November 6, 2024 • 50 mins
Slate’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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Stops by to try to comfort us.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Then we'll talk to Media Matter CEO Angelou Kirasone about
how MAGA outorganized Democrats and how Democrats can counter it.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
But first the news, Molly, how you doing here?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
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.
(00:57):
And I was really wrong about this election.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You know, I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
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
(01:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Mag of people tell us that everything is fine.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Somali Kamala just did her concession speech. What'd you see here?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
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
(02:18):
Democrats would like to flip, and that is still possible.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
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
(02:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
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
(03:28):
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.
(03:49):
But obviously they didn't and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
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
(04:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It used to be Roy Cooper.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
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,
(05:13):
but they're really big.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
They're really important.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
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
(05:38):
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
(06:01):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Dahlia him Molly oh boy.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
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
(06:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And that's you.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Oh man, that is a big, big siss even whip to.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Let me say this, Molly. I feel like every time I've.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
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
(07:28):
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
(07:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, I mean, it isn't. It isn't.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
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
(08:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Now, that's right, and I.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
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,
(09:01):
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
(09:24):
be so grateful that this like rickety crazy decentralized you know,
archaic system held and yet any.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
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,
(09:58):
the fact that our like one of our largest news
delivery systems is owned by the Chinese government. These things
are all bad.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:53):
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
(11:16):
he'll do.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That, He'll do Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
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,
(11:43):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
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
(12:19):
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
(12:44):
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,
(13:06):
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
(13:27):
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,
(13:49):
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
(14:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I mean, it was not high turnout election. And also,
you want to hear my worst.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yes, whatever it is, I want to hear your anything.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The worst everything.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
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
(15:33):
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
(15:58):
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?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
But in the end, like it just didn't connect with voters.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I mean, that's very depressing.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
It.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Listen, you and I I think both talk to Tim
Snyder on the same day last week right, did.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
We wow both podcasts with him and very possible.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
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
(17:11):
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
(17:33):
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
(17:55):
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
(18:17):
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
(18:38):
the constructs that we're given and it's really hard to
think about.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
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
(19:03):
just like kind of anathema to how we think about liberty.
Does that make any sense?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yes? And also I mean we just have to keep.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
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
(19:33):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:16):
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.
(20:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
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
(21:14):
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
(21:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
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
(22:10):
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
(22:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
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
(23:13):
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.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
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
(23:51):
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
(24:13):
take it out for a spin for the first time.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
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
(24:36):
that Vice President.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Harris ran a nearly flawless campaign.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
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.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, and that is absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
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.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
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
(25:56):
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
(26:19):
their head for a couple of days and then like keep.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Going and keep going, keep going. And the one bright spot.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
If you're listeners podcast, you are probably the group that did,
in fact vote for Harris because.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
White college educated women, nobody else but you guys understood
the assignment. Yep, thank you.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Oh lots of love, Molly, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Angelo Carrasone is the CEO of Media Matters. Welcome back
to Fast Politics, Angela.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
I this will drop on Thursday, two.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Days after yet another election that did not necessarily go
the way that many of us hoped.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I want you to talk to us about MAGA.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
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?
Speaker 5 (27:19):
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
(27:40):
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.
(28:02):
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
(28:24):
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
(28:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
That's exactly right. So what does MAGA look like.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
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
(29:33):
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.
(29:55):
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
(30:17):
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
(30:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Now say that again, because I haven't heard anyone say that,
and I think that's exactly right this idea.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Say it one more time and just go a little
more with that.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
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
(31:26):
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
(31:49):
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.
(32:10):
And so, just like in twenty.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Can you say more?
Speaker 5 (32:22):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Right.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
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
(33:03):
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.
(33:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Right, that is a fringe idea.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
So that's what MAGA is.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
It builds out from the fringes.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
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
(34:06):
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
(34:27):
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
(34:49):
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
(35:10):
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
(35:31):
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
(35:53):
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,
(36:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yeah, this is a hard question.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
But let's talk about growing power from the fringes. So
does that look like McCarthyism.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
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
(37:06):
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
(37:28):
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
(37:50):
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
(38:11):
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
(38:34):
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
(38:55):
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
(39:19):
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
(39:41):
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
(40:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
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
(40:44):
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
(41:05):
this country that don't have news.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
The news they're getting is read sludge.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Remember how you know the thing that Elon shared and
after Paul Pelosi has been you know, amien.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
So what's the solve there?
Speaker 5 (41:21):
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.
(41:42):
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.
(42:03):
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
(42:23):
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
(42:45):
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
(43:07):
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,
(43:28):
and we've never really made robust investments in them, whereas.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
They have, and they have a pipe which they have
to have.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
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
(43:58):
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
(44:19):
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.
(44:41):
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
(45:03):
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
(45:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
You know, I a.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Right, it's downstream, yes, and that's it.
Speaker 5 (45:56):
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
(46:17):
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
(46:38):
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
(46:59):
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
(47:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
No, I agree, I agree, I agree, Thank you, thank you,
thank you. No, no moment perfectly, Jesse Cannon, my Jung Fast.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
This will be a not bittersweet, but bitter moment of fuckery.
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
It was that Democrats did not show up.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
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
(48:33):
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
(48:57):
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
(49:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
I didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
But you know what I did.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
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
(50:10):
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.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Stops by to try to comfort us.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Then we'll talk to Media Matter CEO Angelou Kirasone about
how MAGA outorganized Democrats and how Democrats can counter it.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
But first the news, Molly, how you doing here?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
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.
(00:57):
And I was really wrong about this election.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You know, I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
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
(01:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Mag of people tell us that everything is fine.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Somali Kamala just did her concession speech. What'd you see here?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
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
(02:18):
Democrats would like to flip, and that is still possible.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
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
(02:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
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
(03:28):
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.
(03:49):
But obviously they didn't and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
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
(04:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It used to be Roy Cooper.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
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,
(05:13):
but they're really big.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
They're really important.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
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
(05:38):
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
(06:01):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Dahlia him Molly oh boy.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
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
(06:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And that's you.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Oh man, that is a big, big siss even whip to.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Let me say this, Molly. I feel like every time I've.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
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
(07:28):
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
(07:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, I mean, it isn't. It isn't.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
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
(08:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Now, that's right, and I.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
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,
(09:01):
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
(09:24):
be so grateful that this like rickety crazy decentralized you know,
archaic system held and yet any.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
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,
(09:58):
the fact that our like one of our largest news
delivery systems is owned by the Chinese government. These things
are all bad.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:53):
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
(11:16):
he'll do.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That, He'll do Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
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,
(11:43):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
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
(12:19):
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
(12:44):
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,
(13:06):
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
(13:27):
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,
(13:49):
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
(14:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I mean, it was not high turnout election. And also,
you want to hear my worst.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yes, whatever it is, I want to hear your anything.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The worst everything.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
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
(15:33):
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
(15:58):
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?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
But in the end, like it just didn't connect with voters.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I mean, that's very depressing.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
It.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Listen, you and I I think both talk to Tim
Snyder on the same day last week right, did.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
We wow both podcasts with him and very possible.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
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
(17:11):
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
(17:33):
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
(17:55):
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
(18:17):
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
(18:38):
the constructs that we're given and it's really hard to
think about.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
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
(19:03):
just like kind of anathema to how we think about liberty.
Does that make any sense?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yes? And also I mean we just have to keep.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
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
(19:33):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:16):
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.
(20:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
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
(21:14):
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
(21:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
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
(22:10):
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
(22:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
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
(23:13):
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.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
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
(23:51):
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
(24:13):
take it out for a spin for the first time.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
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
(24:36):
that Vice President.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Harris ran a nearly flawless campaign.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
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.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, and that is absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
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.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
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
(25:56):
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
(26:19):
their head for a couple of days and then like keep.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Going and keep going, keep going. And the one bright spot.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
If you're listeners podcast, you are probably the group that did,
in fact vote for Harris because.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
White college educated women, nobody else but you guys understood
the assignment. Yep, thank you.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Oh lots of love, Molly, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Angelo Carrasone is the CEO of Media Matters. Welcome back
to Fast Politics, Angela.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
I this will drop on Thursday, two.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Days after yet another election that did not necessarily go
the way that many of us hoped.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I want you to talk to us about MAGA.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
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?
Speaker 5 (27:19):
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
(27:40):
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.
(28:02):
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
(28:24):
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
(28:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
That's exactly right. So what does MAGA look like.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
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
(29:33):
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.
(29:55):
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
(30:17):
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
(30:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Now say that again, because I haven't heard anyone say that,
and I think that's exactly right this idea.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Say it one more time and just go a little
more with that.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
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
(31:26):
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
(31:49):
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.
(32:10):
And so, just like in twenty.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Can you say more?
Speaker 5 (32:22):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Right.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
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
(33:03):
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.
(33:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Right, that is a fringe idea.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
So that's what MAGA is.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
It builds out from the fringes.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
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
(34:06):
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
(34:27):
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
(34:49):
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
(35:10):
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
(35:31):
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
(35:53):
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,
(36:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yeah, this is a hard question.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
But let's talk about growing power from the fringes. So
does that look like McCarthyism.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
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
(37:06):
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
(37:28):
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
(37:50):
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
(38:11):
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
(38:34):
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
(38:55):
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
(39:19):
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
(39:41):
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
(40:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
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
(40:44):
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
(41:05):
this country that don't have news.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
The news they're getting is read sludge.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Remember how you know the thing that Elon shared and
after Paul Pelosi has been you know, amien.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
So what's the solve there?
Speaker 5 (41:21):
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.
(41:42):
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.
(42:03):
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
(42:23):
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
(42:45):
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
(43:07):
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,
(43:28):
and we've never really made robust investments in them, whereas.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
They have, and they have a pipe which they have
to have.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
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
(43:58):
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
(44:19):
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.
(44:41):
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
(45:03):
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
(45:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
You know, I a.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Right, it's downstream, yes, and that's it.
Speaker 5 (45:56):
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
(46:17):
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
(46:38):
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
(46:59):
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
(47:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
No, I agree, I agree, I agree, Thank you, thank you,
thank you. No, no moment perfectly, Jesse Cannon, my Jung Fast.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
This will be a not bittersweet, but bitter moment of fuckery.
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
It was that Democrats did not show up.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
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
(48:33):
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
(48:57):
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
(49:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
I didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
But you know what I did.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
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
(50:10):
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.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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