It is okay to feel sad and disappoint it. Well, please know what's going to be okay. On the campaign, I would often say, when we fight, we win. But here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Sometimes the fight takes a while.
That doesn't mean we won't win.
And don't you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.
Hello, out Louders, it's mea Friedman here dropping into your feed for a special bonus episode of Mumma mea out Loud and thanks to all the out louders who've checked on me in the group in my DMS. What a week it's been, of course, with the US presidential election. This is a special extra episode, so if you're not into US politics, don't panic. We will still be coming into your ears with a regular news free episode on Friday.
But we know that so many of you have been writing a rollercoaster of emotions, wondering how we landed on the news that broke yesterday that Donald Trump has been re elected. We've heard you, and that is why today Amelia Lester, deputy editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and mum Me as US correspondent, has jumped on a call with me. I'm in the podcast studio, she's at home, and we wanted to help you understand the facts of how we got here. First of all, welcome Amelia hashtag Are you okay?
Hello? I didn't think we'd be talking this soon after what happened yesterday, but I'm finding that it's helping to sift through the facts a little bit.
Good because I still haven't looked at a news site or a news screen, no news coverage, and I'm getting my information exclusively through my group chats, you and my other media friends who are feeding me the need to know information. Now, as I said on yesterday's episode, we unpack the emotions today, we're talking about the facts. Let's start with the final vote count. How did it land?
Well, the votes are still being countered, but it's safe to say that this is a resounding victory for Donald Trump. He didn't just squeak by. Already, we've discovered that he got fewer votes than Joe Biden got in twenty twenty. Joe Biden still has the most votes of any presidential candidate in history. Turnout is looking lower than twenty twenty two, significantly lower. That's not in itself surprising, and twenty twenty
everyone was at home in their track suit pants. But it is interesting, given that the Democrats really hinged this election on the idea that it might be the last, it's the most important election in US history, it doesn't seem like the American people agreed with that definition.
First of all, none of the polls predicted this. It was always meant to be close. Every single poll said it was going to be really, really close. So it's almost like we were geared up for a result that never came, which was either a marginal Trump victory or a marginal Kamala Harris victory. A landslide wasn't on many people's bingo card, except maybe Donald Trump himself. Would you call it a landslide? Is that what happened? And how did it happen?
Yes, it's a landslide. Not only did Trump win the White House, Republicans took the Senate from Democrats, and although the House is still up for grabs, it looks like that they're going to win that too. That's significant because if they control all three arms of government, there are no checks on Donald Trump in the executive branch. As to how it happened. Very simply. Harris didn't win over any new groups of voters. This is what I can't
get over. Not only did she not win over any new groups of voters, Trump won new blocks of voters, So he won working class Latinos, he won working class Black voters. Harris won women by plus three points on Biden. That's not very many points, given that we were being told that reproductive rights and freedom were on the ballot. Here men switched over to Trump in bigger numbers than we've ever seen men vote for Republicans before. Young people
did not show up. Old people did not support Harris in the same numbers that they supported Biden in twenty twenty. Very simply, if you don't win over any new groups of voters, you can't win the election.
So do you think that it's true that it became an election about gender? Did it very much split along male female lines?
No?
Because if you only see plus three on women voting for Harris compared within twenty twenty, that's not an overwhelming shift for women. Now, women already vote Democratic much more than men do. But I would have expected to see a double digit increase, just like the double double digit increase in Black men voting for Trump. To see only plus three for women just indicates that women didn't care
as much as we thought that they did. So as for whether it's an election on gender, I think I'd have to say no. I'd have to say that that very diverse coalition that Trump assembled seems to me that people were really laser focused on the economy and on a sense that they kn't afford their groceries and that Joe Biden and everyone around Joe Biden has to go.
So I want to ask about his misogyny and his convictions for sexual assault and his other crimes that are in court steal and that he's also been found guilty of. Did everybody just ignore that, because it seems like they did.
Yes. And I had a really crystallizing conversation today with a friend who did not vote for Donald Trump, but who pointed out to me that Americans have never cared about this idea of character in the oval office. That's just never been important. And she pointed to Bill Clinton as an example. Now, Bill Clinton, I'm not making a false equivalence between Bill Clinton and a man who's been found liable for sexual assault, which Bill Clinton certainly has not.
But Bill Clinton has a checkered history with women, I think it's safe to say, and he won two terms in office. And the reason is because the Democrats kept saying, of Trump, look at his rallies. Remember that Harris kept saying, look at his rallies, what his rallies. Tim Waltz would also this is fine, He's going to do more for us. He's going to fix the economy for us. And they had this fundamental belief that once Americans find out how
bad this man is, they won't vote for him. But that was misguided.
So did they actually buy his bullshit about being a great businessman despite the fact that he's been declared bankrupt many times his businesses have.
He's essentially a fraud. But did Americans believe that he was the master on the Apprentice and that he was going to restore America to financial greatness again and put more money in their wallets.
I think that voting is an emotional act, and I'm feeling that a lot more in the wake of the selection result. I think as journalists we want to search for reasons and we want to get inside voters' heads. But it turns out that in the privacy of the ballot box. People must make decisions based on emotion, because you're right that the facts don't point to him being
a brilliant custodian of the economy. I mean, the stock market rode high for the first few years he was in office, and then it crashed when COVID came along, and then Joe Biden had to spend his four years in office getting it back on track. People were angry at Joe Biden, they were angry at the post COVID economic landscape, and they lashed out. That to me feels right. Don't you think It feels like people lashed out rather than sat down and read all the New York Times investigations.
I've been trying to understand whether people voted for something or against something else, whether something about Carmela and the Democrats and what they were offering people just went absolutely not And if so, what was that or was it just that Donald Trump was more appealing? And why do you think it was a vote against or a vote for.
I think it was a bit of both. And I think remember when Harris took the nomination, I can't really say won the nomination, but when Harris was declared the presumpt of Democratic nominee, and we talked at them about the fact that as a woman, as a woman of color, a woman of color from San Francisco, which is the most derided city in America in terms of this idea that it's a liberal bubble and that it's out of touch. She's this liberal San Francisco black woman who has a
history of locking up black men. That's the way that the track record was presented. You have to wonder how anyone thought that was ever going to work. In retrospect, I look back on it, and I think there was a liberal bubble that developed that the party after it took them so long to get rid of Joe Biden. They were so exhausted they just said Kamala Harris has to be the nominee. But they must have been deluded to think this would ever work. Do I sound tired and cynical?
Why would any woman vote for Donald Trump? Because many, many, many of them did.
Do you remember that photo that I sent you a couple of days ago. It was at one of the final Trump rallies, and it was two women, probably forties fifties in the front row at the Trump rally. They looked like they were at a Taylor's Swift concert, the joy and the excitement in their faces and their hands outstretched to him. One of them wearing a T shirt that says make America Great Again, the other one wearing a T shirt that says in the make America Great
Again font mean tweets. Now, what's that about? Why does a woman love the fact that Donald Trump sends mean tweets? I don't know what the answer is. What do you think the answer is.
What's always worried me and disturbed me is that what we thought was a flaw and that people were just holding their nose and going, oh, he's cruel and he's you know, unkind and horrible to people, particularly women, and is so disparaging. But people are holding their nose and just voting for other reasons. I've now come to understand since yesterday that it's not a flaw, it's a feature.
People are really attracted to that, And I wonder if he's just the mouthpiece for people's anger with the world, with the economy, with the state of their lives, with feeling powerless, and he embodies that anger.
It's this idea of wanting to blow it all up, and feeling a strength and a security with aligning yourself of the bully.
We'll protect you, we'll protect women.
Is that it? That's what Megan Kelly said. That's what she said to him at their final rally together. She took his hands and she had tears in her eyes, and she said, thank you for protecting us.
Yeah, the whole tradwife movement, that is this appeal of it's hard having choices, it's hard earning money and having jobs and having equality. Life was easier when we just had big, strong men to protect us. Is that what it is?
I'm actually so glad that you raised that. A friend of mine, who was an editor at The New York Times, leaving work yesterday after this marathon over day, said to me the exact same thing. She said, This is why we're seeing this fascination with tradwives, because we've decided, we collectively women had decided it's all too much, it's too hard. And that's why we're fascinated with the childwives, because they
seem to live an easier life than us. And that's why we're okay with jd Vance talking about the childless cat ladies.
I wanted to ask you about young people because they were galvanized by Obama as a change candidate. I don't know if they were galvanized by Joe Biden, but they clearly weren't galvanized by Kamala Harris. Greta Tunberg, the young climate activist who lives in Sweden, posted to Instagram the day before the election sort of a manifesto about how if you don't like either of the candidates because they're not perfect, you don't have to vote at all. You
can actually just boycott the election. I know that a lot of young people are disillusioned and upset about the war in the Middle East and don't like that the Biden administration has been a supporter of Israel, and there've been a lot of student protests about Kamala Harris being another symptom of that and another perpetrator of that support. Do you think that had an impact?
So I have another anecdote. I'm sorry to keep bringing the anecdotes, but you can imagine that my American text message chains have blown up in the last twenty four hours and I'm hearing a lot of interesting perspectives from them. This is from a friend of mine, who is a professor at an Ivy League university, so one of the top universities in the US, and she teaches first year students, and she wrote to me and said, my students are completely unfazed. Many of them didn't vote. This is just
what they think politics is. And when politics is gross and both sides are equally bad to them, they just tune out. They couldn't wait for it to be over so they wouldn't have to hear about it anymore. Oh wow, I was shocked.
I'm shocked too, because it's not like Trump's position. You know, he's a far more fervent supporter of your Israel than the Democrats, and so they decided it sounds to just go, well, I don't like anybody, so I'm not going to vote at all. What struck me about Greta Tunberg's message was this idea of moral purity and that being a symptom of the left, and that if there's no perfect candidate, we don't want to play, we will boycott, we will
sit this one out. Because now that Donald Trump's president, what do you think he's going to do to the environment. Not on his list of things he gives a shit about because he can't make money out of it. What he can make money out of is doing terrible things to the environment and allowing other people to do terrible
things to the environment. You know, I've been reading some commentary that says this idea of moral purity on the left with canceling people for using the wrong pronouns or emphasizing things around identity politics, and how these more niche issues for them, these specific minority groups are the most important thing, and that's driven people to the right. Do you think there's truth in that or are we all just like casting around for explanations.
Yeah. I have two components from my answer to this, and I want to remember to hit them both. The first thing I'd say is, that's so fascinating the idea of the left being caught up in these relatively niche issues and us in the mainstream not recognizing that, because there's an argument equally that on the right. Why a lot of people were drawn to Trump were for cultural reasons that the Democrats weren't even really talking about. For instance, he ran an ad in Swing States Trump did which
was about trans athletes in schools. Now, this is not an issue that really the Biden administration took a particularly strong stance.
On trans athletes in schools.
Whether or not trans girls can play on girls' sports teams, and he was saying that the Biden administration was going to make it an uneven playing field because they were going to let trans girl athletes compete alongside biological girls. Now, this is not something I ever heard Kamila Harris even
talk about on the campaign trail. But I think that you're onto something with this idea that on both the left and the right, and we're talking here about the more extreme factions of both sides, they're talking about issues that we're not even awarer really on the mainstream radar, and that those issues are serving to radicalize them. Now, on the right, they're radicalizing them into magaworld. On the left,
they're radicalizing them into not voting. And by the way, related to this is a really interesting idea that I heard advanced overnight, which is that if Trump was running for president in any other country in the world, we would call him far right and fascistic routinely. If he was running for president in Hungary, we would call him that. But because he's running for president in the US, we all can't quite believe that's what he is, so I never hear the terms of our right applied to him.
But it's absolutely accurate anyway. That's just an aside on language. But I think it's a really interesting point to make that there's these kind of niche issues on both sides.
The second point that I wanted to make about young people and the purity politics is the most convincing rebuttal I her to that came from Alexander Orcasio Cortez, who, as you know, I think is the most gifted communicator in American politics, and she said in an Instagram live, you never get anywhere by seeding your power.
What does that mean?
Meaning if you see the right to vote, you were giving up power in the name of advancing your own aims. You're not going to get anywhere if you give up power, and that pragmatism seemed to be wholly missing.
You can't advance your own aims by not being on the field, you know, by saying I'm actually sitting this one out because neither of the teams are perfect enough.
It makes no sense. The other factor I want to bring up with young people, which my friend's text message to me made me think about is COVID and the effects of COVID on this particular group of young people, because think about it, these students that my friend is talking about started high school at the beginning of the pandemic or near to it, and I can't imagine how that shaped how they think about other people in the world to have gone through. Remember, the COVID experience in
the US was its own particular thing. It was hard on everyone everywhere, but in the US it really radicalized people and it dur have people mad a lot of the time. So I'm wondering whether the pandemic's long shadow has shaped their worldview in a way that we can't even fully assess. What do you think of that?
Yeah, I think that the days of multiple terms for any government are probably gone. Also, just because a four year term or even a three year term feels like a really long time when we're living our lives in increments of text messages and you know, flicking through reels and tiktoks. So I think that this idea of we're going to be in it for the long haul just
doesn't apply in politics. And I think this idea of change, change, change, the idea that a changing It's going to be different, It's going to be different, It's going to be different. What's interesting about this is that it was so upside down because in some ways the change is going backwards because it's going back to Trump, and Carmela was an incumbent but was also a change because it was moving away from Joe Biden. So it was a very confusing feeling.
And I think whoever was going to come across as the biggest change candidate was probably going to win. And I think that's true in any election, which is why I think an incumbent can't campaign as a change candidate. She tried, and she felt like, one, do you think that it would have been different if Biden had stayed.
Yes, because then I think it would have been two old white men competing, So you would have taken the whole racism, sexism, misogyny dynamic out of the race. Which is not to say that by one of one, but that's where my head's out on that question. The change candidate thing. One decision the campaign made is haunting me, and that was the decision to bring in the Cheneese, to bring in Lynn Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney, who was very prominent in the George W. Bush years.
He worked for George W. Bush and was sort of the architect of the Iraq War. You're just making me realize now that bringing up on stage people who remind Americans of this real low point, like an objectively low point for the country, which was when it was mired in war in Iraq and it was post nine to eleven and the economy was stumbling. That just seems in retrospect like a really crazy idea.
Well, they half understood because they Hillary was nowhere to be seen.
That's true.
She was, you know, ive act and kept way out of sight. The celebrities weren't. I know a lot of people who were really fearful every time Kamala got a new celebrity endorsement or wheeled out Oprah or you know, had Beyonce at a rally, or I think even Katy Perry at the end, because that didn't work for Hillary.
That sense of the elites celebrities, it just doesn't work when you've got Donald Trump driving a garbage truck and pretending to work in McDonald's and cosplaying being working class again, it just felt like upside down world. Where he's got a gold toilet and his actual friends are billionaires who he does favors for.
Katy Perry really gave me twenty sixteen. He Begb's when she appeared on stage that last night in Philadelphia, the same place where Hillary had her rally the last night before the election. With Katy Perry, it's like Katy Perry herself feels like a portal to twenty thirteen.
Yeah, I was listening the other day that Katy Perry is like. It was her fortieth birthday a couple of weeks ago when the Washington Post declared that it wouldn't be endorsing a candidate, and everybody came for Jeff Bezos, and she was with Jeff Bezos at her fortieth birthday on a train on the Rony Express with a whole
lot of celebrities. So yeah, I know that she offered early in the campaign her song, her terrible song, Woman's World, which felt so retrograde like fight Song back in twenty sixteen, and the Harris campaign said no and instead went with Freedom by Beyonce. But at the end of the day, all of those rules about what works, what is an acceptable way for a presidential campaign and candidate to behave, They're all thrown out the window, right, He's just burnt down all of.
It he has and can I I'm not quite ready to talk about like what Trump will do. I want to say one thing about feelings. I've got this gut why it didn't work for Harris. I dug around her YouTube channel the other day. It was a couple of days before the election, and I wanted to feel something. So I went to her YouTube channel and I was
clicking on some of the videos. I wanted to feel inspired, part of something that was bigger than myself in the way that all great political movements need to make people feel. And there was nothing on there. Now. They had ninety days, they did not have a lot of time. But why didn't I ever feel anything when I heard her speak or when I watched her campaign videos. I'm a sucker
for those. I love a good political ad with people drinking coffee and going to work and then soaring music and then we are bigger than any one of us. I love those moments. I didn't get any of those moments. Instead, I got Katie Perry, fresh off the train with Jeff Bezos regaling us with an not particularly in tune woman's world.
Do you know when I did feel something, and when I think it was the height of it is when she was declared the nominee, and around the time of the DNC, when it was Tim Walls who was the coach of America, when it was Karmala is Brat, when it really did feel like that, it felt like a step change. It was, here's this new vision of the future versus this old cranky uncle who's ranting on Facebook. But it didn't last. It didn't last after the convention
and Trump got that after his assassination attempt. I felt that for Trump, not personally, but I felt the culture go that way. And then I felt the culture go that way for Karmala. But then I agree with you completely. The last few weeks, I just I never felt it again. It dissipated, and then maybe a little bit around the time of the debate, but then nothing. I just I felt like there was no cut through, there was no there.
Was no vibes, no And something you said there about how you felt something around Brat me, remember that I felt something, you know, when I felt a little teary.
It was fun, it felt joyful for the first time US politics was like, oh my god, instead of these embarrassing old men fighting and Biden and Shuffler, I mean it, suddenly it was like, oh my gosh, it could be actually cool and fun.
Here's when I felt something. It was actually a few days before the end of the campaign, the SNL skit take.
My Pamela, the American people want to start the chaos and and the dramaa with a cool new step Mamala pick backing our pajamaa's and watch a rum Pamela.
Yeah, keep calm and carry on. Ala. I felt something very different to what I think you need to feel on the verge of winning a presidential election, which is it was a small, intimate, beautiful moment between two black literally sitting at a vanity like it's the smallest moment. It's a private moment actually, and the skip was Camel talking to herself. And I'm actually getting chills thinking about it, because I feel like that's not what you want a
giant political campaign to climax with. I thought it was a beautiful moment. It made me tear up. The respect and admiration that you could feel between these two women, the genuine feeling and emotion between two women who are at the top of their game, really respecting each other and having this moment. But that's not enough to win an election. That's not going to win it.
Just to wrap up, can we think of anything positive to say?
I know that's what we said yesterday.
But you know, in the cold light of day, the day after the markets are up cryptosauring there are a lot of signs that the business world is very, very happy with the result. Are there any bright spots?
It's not a bright spot, But I'm going to tell you what another friend texted me because I found it not a bright spot but comforting. And she wrote to me that she'd been talking to her therapist about what to do and how to think about this, and her therapist said that you need to accept what is happening. That's not enough. And so the thought that her therapist came up with is this is happening, and I still need to keep doing the right thing. I appreciated the
acceptance of reality. I'm not into unlike in twenty sixteen, where I was seeking out opium, like this idea of like we can still fight, we can win, We've got to resist pussy hats No, none of that. It is what it is.
Yeah, it doesn't feel like that, does it.
No, he controls it all. There's no silver lining. But what are we going to do. We can't just roll over like We've got to keep doing what we think is right and in our small ways and in ways that we can. And I found that kind of soothing.
Thank you, I love you. If we can't have optimism, can at least be a little bit soothed.
Lots of love Now before I go.
Yesterday, we watch the world change in a way that has left many women feeling shocked and confused. Many of us are fearful of what's to come because across the ocean, a new president was elected, but the waves of this decision have reached us right here in Australia. As you just heard. When America takes a step, the world feels its impact, and for many of us, especially women, it feels like an unsettling backwards step, and at an uncertain time.
More than ever, we need to ensure that women's experiences and perspectives don't just fade into the background. And today the role of independent media has never been more vital. Now's the time to ensure that our stories are told, our voices are not just heard, but amplified, and we need to make sure our issues don't disappear from the conversation.
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