Fast Politics with Molly Jong-FastSlate’s Dahlia Lithwick stops by to try to comfort us. Media Matters CEO Angelo Carusone examines how MAGA out-organized Democrats and how we can counter it.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have lined up to kiss Trump's spring. We have such a great show for you today, Slates Dalia Lithwick.
Stops by to try to comfort us.
Then we'll talk to Media Matter CEO Angelou Kirasone about how MAGA outorganized Democrats and how Democrats can counter it.
But first the news, Molly, how you doing here?
I am just going to keep going. You know, we're coming off an election that a lot of people, including myself, not happy with the result. I want to say this because I feel like one of my best qualities is that I am able to admit when I am wrong. And I was really wrong about this election.
You know, I was wrong.
I thought for sure Donald Trump would not win. I thought there would be a mandate. I thought that Harris would win. I did not see any of this coming. And I'm really sorry to our listeners who I where. I told them that I knew when I didn't know, and I really do promise to try to stay out of the prediction market from now on. Because the reality is I'm not good at it. But there are a few bright spots. We're going to talk about them, and then we're going to talk about the news, and then we're going to keep going and going and going, and do the podcast and bring you guys the news and not do false equivalencies and just do what you guys need so we don't have to listen to fucking.
Mag of people tell us that everything is fine.
Somali Kamala just did her concession speech. What'd you see here?
Harris did give a speech. She said something which made a lot of people. I agree, but I think is actually quite smart. I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign. That's really true and right and correct. We all have to just keep going and that's where we are. Let's talk about the House of Representatives that Democrats would like to flip, and that is still possible.
What are you seeing here?
Democrats still have a chance to take control of the House. The California races are going to take a while account. One hundred and ninety five races have been called for Republicans, one hundred and seventy four for Democrats, but a lot of those remaining seats are in California, easy victories that the majority party needs. They need at least two hundred and eighteen seats. It is not impossible that they will get there. We have to see, but it's certainly not impossible. Speaking of things that make us really upset, I.
Think this is the worst one for me, which is what happened in the vote in Dearborn, Michigan, which is the largest Muslim community in Michigan.
Yeah, and this has been something that we had talked about a lot that seemed like a real possibility, really grim. We thought this might happen. And look, people were mad about Gaza and that is something that a lot of us understand. So in Dearborn, where fifty five percent of the residents are of Middle Eastern descent, Trump won with forty two point forty eight percent of the vote over Vice President Harris, who received thirty six point twenty six percent of the vote. Jill Stein also got eighteen percent of the vote. Dearborn went for Trump. They felt that Trump would be better on Gaza. I think that's pretty insane. But obviously they didn't and we'll see what happens.
Well. I think is really sad here too, is so few people came out to vote. It's staggering to look the around one hundred thousand people who live there and then just how few decided to cast a vote in the selection they did stay home. And this is they have been traditionally a place where Dems really run up the numbers in Michigan to win. And it's that.
One bright spot in what otherwise is just a grim post mortem is North Carolina. In the state of North Carolina, Democrats have appeared to have broken the GOP supermajority in the state. They flipped a key seat an our east of Raleigh. Why it's important is because in January, Republicans won't have a supermajority and they will not be able to override the governor as they had. Remember in previously when it was now it's going to be this guy called Josh Steine.
It used to be Roy Cooper.
With Cooper they were able to really just sort of override things he wanted to do. Now joshtein the North Carolina governor, will have more power. I want to like, get on my soapbox here for a minute and just point out these races, these down ballot races, these little judgeships, these kind of things. They may seem like not so big, but they're really big.
They're really important.
Things like this can mean the difference between people having ten polling places in one polling place. It will mean the difference between you know, school you know, more money to public schools and more money to libraries. And it just is extremely good when when Democrats win on those down ballot races. So as much as there's a lot of stuff to be really fucking depressed about, the black Nazi, the self proclaimed black Nazi in North Carolina did lose, and North Carolina will continue to have a democratic governor, and now it no longer has a state supermajority. Dahlia Leswick is a senior editor at Slate and the author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and the Battle to Save America. Welcome back to Fast Politics, My buddy.
Dahlia him Molly oh boy.
So Vice President Harris has conceded has a conception speech coming. You know, while we're taping this. This will drop on Thursday morning. I got five hours of sleep last night. We are sort of here together because I know how bad I feel, and I have a sense on how bad Jesse feels and there are not that many people where they are really fucking smart and really know what's going on, but also make me feel better.
And that's you.
Oh man, that is a big, big siss even whip to.
Let me say this, Molly. I feel like every time I've.
Come on your show, I have like taken us down the deranged wormhole of like structural democracy, minority rule. Right, I'm always like prectoral college this, and filibuster that and malaportion Senate and if we just had, you know, democracy, So this is like the first time I'm going to come on and be like, you know, I think democracy kind of did it flying. Like we can say that people like massive votes don't like the bomb threats in Georgia, Like, but this was not a failure of democracy. This was a failure of us. And that's like really really for those of us who've like had like sort of structural architectural reform on the brain for a long time, Like that's like to punch in the neck.
Yeah, I mean, it isn't. It isn't.
Right, Like the good news is that voters were able to vote, elections happened, you know, like it's not the outcome that we wanted, but it is, you know, there is something to be said that you know, it's this opportunity to I mean I was thinking about it, and I was thinking, like, protect norms, right, Protect norms has to be number one, right, protect the tenants, protect the norms of democracy, and then you know, because that has to be number one.
Now, that's right, and I.
And I really really do want to say rarely do I start crying two minutes into a conversation with you, but like I really want to say, like poll workers, election workers, like people who stood in line, like all the shit that you and I have been afraid of, right, violence at the polls, and people like roughing up you know, voters and you know, challengers and people with guns on the back of their trucks in Arizona, Like none of that happened. We're not going to have a bushfee Gore election. We're not going to have an election in which the systems didn't hold. And you're exactly right, like we should be so grateful that this like rickety crazy decentralized you know, archaic system held and yet any.
Yah, and yeah, but it is it's this Joe Biden ism. Right, you can't only love democracy when you win, right. But that said, I do think like the structural problems of not being able to break through two voters, the lack of local news, the news deserts, the disinformation and misinformation, the fact that our like one of our largest news delivery systems is owned by the Chinese government. These things are all bad.
Right, And you know it's funny because I feel like I've had, like I've been writing a series of like facts matter, and like the press is broken. Like everything I've written for the last month has been about you know, Trump essentially creating a permission structure to choose your own ending right and and to just create the reality you want. And You're exactly right, Like if if in a sane world, like would Elon Musk be able to pour you know, personal millions into the Trump campaign while running X while creating a quote unquote lottery for you know voter his wing states while having conversations with Putin, Like, maybe the way to tie together what you're saying and what I'm saying is like all of the systems held and there is a like oligarch industrial complex, tech bro other system that is largely invisible, I think to us, and that he'll do.
That, He'll do Yeah.
And the thing is, like, there are a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, Like I was listening to podcasts in twenty sixteen, going what the hell am I going to do now? And let me tell you what I did in twenty sixteen. I changed my career and started doing what I do now. So, like, if you're listening to this, there is an opportunity here. Right, American democracy is teetering on the brink, but you know, we have been the you know, if you look back in history, we have been here before.
Right.
You know what I did this morning, Molly, when I like couldn't move, was like reread that Langston Hughes poem about you know, all the ways in which America was never America to me and to think about, and folks should just read it because I think, like we're trapped between like a fever dream of you know, this is the perfect best you know, constitutional democracy ever in history, and it gets better every minute. And the fact that it never really was given a chance to soar right like that it was yeah, Jim crow Baby right for like reconstruction and and you know, the Civil War and on and on and the like very bones of a constitutional system that didn't prize equality and democracy the way you and I think about it. And I guess I would just say this, like it would be really nice if that Langston Hughes democracy had a chance, right, if America could be America. And I think in a weird way, the way I'm trying to mollify myself right now is to say that there is an electorate that is split between fully understanding that that promise was never realized and an electorate that like somehow convinced itself that like I saw it one time on leave it to Beaver, so it must be those were the good old days. And I think what's really painful, and like I want to center this is that you know, Donald Trump didn't hide who he was, Like he had a like full on, like weird creepy Ersatz nineteen thirty nine Madison Square, a Gordon Nazi rally, and I know you saw what I saw, like this was not the twenty sixteen, like here is my lovely family and they're all like in vasilene and beautiful, like it was just full on like engines his mind dictator for a day, putting people in camps, deporting everyone, right, like, he put it all out there, and the idea that that unfiltered thing is what people voted for and that they think that that will bring them to I don't know that perfected democracy or just straight up strong man illiberal hutocracy.
I don't know.
But I think what's hard right now is not just that, like the system didn't fail us, it's that we saw exactly what he was and we chose it.
Yeah.
I mean, now, I would say it was pretty small numbers, right, It wasn't a huge I mean, it was not a mandate. I mean they'll say it was a mandate, but it was not a mandate. The numbers, the voting numbers were I have to look now, but they were pretty small.
I mean, it was not high turnout election. And also, you want to hear my worst.
Yes, whatever it is, I want to hear your anything.
The worst everything.
So my I was talking to a Democratic congressman who's no longer an office, and he was saying, you know, one of the things that Democrats do that's really bad is Democrats say this is what is good for you to voters, even if voters don't necessarily want it, even if it's good policy, even if it's good politics, even if it's something that seems like it should be popular. And if you think about that in that way, that actually makes a lot of sense, right, Like, think about all the things that Democrats have been like we're giving you. I mean, even a good example is like chips, chips, is this thing that is so good for the economy, right, building factories in America, employing people, economies booming. Voters didn't really get it right, And like there is a certain kind of there was a lot of like why can't democrats message on chips and science? Why can't they explain why building factories in the heartland is good?
But in the end, like it just didn't connect with voters.
And again, you know, that's just an example of a way in which there was so much money spent and it was not sort of aligned with what voters want. Now. Is it better for the environment, yes, is it better for manufacturing, yes, But like you only get so many of those when you're governing.
I mean, that's very depressing.
It.
Listen, you and I I think both talk to Tim Snyder on the same day last week right, did.
We wow both podcasts with him and very possible.
Yeah.
I think like one of the things he did was helped me think in terms of like sort of negative liberty and positive liberty, right, and like how like constrained our vision of freedom is because we only ever think in terms of freedom from right. That's what makes us free. And it's not chips, right, And it's not healthcare, and it's not you know, infrastructure. It's just I am free because they can't take my guns and you know, they can't tell me where to go in my car. Like, I think there is a deep, deep thinking that we have to do and messaging about helping people understand that like women dying in hospitals because of miscarriages, you know, sepsis preventable for decades, Like that doesn't make you free. And you know, sending your kids to school to get shot because like we want people to have guns, like doesn't make you free. And I think, like in a lot a lot of ways, what you're describing is a sort of a like a really capacious notion of like well being and liberty too, and freedom too, that is so not kind of the construct of how we think about freedom. We just think about it both in terms of you know, to again use Tim Snyder, like freedom from but also anything that anybody else gets makes me less free, right, And that's why like nonsitizen voting is an issue, and that's why immigrants taking your jobs is an issue. And so I think like we're a little bit in this moment that we're in where those are the constructs that we're given and it's really hard to think about.
You know.
I love the thing that he says, like, you know, what's not going to be like freedom from like climate change. We're gonna have to think right about that through this lens of freedom too. And so I think in a weird way, all of these policy conversations fizzle because they're part of a framing that is freedom too. That is just like kind of anathema to how we think about liberty. Does that make any sense?
Yes? And also I mean we just have to keep.
Going right, yeah, And I'm just reading Cherylyn Eiffel just sent round a note about you know, she's like my spirit guide about how we're going to get through the next couple of months, and she says, like, you know, our spirits are going to be assaulted we're going to have to see this person with the course language and the displays of violence and the privilege and the power, and we just have to, you know, make sure to spend time on those things that refresh our spirits. And then we just need to realize that there are just enormous vulnerable communities that are going to feel a world of pain. And you know, it's not it's just not an option to say that that's not the work. And it sucks because I think we're so sad and broken and I think you and I both feel like I've been doing this work for eight years, like I would like to stop. I guess I just think I've been sitting in this a lot, like the people who are going to be hurt, and we haven't even had the conversation about what the Supreme Court is going to do with that. You know, you know, Alita is going to retire and Thomas is going to retire, and we're going to have a six to three supermajority for like the rest of our lifetimes, and they're going to do com stuck and they're going to get rid of them of a prystal, like this is just going to be hell. You know, and our trans kids are going to suffer and our migrants, like this is going to be hell on earth, and like lifting up that is like even if we can't fix it, I think buffering it is like that's the mission.
Right Yeah, and also know and also letting people know that they're going to be okay, right like that we're going to push back. We're going to do what we can do to make sure everybody is okay. We're going to take care of each other, and we're going to keep going. You know, I do think there are a lot of people who need to know they're going to be okay today, you know, I mean people with trans kids, or people who are trans, or people who are gay, or people who are here in this country and worried about being deported. Like we just have to be for them strong, you know, because of the privilege that we have. I mean I think of that so much. We have this opportunity to be able to be there for them and to you know, speak for them and to and to tell them that we will continue to work for them.
And maybe just to add this, you know, the how democracy die. Guys like they keep saying that the you know, the academy, like the corporate world, like the entities. I think of them as the soft furnishings of democracy, like once the institution fail, right, like then you need the throw pillows of democracy, which it's like big business, and like they need to step up and you know, to quote Snyder again like in on tyranny, like if they comply in advance, if they buckle in advance, like, we don't have another bulwark. And so I think in addition to reassuring people they will be okay, like now is a really really good time for American medical associations and for colleges like the entities that just kind of muddled through in twenty sixteen and hope that somebody else would like put skin in the game, Like I think they need to show up now.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a really good point. And I also think that we need our institutions and also our governors, right Like I'm in a blue state and I have a democratic governor, Kathy Hokel, And this is her opportunity to remind residents that there is federalism, right like Republican We saw in Texas that Republicans were very happy to enact federalism and I hope that we'll see Democrats do that too, in ways that protect you know, they are also a bullwark, right, yeah, no, that's right.
And I think we're going to see like state supreme courts, right, We've seen it for years now, you know, state supreme courts that find in their state constitutions all sorts of protections. Like, I think we're going to have to see, you know, states stepping up. And at the same time, I think we really you know, and I'm so glad we're not doing it now. Like I think there's a lot of people who are going to say, like, oh, if only you know Josh Shapiro and if only you know Broker Convention, like all of the circular firing squad, and I I guess there's some utility, But I think like the better thing again to do the Lynston Hughes palm is to just say, like, democracy could be really amazing. Let's like take it out for a spin for the first time.
Bin well, And I think I also think that we can look back on the opportunities that were missed without being craven to each other. Right, there is no reason to not have a clear eyed view of what happened so that we can all learn from it without saying that Vice President.
Harris ran a nearly flawless campaign.
I think it's it's okay just to sort of look back on why she didn't win, but also to appreciate she she absolutely she went, you know, she went to Wisconsin and Michigan and all the places that you're supposed to go many many times, you.
Know, Yeah, and to really think about you know, race and gender and all of the stuff that we don't necessarily you know, feel comfortable talking about in it or look at.
Yeah, and that is absolutely true.
And that and the sort of unsparing look at ourselves as voters and our candidates and what the country looks like is absolutely true. But I do think, you know, for all those people who are despairing, this is what it is. This is democracy and action. And tomorrow we will wake up and we will keep going.
Yep. My eldest son always reminds me of that like beautiful line from like Jewish texts that says, it is not incumbent on you to finish the work, but you can't desist from it either, right, Like we're going to find that scene between feeling all of us feel right now, everybody feels like I didn't do enough. If I had just like done, four more laters were written, two more pieces like no and at the same time, like we don't get to just fling our hands up and say we're done. And you find that scene and I think everybody needs to like drink a bunch of water and be in their little communities and were fuzzy sucks on their head for a couple of days and then like keep.
Going and keep going, keep going. And the one bright spot.
If you're listeners podcast, you are probably the group that did, in fact vote for Harris because.
White college educated women, nobody else but you guys understood the assignment. Yep, thank you.
Oh lots of love, Molly, thank you.
Angelo Carrasone is the CEO of Media Matters. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Angela.
I this will drop on Thursday, two.
Days after yet another election that did not necessarily go the way that many of us hoped.
I want you to talk to us about MAGA.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you said this in your writing that MAGA may actually be not a transient thing but a real Can you talk about that?
Yeah? I think that there's sort of two things happening, and we can get into the why. But one of the things that people sometimes, especially because so much of our coverage after elections is driven by just like our coverage leading up to elections is driven by polls, the coverage after elections is sort of driven by a lot of sort of an amalgamation of micro trends, right, and tactical discussions, And what it doesn't do oftentimes is take a step back and look at the big trend line. And the effect of that, to your question, is that after twenty sixteen, any a little bit after twenty twenty, people sort of treated MAGA as something that was, as you noted, potentially transient, that it was this sort of weird flash point. I was so deeply connected to Trump. And the result of that is that it will sort of go away on its own. But in reality, and that's the thing that I know here, no matter there's obviously a lot of tactical things about the campaign, but there's a bigger macro trend that we have to sort of grapple with, which is that MAGA is growing. And that is independent of how and who and what the parts of it are. That is like and a fact that we have to internalize because I do think that so much of the discussion over the past few years and electropolitans has been about, well, everybody, we all agree on these things, right, and so once everybody sees or becomes aware of certain things, we're in alignment. And that's actually the wrong assumption. We're not in alignment. The notion that MAGA is growing reinforces that, and there's a lot more to unpack around it. But I do think that that is something we really do need to internalize very fast because it will affect how we respond and act when it comes to dealing with and and you know, addressing administration actions, and that's something that we just need to internalize now immediately.
That's exactly right. So what does MAGA look like.
It's to something extent the discussion of like the manosphere is important, the acknowledgment of that. But one of the things that MAGA looks like, to sort of describe it is you have to go back to its roots. And one of the things, because it's it's all sort of an outgrowth of that. One of the things that Trump did when he started to run for office all the way back in twenty fifteen. Is he took portions of the large right wing constituency and he started to sort of knit them together. And part of it was that at the time, it wasn't the manosphere. Was the men's rights advocates and the prouds Boys were a part of it, but they really call themselves men's rights advocates. And there was a whole sort of universe around around that. There was the sort of the more conspiracy parts of sort of these, you know, there was sort of right wing. It was the traditional issue groups, which is anti choice and sort of and those those are pretty much the core components of it, and obviously the Christians. And one of the things that he did is sort of passed them together. And that's always a red flag, is that when you start to have cross pollination of communities, that's when you get something that is greater than the sum of its parts, because they all start to grow and the idea is cross pollinated. And that ever since then what got folded into that original coalition because he's sort of it's sort of like a poison pill, right, He injected that into the Republican Party and that sort of took over the Republican Party, you know, within a relatively short period of time. So MAGA really is not just all the components of the Republican Party. And we do need to stop pretending that there are I don't want to seem clib like sort of good Republicans. Of course they are good Republicans. But like, there was this notion in this cycle that a very large number of Republicans were going to defect because they believed in something greater than their party, and that just that turned out not to be true. Republicans are MAGA.
Now say that again, because I haven't heard anyone say that, and I think that's exactly right this idea.
Say it one more time and just go a little more with that.
Yeah, I'm not saying it to be mean. It's just we have to be realistic. Yeah, it's like, you know, there's this notion that Republicans and MAGA are distinct, and there's maybe some overlap and some loose you know, there's an uncomfortable affiliation, but actually Republicans are MAGA, and you only need to look at what happened this cycle. There's this notion that Republicans were going to defect from the party and vote for Harris, and at a greater number than they have historically. And that's not true. They did not switch. They voted for Trump, they voted for MAGA. And so MAGA is really all the traditional Republican ideas mixed in with this, this grander notion that those court constituencies that I talked about before and then updated for you know, the current version of it is sort of weaved in additional new layers. And this is the thing about MAGA that I really want people to take away. It's not oriented around a set of policy descriptions, but rather a set of approaches. One of the approaches is might mix, right. The other approach is that you organize and build power on what used to be considered the fringes. And so, just like in twenty.
Fifteen, you organize again, this is all stuff I was not hearing. You organize and build power on things that used to be considered the fringes.
Can you say more?
That's right, and that's why MAGA is growing. So when I talked about MAGA one point zero, right, you know, the sort of the men's rights advocates and those groups, the conspiracy theorists that didn't just end there in twenty twenty, MAGA incorporated QAnon, and it incorporated the anti vaxx movements and sort of the larger wellness communities.
Right.
One of the things that it did this time is it brought in some even scarier things. When Trump launched his campaign, he launched it in Waco, and that was a broadside against government that is reflected not only in the policy of Schedule F and the plans to sort of terminate tens of thousands of federal workers, but it's also in this sort of idea that Elon Musk is going to come in and cut the federal government by you know, a third. It is very specifically an anti government idea, So that's one part of it. Obviously, the RFK stuff is just an intensification of it and then more extremists, and that is a part of MAGA, is you build an organized power on the fringes or what used to be considered the fringes, and that they're front and center, or what we're seeing with these tradwives or these sort of cultural crossovers that are pretty far out there. There's the whole thing about childless cat ladies. You know, you can really start to unpack it, and you'll see that these are fringe ideas. I mean, Tucker Conson is out there talking about demons. We are very likely to have a US government demon cask force.
Right, that is a fringe idea.
So that's what MAGA is.
It builds out from the fringes.
That's right. It builds an organized power on the fringes. And one of the things I used to talk about when Trump was first running for office is that, you know, when Obama was first elected, one of the things in right wing radio that the ideas, you know, they they were going through a trauma, you know, themselves back then when President Obama first came into office, and if you were a writ wing radio listener, one of the things that you heard over and over again was this idea of the ten percent theory, and it was this was sort of a romantic notion that all you need is ten percent of the population, and with ten percent of the population, as long as they're fervent and passionate and intense, you can do anything. And they used to tell all of this revision is history. All the great wars, the American Revolution, all the great moments in history, they always attributed back to this idea that it was just ten percent of the population at first. And one of the things that Trump's people really started to convince themselves of is that, yeah, it doesn't matter if for small we're intense. That idea has sort of translated into the current approach. That's where this idea about building power on the fringes comes from. Is that you bring in these really intense, scary people. And because there's so intense and scary, people are faced with the question. And for the most people, when it comes to confronting burgeoning authoritarianism or extremism, they break to the right. Most people duck and cover when they're confronted with scary stuff. That's why heroes are heroes, because that's not the norm, right, you know, And that's what happened with the Republican Party is that, you know, originally they sort of lost themselves because they were so hopped up on the means to an end that was getting rid of abortion and you know, and squlturing reproductive health that they you know, sort of started they took the poison pill somewhat knowingly in hopes that well, we'll just get through this and then you know, whatever, we'll consume them right, and that's it, and so this is it, this is they consume them, like you said, and this is what we have to deal with going forward. And it ties into so much and that's why I said, like we can get into the tactical stuff. But the truth is what my big takeaway from the last few weeks and obviously the results, is that there are some macro things here that we need to account for and understand and internalize fast, not only because that will help us develop strategies for responding, but we need to internalize it fast so that we are not disoriented. People are not disoriented. They're going to be disoriented unless they internalize that they need a decoder for what's about to happen. That is the first step to resilience, and everyone's going to need a heck of a lot of it, and not just our society but all the people that make up with it, because every day that people are disoriented and don't buttress themselves and sort of nurture that resilience, more and more people break toward the right. They duck and cover, because that is what happens when you infect now our government with what used to be people on the fringe.
Yeah, this is a hard question.
You've already said more smart stuff than has occurred to me, Like I've been writing stuff down, which I never do because what you've said is so smart and so correct.
But let's talk about growing power from the fringes. So does that look like McCarthyism.
Yeah, but you know what's so different about it, And that's one of the reasons why you mentioned McCarthyism as opposed to say, the John Birch society, right, because McCarthy actually was able to get some power, right, and whereas the John Birch society. Hey, yeah, they were influential, but they didn't. Here's the difference, and it gets it and there's a modern analog to it. The difference is that America has always had fringes, just like any society. We've had a little bit more fringes, and part that's what makes us a little spicy. Our fringes are kind of a feature in a way. But what we haven't had is the fringes being connected, right, and so you can't build power unless you connect otherwise disconnected audiences. That's where McCarthyism come in. Obviously, McCarthy was a demagogue, so the tool was demagoguery, but what it did was it connected otherwise disconnected audiences, and he used a platform that he had to do that. And what we have now the modern analog and like to your point about McCarthy as in a way, it's maccarthyism on steroids, because McCarthy still needed to rely on traditional means. And one of the things that we have now is that you have extremely powerful algorithms that connect otherwise disconnected audiences. If you like one piece of q and on content, or two pieces q and on content, even if you don't intentionally know it's q and on or not, the algorithms will feed you more and more and more of that and move you down a rabbit hole and move you and intensify or capture you. They will convert you, and they will connect you to new people. And so that is partly what we're dealing with now, is that we are dealing with a McCarthyism that does not need to dilute itself to speak to mass audiences. And believe the McCarthy thing, strangely enough, was diluted. It needed to be deluded in order to reach broader and broader audiences. What happens when you don't need to dilute to have the same reach and saturation because the tools that we're using, the tech platforms are automatically distributing that content to those individuals. And I just want to make one point on that because I think it helps tie into the outcomes here. The major platforms had put in place many safeguards since the last election about what was recommended, about who they were recommending content too, about not accelerating extremism, and in the last year most of those safeguards have all been systematically eliminated or reduced as a result of pressure from right wing influence. They work the refs at these platforms, so they knew what they were doing because they knew that in order to scale and execute organizing power on the fringes, you needed the runway and the tools that these tech platforms provided. So I would say it looks like Maccarthyism, but strangely enough, a more raw and non deluded version of Macarthyism. And I don't think we should joke about the demon thing I before. When I but I said that before, it's a joke. But think about it. There's the increase of Christian nationalists, the rise of this evangelical stral of, this intention religious strain, this idea that there are demons among us doing bad things, that is going to be something that they start to name, they're going to start identify. I'm not even joking when I when I talk about q Andon and like you know, back in twenty eighteen, people don't reporters. They really thought I was losing my mind. And I talk about demons now, not because it's a focused point of mind, but I look where they get their information, and it's like they're going to start screaming that person is a demon, that person's being motivated by demons. And that is a tactic of the same thing that MacArthur it is. They will have they will they will build up new boogeym in new labels that they can then apply to individuals in order to harass them, persecute them, and all of that is designed to sort of make examples out of people fast, so that more and more people duck and cover.
Yeah, let's just keep going with this for a minute. What do we think that we do next. I was on a show this morning. It was on the Late Night MSNBC, and we're talking about like what went wrong which is what we're going to be talking about for the next five hundred until the midterms. And one of the things that you know, there was a lot of like this and that, and this went wrong, this went wrong. But like one of the things that I think is that it seems to me like there is is a real information problem right like we there are parts of this country that don't have news.
The news they're getting is read sludge.
Remember how you know the thing that Elon shared and after Paul Pelosi has been you know, amien.
So what's the solve there?
I would say there are three sort of immediate things, and part of it's, you know, a lot of this all starts too with the recognition early on that it was describing about how they're organizing and building power, and because that then sort of then you're working towards countering that. I think there's sort of three things that are important in terms of the next step here. One is everyone. I think a lot of people talk about messaging and say, oh, we need better messaging. I look at it in a slightly different way. You know, there's three ways that you can talk to somebody. You can talk to their head, their heart, or their gut. That's it. It doesn't matter what the message is, it's either to their head the heart of their gut. And if you look at the bulk of Republican and conservative and right wing message messaging with what they're saying, it's almost all to people's gut. Sometimes it'll be to their to their heart, never to their head. If you look at democratic messaging, it's almost always to people's heads, sometimes their heart, never to their gut. And why that matters is that we live in a as you notated, we live in that we have this information asymmetry. But obviously people say, well, not that many people watch the news or read papers, sure, but they still live in an information world because you get it through word of mouth. You get an you don't get the individual facts with the threads, but you get the narrative. We all live in a narrative or narratives. And when that narrative, when the right wing has narrative dominance, and as you noted, that narrative dominance is really just a reflection of right wing sludge. You're just pickled in misinformation and right wing rage all the time, even if you don't consume a drop of it. They're still pickled in it because your friends are because indirectly you're getting it. It's on the television, you see the chiron, when you're picking up your bagel in the morning. You you form a narrative. That's what happens. And so I think we need to one think about how it is that we communicate and communicators need to write eyes that we need to rethink about that. The second there were two more structural pieces. One is that there's no shortage of creators on our side. But the one thing that the right wing does, and they've done this for decades and they do it better, is they invest in people. There's no reason why our content creators should not be getting what you know, have to have other jobs. You know, some of our best people are you know, it's not their primary position. They're not full time, you know, you know, video creators or podcasters. It's something they do on the side, incidentally, and we've never really made robust investments in them, whereas.
They have, and they have a pipe which they have to have.
You know, there are people on Instagram that got grants from Charlie Kirk years ago that will make their way to or have already made their way to daily wire podcasts after a few years, right, And that's how it works. And so you get the benefits immediately of you balance out the scales because you have your own people out there pushing information and it's authentic, you're not trying to command and control it. But then you're also building revolving capital and businesses that are designed to build and shape narratives. So unless that challenge is confronted, you know, and liberals are so burned by what by air Americas like, well, we tried to combat right wing radio in the ninety you know, in the late ninety other two thousands, and so let's give up forever, you know, And that's a mistake. And then the last thing I'll say is, so one is we need to grapple with that, and that's not We'll spend one point five billion dollars on ads that we know don't work, but we won't spend one hundred million dollars to incubate and seed a new generation of creators and talkers and storytellers. That's ridiculous, that's stupid, and that's a mistake. And then the third thing I'd say is that the tech platforms are going to kill us. They are and we need to deal with that. And the Democrats Republicans work the refs in newsrooms, and then they took the same strategy. Yes, and it worked, and they did it again here. You know, every time Democratic YouTube or another major platform rolled back another election policy and the result of right wing pressure, there was no Democratic counter response. There was no talk of them cheating or yelling and screaming. I wasn't surprised by what happened with Jeff Bezos or what we saw in Silicon Valley as the spring rolled by, because those seeds were so months ago. They were scared from Republican pressure that they were getting. And that needs to be something that Democrats really grapple with. And it's not only because that will help again balance out the scales, but it's also that they'll maybe get some insights into that the political landscape is realigning. They need to be more responsive to what is happening, and that political landscape is actually a reflection of what the larger information landscape is.
You know, I a.
Mediumized whenever I talked about the media, people say, well, not that many people watch CNN or read the New York Times. Sure, but they get a podcast. Secondarily, they sit online, they get push alerts on their phones. All these things add up.
Right, it's downstream, yes, and that's it.
And Republicans understand, and Trump in particular, you know, I think we need to internalize the lesson. He's a media creature and he was able to do a lot because he is a media creature. And part of what allowed people to say, oh, he doesn't really mean it is a thing called k fabe, which exists in WWE. It's a wrestling things. It's a character, and people sort of all the stuff that people that really has turned him off to people they say, oh, but it's just a character. No, No one thinks the Undertaker really murders their villain and the you know, their opponent in the ring and brings them underground. It's a joke. And I think a lot of times what Trump was able to do was not only manipulate the media to have narrative dominance and to coordinate, you know, take advantage of this massive right wing megaphone that they've had, but also rely on the benefit of the doubt and the sort of the way that consumers engage with those characters, and in particular him and we need to recognize that that that is a thing that we're going to have to grapple with as well, because he won't be the last. That's the scary thing. Tucker will be a rising political force and we need to accept that as as a thing that it's true. We will have to accept that. Look out the trail and look who performed in terms of engagement. Very few people cut across the right wing landscape in the way that Trump does, and Tucker is one of those few figures. Obviously Musk as well. That's it. That's the next step and doesn't solve everything. But I don't think circular firing squad or trying to figure out some of the micro things that would have been different are going to be helpful because what took place here is macro and we need to think about it at a bigger level. Yeah.
No, I agree, I agree, I agree, Thank you, thank you, thank you. No, no moment perfectly, Jesse Cannon, my Jung Fast.
This will be a not bittersweet, but bitter moment of fuckery. What are you seeing here?
We didn't even need to say it. Our moment of fuckery is is fucking election. It's twenty twenty four. It's eight years later, and we have learned nothing. Another low turnout election. Some states did better than others, but ultimately it wasn't like Donald Trump grew MAGA.
It was that Democrats did not show up.
And I'm not going to spend the next two years blaming people, but I am going to spend the next two minutes complaining about the result of this election. You can't give people something they don't want. But it hurts to think that Republicans waived signs that said mass deportation. Now, mass deportation was not a vibe, it's a plan, And I just want to say that I hope that all of us, as citizens of this great country, will in fact try as hard as we can to protect the vulnerable and to keep our democracy safe. This is going to be a slog and we're going to have to stay and fight and defend democracy. And look, I think there are a lot of factors here that happen that are just important to think about and muse about. But what's most important is that we're here and we're going to keep going, and that's it. So I really want to thank all our listeners. We need you more than ever and I feel connected to you guys, and I'm just grateful that you listen to us, and you know, and we're going to get through this, just like anything else we're going to you know. I want to say one last thing. I wrote this book that's coming out in June about the year I had when my husband got cancer.
I didn't talk about it.
Here, and my mother got dementia, my stepfather died, and my father in law died, and a bunch of other stuff happened, to believe it or not, and it was really fucking hard, and I had a really tough time.
But you know what I did.
I just did the next thing and I got through it. And I know that we can get through this and the next thing and the thing after that, and we will together. And I'm grateful for all of you. So thanks awesome. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
