Episode 199 with Ettingermentum
Welcome to KK&F, where we’re making sense of the aftermath. With a race called much more quickly for Trump than many expected — he was declared the winner of Michigan around 5:30 AM EST the day after the election — it was clear that the race wasn’t even as tight as anticipated. Trump won every swing state and gained ground pretty much everywhere. What should the Democrats learn from this — and what are they willing to learn? Watch our convo with Ettingermentum below:
We, uh, know who would’ve won. Watching many voters shift away from Harris, whether toward Trump or rejecting voting entirely, reminded us that many groups — for example, the disaffected young bros that seem to have broke for Trump in surprisingly massive number — were moved by the message of Bernie Sanders but, now that the only choice is between neoliberalism and Trump-style conservatism, have simply shifted to the right: those people are Republicans now. And the Democrats were never interested in them. The Democrats, rather, trotted out Liz Cheney time after time to tout the feasibility of consolidating party establishments — the last thing populist-inclined voters wanted to see or hear.
It seemed that Harris might make a strong showing in some Rust Belt states, especially given the skill of her VP, Tim Walz, in making appeals to these regions. In fact, Harris lost many of these areas while Democrats lower down on the ticket pulled off big wins. In every single competitive state, Democrats outran Kamala Harris, some in excess of 10 points. Why? Candidates like Rashida Tlaib, for example, have won by representing and defending their communities tirelessly while, on the federal level, the party dismisses major parts of their constituencies, abandoning and dismissing Arab American voters in places like Michigan. Where Democrats below the top Harris-Walz billing were able to make inroads into their communities, defend bread-and-butter policies, and provide a vision for that community’s well-being, they earned more trust than Kamala.
As Bernie Sanders pointed out in a recent post-election statement, do we think the top Democratic operatives will learn anything from this? Probably not. Their jobs are cushy, and they’re used to hopping from Biden to Kamala to, who knows, Newsom or Buttigieg next time — or to a Republican if that’s where all the money goes. But because the rest of us are stuck with four years of Trump, we need to know what happened Tuesday night — and Episode 199 of KK&F has some good answers to start with. We hope you enjoy listening.
This episode will be available as a podcast tomorrow on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more.
