Native Land PodWhat Really Happened This Election? | MiniPod
This week hosts Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye, and Andrew Gillum discuss where Democrats and the Harris/Walz campaign went wrong and how Trump won this election.
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Native Land Pod is brought to you by Reasoned Choice Media.
Thank you to the Native Land Pod team:
Angela Rye as host, executive producer and cofounder of Reasoned Choice Media; Tiffany Cross as host and producer, Andrew Gillum as host and producer, and Lauren Hansen as executive producer; Loren Mychael is our research producer, and Nikolas Harter is our editor and producer. Special thanks to Chris Morrow and Lenard McKelvey, co-founders of Reasoned Choice Media.
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Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reason Choice Media.
Welcome Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome home, y'all. This is our mini pod. We tricked, y'all, We still here. I I wanted to touch base with y'all because we did a whole show where we ended up in a rumble around the Oval office and whose I asked, should have a chair in there. But what we didn't talk about is what happened in the elections. Well, but I think that our perspectives matter here. A lot of the folks that have something to say don't necessarily have the inroads with the people we know within these campaigns. And I think the other thing that has been talked about in passing but not as much as the fact that it wasn't just a Harris for President campaign loss. The Senate is gone and so is the House, and so I want to talk about what we all think happened. I'm sure that this is another one of those conversations where reasonable minds can disagree, and so I want to hear what you think. Andrew. You are our resident candidate, democratic strategist that has run a campaign and knows what it's like to get close. I think you probably only know what it's like to get close. You only have won, and you've only gotten close. You've never had a blowout like this. So what do you think went wrong? Or what do you know went wrong?
Angela? I can tell you one thing that I believe went right, and that is Kamala Harris, with one hundred days to transition from VP candidate to presidential candidate, which is I can't even imagine the change that would have had to happen, ran through the goddamn tape. I think she was everywhere, talked to everybody. Are their tactical pieces that needed to change? Are there? You know, things that can always be done on the edges and the scene in scenes of a campaign. Absolutely, But when you think greater, bigger picture, Kamala Harris did what she could do as a candidate. She could not, however, answer for endemic problems and within the Democratic Party structure and quite frankly, the diminished democratic turnout that we experienced in this election. Let nobody forget that we had a voter drop off from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, and the seven states that were battleground states where Kamala competed on the air, was very present, tried to make her case. She lost to Donald Trump by basically three points on average between those those states or less that she did not compete, meaning they were not they were not battleground states. She lost by six points or greater. What's the point there? And places where she where people got to hear her, where people got to hear her defense and what she stood for. She closed the gap between Donald Trump and Republicans by three points of industrialized nations where and I know people were like, well, we don't live in industrialized that we live in the United States. Will listen to this just globally. Globally, the incumbent parties, be they conservative or liberal, and democracies all across the globe up until getting to ours, the incumbent party and leadership were walloped across the board. The United States, of all of those developed nations who had democratic elections, had this small list the the smallest defeat of any of the other countries. I think that's important to understand. Because Kamala closed a very significant gap, it should have been worse. And the reason it should have been worse is I got to retort back to James Carville, it's the economy stupid. And I know we've been talking a bit about whether or not there is some a duplicity, and people believe it in that message. But when you can take black men's support to low twenty percent and Latino men's support to fifty percent plus a twenty five point shift in a cycle, we can't just trump it up to what is a significant issue here, which is that of race and gender, including amongst these two groups that I just mentioned as being real impediments to Kamala's ability to scale that additional hurdle. I would say, while we did not win in a number of plays, this is where we wanted to win. At the top of the ticket. The most Democrats really did mitigate a number of losses. Hakeem Jeffries will have experienced. What potential gain of one or two seats, a loss of one or two seats. The fact that they were able to help steady when people held us accountable for not being able to afford their groceries. That is, that is not a mandate for the president or the Congress to treat the opposing party and their beliefs and their supporters any kind of way. I know everybody thinks you're saying that went wrong. What I'm saying is is that there was a lot that went right that we are not accounting for, and the way this election in total played out.
The other I want to know what those things are.
Well, the things that went right to make that happen.
Are you saying that the loss wasn't that bad? So that's when right? No?
No, no, no, yes, in part because it was supposed to be much greater. I know we all had optimism that it was the devil versus the angels sitting on the shoulder. She's not an angel. But I'm just making the comparison, which means he was canceled, could not be considered well. For a lot of voters. They didn't experience him so badly the first time. They ignored a lot of his nonsense, which was consequential for a lot of communities, but they ignored it, and what they recall was that their groceries were accessible and affordable. You had people across the board saying that they felt like they financially did better even though the US survived. The US survived the inflation better than any other industrialized country, we came out of it better. We came out of COVID better. But people don't live in other countries. They live in this one, and so if their experience is bad, it's going to be reflected, y'all. I think there were a lot of contributing factors to the loss that Democrats experienced. But I always felt like this race was out of going to be like this neck and neck, or that it was actually going to be a demonstrable win. I was hoping that demonstrable win was going to be in favor of Kamala Harris. But if you look across these battleground states, the blue wall collapsed, not terribly significantly, but enough for us not to win those electoral votes. And we got to get inside what the hell working people in this country? I think? And when I include working people, I'm not talking about white world folks. That is not a syndonym for working people. Working people are black, brown, everything in between. Who felt like this party was not doing their bidding even though we're the only ones doing their bidding. The talking points on the other side and the messaging from the other side made them look like they were the Union Party and not us. And we got to figure that shit out. And the last point I'll make is when we were in Atlanta, and I will never forget that young man who stood up and talked about the hundreds of black men that he encounters every single week in Atlanta through the nature of his work, and the fact that they were saying that straight black men don't have a home in the Democratic Party. And you then consider the significant loss of black men, younger, Black Latino men younger, and white men younger who philosophically are not identifying ex conservative, They're just looking for a home.
Well, they didn't Dane Brown with black men, Andrew, and I want to be cautious about putting out doubttle.
Listen, I'm not saying that black men are responsible for Kamala losing white women, without a doubt, they're white and white men, or without a doubt, the reason that she did not win it was their collapse. But what I'm not going to do is ignore that in some of these battle round states, Donald Trump got ten points more than he did in the last election with black men and doubled twenty points with Latinos. And so what I'm saying is is we can't try to explain an academician. Through academic exercise, our way out of the fact that we have an emerging problem amongst certain constituencies that the young men who do not feel like they are seen heard, played with, dealt with within the Democratic Party, and that will be a significant problem, especially when you consider what the future demographic, voting demographic.
Yeah, I just want to happen. Because we're ten minutes in that piece. I think we have to consider that the voter turnout itself was smaller and that's why some of those gains looked like they were larger. I'll be quick what I think went right. I think that Vice President Harris ran an amazing campaign that was pulled together and executed in one hundred and seven days. This idea that she didn't talk about the economy is bullshit. She absolutely did. You know, she put together an incredible campaign in one hundred and seven days, and I don't think the idea that she didn't talk about the economy is complete and utter bullshit. And it drives me crazy that people say that constantly across the cable news spectrum, and hosts who are supposed to be journalists don't correct it. She did talk about the economy. I don't think there is anything that she could have done differently that would have changed the outcome of this election. What I think went wrong, hence right for the Trump campaign, is that a majority of people in this country were either in support of or okay with, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic viewpoints of this president. Even if the president was saying, I will do this thing for you, I will pretend to put put this policy for which he didn't put any policy up front, but he was saying under me, you'll walk down streets paved with gold and have you know, refrigerators and milk and honey every day, And in the next breath he was calling Nancy Pelosi a bitch, or he was dancing incoherently across stage for forty five minutes, or insulting Michelle Obama, insulting Vice President Harris. They were okay with all those things. So that is what we have to confront in this country, quite frankly, the fact that a majority of people were either in support of or indifferent to his hatefulness and his hateful rhetoric.
I a few things. One, I want to commend Kamala Harris for a historic run and a very brave run. I don't know anybody that could have pulled off what she did in one hundred and seven days. So I echo that Tiff. I also want to commend her on molly wopping and mopping the floor with Donald Trump in that debate. I also want to commend them on plugging in influencers the best way they knew how in the camp. I would argue that the influencers and the surrogates who participated on the campaign trail were probably one of the more organizing, organized pieces of the campaign. However, that's not sufficient, and I think andrew to the argument that we had with Tiff before on if the role of celebrities is outsized with what actually matters when people go into the voting booth is something that really should be questioned at this point. A lot of money was spent on getting those folks out to the trail, getting them on the stage, ensuring their involvement, and I don't know that she saw a real ROI there, and that's something that has to be discussed. I have a tremendous bone to pick with white men and with white women. These are the same folks I talked about needing to be held accountable for whatever they decide to do on election day, and I'm not veering from that. I have a tremendous issue there shout out to y'all because you showed up. The sad part for y'all that showed up is you showed up and voted against your interests. People have argued that you did vote your interest What I'm saying to you is, and I'm not trying to call you ignorant, but I believe that you voted in the long run, against your interests and you don't even know it. You thought your interests were mass deportation. You thought your interests were getting rid of DEI. You thought your interests were ensuring that affirmative action no longer existed in institutions of higher learning for your children. What you don't realize is the ways in which these things are going to backfire and hit you even even more. I gotta say that I think the biggest winner in this campaign is once again, the white consulting class. Regardless of what parties sit in, that one has to be disrupted, it has to be destroyed. We're talking about contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars I'm sure folks will say, well, you're not looking at this right because this was a media buy and so most of this went to TV. Well, what ROI do we have to say that it was worth the campaign spending over two hundred million dollars with one vendor for TV adviys. The ROI is not there. This has to be disrupted and the bottom line is there was a whole other contract for digital adviys. What ROI do we have that says this was a good use of resources. Here's my point. There is nothing that y'all can do to out smart good old fashioned canvassing, mail, door knocking, text messages. You're not going to be able to goo target enough in a digital space, to target enough on a TV space to make up for the lack of not being involved in knocking on doors. That was an issue before Kamala Harris became the top of the ticket and the nominee for this parties or this party's nominee in this election. That was an issue that preceded Joe Biden being at the top of the ticket. This is an age old battle that has to be fought and has to be challenged. There are black staff who are part of the organizing community, part of canvassing challenge, paid canvassers challenge whether or not this was the right tactic. Said they didn't have the resources. Jasmine, who was the state director in Florida andrew I said you are a tweet her Twitter threat earlier. She goes in about how much they had to rely on outside resources because they couldn't get any resources from the campaign because the campaign had pretty much given up on Florida. The sad part is, y'all, that is not a Florida unique story. It is the story of every battle ground state director and that has to be discussed. They spent so much time and effort in ensuring that these large, rich white consultants would keep their share, could even potentially get bonuses off of a law, but wouldn't get these folks the dollars they needed to get signs on the ground, to get folks on the ground knocking on doors. You guys, we went and knocked on doors. We can figure out how to use the MGB van at right. We could not say if somebody wasn't home or not. We know that firsthand. But there are folks who did this every single day that can talk about what went wrong here, y'all. Like I said on the main episode, I was convinced this election had to have been stolen in some really remarkable, challenging way on data. It's not we ignored the people at the bottom, if you were ever, of course, But as usual, what we've learned as well is that nothing from the top ever trickles down. There's not a trickle down economy, there's not a trickle down campaign. You cannot expect that people will be touched just because folks are getting paid at the top. So there's a lot more to be said there, but that's what I got to see. Say, the biggest loser here is the DNC, because I think that thing's gonna have to be disrupted and destroyed to really get back to the heart of what it was supposed to be for the beginning.
What the biggest loser is the American people. And I just want to echo your point, Angela. We know people, we know personally, people who were given crumbs out of this huge pot of money. They were given crumbs, and these are people who have been doing organizing work and gotv work for decades. People are so willing people poured money into I don't know about this cycle because I don't know the numbers, But previous cycles, people poured money into never trumpers, they poured money into the Lincoln projects. But you have people like you didn't dance with the ones who brung you, and I honestly just think we're looking at a space. It wasn't just that Vice President Harris lost. It was the way we were treated all the way down, Like you talked about Angela as staff or as people outside the campaign who were trying to help this campaign. And I want to be really clear, none of us are putting this at the feet of Vice president here. Nope, we're putting it at the feet of people who are in charge, who are constantly discrediting the people who's very fucking backs this democracy depends on. And when I wept for days after the election, that is what I left about.
Yeah, And that's the thing, like at some point that those who get rewarded for losing elections cycle after cycle, and they get named campaign managers or named campaign chairs, that has to be we have to that is the first place where accountability must be had. And so I wanted to have this conversation. I know that it's emotionally charged. I know this is challenging, it's hard. We've been screaming this from the beginning of the podcast. Andrew's giving y'all his own story. I know that he'll continue to do that. I hope that he'll participate in this autopsy as well, because it's not just an autopsy of this cycle. It's an autopsy of what's been wrong with the party for years and it's time for it to change.
Yeah, and black women, you do not want it to be Black women versus the party. Black women are We are the backbone. So see how you do without your base. See how that goes.
Since we weren't now in black men because they black men too.
But I'm just saying black women, in terms of organizing, we do outnumber black men. I love black I never believed that Trump bs. I know brothers are right there with us. I don't even believe that Trump gained ground with black men. But the I would say one distinction is when black women organize, Black women organize a community of people that includes black men and black women. Black women are constantly on the front lines as poll workers organizers. You just disproportionate to any other group, including our brothers are black men. But this is not meant to put black men down or disparage black men. We need y'all, We love y'all. Y'all are right there with us in this fight. But I am just so frustrated and her We're broken, heartbroken by the way we're treated. It is so exhausting. It's so exhausting, and I don't know how you hold on the hope. But I'll tell you, guys, I don't have an ounce of fucking energy to do anything for this party, this country. All I want to do is make sure my people are okay. I don't I'm running out of the fight, to be honest. If this is what y'all want to have at it, let it burn. I want to make sure that my people are okay. That's just where I am. Truly.
I hate this. I know that this probably means that we'll have to do a part two on this as we continue to figure out what happened in this election, as we continue to wrestle with our own feelings and the facts, and we'll always do that right here on Native Lampid. So thank you all so much.
Nobody's wrong for how they feel. That's for damn sure.
Thank you all so much for tuning in. Welcome home, y'all.
Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Resent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
