Politics has changed drastically in the social media age, Democrats have not

Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

Episode Summary

The 2024 presidential election is over, and the results are not what many of us hoped for. Despite engaging in treason against the United States on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump will become president once again.

While there are plenty of things that Kamala Harris could have done better, she was up against several larger obstacles, chief among them the price inflation that has troubled every country in the world after the Covid-19 pandemic and also the gigantic far-right media apparatus that relentlessly tells more than 100 million Americans that Democrats are controlled by Satan and falsely claims that the United States is currently in a recession. Undoubtedly, her being an Asian and Black woman was an obstacle as well.

Despite all of these difficulties, however, Harris made a number of solid choices, including speaking clearly about the threat of Trump’s fascistic politics, proudly articulating why reproductive rights matter, picking populist Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, refusing to get dragged into the mud with Donald Trump’s bigotry, and running an incredible social media presence.

But none of these tactical successes were sufficient to overcome Democrats’ refusal to invest in advocacy media or to ensure that social gains by one group do not negatively impact those of others.

During their administration, Harris and President Joe Biden rolled out a number of policies that undeniably helped millions of regular Americans but instead of frequently and coherently explaining what these policies were and why they mattered, both seemed to think that good ideas would speak for themselves. They did not.

Even if they had spoken about them earlier, whatever advantage Harris might have enjoyed from these policies was squandered, when she reoriented her campaign to prioritize outreach to Republicans over pressing the case against income inequality and social stagnation.

Joining us to talk about what went wrong is Jim Carroll. He’s an associate editor at Flux and also has his own site, The Hot Screen.

The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.

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* Searchable 2024 exit poll survey results

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* How Republican elites created a new, politicized version of the ‘Satanic Panic’

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

03:04 — Pro-democracy arguments and their effectiveness

04:52 — Economic conditions and their influence

11:08 — The role of media in shaping public opinion

14:22 — Trump’s fake economic proposals sounded more ambitious than Harris's at first glance

16:47 — Democrats cannot campaign on policy alone

19:32 — How media shape public opinion of the economy

22:24 — The right’s “regime” narrative is a powerful response to concerns about protecting democracy

30:44 — Why social justice needs economic justice to survive

32:39 — Kamala Harris's failed pivot toward disaffected Republicans

36:26 — The impact of non-voters and younger voters

38:00 — Surfing the media wave rather than trying vainly to control it

42:31 — Many lessons of Obama and Clinton victories are not relevant to today

46:40 — Mainstream media’s failure to tell the full truth about Republicans

48:20 — Democrats cannot rely on the mainstream media

53:01 — Cause for hope: There’s plenty of money to create a progressive media infrastructure

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: People are floating lots of different ideas about what happened and [00:01:00] and I think we should say perhaps at the outset that, judging the total, the complete vote totals at this point.

As we're recording on the 11th of November, it's perhaps a bit premature because there are still a lot of provisional ballots and overseas ballots that haven't been counted yet. But at this point it does seem like that Donald Trump's going to have a very narrow popular vote. When the first time since 2004 for a Republican and, again, well, the totals are going to fluctuate a bit, but it looks like the Trump kept roughly the same amount of voters that he had last time in 2020, whereas Kamala Harris lost a significant percentage of the people who had voted for Joe Biden or couldn't retain them, or they stayed home or they switched to Trump or somebody else who knows.

Um, We will find that out later. But yeah, whatever the case may be, she's definitely going to have a lot fewer votes than Biden. So, I mean, there's a lot of different theories out there, but let's you wrote, wrote a piece over on [00:02:00] Flux for us, but let's maybe get, talk to some of the ideas Your initial thoughts of what, what happened do you think?

JIM CARROLL: Yeah, well, I'll back up one step and just to give context of what kind of what my perspective has been on the election and kind of how it's definitely influenced how I'm thinking about it initially. And basically, a lot of the concentration of my writing has been around the kind of the authoritarianism of Trump and the MAGA movement.

And to me, this has been just like a glaring fact about Donald Trump and then his candidacy. Going into 2024. And so that was really the perspective I've kind of tended to look at the campaign and I would say my heart would thrill when I would hear Kamala Harris, bringing up those arguments on the democracy front against, against Donald And I, despite her loss, I feel pretty strongly that those are the right points to make among others. Those had to be part of her [00:03:00] campaign because that side of Trump and the MAGA movement is just such a threat to democracy in the United States and something that I think this election had to foreground, the Democrats had to foreground and make that into one of the clear stakes of the election.

And I think one of my sort of more pessimistic points was like, in the event that Harris lost, at least the Democrats would have set this as one of the things that we're talking about and that we need to keep talking about. So obviously to see Donald Trump win to me was, probably the most gutting part of it was this is a guy who tried to overthrow the election in 2020. This is a really bad sign for American democracy that this was not a disqualifying factor for a sufficient number of voters.

And so that was kind of my, I'd say, like, after election night and the day after, I was like, this is just, really needed to get a handle on this, I think, going forward. How did the pro-democracy [00:04:00] arguments not resonate? So that's definitely a perspective and I, I think I kind of start there like one reason Harris lost is because these pro-democracy arguments didn't have the sway that I think the Democrats were hoping and I think they, I think, the 2022 midterms had definitely given I think a lot of people on the democratic side hope that the pro democracy arguments actually do have a lot of sway.

And, and I think there's a case to be made there, and I think, when you get down to the nitty gritty of like what swing states did in 2022 and 2024 I there is, definitely nothing about this election that's made me think that this is not an issue that the Democrats need to keep hammering but coming out of it, I would say that that's at the top of my list of like, what in the way that Democrats were talking about this, what in the way that people were thinking about their lives, why did this not resonate?

Economic conditions and their influence

So I think that's kind of kind of the first thing I'd say that the second thing that I'm thinking and seeing a lot of and it's really [00:05:00] holding a lot of water for me is just the basic economic conditions that people are perceiving their lives. I think particularly inflation

I think was A generational phenomenon. We haven't had this much inflation since the seventies, early eighties. And I think it's, I think it's pretty well documented that inflation is uniquely corrosive things to the incumbents in office to societal bonds in terms of, and people's attitude towards the economy, a lot of psychological things going on.

So, and then we cited, I think, at least in the exit polls that are, I know there's still kind of going to be a second guest and, there'll be more, more research for sure, but. Definitely seeing the economy being so high in a lot of people's decisions is particularly on the side that have voted for Trump.

So that's kind of, to kind of start us off. Those are, that's kind of what I've been thinking about. And I, I was telling you before we started also kind of did a kind of big download of what people are talking about. And definitely, there are many, many other factors [00:06:00] that are being discussed, but those are, I would say those are the two that right off the bat I was, I was thinking about preoccupied with.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the, the democracy question is interesting also because so, so when you look at the exit poll that actually was a question that they asked people. They said. Democracy in the U S is colon threatened or et cetera. And among the people who said it was very threatened, 51 percent went for Trump actually.

hmm. 47 percent went for Harris. And then people who said somewhat threatened, it was 50 percent Trump, 49 percent Harris. So that to me, I thought that was a very interesting point. Because I, I absolutely agree that the. Pointing out what it is that Trump and the more importantly, the people who control him want, like people needed to understand that.

And I, I do think generally speaking, Harris and her surrogates did a good job of that. But [00:07:00] at the same time, it's very clear that the public did not receive that message. And, let's Let's maybe talk about that. And cause I, obviously, I've written and you touch it on your piece as well, that, the idea of media, I mean, ultimately, I think that that's where, what this means is that, what was in many ways, the core argument of Kamala Harris, the majority of people didn't believe it seems like,

CARROLL: hmm. I think, I think that's true. I think one thing that popped out to me when you were mentioning that statistic is actually, a couple of months ago, I had seen a poll talking about, who do you think is a greater threat to democracy and, or who, I think it was actually phrased as who would be a greater defender of democracy.

And Trump was definitely, at least five or 10 points ahead of Harris. And I think for me, that was like a major moment about how the election was going to go, because I found that shocking, but I think if we think about it in terms of you've got people on the Republican side who [00:08:00] feel that the Democrats are a threat to democracy and that Trump is redeeming our democracy and, and what does democracy mean anyway to people when they say democracy, which I think is.

a huge subterranean aspect of, of where things have kind of gotten screwy with, with, with our politics. I think, yeah, I, I, I think it starts getting in some, some interesting territory in terms of, yeah, what, what people really are, are saying that they want or what they're scared of happening when they say, when they're asked that democracy question.

And like, to me, it it's, and I, while I always felt it was an important message I, I definitely did see warning signs on this.

SHEFFIELD: A lot of people, they didn't understand the question or they saw it, saw it differently or they, or from an economic standpoint, they felt like their lives are terrible.

So if the system is broken for, and you ask someone, well, we, should we protect our democracy? Do we need, or is it under threat? [00:09:00] They'll answer it in the current stance from where they're at, or at least from, what they've been exposed to from a media standpoint. And so, like, and Democrats have, I think, a very real problem that they have created a kind of this sort of society of science, if you will, is what I'm calling that people who have a multiple degrees and, live in an urban area, their lives are generally pretty good.

Whereas the vast majority of people are not like that. And and while Joe Biden did a lot of, good things for them, most of them never heard about it. And a lot of these things that he did like prescription drug negotiations and things like that they haven't started yet, but more importantly, they'd rarely talked about it, like Kamala Harris had all, she could have picked all kinds of policies and, talked about them on the trail that she and Biden had put in but they never heard it.

CARROLL: think there was if you think about it [00:10:00] in terms of like people, let's just take people, the responses at face value here and, a huge reason people voted for Trump was the economy, a sense of economic malaise, a sense that, you know, particularly with people on the lower end of the income spectrum that, they're living pretty precariously.

Trump, I think, is perceived as. Having a solution slash being aware of the issue. I think that Harris's proposals. Well, a, I kind of agree. Like, I didn't really hear too much and I was paying quite a bit of attention, but it felt like at bottom there was no there was no sense of like, a, A really broad based aggressive plan to be like, what our societies are on equal on equal.

People are very precarious. Let's like, have an aggressive economic program to really like, let's just dig in. Let's just do this. And so I feel like she had some, some really great ideas like [00:11:00] the, the first time home buying credit. I mean, that's that's awesome. And but they just like, wasn't. Wasn't enough.

The role of media in shaping public opinion

CARROLL: I think to counter what I think in some ways is Trump just kind of has more than anything, like a reputation. And I think it's it may be based on the fact that he was like a reality star on a show where he was a successful businessman. And part of me just feels like there's just this. Almost this on a reality to his sort of like hold on people's imaginations in the economic department.

It's just like he presided over like a crashing of the U. S. economy at the end of this term. So, like. The reality is like, he really didn't do great stuff for the economy. But and then you look at his plans and after bashing the Republican or started bashing the Democrats for inflation and blaming on Biden his solution is to impose tariffs that pretty much any credible economist says is kind of.

Lift inflation. Ditto with the mass deportations that he has planned. We're [00:12:00] going to like remove so many people from the workforce. Housing construction costs are going to go up because a lot of undocumented laborers work in, in, in that area of the economy. So, I just feel like on the one hand, you had Trump pretending to provide a solution very aggressively, which okay.

And then the other hand, I think Harris was very specific about what you do, but it, I think with the benefit of hindsight, A week, a week after this defeat it really feels like it did not rise to the moment of the economic insecurity people are feeling. And, I know it's a loaded term, but it's like, after inflation, I think people are really, really rattled and I think it kind of 1 of the consequences of it, I think, is a perception that maybe.

Like, can government do, how quickly can government actually do stuff? I mean, they said they were fighting inflation. It took so long for it to go back down and, and now prices are still higher than they used to be, which, it's kind of what happened with inflation. So I think, I think there was a real.

In a way [00:13:00] under Biden and again, Biden himself, his administration did a lot of great stuff, I think, for the economy that is going to have long term benefits like the inflation reduction act and so on, there was a lot of attentiveness, attentiveness to the economy and I think to working class folks but I think ironically, I think, if Harris had, to have had a chance, I think she would have had to be very aggressive of saying, like, Here's what we're gonna do.

Bam, bam, bam, a 10 point plan, 20 point plan to address people's concerns. And I think somehow that urgency just wasn't there. And it didn't strike me. It's such a problem during the campaign. But again, kind of looking at the, looking back now. I feel like that might have been one thing that could have turned this around potentially.

SHEFFIELD: hmm.

CARROLL: And not, sorry, not just turned it around, but the right thing to do. Also, it's just like, I, I think what's frustrating me to some extent is people talking about Democrats economic messaging. But [00:14:00] it's like, it's not just messaging. It's, it's like, you need to fix the economy. Like, it's not just like talking about it, right.

It's like, no, like there are, like, if you have, half the population who if they were to lose their job, only have savings to survive for a month, that's a pretty big deal. That's, that's, that's not something that any president should be like getting good night's sleep about like knowing that sort of fact.

Trump's fake economic proposals sounded more ambitious than Harris's at first glance

CARROLL: I think looking back at how Harris was making her case for the economy versus Trump, I think on the Trump end of things, You had kind of the whole Trump thing.

Like he had the greatest economy in the world when he was president. He's got plans to make everything great again. When you dig into those plans, it seems like they're basically have to do with cutting taxes and imposing tariffs and mass deportations. The latter two, at least are going to like inflation

SHEFFIELD: and drill drilling for oil or

CARROLL: He's got, he has this, let's put it this way. He's got this plan that sounds really aggressive. [00:15:00] big scale. And I think, I can imagine being a voter and hearing that. And, um, knowing nothing else about Trump for this hypothetical, I'm thinking like, okay, this guy seems to know what he's doing. And he seems to be thinking big. And I think, I don't think anyone listening to Harris would really credibly be able to say, like, she was thinking really big about the economy. And I, I'm not, I definitely don't want to get into that. critiquing the Harris campaign territory right now. But I think, I think the reality is that she was definitely hamstrung by being Joe Biden's VP.

And, and at some point there was not going to be any credible approach to putting an enormous amount of distance between, between herself and him. I think that people, voters would have not believed that it was authentic. But you know, we, we, no matter the, the, the constraints. Her, her presentation of, of economic solutions, just, I, I, even if Trump's are fantastical and aren't going to work the [00:16:00] appearance was, I think, pretty pretty visible to people. I, I can't help thinking that, that when you have a lot of people who are really like inflation was awful and prices don't seem to be going down. And even though they say inflation stopped, why are the prices still high? And I feel, I only have a month of savings here. Like when you hear. know, a limited number of solutions from from the Harris campaign. I think again, I feel like Trump was able to kind of just say anything. And Harris is like in the reality based world. And like, she's not going to, like, make promises that she absolutely can't keep. So I think there's that sort of imbalance at various levels, whether it's Trump's approach. Willingness to lie or Harris's in it.

SHEFFIELD: promise the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Democrats cannot campaign on policy alone

CARROLL: earlier also was like, I do think that Biden did quite a bit for the economy. And I mean, like the I, I feel like in some ways, like the Republicans can't have it both ways.

They can't say that like, Oh, Joe Biden, like cause inflation by all the [00:17:00] spending, but at the same time, like the spending helped the economy. Like, I don't think anyone is like. Questioning that like, hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of jobs are being created either directly by the IRA spending or by follow on effects. Like, this is like stuff that really is helping the economy. But again, I think it's it was more along the lines of setting us up for long, long-term success. As opposed to like things that people were seeing like right now, right now. Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's, I mean, the, the thing about it also is that I do think this campaign hopefully should. Forever in the idea that the public pays attention to policy very closely and understands who did what for them. Because clearly, when you look at the policies that Trump passed when he was the president, he passed a tax cut that mostly benefited companies and, and very wealthy people, and he tried to cut Medicare and Medicaid repeatedly tried to and actually one of his other policies, which almost never got talked about, including [00:18:00] by Harris was that he deliberately raised gas prices right before.

The right after the election were like in 2020, like when he was the president, his goal was he thought the gas prices were too low.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: he negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia and Russia and all and other and OPEC to. Lower production worldwide and make gas prices go up.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Donald Trump did that.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: yet people don't know that that happened. Like there's just,

Are so many things that he did. And of course, I mean, like to me, there was always this kind of heads. I win tails, you lose type of argument on the economy because, the Donald Trump crashed the economy. When he was the president, because of his incompetent handling of the pandemic, inflation was extremely low, and there was even a risk of deflation, because the economy was so horrible.

And gas prices were so low, again, because [00:19:00] of a global pandemic, which he made worse. But then, he wants to take credit for the gas prices being low, and inflation being low! And, but it's, but this is a very difficult argument to make to people who don't know anything about economics and aren't paying attention very well.

And, like I, to me, the Harris campaign didn't even really try to make this argument at all. But even if they had, I'm not sure that they would have worked because it is complicated.

CARROLL: Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: And it requires a lot of reinforcement and external validation.

How media shape public opinion of the economy

SHEFFIELD: And like that to me is the underlying biggest factory is that, Republican campaigns have this enormous margin of error because they have a huge ecosystem in support of them.

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: Whereas Democrats basically have to run a perfect campaign in order to win because of their poor larger strategy.

CARROLL: Yeah. Well, and I actually really like your point about the the Republicans just having a larger margin of error [00:20:00] in, in part, or maybe a large part because, because of the media. And I think, know, another, maybe, coming at this, the election results from, from yet another angle here, this is again, a kind of a big picture thing, but like, it just feels like, you have the the democratic party. In power with this, this record high inflation. And it's some, it's some level there was no. I think this kind of goes beyond just, I think they're communication problems. Like there was not an effort to tell the public, like, look, this is not, at the end of the day, this is because you all went out and like bought a whole bunch of goods after COVID ended and inflation spike, like there's kind of like these, these structural reasons that had nothing to do with Joe Biden nothing to do with like mistakes.

It was like literally how the economy, it was like when you suddenly

SHEFFIELD: And not just in the United States, everywhere in the entire world.

CARROLL: yeah, and of course, like, heaven forbid, the United States actually like learn something from looking at political situations in other countries and getting some context. [00:21:00] But so I think you had, I think you had that kind of, um, that that lack of communication about what's going on, which, was, I think, a political choice on the part of the Democrats, part of the Biden administration. But I think you also have kind of a more long term structural thing that I think. know, again, a big picture thing, which is the Democrats as a party simply did not have the any reservoir of trust with the public that they are good economic stewards. I think, I think something if, I think back to like, the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration, like, at some point, like there was a sort of like, such a hegemonic that the Roosevelt administration was in that they had like room for maneuver, like they could like play around with like solutions to the Great Depression. And I feel like. Um, at some, at some level, the fact that people were sort of like, well, Democrats couldn't handle inflation, better not trust them on the economy. That's, that's bad for the Democrats if they [00:22:00] are, a party that ideally wishes to present. as, the party of kind of the middle class and the working class. So that's I, I just thrown that out there. Cause I, I feel like that's both something that maybe is like super obvious, but I'm also kind of like, I think it, something to, to come back to as, as people like mole, like what went wrong here. Hmm. Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

The right's "regime" narrative is appealing to frustrated people

SHEFFIELD: Um, well, and, and, another angle on the media side is that, when you look at so another exit question on, on the poll for 2024 was, who did you vote for in 2020? And so the finding on that one was, so it was 44 percent said Biden, 43 percent said Trump. And then 10 percent said they did not vote.

And of that 10%, Trump won 49 and Harris won 45. And what was interesting further is that and this is the sample size is 23, 000 people. [00:23:00] And the sample size is about 23, 000 people. So these are much lower sample sizes, or sorry, margins of error. But it looks like that Trump, he was able to keep 95%.

Of his previous voters and by, and Harris was only able to keep 93%. So there were, there were some the 5% difference there or sorry 2%. And of course, but if it was directly from the opposing party, it's basically doubled, essentially. And then Trump also had the majority of people who had well, he 2% said they had voted for another candidate.

And of those people, 43% voted for Trump. And 33 percent went from Harris. And, so, I mean, to me, this also does suggest that, Democrats not wrongfully, do have a, an association with the current order and, and like Republicans, if you listen to [00:24:00] them on YouTube or podcasts like the ones who are better at communicating their views.

Thoughts instead of, like these, focus groups that you see on TV sometimes or that, oftentimes they'll say, well, they use the term the regime as if, or the cathedral or things like that terms to denote that there is this amorphous thing that controls everyone and hates you and is trying to keep you down and, Democrats by and large either are not even aware of these arguments seems like, and don't realize that they're extremely powerful.

I think if you talk to, almost any person who is, relatively young and not a loyal Democrat who is still an avid news consumer.

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: They have heard these things and, and they think about them. Like I have a, I have a friend who he thinks Trump is a complete moron and, should be in a rest home, but he still voted for him because he's so concerned about, [00:25:00] the regime.

And he, and he thinks Republicans are stupid. He doesn't like Republicans. But he still wants to, he still was willing to vote for Trump anyway, because of these, Narratives that have been just relentless. I mean, you would listen to Joe Rogan, like, and all these imitators of it. Like they just pumped that narrative every single podcast, whenever they talk about politics, that's what they're saying to people.

So to me, it was no wonder that a lot of people felt that way.

CARROLL: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing this reminded me of was whole like, democracy angle here and in, this is like an observation that I came across in the last day or two. I've seen it before. And I personally, I think the first time I encountered it, it was just really hard to internalize.

But basically this idea that, a lot of people are, When you talk about and protect democracy, a lot of people seem to be associating it with, like, protect the status quo, and I think that's a really important observation. I think again, like, it's kind of, I find that a gut [00:26:00] wrenching one because I mean, I feel like, The idea that people are, there are just a lot of angles that really bother me with that.

But but I under like, I get it. Like it, like if, if, if there is a conflation of democracy also includes the bureaucracy and includes unaccountable power. I think once you started hitting those, those points of people have a perception that there is something, yeah, unaccountable, something that doesn't have their interest in mind.

And, and, and like you're saying, like the. Republican party and right wing media have just pounded this idea into people's heads for. Like a generation now, like that the government, I mean, I think flashbacks of Newt Gingrich, you're like, the government is like this alien imposition on the American people. And it's like the most fundamentally anti dem, I guess as part of my personal sort of like, revulsion against it, it's like, it's, it's a fundamentally anti democratic idea that a democratically elected government is actually your enemy. But they've ridden [00:27:00] that horse to

SHEFFIELD: Yeah,

CARROLL: point of now we've got Trump. where Trump is like literally an insurrectionist who tries to overthrow the government and actually seen as somehow that has given him legitimacy in the eyes of, of the Republican base. It's things have sort of been kind of flipped over. It's, it's you've painted democratic governance, including the idea of. Science based decisions and, the inevitable governance by people who are experts because it's like a highly modern society where you have, like, you do have scientists at the EPA making decisions and you've got scientists and, and people with PhDs at, the Department of Labor, like making sure that, it, so there was a whole, there was like this grain of truth that has been like blown up into this idea of we are occupied by a, Oh, Alien entity that has seized control of our government.

Oh, and by the way, the Democrats, the Democrats love it and they've done this to you. So there's,

SHEFFIELD: yeah,

CARROLL: that is definitely part of the equation in [00:28:00] terms

SHEFFIELD: it is.

CARROLL: the thoughts about democracy. Yeah,

SHEFFIELD: if they have more far right Christian viewpoints as well, because, like they believe that their opinions are Should be the law of the land. And so when they see, their, their, their niece coming out as bisexual, or they see their, a gay couple move in next door, that to them is a threat to democracy in their minds.

And, and, and these are. They're not, they're not true beliefs. But there is, I think there is a general, there's a significant problem on the American left with seeing false beliefs and just saying, well, that's stupid and not wanting to address it. Like that's, that is the fundamental dynamic I feel like is that.

When people who are Democrats or further left, they, [00:29:00] they, they, they just think, well, these ideas are dumb and no one believes them. Or if they believe them, screw them. Who cares what they think? And you can't do that and win

CARROLL: I think there's a sense, and I think this kind of cuts across, Not just I go ideas and beliefs that that a lot of things are just like self explanatory and will kind of take care of themselves like I kind of avoid any concrete examples here because I don't want to wade into like, particular cultural conflicts.

But, but does seem that in general. have the Democrats as like the party of like social progress. And I think that is, is like undeniably like a great good that has been associated with the Democrats. In my opinion, I mean, from the civil rights movement to women's rights, the gay rights to into the future here and

SHEFFIELD: consumer protection. Yeah.

CARROLL: you.

Like there's a whole, like this whole vision. Of a more egalitarian society where we're all equal and where the government has a [00:30:00] role to play in keeping the playing field equal by, passing laws that say like you are equal, like, it's like, Oh, government oppression, or is it just like a law that is actually fair? And I think, I think one way of looking at our political situation is over time, the Democrats have. Not gained. I think, I think one, they've kind of downplayed this identity in a way that I think has prevented the democratic coalition from like really maybe cohering a bit more and kind of seeing it's various element is various constituents see the other constituents as allies who need to be defended and we're kind of all in this together. I don't think they really tended that as well as they could have. And I think on the flip side in, again,

Economic justice protects social justice

CARROLL: this is like a big picture thing where, you know, the Democrats as they, as Republicans continuously pound them, like every time there's an advance in rights, let's say it's like another point for the, the conservative counter revolution and the right wing media to, to bash through the [00:31:00] Democrats. And I think over time they've, kind of gotten this association with being like liberal and out of touch, even though. I think the reality is that I think our society in general has changed. And a lot of people who used to be conservative are actually in a lot of ways, not as conservative as they used to be. Not to say there isn't like a gigantic core

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: conservative people, but there's been, there's been good change, but I think.

SHEFFIELD: Oh, you see it on, yeah. Like same sex marriage is probably the most prominent example.

CARROLL: where I, I never, again, maybe we're going to see gigantic backlash in the next four years here if the Supreme Court tries to, reverse gay marriage and so on.

But I think there has been like genuine change because the reality is a lot of the threats that were warned about. Social progress don't come to fruition. Like society didn't collapse when women went into the workforce. I mean, it's like these, although I guess the conservatives would argue, yes, actually society did collapse when that happened because the family fell apart. So, but I, I, what I do want to connect this with is the economy because I think the Democrats I think they've played a game where [00:32:00] they're pushing really hard on a lot of social change, but they have not played hard on making sure that that egalitarianism floods out into the economy. And so we're, we're, we're the most unequal economy in the history of, the United States more or less at this point. And I, I can't say that, I just feel like that's at this point, the Democrats are paying a price for not being as aggressive on the economy as they, as they have been. And, and rightly so in other areas. And I, I think that that imbalance is kind of playing against them right now, especially in enabling a lot of Republican attacks.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's right.

Kamala Harris's failed pivot toward disaffected Republicans

SHEFFIELD: And there was Something that this was something that changed though, within the Harris campaign, because when she first came on the scene that was not what she, she actually was going a lot harder after that.

CARROLL: On what specifically are you thinking?

SHEFFIELD: on, on, on going after, billionaires for exploiting people or twisting regulations, manipulating the [00:33:00] system.

That was her early campaign. And like, and it was basically kind of, Right. It was dropped almost immediately after the democratic national convention. And there was a report recently that came out that claimed that her brother in law, Tony West, who is a lobbyist with Uber had advised her not to make those attacks anymore.

And. And, and we'll, we'll see probably further. I mean, I think it might be a little early to say at this point, who else might have said that to her or whether he said that or not. I mean, we don't know for sure at this point, but a strategic chain or communications change did happen within her campaign.

And. And I think that that was a, in retrospect, yeah, not a good one, not a good message.

CARROLL: And that reminds me of something else that I was, I was thinking in terms of there, I guess it's kind of strikes me as a bit of an irony because I do think that Harris put together like a broad based coalition of [00:34:00] anti MAGA politicians. I mean, like, it's almost becoming a cliche at this point, but he's like, it's like, it's stretched from AOC to Dick Cheney. Like, I didn't see that one coming. Right.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: did not see that one coming and I think, if you, if you talk to people experts in anti authoritarian, strategies and so on. It's like doing that sort of like bringing those conservatives on board and liberals on board, getting that majority, however you can put it together to defeat the, authoritarian, extremist party. That's what you need to do. And like Harris, Did that I like to her credit, but I think the price that got paid was, she also didn't want to alienate maybe, and I don't know if this was the specific thing, but like, there were some gettable suburban Republican women in Pennsylvania who might be put off by me talking about the minimum wage too much.

And I think, a bigger scale, I think that logic sort of applied. And I think some of the [00:35:00] kind of require what we're receiving is the political requirements in building this sort of broad MAGA coalition that, could include again, really people as far right as Dick Cheney and as far left as ASC you kind of had to stick to the middle on the economy. And

SHEFFIELD: In order to, yeah, continue to get their support. Yeah.

CARROLL: Dick Cheney walks, if you talk about raising the middle age, for ridiculous example. So I think there was a, in this, I think leads back to with Trump running, this was just a very, very fraught situation because again, you've got this guy who. Is a, convicted felon and he tried to overthrow the government and it's like, my God, yes, you are going to try to get as broad a coalition as you can to stop this guy. That just makes perfect sense. But if voters concerns were maybe a little bit more weighted, and I'm

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Mm

CARROLL: it's right or wrong at this point towards, Hey, I am just so [00:36:00] concerned about the economy. What Trump did was in the past. What you're saying about his threats are in the future. They haven't happened yet. All I know is like right now I'm hurting. Like I can see the logic there. I, it's, it, it sucks for our country, but I can definitely see the logic there. And

SHEFFIELD: hmm.

CARROLL: if we're talking about how did this election happen?

I think dynamics like that are part of, or part of the equation. Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

The impact of non-voters and younger voters

SHEFFIELD: And well, and, and, to go back to the exit poll about, The people who didn't vote. I mean, ultimately that was the difference was these non voters. Like, for Trump, Trump, Trump was going on a lot of these YouTube podcasts and, or podcasts in YouTube not just Joe Rogan, but like a bunch of these podcasts that people on the left, no one would ever.

Dream of even wanting to watch it. Like, this YouTube channel called the, by two brothers called the NELK boys. Like she would never have gone on that. Or, like, there's just a ton of these things and [00:37:00] there, there are some, it, to me, they did also fit to a, another larger problem within the democratic ecosystem, which is that it had a great message for women telling them, you need to come out and vote.

And protect your rights, but they didn't have a message for men. Other than, you're welcome to come and join us. We, we'd be glad to have you, but that was it. Like you, you had to have more than that. And, or even if you didn't, you just had to at least be where they were

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: and look at, and be in with the media where they were.

And, and so for these non voters a lot of them are, are just people who were too young to vote in 2020. And, when you, when you splice out the numbers Donald Trump as for a Republican did better among younger voters than any Republican had since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: And then of course he did got a majority of, of Latino men to vote for him.

And, and he did that by being in the places where they [00:38:00] were.

Surfing the media wave rather than trying vainly to control it

SHEFFIELD: So like, obviously, I, I'm not going to expect Kamala Harris to be going to UFC fights, nor would they want her to because they're, Dana White is a very right wing person. But there's, there are other places where she could have gone to and, like, Going on the Joe Rogan podcast.

You should have done that. Not that she would have persuaded him. Like, I don't, I don't think that, that she, she would have persuaded him, but these people who watch these podcasts, these are tens of millions of people who watch these podcasts. And if you add them all together, it may be like a hundred million people in a given month are watching or listening to these podcasts.

CARROLL: Mhm.

SHEFFIELD: she wasn't there for them. And, and, and all of these podcasts, like some of them were just not really, they weren't intending to be political, but the Republicans were the only ones who were showing up. And like, there is, there is this problem that a lot of Democrats have that, well, I don't want to go into a media environment unless I have complete control of the situation.

I [00:39:00] don't want it to go out of control. And it's like. We live in a, in a world of hundreds of thousands of, of posters, of people making content and you can't do that anymore. Like all you can do is ride the wave now. That's all you can do is stay on top of it and, give people your best answer and, and answer anything that they throw at you and not.

Come up with some, cause she did struggle a lot, especially early on about, well, how would you be different than Biden? And you touched on that a bit. She started answering something like that, but even then it wasn't very much. She was like, oh, well, I'll report a point of Republican to my cabinet.

Well, what, what good is that? Especially if you're somebody who is, more left wing, that's a negative.

CARROLL: Yeah. Well, yeah. Talking about the whole like podcast universe and the things that they, that, that Harris or other Democrats didn't go on. I mean, it makes me think of, and again, this is something as I was kind of like, burning, burning through people's reactions to the the election this [00:40:00] past weekend.

One thing that, that I thought was really a sharp observation that, that someone had made was like, there is like this whole, world of culture, which is, an enormous part of all our, our, our lives. And specifically in terms of like, men feeling that they're not welcome in the democratic party, not being talked to, I do think, we are living through an age of cultural black backlash right now, where I think, you had the me too movement. And I think ever since then, you've been kind of having this sort of like, banner sort of like. of rebelling. And, we're still a patriarchy. We're still a male dominant society. And health, men still have quite a, quite a few means to, to make their, their sort of dissat, dissatisfaction heard.

And it, it does seem like there is this kind of bit of cultural ferment going on right now that is separate from politics. But I think what you're getting at is also is also part of politics because it form, it influences people's votes, it influences how people think about politicians. And there's nothing to say, like you're saying [00:41:00] that a democratic politician can't go on one of these shows where maybe they're, the general tenor is like, not something that the Democrat agrees with, but. That's how else you're going to get, get your point of view across. And I, I think like one of the things that I think is just thrilled a lot of Democrats is seeing someone like Pete Buttigieg be going on Fox News, all these things and showing that like, yeah, with a certain attitude and a certain quickness of wit, like you can actually kind of get your ideas across.

And again, jury's out on whether It has all made a difference, or, I don't know how Fox News is cutting and splicing, Pete's discussions with people so that, does he come out sounding

SHEFFIELD: I think he does them live, actually. I think he does them live. Oh, they can't do that.

CARROLL: So, he knows what he's doing.

So, I think they kind of showed that, like, and I think, will kind of turn this to another, kind of push this forward again and say, like, I think this also speaks to, like, there is, in many ways, a sort of lack of aggression on the Democratic side. And it's, it is very befuddling because like the stakes could not be [00:42:00] higher. And I think obviously like Trump is a master of keeping the initiative and aggression, obviously. And seeing the Democrats not just like sometimes just like, let's just like freaking do stuff we haven't done before and like get out there. I certainly think in the post, post Harris phase of things here to blame her po the post-election phase.

I think you're gonna hopefully see people being much more experimental or at least suggesting that

SHEFFIELD: Yeah,

CARROLL: here and like, let's figure this out.

Many lessons of Obama and Clinton victories are not relevant to today

SHEFFIELD: well, and that is actually a core difference as somebody who has been on the inside of both sides, like the right is so much more experimental than the left is and, like, whereas, because people in the democratic campaign, super structure, if you will, largely are people who are veterans of the Bill Clinton campaigns.

And of the Barack Obama campaigns. And the critical thing to note about both of those candidates was [00:43:00] that in a lot of ways, the system actually favored them. They didn't actually have to grind out a good. campaign, a great campaign on their own. So, and I, and I'll say that, like, just to be more specific, like, so Bill Clinton, of course, 1992, he was helped with both of his campaigns by Ross Perot being there, taking away votes from Republicans.

And then, and then in 96, he ran against Bob Dole, who was, just everybody, No one liked Bob Dole. And so he never had a chance. And everyone knew it, probably including him, from the beginning. And then, fast forward to 2008 with, Barack Obama. So candidate quality and media environment are, to me, are the biggest determiners of who wins a little action.

And Barack Obama, was an incredible quality candidate. Like we haven't seen anybody with that level of eloquence. And he just like also with, like Trump has an ability to, give people an answer that sounds good to them and makes sense to them.

CARROLL: Mm-Hmm.

SHEFFIELD: and on case of Obama could actually speak grammatical [00:44:00] sentences.

And, a lot of people say is attractive and, like, He was a fantastic candidate. And so whatever other issues were going on and then he had the financial collapse that happened during the Republicans, like all of these things, like it was, he was going to win that election pretty much guaranteed in 2008 and 2012.

He was up against a guy who was, basically a venture capitalist banker. Like if a Democrat can't beat a boring venture capitalist banker, then, you're pretty awful campaign chop. And then of course he was still the, the great communicator that he was. So basically that goes back to this idea of not Democrats, not having room for error because the people who have the experience, who have the power, who have the infrastructure, who have the money, they never had to earn it in some sense.

And now that Democrats have to grind in order to win, they don't know how to. And Joe Biden, I would [00:45:00] say, one in spite. Of the democratic operative class, because it was largely people who were just so horrified by the Trump presidency, by the pandemic. And notably, that's why I was saying the people who didn't vote in 2020, they voted, they didn't vote, they voted for Trump.

So like basically Trump had of the electorate that we had. In 2020, he lost it. He lost. It was only these new voters that came out. That's why Donald Trump won. Is that he mobilized, non voters and he was able to convince enough younger voters. Like when you had those two together. That was his margin of victory.

And that's something that I think to me is, is a huge takeaway.

CARROLL: Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: And then, and then I guess maybe the last underscoring at that point is that when you look at, so one of the other exit poll questions was what's your feeling if Trump is elected or if Harris is elected and they gave people the [00:46:00] choices of excited, optimistic, concerned, or scared.

And the fascinating thing on this question is when they, of the people who said they were concerned if Trump won, which was 14%,

CARROLL: Mm hmm.

SHEFFIELD: 14 percent of them voted for him

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: that they said they were concerned if he went now. And then if you look at people who were concerned about Harris, if she won, there was 21 percent of them.

Who said they were concerned and she only got 7 percent of them. So basically the, these were reluctant voters who, who a lot of them didn't like Trump, but they voted for him anyway.

CARROLL: Yeah.

Mainstream media's failure to tell the full truth about Republicans

CARROLL: Well, this reminds me of the other, this is obviously staring us in the face, but just the issue of the kind of the massive media failures that happen, not just in terms of like. know, Democrats having to contend with, a massive right media apparatuses feeding all sorts of disinformation and, but also just, let's call it like the mainstream [00:47:00] media, New York Times, Washington Post, where I think it's, it's pretty clear that there was like just a, a gigantic failure to really talk about like what. What a threat like Trump poses to, not just our democracy, but pretty much every aspect of our lives. Because of his starting with the fact that, he's, he's basically like a lawless individual who tried to overthrow our government and seems to have no respect for the law.

And I think the Supreme

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: come in and said that, what he does can go. Going forward, so I think, I think in some ways, and this is kind of what is, what I'm seeing is a bit missing from kind of the postmortems that I'm seeing this last weekend and so on is Democrats had these massive headwinds that they're going against.

I mean, so much misinformation on the right the kind of, I guess that it's called the same washing phenomenon coming from [00:48:00] mainstream and then it's like, oh, and the Democrats lost. They must really suck. it's like, well, let's, let's hit the pause button here and kind of look at what these structural factors were that were going on. And but I, I just think that that's, I just didn't want to leave that out of kind of the overall kind of like

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: and things that I think people are going to definitely be like looking at and talking about.

Democrats cannot rely on the mainstream media

CARROLL: And, this definitely goes into discussions of like, how do the Democrats build a sort of media apparatus that can get the word out when they can't rely? And at this point, I think it's pretty clear they can't rely on mainstream

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

CARROLL: that for them, whatever.

SHEFFIELD: they can't. Yeah. And, and here's the, the other irony to me is, is again, somebody who switched sides was that people on the right, they figured that out also. Yeah. So the, so the mainstream media by design is appealing to both sides. Like that is the literal business model that they will not be the advocacy [00:49:00] organization for either political party.

And, they've, they've decided to commit to the bit. They don't care to defend themselves against a guy who literally wants to throw them in jail and calls them enemies of the people and incites violence against them. They don't care. And so, and I, and I know that that's probably, having to come to terms with that reality, like it's, it is an astonishing, myopia that they have, but they have it.

And, whereas the right, they figured out, well, okay, we're Christian fundamentalists who, want. Corporations to rule everyone in a sort of feudalism. So the media doesn't promote our ideas and they're not going to, so we will make our own. And they had that realization in the 1950s and that's, like this is the fundamental dynamic.

And and, but, but I think for again, like a lot of, a lot of people, the, the, the, the, the disadvantage that people who are trying to [00:50:00] oppose this, Unreality movement is that when you're, when you're just attacking, when you're attacking reality, you're against reality. That's easy. That's much easier than to say, well, I'm in favor of reality and we're going to make it better in small ways.

CARROLL: Yeah, I mean, that's, it's a huge imbalance. It's a huge imbalance. And it does feel like, yeah, it does feel like a lot of people, particularly on the right have, they're, they're in echo chambers. And, and, they're, Hearing, they're not getting the truth about what's going on with the economy.

They're not getting the truth about what's going on, even on like the culture war front. I mean, they fed these nightmares about, about immigrants invading the country and, and these things that

SHEFFIELD: Or,

CARROLL: I mean,

SHEFFIELD: or trans, sorry, or transgender prisoners. Like there were literally two gender affirming care surgeries and they were done under Trump. They were not done under Biden. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

CARROLL: [00:51:00] I mean, yeah, it's like, I get, it's like to state the most obvious thing in the world that it's been so obvious for so long that I think it's just like treated as a given, but yeah, if you have like massive propaganda apparatus that can broadcast fictional versions of the world that people are convinced are the reality, yeah, that's a huge political advantage.

And, and I do feel the Democrats at some level. At various points, they just gave up, they just took it as that given, and it's

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Mm

CARROLL: behind your back or your opponent has four arms or whatever metaphor you want to use. It's, it's, it's just kind of like, wow, like, I guess we're just going to like operate in this information environment.

I, I do feel like in some ways, there's some silver lining with this election. It's going to be that Democrats realize that this can't go on. Like you, there's no point in having great ideas if, if people aren't hearing them or [00:52:00] people hearing an avalanche of, of, of lies that kind of,

SHEFFIELD: hmm. Five lives.

CARROLL: them.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and like, well, and there were a lot of organizations that got lots of money for fact checking and whatnot, but the problem is,

CARROLL: hmm.

SHEFFIELD: and I, I still think those things need to be done, but the reality is,

CARROLL: Mm

SHEFFIELD: fact check your way out of fascism. Fascism is about money. It is about a false version of reality that is crammed into your skull whether you want it or not, or whether, and whether you know it's even happening or not.

Like that's, like on the economy, when you look at it, like a lot of people, I mean, you look at the, the audience of these things, it's not the majority of Americans who are, participating in right wing media, but it is probably, Bigger now or at least proximate size to the mainstream media, especially and for younger people It is definitely bigger because gen z Prefers youtube.

They don't even like netflix like youtube is more popular among gen z than netflix is and any of the other [00:53:00] streaming services.

Money is not the obstacle to a better media environment, willpower and skill is

SHEFFIELD: But I will say there there is As we're getting to the end of our session here that there is one cause for hope that I do want people to think about. And that is when, when, when I have talked about these things and articles and social media, a lot of times people will say to me, well, this, it's, this is just not fair.

There's all these billionaires who are funding these things. It's this is what we're up against. How can we ever have any hope? But I want people to realize there were 83 billionaires who backed Kamala Harris in 2024. There were 52 who backed Donald Trump. So money is actually not the problem for the left.

It's skill and it's the desire to do something different and better.

CARROLL: Yeah, totally agree. I mean, I think it's in some, in some to be optimistic. I mean, I think this is a case of like just people's imaginations. I mean, I think it's sort of like the classic thinking outside the box about [00:54:00] proceed.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. But yeah, you, if, if, if you really believe that democracy is at stake, which is what they kept saying, then you need to act like it. It's time to do something different. And, and the great thing is there's a lot of people who would be really excited about doing something different and that would really get behind it, like, Kamala Harris is the democratic base of voters in, when, when Gallup has people, are you excited to vote this year?

Democrats. This was like 2008 levels of excitement about voting. So people really want something different and they want to stop, they want to stop, the, the Trumpian Christo fascism, they really are committed to do it. And so, this, I think it's, it's a painful shattering and of illusion.

But if we can keep it together and push back against all of the horrible things that Trump and his cronies will do there is, there is There is, there's a lot of people out there, who have said on Twitter, I've seen that there, that Harris managed to re [00:55:00] inspire patriotism in them in a way that they hadn't felt since the Obama years.

And, and that's a good energy to capture and we don't need to lose that.

CARROLL: Totally agree.

SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so for people who want to keep tabs with you, Jim what, what are your recommendations for it?

CARROLL: Well, you can check me out at flux. You can also check out my personal website. It's the hot screen. com. Yeah, I yeah, mostly politics these days used to do movie reviews, but then Trump happened and I kind of concentrate on the politics.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Now, what about on socials though? What are you, for people who want to catch?

CARROLL: still on Twitter at this point. So that's a JTC at JTC Carol and yeah, that's, that's kind of the extent of it these days. I, I definitely going to get onto blue sky soon. It seems to be a, it's a Twitter exodus is seems to be accelerating.

SHEFFIELD: Yep. It sure does. And with good reason, with good reason. Yeah. All right. Well, cool, Jim. Thanks for being here and we'll hopefully people got something [00:56:00] out of our chat here.

CARROLL: Great conversation. Thank you.

SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is the program for today. Appreciate everybody joining us for the conversation and you can always get more. If you go to theory of change that show, you can get the video, audio and transcript of all the episodes and my thanks to everybody who has a paid subscribing member. That's very, very important.

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