[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Let's focus in on the debate within the Democratic Party or more broadly the political left in this country over why the Democrats lost the election and what they need to do to win. They just lost the presidency and the Senate, and Republicans are probably, though we don't know, on their way to retaining a slim majority in the House. You've been hearing some of the theories because every Western leader who saw a pandemic inflation on their watch has gotten slaughtered in their next election. Harris only did as well as she did because Donald Trump is so unpopular, because Biden dropped out too late, leaving Harris too little time to introduce herself to voters, because the racism and sexism tax on a Black and South Asian woman candidate was too steep to overcome, because the Democratic Party is too identified with censorious and extreme sounding identity politics, or because the Democrats fail to offer a true populist economic alternative to Trump's economic populism on the cost of living, even though Trump's is probably going to make inflation worse.

As business and economics reporter Greg David said on yesterday's show, it's why long term interest rates have been going up since the election. Greg told us long term interest rates rise when Wall Street investors anticipate inflation. Trump sold the idea that he's better for working class wallets than the Democrats because the Democrats didn't really counter it with much of substance. That's that theory.

We have a guest today representing mostly that point of view. It's David Sirota, among other things, a former presidential campaign speech writer for Bernie Sanders. Before we bring him on, let's set this up with a clip of Senator Sanders discussing his own election postmortem on CNN's State of the Union program on Sunday. Sanders had said the Democratic Party abandoned the working class. That was his phrase, "abandoned the working class." The host Dana Bash quoted DNC Chair Jamie Harrison who said, "Joe Biden has been the most pro-worker president of my lifetime," and Sanders responded.

Bernie Sanders: Look, Joe Biden is a friend of mine. I've been proud to work with him on an agenda which has been very strongly in favor of the working class. Biden promised to be the most progressive president since FDR in many ways. On domestic issues, I think he kept his word, but here is the reality. The working class of this country is angry and they have a reason to be angry.

We are living in an economy today, Dana, where the people on top are doing phenomenally well while 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, 25% of elderly people are trying to get by on $15,000 a year or less. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and parents all over this country worry that their kids may have a lower standard of living than they do. That is the economic reality.

What Donald Trump did is provided an explanation. He went around, he said, "I know you're angry and the reason is that zillions of illegal immigrants are coming over and they're eating your cats and dogs and everything else. That's the reason." Well, obviously that is not the reason. The reason is, in my view, that we have an unprecedented level of corporate greed today, more income and wealth inequality and people on top want it all.

We need an agenda that says to the working class, "We're going to take on these powerful special interests and create an economy and a government that works for you." By the way, that can't happen unless you get big money out of politics. We got to get rid of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision so billionaires do not continue to buy elections.

Brian Lehrer: Bernie Sanders with Dana Bash on CNN on Sunday. With me now, David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, host of the podcast Master Plan, co creator of the movie Don't Look Up. Did you know he was a co creator of Don't Look Up? You saw it, right? Former presidential campaign speechwriter for Bernie Sanders. His election postmortem peace on his site, The Lever, is called Handbook for The Politically Deceased. David, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Sirota: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Your article begins with the premise of the Democrats rejecting working class politics, so let's start on basically that same exchange from the Bernie clip. Joe Biden came into office trying to be the biggest economic populist since FDR or LBJ. I could list all the things he did or tried to do and there was so much coverage of him at the beginning. He even said some version of wanting to be the next FDR or LBJ. Did the Democrats under President Biden really reject working class politics?

David Sirota: Well, I think two things. One, when President Biden passed the American Rescue Plan, which was a big investment in the working class of this country, he was the most popular that he has been in his entire term. When he actually did deliver in a high profile way, a huge investment into the working class, he was rewarded with a lot of support across the country. I think two things then subsequently happened. There was a narrative created that the American Rescue Plan caused inflation, which was a nonsensical narrative. We now know that corporate greed, the use of corporations using their market power to raise prices and the supply chain issues really caused much of the inflation.

Also President Biden was also, in a sense, starting his decline. That became more acute as the term went on. He wasn't really out there, in an aggressive way, selling his agenda. There was that.

Additionally one other point, the American Rescue Plan expired. People got a sense of what the government could do to raise their economic wellbeing, the child tax credit extended unemployment benefits and the like, and then those benefits were ripped away. There was a lot of discontent around that. I think those three things colluded to create a situation in which the working class of this country was saying, "What are the Democrats really proposing? What are they going to do?" For me, it was a question that the Democrats didn't answer while Donald Trump campaigned on the old Democratic trope of, "It's the economy, stupid."

Brian Lehrer: Would you say then that Kamala Harris failed to campaign on the policies that Biden had promoted for a while but either expired or failed in Congress, that she didn't run on universal childcare and national rent control, which Biden was reportedly about to propose just before he dropped out, or greatly expanding home health aides for senior citizens, or those kinds of things, that she ran on smaller boar tax credits for first time homebuyers for people starting small businesses, plus the child tax credit?

David Sirota: Yes, I think that's part of it. I certainly think some of the things she put out there were good policies, but presidential campaigns are exercises in telling stories. I would challenge anybody to think about what we just lived through and ask yourself, did the Harris campaign really name any villains? Did the Harris campaign tell a story about who is actually keeping the working class down? I would say no, the Harris campaign did not tell a story about big corporations ripping people off, about Wall Street fleecing people and the like.

I think part of the reason she didn't is because- as we know from reporting that happened during the campaign and after, that she was surrounded by a set of donors, by a set of billionaires who were pushing her not to go too populist in this campaign. I think the strategy was if we can run as a generic Democrat, that Donald Trump is so inherently unpopular that just a generic Democrat will be able to defeat Donald Trump. Then you put on top of generic Democrat, "Let's campaign with Liz Cheney. Let's toggle a little bit to the right of Joe Biden to try to get so called moderate Republicans."

I think that was a failed strategy because I think most of the moderate Republicans in the suburbs have already become Democrats long ago. There's not a lot of water to squeeze out of that wet towel anymore, that the swing voter is not the old country club Republican, the old Rockefeller Republican. Those are Democrats now. The swing voters are working class voters. If you're not telling a story about the villains, the corporate villains who are coming down on that working class, you're probably going to lose elections.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, this is one of those segments where our lines are full even before I put out the phone number. Just letting you know, but let me give it anyway for when people are on hold, finish up, because we don't only want the people who memorized our phone number and like to call in a lot to have access here. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can always text. The text thread doesn't fill up like our 10 phone lines.

We're framing the question broadly for you, mostly for Democratic listeners in this case, how much of the various explanations do you embrace for the Trump victory in the Electoral College and several point win in the popular vote, or anything you want to ask David Sirota?

The other explanations, listeners, besides the one that David and Bernie Sanders are giving regarding Biden's late exit; the global route of governing parties that were unlucky enough to preside over pandemic inflation, racism and sexism in the electorate, the party being too far left on crime, too weak on the border, not explaining their position on transgender athletes clearly enough, the prevalence of disinformation on social media or some mix of any of those or ones not even on that list. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. David, let me get to the issue that some people are raising of the Democrats focusing too much on non economic issues and being seen as out of touch on those.

You've heard it, criminal justice reform rather than crime, defund the police, LGBTQ rights to the point where the Trump campaign was able to play that clip a zillion times of Harris saying years ago that she was for taxpayer financing of transgender surgeries for people in prison and she never addressed it, plus canceling the speech of people who aren't ideologically pure enough, or at least that's the allegation.

Here's a clip of Democratic Congressman Richie Torres of the Bronx, who posted after the election that Trump has no better friend than the far left. Those were Richie Torres' words, "Trump has no better friend than the far left." He's a Democrat in Congress. He made some of that case after the election on MSNBC.

Richie Torres: Keep in mind the trends that are unfolding in 2024 long predate the 2024 election. Back in 2020, Donald Trump made historic inroads among voters of color during the public backlash against the Defund The Police movement. He built on those gains decisively in the 2024 election. Look, if the goal is to win elections on Twitter, then you should embrace movements like Defund the Police, but if the goal is to win elections in the real world where it matters, then you have to appeal to working class people of color who historically have been the base of the Democratic Party.

Brian Lehrer: Congressman Richie Torres on MSNBC. Here's Bernie Sanders asked to respond to that kind of critique, especially as it pertains to the shift in the Latino vote, in his CNN interview.

Bernie Sanders: Well, what I think is that Trump has done a good job in claiming that Democrats do nothing more than the woke agenda. In my view, what Democrats have got to focus on and tell that gentleman, "Do you want a minimum wage that's a living wage? Do you think healthcare is a human right? Do you think we should build the affordable housing that we need? Do you think we should take care of our seniors by expanding Social Security?"

I think the emphasis has got to be, "Of course," and wiping out all forms of bigotry. The Democrats should be proud of standing up for women's rights and abortion rights and gay rights and civil rights, but the emphasis got to be, is to make it clear that we are prepared to stand with the vast majority of the people, many of whom are falling further and further behind, while the people on top do phenomenally well. That's a message that, in my view, will resonate with the Latino community and the entire working class community.

Brian Lehrer: Again, Bernie Sanders on CNN. To be clear, he wasn't responding to Richie Torres directly. He was responding to a Latino Trump voter who they had played a clip of, but it was the same idea. David, where do you enter that conversation?

David Sirota: My view is that, and I think what Bernie Sanders is saying, the more succinct way to say it, is the Democrats need to be defined in people's minds primarily as a class-first economic populist party, a party that proposes universal, not means-tested, not complicated, not paperwork laden, benefits and supports for the working class, and also a party that is willing to take on corporate power.

The party is caught right now between its donor class and its voters. The way I've explained this before is that there's-- if you look at the Venn diagram of the Democratic Party, there's what the donors want in one circle, there's what the voters want in another circle, and in the middle is a very small set of issues that the donors can accept and that the voters want, but it's a very small set of issues like, for instance, reproductive rights and the like. Important causes, but not causes that challenge the power of the donor class, that are responsible for the problems that are faced by the working class.

That is a problem and people can sense it. It's why the Democrats seem incoherent. It's why they take small steps on economic issues, not big steps. It's why they are not defined as an economic class first party, which allows the Republicans then to portray them as defined by all sorts of cultural issues, and the Republicans, of course, caricature those cultural issues which lots of voters don't like the caricature. It's about getting back to what is the central brand and story of the Democratic Party? I think most people would say right now it's not a story of a party, it's not FDR's party.

I want to add one other thing about Bernie Sanders. When you look at the election results, the Democrats fared particularly poorly among Latino voters, younger voters, working class voters and men. It's worth reminding everybody that those were the demographics that Bernie Sanders performed best among in the Democratic primary.

The response to Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party was to take his movement and negatively gender it as so called Bernie Bros, and then everyone wakes up after the election and wonders, "Hey, wait a minute, why do we lose among men? Why do we lose among Latinos? Why do we lose among working class voters?" The party has spent four or six years berating the Bernie Sanders movement within its party and then wakes up after the election and wonders why many of the people in that movement or the demographics that he was strongest among in that movement left the party.

Brian Lehrer: Hillary Clinton supporters, some of them saw a lot of sexism among those so called Bernie Bros, too.

David Sirota: Look, sexism and racism were clearly at issue in this election. I would say this. Everything you mentioned earlier about disinformation, sexism, racism, the Republican attacks, all of that colluded in this election, certainly to tilt the playing field against Kamala Harris, and on top of that, as you mentioned, the inflation situation and how that that generally tilted the field against any incumbent party in office.

That argues for, then don't run a risk-averse campaign just trying to portray yourself as a generic Democrat. A risk-averse campaign in a situation that is inherently tilted against you is a risky strategy. You're going to have to try to bet big. What does betting big look like? It's putting forward very crystal clear policies that people can understand the direct benefits of.

It was Tim Waltz who said the top priority of the Democrats, this is right before he was nominated, the top priority should be simple, universal paid family leave. It was something the Democrats did not campaign on. They did not tell a story about the villains in the economy. They did not name the villains.

In fact, at the Democratic convention, if everyone remembers this, what did the national television audience see on the second night of the convention? They saw Bernie Sanders ripping on billionaires, and then immediately after that, they saw billionaire governor J.B. Pritzker brag about being a billionaire. then they saw the former CEO of American Express say that Kamala Harris understands that government's job is to work with business. What kind of an incoherent message is that? It's certainly not a message in which the Democratic Party is clearly diagnosing the problems that are being faced by the working class.

Brian Lehrer: Should Democrats excoriate business leaders to that degree and say that they don't want to work with business, only focus on the ravages of certain parts of the business class? If people are worried about the cost of living, if people want good jobs and the economy to thrive, isn't there a finer line to walk than what you just said?

David Sirota: Well, look, I certainly think you don't want to paint all businesses or all business leaders with a hugely broad brush, but there are plenty of corporate villains in the economy that are making life worse for people. Private equity buying up housing, the drug companies jacking up prices. I could go on and on.

I would put it this way. When FDR was running for reelection in the middle of the Great Depression, not exactly a great time to be running for reelection as an incumbent, what was his message? His message wasn't, "The government's job is to work with business." His message was, "I welcome their hatred." That he described a situation in which the corporate community and the oligarchs and the powers that be were aligned against his administration, and that he welcomed their hatred to continue the fight that he had started in his first term to get into a second term.

In other words, the story was not everything is fixed, as opposed to what we heard a lot of pundits say, "Voters are ingrates for what the Biden administration has delivered." FDR's message was, "I am not happy with all that we have accomplished so far. I welcome the hatred of people who are against us, the oligarchs that are against us, and we need to do more." That was not the message that the Democratic Party put forward in this situation.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is David Sirota, if you're just joining us, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, host of the podcast Master Plan, co creator of the movie Don't Look Up, and former presidential campaign speech writer for Bernie Sanders. His election postmortem piece on his site, The Lever, is called Handbook for The Politically Deceased. You hear the consistent with Bernie Sanders critique that's much been in the news over the last week, arguments here about why the Democrats lost the presidential election.

Here's some pushback that we're getting in text messages. One says, "You're talking about the donor class. The donor class helped propel Trump to victory." Another one says, "I cannot believe that the guest is calling the first woman of color to be the nominee to run a-- calling her a generic Democrat." Another one says, "Kamala Harris said 'Price gouging,' in almost every speech." Pick one or more of those to respond.

David Sirota: Sure. First of all, what I meant by generic Democrat was a conventionally defined Democrat on policy and on the story that's being told, a story of the election is about democracy being under attack, it is not about a populist story about the economy and who is coming down on the working class, so a generic Democrat. I would say that it was certainly the strategy, but it was not an effective one.

On the question of price gouging, look, Kamala Harris' television ads were the, in my view, strongest part of her campaign. Her television ads about price gouging were an attempt to try to tell that story. However, if you remember, she first put out the price gouging idea, then she backed off of it. Reporting has told us that she backed off of it because of pressure from her donors and the people around her, and then she put some ads on television.

I would say this. There was a dissonance between the Kamala Harris on the campaign trail and the Kamala Harris on the television ads. Airing television ads about price gouging while campaigning with Liz Cheney and really talking mostly about Donald Trump's assault on democracy, which Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, but there's a dissonance there. Typically what you see in winning candidates is what they're saying on TV is being amplified by what they're saying on the campaign trail over and over and over again. Again, that's not exactly what happened in this race.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another text. Listener writes, "My 19-year-old daughter said to me yesterday, 'I was so shocked, my social media really made me believe that Harris would win.' My 17 year old son, the morning after the election, said at breakfast, 'I'm not surprised. My social media was all guys for Trump.' To make clear he was upset. He is also a basketball-playing, gaming, rap-listening young man. The algorithms really need to be addressed and I'm not hearing anything about them." Any thought on that? I guess, the addendum to that is, the ones that were targeting young men were so successfully spread.

David Sirota: The narrow casting in our politics is certainly-- it's not exactly new, but it's getting more intense where different groups are getting different messages. Look, there was a situation in which an Elon Musk-linked PAC was sending two different messages to Trump voters, some Jewish voters, some Arab voters saying different messages on where Kamala Harris was on the Israel-Gaza situation, and opposite messages to try to get those folks to vote for Trump.

We are certainly living in a world where the messages are being narrow cast. I think the key point that I keep going back to is even as you are narrow casting, is there a way to get a single story told? Again, I go back to Donald Trump told a story of essentially what the Democrats have told in every successful open seat election that they've won, which is, "It's the economy, stupid." For the most part the Democrats didn't tell a story about the economy. A lot of their media machine by the way told the story of not, "It's the economy, stupid," but, "You're stupid if you think it's the economy."

There was a lot of stuff about people are ungrateful, they're misled, they don't understand that the economy is better. "Why aren't people feeling better about the economy?" One other thing that we've learned in this election, the macro economy can be doing well, but if people's micro lived experience of the economy is not going well, then the macro numbers don't mean very much in terms of determining political outcomes.

Brian Lehrer: Another text asks basically with a premise that you're saying, people want to be against the rich and the Democrats weren't giving them the voice to do that or giving voice to that sentiment. Listener asks, "Why was Elon Musk so palatable to the working class then?"

David Sirota: That's a great question. I want to be very clear. There are legitimate questions about why would a populist zeitgeist, an anger at the higher ups, why would that redound to Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the billionaires backing Donald Trump? I think the answer on that is that, first and foremost, in an economic situation like that, the election is inherently going to be a referendum on the incumbent party. You can't just take that away. That's inherently what it's going to be.

Donald Trump exploited that to portray himself as an outsider crashing the gates, so did Elon Musk. It's ridiculous. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world who stands to now potentially benefit in a personal financial way from being appointed to a top position in the Trump administration as Trump has promised. It's ridiculous that Donald Trump and billionaires are now seen as the outsiders crashing the gates, but again, any election in this situation is going to be a referendum on the incumbent party. "What have you done for me? What is your attitude? Why should I rehire you?"

I want to mention one other thing. The last three elections have been like that. In fact, four of the last five elections have been that. 2008 was a referendum on the incumbent party. The Democrats won. 2012 skipped because that was the last time the Republicans basically nominated the human personification of Gordon Gekko as their nominee, Mitt Romney. Obama essentially got lucky, but he easily could have gotten voted out in 2012 had the Republicans nominated a Trump-like populist, but then 2016, 2020, 2024 people are continuing to vote for change, I would argue mostly because they don't like their lived economic experience.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with David Sirota. I know I've been taking all texts so far. Some great questions coming in in our texts [unintelligible 00:27:19] We will take some of your calls for David and we'll play one more Bernie Sanders clip. This one's going to be about Joe Rogan as we continue on WNYC.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we take calls and texts from Democrats on why you think the election turned out the way it did. We hear from David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, host of the podcast Master Plan, co creator of the movie Don't Look Up, and former presidential campaign speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, and consistent with a lot of Bernie's critique of how the Democrats ran this campaign and how they're running their party in general. Let's take a phone call. Mary in Greenport, Long Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mary.

Mary: Good morning. I think this country is not ready to elect a woman. The votes were so close. I think if Harris had been a man, she probably would have won. The second mistake and always blew my mind was that letting any Republican and Trump get away with talking about the border and not countering with, "Well, he was so worried about the border that he opposed the one plan that would have done something." The third and main thing that they did wrong was not electing Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders should have been elected. He has the polities. He has the brains. He would have wiped Trump's butt in a talk, and he would still be president. I think those are the three.

I think the biggest problem, and the reason I'm so scared, is that here is a man who is obviously an amoral narcissist, who only cares about himself, who lies as often as he speaks, and yet people can't see through it. I think even if Harris had won, we are in big danger that we have a populace that is so apparently incapable of critical thinking.

Brian Lehrer: Mary, thank you for your call. Let's go right on to Larry in Brooklyn with another point of view. Larry, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Larry: Hey. Hi. Thanks. Listen, what I wanted to say is I'm listening to Mr. Sirota, who has, since I called, made some good points, but we're all talking like history began four years ago. Nobody's talking about how even starting during the Carter years, but certainly later NAFTA was cooked up during the Reagan years, put into form during H.W. Bush administration, and signed into law by Bill Clinton, who governed slightly to the right of Richard Nixon. Seriously. I'm not wrong about that. Then I listened to Richie Torres, who I love generally, say, the goal is winning elections. It's not. The goal should be doing stuff. Getting stuff done.

The minor deities of the Democratic Party are Bill and Hillary Clinton, there we go, who would never have the nerve to do what the major deities did, like Lyndon Johnson, let alone Roosevelt, did and propose real things that are really good for the country. This idea that it's about the story and the narrative during the last four years is nonsense. This started in the late '70s when the Democratic Party abandoned its working class base, which really was a base back then. I know civil rights got mixed up in that and all that, but still, I'm right. When in history has even a mildly left wing movement ever succeeded without working class support? That's what I have to say.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. One more in this set. Nikolai in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hello, Nikolai.

Nikolai: Hi, Brian. If you're a liberal out there who's just baffled by what's happened, I really agree with what the previous caller said and what David has been saying here, peep, the levels of cynicism are absolutely off the charts amongst friends who used to be loyal Democrats. At home you have things like just the full giveaway to corporate interests, no indication that you want to back down on that. You have her promise to expand fracking in this opportunistic attempt that no one believed. They won't even promise a single payer health care. They're not even lying to us on that.

Abroad you have, as a working person, you're seeing them funnel billions of dollars to an unwinnable war in Ukraine, you're seeing them pump billions of dollars to fund the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which is becoming more and more clear and which this station has ignored and the show has ignored for the last month, I will say. You've touched on it barely, but since the invasion of Lebanon, there's barely been a segment and I think that's disgraceful. There's a huge distrust in media too. NPR sounds like a propaganda rag for corporate Democrats.

I love you, Brian, I think you're a great guy, but please focus on what is one of the best documented genocides in world history. I wake up and I see children with their faces caved in every day. This is so urgent and I really ask you to search inside and say, "This is a genocide." Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Nikolai-

Nikolai: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: -let me ask you one follow-up question, actually. You told our screener, and tell me if you would go there, that AOC and Bernie also have let you down on this foreign policy. Am I getting that right, or did you say anything like that? I don't want to misquote you.

Nikolai: Yes, that's exactly right. I took my all my vacation days in 2020 to go volunteer in Iowa for Bernie Sanders. The way that he bent down immediately once Barack Obama made a phone call to push him out of the race, didn't extract any promises from Biden and the way he's covered for them. now that they've lost, he's changed his tune. When it was important and difficult, he wasn't there.

AOC again, I volunteered for her as well. She has completely turned into a generic corporate Democrat. She talks better on some things, but when it comes to her ability to actually utilize power and hold people like Pelosi accountable, she refuses to do so. I'm no longer a Democrat. I don't want anything to do with the party. I voted for Jill Stein. Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Nikolai. David, your reaction to anything in that thread of callers?

David Sirota: Well, the first thing I want to pick up on is the caller who talked about NAFTA. Look, that's 100,000% true. We review that in our article at levernews.com, which is this did start, in a way, with NAFTA. There's a study that showed that the strongest Democratic congressional districts became the strongest Republican districts as NAFTA was rammed through Congress by a Democratic president.

I think it's not just NAFTA. It's also what happened after the financial crisis. Barack Obama got the largest electoral mandate in modern Democratic Party history, at least in the last 40, 45, 50 years. He did so promising to crack down on Wall Street during and after the financial crisis. What we know is that what Obama basically did was protect his bank industry donors while millions of people were foreclosed on. That essentially shredded the social contract and sowed a level of cynicism that I think led to what's ensued since then. In some ways, we're living in the aftermath of NAFTA and what happened after the financial crisis.

Yes, this is a long story of the Democrats basically putting a boot in the eye of the working class and people being cynical and essentially not believing their promises because they've been promised things only to have those promises not be delivered upon.

On the Israel-Gaza situation, I certainly think Kamala Harris refusing to separate herself at all from the Biden administration's unwavering support of the Netanyahu government, I certainly think that did not help Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan. It did not send a message to young people, not just young people, people in the Democratic Party in the country who were concerned about what's going on in that region of the world. There was no effort to distance herself from that.

Again, when she was asked, "What are your differences with Joe Biden?" She basically said, "I have none." What kind of message was that sending in an election that was an election fundamentally, that really was an election about change?

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a sense of how much the Gaza issue might have affected the crash in Democratic voting? Again, what we saw was Trump only got the same number of votes pretty much as he got in 2020, but Harris got about 11 million less votes, fewer votes than Joe Biden got in 2020. It was just less turnout. It all came out of the Democratic candidate's vote total. I don't know how much of that to attribute to the uncommitted movement.

Certainly we've seen reporting from the Dearborn, Michigan area where there's a strong Arab American population, and a lot of them either stayed home or voted for Jill Stein. She got a much larger percentage of the vote there, I think about 15%, 16% than she did around the country, which was only one half of 1%. Some voted for Trump as a protest against the Democrats, even though they may actually fear Trump's policies toward the Middle East even more, or maybe some of them genuinely hope that he's going to do something that the Democrats didn't pressure Netanyahu to do.

Nevertheless, it was obviously an issue there. I don't know about the other swing states. Harris lost all the swing states where there wasn't that concentration of Muslim or Arab American voters. I wonder how you see, if you've looked at it, if there is any exit poll data or anything else to back up how much Gaza was an issue in the decline in Democratic turnout.

David Sirota: The way I see it is that among the populations, the demographics that we know have been most concerned about that, especially young people, the turnout, the Democratic performance among those groups went down. I would say this. One thing that I think we can say is that in showing that there isn't going to be a change or in having a candidacy that says, "We're not interested in making any kind of change on that issue," you are not giving people who want a change on that issue a reason to go vote.

I should add one other thing that hasn't really been talked about at all, that the college loan repayment situation started out again a month before the election, an issue very, very on the minds of young people. Was there a cause and effect between restarting college loan repayments and suppressing the young voter turnout for Democrats? My point is, I guess it all colludes together to not give people an incentive to go vote for the Democrats.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, Jewish turnout, or at least the percentage of the Jewish vote to be accurate, American Jews votes for Harris really held consistent with past presidential elections. Depending on which survey you're looking at, anywhere from 66% to 79% of Jewish voters went for Harris in the exit polls, meaning Black women and Jewish voters were the most consistent Democrats from 2016 to 2020 to 2024. Despite Trump trying to run on Democrats being weak on antisemitism, Trump being a stronger supporter of Israel, those things, that vote did not crash. It really didn't even deteriorate. What do you make of that?

David Sirota: Well, look, I think the Democrats still have a base. Let's not pretend that the Democrats don't have any voters at all. This was a relatively close election. It was not exactly a landslide.

Brian Lehrer: Still only two and a half, three points in the popular vote.

David Sirota: Right. The Democrats still have a base. I think the takeaway here is who do the Democrats think the swing voter is? I keep going back to this. The swing voter. There's a relatively small number of voters who are really swing voters. I think up until now, the Democrats have thought the swing voter is the disaffected Republican. Look, it was Chuck Schumer who said on the eve of the 2016 election, he was talking about Pennsylvania, "For every blue collar Democrat we lose in Western Pennsylvania, we'll win two disaffected Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and we'll replicate that in all of the swing states." What we just saw was an election-

Brian Lehrer: That was true in 2016, and true in 2020, but the case you made before is that those people are already Democrats, so the swing voters now are a different group, right?

David Sirota: I think the point is, in 2016, the math didn't hold. They didn't get enough former Republican disaffected swing voters who weren't already Democrats, to offset the amount that they were losing among blue collar Democrats. The math doesn't really work. It barely worked in 2020, and it clearly didn't work in 2024.

I think my point is that whole paradigm, we can lose blue collar votes and squeeze more disaffected Republican votes to offset what we're losing among the working class, formerly Reagan Democrats, if you will, that math doesn't work. It especially doesn't work in a downwardly mobile country where the working class is getting bigger and the middle, upper middle, affluent class, educated class is getting smaller. The math doesn't work. The Democrats have to focus on the real swing voters.

I should add one other thing if I can. The reason the Democrats don't want to focus on the working class swing voters is this, Brian, is that to appeal to the working class swing voters, you have to do things that your donors don't want. You can appeal to disaffected suburbanite Republicans on issues of choice and on social issues that corporate power doesn't care about, but to appeal to working class voters as Democrats, you have to do things that your donors and the billionaires do not like, which is why the party leaders have been averse to doing that.

Brian Lehrer: Going back to your earlier discussion and the previous caller about NAFTA being the start of this descent of the Democratic Party's popularity among working class Americans, do you support Trump's tariffs? Are they a good partial solution? Because that's the opposite of free trade.

David Sirota: Donald Trump invoking tariffs, it was not a very detailed plan, so it's hard to weigh in on a plan that's not all that detailed, but I think Donald Trump's tariff proposal was a way to call back to the Democrat NAFTA brand. He essentially pulled a Ross Perot in doing that. I think Democrats took the bait in berating it rather than coming up with something smarter, rather than coming up with a critique of it that was politically smart.

Do I think we need to talk about the downsides of free trade, of offshoring the manufacturing sector in this country? Absolutely. Do I think Donald Trump's broad tariffs on literally everything is a real policy, is a specific, well designed policy? I don't think we know that yet. It doesn't seem to be yet. We'll see what it looks like when it's implemented. Pretending that tariffs are just all bad, have no political appeal, have no potential economic appeal at a time when people are rightly worried about the deindustrialization and offshoring of America, I think that's ridiculous.

Brian Lehrer: I said I was going to play one more Bernie clip having to do with Joe Rogan, so if I can extend you for just a couple of minutes-

David Sirota: For sure.

Brian Lehrer: - to do this. This time, Bernie is talking about the decision by Harris and other Democrats not to go on Joe Rogan's show. Trump's interview there was viewed tens of millions of times, and then Rogan endorsed Trump shortly before the election or before election day. Bernie had gone on Joe Rogan back when he was running for president, and I gather Rogan endorsed him at that time. Here's Bernie on Sunday about engaging with people like Rogan who may have views seen as hateful or based on disinformation by many on the left.

Bernie Sanders: Look, you can have an argument with Rogan, agree with him, disagree with him, but what's the problem going on those shows? It's hard for me to understand that. Clearly you have an alternative media out there, a lot of podcasts that have millions and millions of viewers. Get on the show, disagree with you here, I agree with you there. I don't see a problem in doing that. You're right, I got vilified by some of the Democratic establishment because I went on Rogan's show. Now a lot of other people are doing just that.

Brian Lehrer: David, for you, as a podcaster, as somebody who runs what I think we can fairly call an alternative media company, how much do you agree with that?

David Sirota: I completely agree with that. First of all, at the politician level, the idea of criticizing a politician for going on this or that show is ridiculous in the sense that the politician's job is to meet the voters where they are, no matter where they are. Bernie Sanders was criticized not only for going on Joe Rogan, but for doing the Fox News Town Hall. That was when I was working for him on the campaign. I eye-rolled it at the time because it's like he's a politician, he's got to meet the voters where they are, but I also think it speaks to the breakdown of the so called traditional elite legacy media.

Trust in elite legacy media has gone down in part because Donald Trump has vilified them, but in part because the elite legacy media seems completely out of touch with people's lived economic experience. You look at the coverage of the last four or five years and so much of the commentary and the coverage is that people don't really understand how good the economy is, that people are being misled into feeling economically dislocated. Then you go back a little further, so much of the elite legacy media has touted the wonderful benefits of free trade and neoliberalism generally, and people are sick of it.

I think there's an opportunity for a much more robust alternative independent media. The Lever, for instance, is a reader-supported independent media outlet. I think there are downsides to that fracturing that some people are going to get narrow-casted information. Information in certain sectors will be less verified, less authenticated, less fact-checked, but I think it's a better media ecosystem if we get to a point where there aren't just one or two or three huge media outlets setting the terms of the conversation and that democracy is better served if there's lots of mid sized and smaller media outlets where views get debated and kicked around all the time.

This sort of oligopolistic media ecosystem that we live in, this information oligopoly is ending and I think that's good. If Democrats pretend it's not ending and they only fetishize going on MSNBC or getting quoted in The New York Times while the Republicans are exploiting this new and growing independent media, that is going to be terrible for Democratic political prospects.

Brian Lehrer: Is there a line though past which Democrats and other progressives shouldn't go to engage and therefore normalize a host, which some people say about Joe Rogan, other people don't say about Joe Rogan, who might have really hateful views?

David Sirota: You know it when you see it in the sense of where are the red lines? You don't want to go on a Nazi podcast. You don't want to go on an explicitly white supremacist YouTube channel. I think you know the red lines when you see it. I disagree with a ton of what Joe Rogan says, but Joe Rogan has lots of people with lots of different views on. This question of normalization comes down to if you're going to go into one of these forums, are you going to actually normalize what you fear is being normalized, or are you going to actually challenge it?

When Bernie Sanders went on Joe Rogan, it's not like he accepted all of the beliefs of Joe Rogan and didn't challenge him. There was a back and forth. I think it's incumbent upon the politicians who go onto these shows to make clear what they agree with the host on when they're asked questions about it and what they don't agree and disagree vehemently.

Brian Lehrer: David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, that's L-E-V-E-R, host of the podcast Master Plan, co-creator of the movie Don't Look Up, and former presidential campaign speechwriter for Bernie Sanders. As the co-creator of Don't Look Up, you want to hear our segment coming up next hour that has to do with the coming policies on climate change.

David Sirota: Can't wait.

Brian Lehrer: David, thanks for coming on today.

David Sirota: Thank you. Thanks so much, Brian.

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.