we live in. And that gives them a really, really important perspective that we should not ignore. We do have things to learn from the 25 and unders because they had a very different life experience than I do as a 40 year old, or than somebody does as a 65 year old.
So those in a, in a good movement, and I do feel like we have a movement now–
Jasmine: Oh yeah. Oh, this, there's momentum. It's not stopping. I think it started when the kids were like, you know, March for our Lives, we are not going anywhere. I think that was like the moment where the ball started to roll, but it was a slow roll. But now, you know, with them inheriting, you know, a society where there are adults in the room that are basically saying, “oh, mass shootings are just gonna happen. We'll have to get over it.” You've got a group of voters coming up that are saying, “we absolutely reject that.”
You know, where people are like, “oh, well climate change, you know, it's whatever. The Earth's getting hotter anyway.” You got a group of voters saying, “no, we reject that. This is the earth that I am going to inherit, and also I wanna breathe clean air and I wanna drink clean water. And no, I do not wanna be drowning because you guys decided that climate change wasn't enough to care about it.” It really truly does matter.
And so I wear multiple hats. And I also wear my professor hat. And so a lot of these new voters are also students. You know, they're in college, they're learning about the world and they're, they're really engaged. But another thing they are is in finals season, and here in Georgia , we had a Secretary of State that basically tried to strip them of the ability to vote on Saturdays. During finals season, they cannot just up and leave. I am saying this as a professor, they cannot just up and go home to vote, especially if they're out of town and they're registered to vote back home cuz they plan on returning back home.
So what Georgia did when they decided they would not only fight Saturday voting, but appeal it. The fight is one thing. The fight is like, “Hey, we interpret the law differently than you.” Okay. Judge says “this is the interpretation of the law.” If you appeal that now, it’s just, “I don't want you to vote on Saturday.” And the students heard that. And when we had weekend voting, the second largest block of voters during weekend voting, Saturday and Sunday here in Georgia, was actually voters age 18 to 24.
So now we are seeing record numbers here in Georgia just for those who are listening, especially if you're in Georgia, the runoff is on December. So next Tuesday, December 6th, and there's, there's only one race on the ballot.
Jess: That's it.
Jasmine: Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock. Which… there are so many contrasts that I could make right now.
Jess: No one is a swing voter here. No Georgian is sitting there going, “Walker or Warnock, Walker or Warnock? I just, I don't know. On the one hand I really like clean air and good schools and teaching our kids the things that they need to know in order to be successful and bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom and all the rest. On the other side, I really like…. his idea about sending the air to China?” Like there's no one, there's no one sitting there making up their mind here.
Jasmine: Senator, Reverend, person who has shown that they are willing to get the work done and work with whomever they need to work with to do it. And then there's like, a football player who can barely string a sentence together, who makes up all these weird stories.
Jess: That held a gun to his ex-wife's head. Exactly. Like this, is this, if, if a writer put Herschel Walker into their West Wing script, like the powers that be would reject it because it's just, it's too much.
The wild thing that I find about the Georgia race is that Warnock is as good as Walker is bad. Yes, exactly. That's amazing. Yes. Like I would be really happy to vote for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if it kept Herschel Walker out of the Senate. But it's Reverend Raphael Warnock.
Jasmine: Right. It's a true choice. Like absolutely. You don't have to vote against Walker in this. You can actually vote for Warnock. And feel great about it.
And so, you know, so we have December 6th and that's election day, and we're, you know, kind of gearing up for that. But right now we're in this early voting period, and as we said, they tried to take away Saturday. Didn't work. We got Saturday back. We saw record numbers on Saturday, record numbers on Sunday, but then Monday. Monday, November 28th, we actually broke the single day record for early voting in our state, and I'm talking about even in the presidential year.
So we broke that record. That's great. The only issue I had with it is that we did it with extremely long lines. And on the one hand I'm like, yay, people are voting, people are enthusiastic. This is great. On the other hand, I'm like, for every person that was like, “I will stand in this line no matter what,” there were probably two or three people that were like, “you know what, I really want to vote, but I cannot stand in line for two hours.”
And so we are here because of the condensed timeline that they gave us for the runoff as far as like, in 2021 when we had the runoff, we had three weeks. We had three weeks of early voting. It was nine weeks after the original election. Now we have one week of early voting, so you know, the Secretary of State's office is patting himself on the back being like, “oh look, we're breaking records.” And I'm like, you're breaking records because you basically shortened the race. Like, if you're measuring how fast you run a hundred meters and you only have a hundred meters to go, you're probably gonna run it faster than if you measure how fast you run a hundred meters when you have 500 meters to go. Like you shortened the race. So yes, it's, you're gonna break records, but what we need is for people to actually, no matter what, still show up.
Even though the Democrats now already have control over the chamber, having that extra person actually makes a big difference. So can you tell people a little bit about why they should actually care to get that 51st seat to the Democrats?
Jess: Yeah, his name is Joe Manchin, and if you've ever been annoyed by him, what you want to do is make him a little less relevant. If we had two more seats, then Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema wouldn't matter at all. That would be it. We could codify Roe v. Wade right away. We would have passed all of the things that Joe Biden campaigned on, right? Last two years, we would've gotten the Build Back Better bill, I mean all the student debt cancellation, the care economy, like all of that, right?
Jasmine: Childcare, paid leave, all of it.
Jess: We would've had all of that if we had had 52. But we didn't, we had 50, so we got a lot of good stuff. I'm actually much more bullish on President Joe Biden now than I was when he was running. I actually think he's done an incredible job as president. I think he's kept the right people front and center, and I think that the voters rewarded him.I actually have nothing negative to say about him.
Where he fell down, where he didn't get what he promised done, it was because of Manchin and Sinema. That was it. They, they said, “no, I care more about my corporate lobby as donors than I care about the people who voted for me.”
Jasmine: “And all the attention I get because I am the vote that you need.” Right.
Jess: Yeah. I like the Washington Post op-eds. I like my Sunday shows. There you go. Like, so if we send Warnock, if we get 51, well then, we get to pass some of that stuff because Sinema has different ideas than Manchin does. She opposes different things than Manchin does. So now all we have are two recalcitrant people and only one of them's gonna matter at any one time.
And they know, I mean, Kyrsten Sinema is up in 2024 and like progressives are gutting for her. Like she's very, she's aware that she will probably face a primary challenge, I think at this point. It's probably pretty likely that we could get her to come on board with something that a couple of years ago she would've put her foot down about, but now she sees the writing on the wall and maybe she's gonna be a little more amenable to lowering prescription drug costs than she had been a couple years ago.
So that's why we need the cushion. Like we need the cushion because each member of the Senate, the way Democrats work is different than the way Republicans work. Republicans are fairly lockstep. Democrats are not. That is 50 separate individual people who all belong to the same party. That doesn't mean that they signed on to support the same stuff in the same order all the time. They're 50 separate people. So the more of a cushion you have, the more likely it is that you can find consensus around those big transformational generational change moves that we need to make right now, because those are difficult to make. So the difference between 51 and 50 could be a trillion dollars in relief.
It could be a care package, it could be a student loan relief package, it could be a climate change bill. Like that's what that one seat could mean. So that's why it matters and, and I think, I think if Democrats are able to remember that, which is, you know, it's a little bit of a political bank shot to remember that the reason why you're voting for Reverend Warnock is because Joe Manchin, although it's not. Reverend Warnock should just be in the Senate.
Jasmine: He's a great senator as well. Yeah.
Jess: But like that's why it matters for us. I think this might help us a little on the other side because the Republicans have the exact opposite problem. It doesn't matter for them, they can't win the Senate, and whereas we can fight our butts off because we know that Senator Reverend Warnock is really important to be in that chamber. Senator Herschel Walker is. Republicans don't really want Senator Herschel Walker. They don't wanna have to answer for this, for the next six years of Herschel Walker making speeches.
Jasmine: We already have Marjorie up there, you know, with Hershel too? What shenanigans from Georgia. Does Georgia, does the Georgia GOP really wanna be known as like the Marjorie/Hershel show? Because that's exactly what it'll turn into. They will be a complete embarrassment especially to independent voters. Like they will lose in 2024 in a presidential year. Cuz they will say, this is what y'all are putting up. Like this is bad.
Jess: Yeah. That's why, it's why the NRSC, you know, the entity that gives all of the money to republican senate races, they're not investing in Georgia the same way that Democrats are. Because we know that like winning Georgia one means we get one of the best senators. We have to come back Like that is a huge win in of itself. It gets us policy wins and it helps Georgia become blue, which is what is happening. It's just gonna take a few cycles to be reliable and do it.
Jasmine: So you know, for those who are listening, whether you live in Georgia or not, if you want to help in these last few days before the runoff, you can go to redwine.blue and make a donation. And that donation will be split between the Warnock campaign and Black voters matter here in Georgia. And when I tell you, like I said, Warnock is going full speed ahead. I mean, he has done dozens of campaign stops. He actually did a Dave Matthews band concert recently. Like, I mean he's doing like an amazing campaign all the way to the finish line. And I can tell you as a person who has run for office, these things do cost money. So if you would like to make a donation, please visit redwine.blue.
And so now I think it is time that we kind of move on to the next part of the pod. And you've been on the pod before, so you know that at the end of every episode we usually do a Toast to Joy. So in these four weeks of special episodes, we want to do a 2022 Toast to Joy. This year has been exhausting, it's been an emotional rollercoaster at times, but we also saw things that brought us joy, like suburban women standing up for their rights and for their communities, especially at the ballot box.
So Jess, what was the moment that brought you joy and hope this year?
Jess: Honestly, like, and this is gonna sound like I'm pandering cause I'm on this podcast, but it was the Red Wine and blue meetups.
Jasmine: Oh, I love it.
Jess: Like, I just needed that infusion of joy. I mean, remember how demoralizing it felt in the weeks running up to the election when everybody on TV was saying women have moved on? “They care more about gas prices than they care about abortion.”
Jasmine: “Red wave, red wave, red wave.”
Jess: But every week I would sign onto a Troublemaker Training and I would watch that chat go absolutely nuts with thousands of women from all over the country. And I would go back and turn on CNN and be like, “You're wrong. You're wrong. These women are fired up. You're wrong.” And we were right.
So I, I think that's, that's my 2022 Toast to Joy, is that what we learned was that doing the work… works. We have to do the work. But when we do, we get the results and that's gonna make the next two years of this relational organizing so much easier. People are going to know that it works and they'll keep doing it and that's how we're gonna pull ourselves out of this hole and and create the America that we all wanted it to be when we were kids.
Jasmine: Absolutely. I love that. I definitely feel. I feel all of that, that tension I felt every time I logged on Twitter and they were like, “this poll said this” and “this poll said that.” And I'm like, “how can this be? Because I'm talking to people and that is not what they're saying.” And I think even, even though I was pushing back on it, there was still that seed of doubt that was being planted in me of like, “yeah, maybe I got this all wrong.” Or maybe I'm like, confirmation biasing myself or something like that.
Jess: Yeah! I'm sitting here like, “am I being a Pollyanna?” And like I'm not a Pollyanna. Like if I am asking “Jess, are you being uncharacteristically optimistic?” Like anybody who knows me would be like, no, that's not you. You're not doing that.
Jasmine: Exactly. I definitely understand where you're coming from to see that the fruits of your labor, like, were plentiful and bountiful. And made waves that were not so red. Then you know that you're doing something right and it really does set the stage, the foundation for doing this again in future elections. We've got a template. We have got the prototype for what to do in future elections. We just have to keep this going. So I am a hundred percent with you.
And so I don't know, thinking of my 2022 Toast of Joy, I mean, obviously winning an election is definitely something that brought me great joy in 2022. Especially because, in my race, I was also being told those same things. Like, “oh, well, you know, this is happening and the polls are saying this, and you're really, you know, this is gonna be really, really close and it's gonna be an uphill battle.” And so I fought like it was an uphill battle. Cause that's what I was being told. And I guess I'm a fighter. I'm competitive. I do all that I can to win because I knew I was doing it for the right reasons. And so I definitely can say my 2022 Toast of Joy was to breaking the mold.
I, at one of my campaign meetings, I was talking to the people who were working on my campaign and I said, “according to all the numbers that we have, I should win this election by just a couple hundred votes. 200, maybe 300. I could also lose it by just a couple hundred votes. 200, maybe 300. So every single door, every single phone call, every single voter contact matters. But you know what? I wanna be a statistical anomaly. Everything statistically says this is a 50/50 race. I wanna blow this out of the water.” And although I wouldn't characterize 52 plus percent as blowing it outta the water, it definitely blew it outta the water based on the predictions.
And so, yeah. That statistical anomaly, like, I'm wearing that like my little badge of honor to the end of the year because everything said that that race should have been so much closer.
Jess: It's so important to keep that in mind and that's one of the things that I think the pundits do a really bad job of explaining. Like look at the Arizona Governor's race. It was such a squeaker, it took days to know that Katie Hobbs had pulled it out. Well, the last Republican governor won by 14 points. So the fact that she won by a small amount does not mean that voters only liked her a little, right? They liked her 14 points plus the amount she won by. That's what we need to look at. Every state is different, every district is different. And when sometimes a 52% win is an absolute blowout, depending on what the demographics of your district are.
Jasmine: Especially when they drew it to not be that, right? Like it was specifically drawn to be much more competitive. And at the end of the day, it was not as competitive as it was because I did the work.
Everyone can find something that you can do to make a difference in your state, in your community, especially when it comes to elections. And with that, Jess, you know, thank you so much for joining us.
Jess: Thank you, Jasmine.
Jasmine: And thank you all for listening to the Suburban Women Problem. We'll see you next week.