November 5, 2024 • 12 mins
Tensions are high as America casts their votes, the nation deeply divided down partisan lines.
Polling booths will begin to close within an hour, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump still neck in neck in all major polls.
TVNZ and Newstalk ZB’s Jack Tame told Kerre Woodham that whoever wins, there will be tens of millions of Americans who are very happy, and tens of millions who are very unhappy with the result.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerry Wood of morning's podcast from
News Talk, said B.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Back to the States, we go to live from Washington,
d C. Jack Tam, host of TVNSSQ and A News Talk,
said b's Saturday morning host for a political junkie, it
must be fantastic being there.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Jack, Oh, Currie, it's so good. I mean, look, I
love New Zealand politics. We all love New Zealand politics,
but it has nothing on money, the drama, the power
of US politics, and yeah, you know, there's so many
different dimensions to the vote today. But I've been luck
enough to be here for the last few of these.
This is my fourth one in a row that I've
(00:44):
been in the US for and that, you know, I
think we can probably agree that this is the single
most contentious one we've had yet. Like, it really does
feel like the tribal partisan divisions are more pronounced than
ever before, which means that regardless of the result today
or whenever we get the result, there were going to
(01:06):
be tens of millions of Americans who are very happy
and tens of millions of Americans who are very unhappy
with the result.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Indeed, I really did like that the phrase nauseous optimism
from the from the Democrats, because it does You're just
waiting for the other shoe to drop, really, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah, you know it's funny. I I've been. I've been
comparing Karmela's campaign a lot over the last couple of
weeks with Hillary Clinton's and I had to, for my
sins follow that campaign at the time. And I remember
on Election Night itself, people were super confident, and of
course the polls were quite different. Then they showed that
Hillary Clinton was well ahead of Donald Trump in the
(01:47):
popular vote, that he that she was likely to win
with the electoral college as well. And then when those
results came through, they were an enormous shock, and I
think that that has led to kind of an electoral
ps PTSD for some Democrats. That having said, you know,
the heading into today materially worse for Krmala Harris than
(02:10):
they were for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. But the
real question is to what extent the models have changed
over the last four or eight years, to what extent
the polsters have now started to correct for the Trump
phenomena and where they didn't before. But it's also my observation,
and this is this is nothing more than anecdotal. I
(02:34):
reckon people who do support Donald Trump are happier to
talk about it now and are more open about it
than they might have been in the past, because that
was a big shock when when he became president for
the first time, you know, just to think heaps of
people hadn't appreciated how deep his support ran. And you know,
I think about my own friends who Donald Trump supporters,
(02:55):
that they are much much much more open about it
and happy to talk about it than they were a
few years ago. And I wonder if that's also a
bit of a dynamic heading into today.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, my producer and your former producer, Helen has friends
in the States, really good friends that she stayed with
over the years, and one of them's married to an
Hispanic man and they're voting Trump.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, yeah, I actually don't think no, But I mean,
I think this is the thing. And you know, I'll
put myself at the top of the list here. I
think at times we've like falland into traps and kind
of looking at Trump's support and really two dimensional terms,
and actually there are all manner of reasons that people
support them. I think a big one is that he
(03:36):
kind of defies conventional wisdom, like he's so unlike so
many other politicians from both parties in the past, and
people are so tired of the status quo, whether it
be Republican or Democrat, that he feels like the guy
who's going to upset the apple cart and shake things
up for better or for worse, but shake things up
for people who are really kind of sick of the
(03:58):
current system. You know, they're being said. I was speaking
to you know, some of the other day, super well educated, know,
being to fancy universities, all that kind of thing, who
was a big, big Donald Trump fan, because he explained
to me by saying, you know, Donald Trump is the
only president in recent history who hasn't had wars start
(04:18):
on his watch. And he said, you know, by by
by being unpredictable, and by doing things like deciding to
order an air strike on an Israeli on an Iranian
military leader with zero warning and without telling his allies.
By being unpredictable, he forced America's adversaries to be a
(04:39):
little bit more cautious in the way they operated. And
he felt like actually having someone like Trump in charge
made the world safer place. And that's why he voted
for Trump. So yeah, I think it's it's never quite
you know, it's sometimes it is just really simple, and
you know, but a lot of the times, you know,
I think we we underestimate that the myriad reasons why
(05:00):
people choose to support him and.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
The way they can compartmentalize us reading an interview as
to why a significant number of black voters say that
they are going to be voting for Trump, and one
of them is that the Democrats have taken black voters, women,
and Hispanic voters for granted. They've patronized them and taken
them for granted. And the other was that when he
(05:23):
was one of the barbers was black, his client was black.
The barber was voting Democrat, his client was voting Republic,
was voting Trump. And the barber was saying, man, what
about the things he says? And the client said, that's
election campaign Trump, that's not President Trump. You know, that's
just what he says to get there.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
See. For me, I'm similarly am fascinated by the way
people are able to compartmentalize. For me, the big one
is just democracy. Like I just find it amazing that,
you know, people who say they care about democracy and
they care about the kind of structures and American institutions
that supposedly make this a great democracy. I find it
(06:05):
amazing that they were able to support someone who still
perpetuates this line about the last election being stolen with
zero evidence, despite it all being thrown out in court,
and that is such a toxic message, you know, heading
into the section campaign, he has sown mistrust about election
processes basically from the word go. And I just I
(06:27):
just think, like, I think it's amazing that people are
able to support a candidate who kind of threatens the
overall system and the integrity of the overall system, again
without without evidence, in a way that in a way
that they do. You know, I was speaking to a
mate about the other day and who's a Trump supporter,
and I said, you know, just just I really want
to make a sincere effort to understand this. Do you
(06:49):
think the last election was stolen? And he said, wow,
you know, I just think there are so many big
unanswered questions, and you know, and the system kind of
hides those questions from the people. When I was speaking
with him about it, it just became clear that, you know,
he was in a totally different information ecosystem to even
some of his close friends. And I think that's a
(07:11):
really really big dynamic here too, Like the ways in
which people are getting information mean that they're kind of
in these bubbles that have no overlap, and so the
realities in which they're living are slightly different, which means
that for something like you know, questioning the integrity of
the election or January sixth is interpreted by one voter
(07:32):
completely differently to the way it might be interpreted by
someone else.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
But there are so many people the world over that
believe the system is corrupt and that anybody who takes
it on and calls it out and says so is
the one speaking the truth. You know, even in New Zealand,
you've got and therese are educated people as well, like
really educated people.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, you know, I reckon this, I actually reckon there's
really good reason for some of it. Like when you
think about it, you know that these people have been
told for decades that you know, take free trade for example, right,
so n after the North American Free Trade Agreement was
signed and known in only four and so many Americans,
especially Americans in the Midwest, in those big manufacturing states
(08:14):
like Michigan, that they were told in Wisconsin, they were
told life's s goinn to get better, stuff's goin to
get cheaper, our economy is going to get better. And
actually they have just seen a steady erosion of the
economy on which they and their parents' generation and their
grandparents generation have relied upon for a really good middle
(08:34):
class living. Right. And it's very easy if you're on
the coast to say, oh, yeah, no, these policies are great.
And you know, Bill Clinton, when he was a Democrat
president signed into law. He was a fantastic president for
all Americans. So well, actually, you know that policy has
led to tens of millions of people, has contributed to
tens of millions of people probably having a worse standard
of living than their parents' generation. And when you get
(08:58):
that kind of you know, situation in a society, is
it any wonder that those people have been affected the
worst no longer buy the message that they're getting from
the traditional parties, you know, so no wonder they want
to turn things upside down and go for a candidate
who might say, you know what, you've been screwed and
(09:18):
I'm here to fix it.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, absolutely, And are you game enough to call it yet.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Nah, not all, Okay, He's the thing. I mean, it's
like I just reckon. Anyone who says they know with
certainty is just is just talking bollocks. And you know,
people might just have a bet and that's fine. I
reckon a couple of big things though, are kind of
playing on my mind. First of all, Trump has always
(09:47):
he has always kind of bucked conventional wisdom, and the
conventional wisdom around his policy strategy is not a great one. Like,
for example, he's basically relying on young men to deliver
him a victory. Now, if there's one group of voters
who cannot usually be relied upon at the polls, it's
young men. That being said, Trump has defied conventional wisdom
(10:08):
plenty of times before, so who's to say won't do
it this time around? You think about, you know, the
young black voters you were talking about before who were
supporting Trump, Like, if he's relying on those voters to
deliver him victory, are they are they saying they like
Trump and they're going to vote for him or are
they just saying they like Trump and actually, when it
comes down to it, maybe they won't. You know, he's
kind of relying on that. The big thing I keep
(10:30):
on thinking about is the gender divide, and there is
like a sixteen or seventeen point split between men and
women when it comes to their support. So women massively
backing Kamala Harris, men massively backing Donald Trump. And I
do think that if Kamala Harris is to win, it'll
be because women went to the polls as opposed to
(10:53):
as opposed to anything else. My final point is that
you know how over summer on Newstalks they'd be we
do those like predictions for the coming year. Oh yes,
you and I do our like songs of summer and
all that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, I'm not there
necessarily bold enough to make a really strong call, but
I will gently remind everyone listening right now that in
my predictions for twenty twenty four, I said neither Joe
(11:16):
Biden or Donald Trump would be the next president of
the United States. So there you go. So you know,
if Kamela pulls it off, I will expect our producers.
Maybe Helen could go and do it right now at
the end of your show this morning, you could go
and dig out that audio so we can remind everyone
that well before KRMLA Harris was a candidate, I maybe
(11:36):
picked it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Wow, what would you have got on at the tab
for that?
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Holy he good call.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Jack, Thank you so much and I'm sure we'll be
hearing more of you over the next day in the
next couple of days. Fascinating time to be there, Jack
tamber And Live from Washington, DC, host of TV and
sis Q, and a news Talk said bees very Saturday
morning host having the time of his life.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
For more from Kerry Wooden Mornings, listen live to News
Talk said B for nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Kerry Wood of morning's podcast from
News Talk, said B.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Back to the States, we go to live from Washington,
d C. Jack Tam, host of TVNSSQ and A News Talk,
said b's Saturday morning host for a political junkie, it
must be fantastic being there.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Jack, Oh, Currie, it's so good. I mean, look, I
love New Zealand politics. We all love New Zealand politics,
but it has nothing on money, the drama, the power
of US politics, and yeah, you know, there's so many
different dimensions to the vote today. But I've been luck
enough to be here for the last few of these.
This is my fourth one in a row that I've
(00:44):
been in the US for and that, you know, I
think we can probably agree that this is the single
most contentious one we've had yet. Like, it really does
feel like the tribal partisan divisions are more pronounced than
ever before, which means that regardless of the result today
or whenever we get the result, there were going to
(01:06):
be tens of millions of Americans who are very happy
and tens of millions of Americans who are very unhappy
with the result.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Indeed, I really did like that the phrase nauseous optimism
from the from the Democrats, because it does You're just
waiting for the other shoe to drop, really, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah, you know it's funny. I I've been. I've been
comparing Karmela's campaign a lot over the last couple of
weeks with Hillary Clinton's and I had to, for my
sins follow that campaign at the time. And I remember
on Election Night itself, people were super confident, and of
course the polls were quite different. Then they showed that
Hillary Clinton was well ahead of Donald Trump in the
(01:47):
popular vote, that he that she was likely to win
with the electoral college as well. And then when those
results came through, they were an enormous shock, and I
think that that has led to kind of an electoral
ps PTSD for some Democrats. That having said, you know,
the heading into today materially worse for Krmala Harris than
(02:10):
they were for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. But the
real question is to what extent the models have changed
over the last four or eight years, to what extent
the polsters have now started to correct for the Trump
phenomena and where they didn't before. But it's also my observation,
and this is this is nothing more than anecdotal. I
(02:34):
reckon people who do support Donald Trump are happier to
talk about it now and are more open about it
than they might have been in the past, because that
was a big shock when when he became president for
the first time, you know, just to think heaps of
people hadn't appreciated how deep his support ran. And you know,
I think about my own friends who Donald Trump supporters,
(02:55):
that they are much much much more open about it
and happy to talk about it than they were a
few years ago. And I wonder if that's also a
bit of a dynamic heading into today.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, my producer and your former producer, Helen has friends
in the States, really good friends that she stayed with
over the years, and one of them's married to an
Hispanic man and they're voting Trump.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, yeah, I actually don't think no, But I mean,
I think this is the thing. And you know, I'll
put myself at the top of the list here. I
think at times we've like falland into traps and kind
of looking at Trump's support and really two dimensional terms,
and actually there are all manner of reasons that people
support them. I think a big one is that he
(03:36):
kind of defies conventional wisdom, like he's so unlike so
many other politicians from both parties in the past, and
people are so tired of the status quo, whether it
be Republican or Democrat, that he feels like the guy
who's going to upset the apple cart and shake things
up for better or for worse, but shake things up
for people who are really kind of sick of the
(03:58):
current system. You know, they're being said. I was speaking
to you know, some of the other day, super well educated, know,
being to fancy universities, all that kind of thing, who
was a big, big Donald Trump fan, because he explained
to me by saying, you know, Donald Trump is the
only president in recent history who hasn't had wars start
(04:18):
on his watch. And he said, you know, by by
by being unpredictable, and by doing things like deciding to
order an air strike on an Israeli on an Iranian
military leader with zero warning and without telling his allies.
By being unpredictable, he forced America's adversaries to be a
(04:39):
little bit more cautious in the way they operated. And
he felt like actually having someone like Trump in charge
made the world safer place. And that's why he voted
for Trump. So yeah, I think it's it's never quite
you know, it's sometimes it is just really simple, and
you know, but a lot of the times, you know,
I think we we underestimate that the myriad reasons why
(05:00):
people choose to support him and.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
The way they can compartmentalize us reading an interview as
to why a significant number of black voters say that
they are going to be voting for Trump, and one
of them is that the Democrats have taken black voters, women,
and Hispanic voters for granted. They've patronized them and taken
them for granted. And the other was that when he
(05:23):
was one of the barbers was black, his client was black.
The barber was voting Democrat, his client was voting Republic,
was voting Trump. And the barber was saying, man, what
about the things he says? And the client said, that's
election campaign Trump, that's not President Trump. You know, that's
just what he says to get there.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
See. For me, I'm similarly am fascinated by the way
people are able to compartmentalize. For me, the big one
is just democracy. Like I just find it amazing that,
you know, people who say they care about democracy and
they care about the kind of structures and American institutions
that supposedly make this a great democracy. I find it
(06:05):
amazing that they were able to support someone who still
perpetuates this line about the last election being stolen with
zero evidence, despite it all being thrown out in court,
and that is such a toxic message, you know, heading
into the section campaign, he has sown mistrust about election
processes basically from the word go. And I just I
(06:27):
just think, like, I think it's amazing that people are
able to support a candidate who kind of threatens the
overall system and the integrity of the overall system, again
without without evidence, in a way that in a way
that they do. You know, I was speaking to a
mate about the other day and who's a Trump supporter,
and I said, you know, just just I really want
to make a sincere effort to understand this. Do you
(06:49):
think the last election was stolen? And he said, wow,
you know, I just think there are so many big
unanswered questions, and you know, and the system kind of
hides those questions from the people. When I was speaking
with him about it, it just became clear that, you know,
he was in a totally different information ecosystem to even
some of his close friends. And I think that's a
(07:11):
really really big dynamic here too, Like the ways in
which people are getting information mean that they're kind of
in these bubbles that have no overlap, and so the
realities in which they're living are slightly different, which means
that for something like you know, questioning the integrity of
the election or January sixth is interpreted by one voter
(07:32):
completely differently to the way it might be interpreted by
someone else.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
But there are so many people the world over that
believe the system is corrupt and that anybody who takes
it on and calls it out and says so is
the one speaking the truth. You know, even in New Zealand,
you've got and therese are educated people as well, like
really educated people.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, you know, I reckon this, I actually reckon there's
really good reason for some of it. Like when you
think about it, you know that these people have been
told for decades that you know, take free trade for example, right,
so n after the North American Free Trade Agreement was
signed and known in only four and so many Americans,
especially Americans in the Midwest, in those big manufacturing states
(08:14):
like Michigan, that they were told in Wisconsin, they were
told life's s goinn to get better, stuff's goin to
get cheaper, our economy is going to get better. And
actually they have just seen a steady erosion of the
economy on which they and their parents' generation and their
grandparents generation have relied upon for a really good middle
(08:34):
class living. Right. And it's very easy if you're on
the coast to say, oh, yeah, no, these policies are great.
And you know, Bill Clinton, when he was a Democrat
president signed into law. He was a fantastic president for
all Americans. So well, actually, you know that policy has
led to tens of millions of people, has contributed to
tens of millions of people probably having a worse standard
of living than their parents' generation. And when you get
(08:58):
that kind of you know, situation in a society, is
it any wonder that those people have been affected the
worst no longer buy the message that they're getting from
the traditional parties, you know, so no wonder they want
to turn things upside down and go for a candidate
who might say, you know what, you've been screwed and
(09:18):
I'm here to fix it.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, absolutely, And are you game enough to call it yet.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Nah, not all, Okay, He's the thing. I mean, it's
like I just reckon. Anyone who says they know with
certainty is just is just talking bollocks. And you know,
people might just have a bet and that's fine. I
reckon a couple of big things though, are kind of
playing on my mind. First of all, Trump has always
(09:47):
he has always kind of bucked conventional wisdom, and the
conventional wisdom around his policy strategy is not a great one. Like,
for example, he's basically relying on young men to deliver
him a victory. Now, if there's one group of voters
who cannot usually be relied upon at the polls, it's
young men. That being said, Trump has defied conventional wisdom
(10:08):
plenty of times before, so who's to say won't do
it this time around? You think about, you know, the
young black voters you were talking about before who were
supporting Trump, Like, if he's relying on those voters to
deliver him victory, are they are they saying they like
Trump and they're going to vote for him or are
they just saying they like Trump and actually, when it
comes down to it, maybe they won't. You know, he's
kind of relying on that. The big thing I keep
(10:30):
on thinking about is the gender divide, and there is
like a sixteen or seventeen point split between men and
women when it comes to their support. So women massively
backing Kamala Harris, men massively backing Donald Trump. And I
do think that if Kamala Harris is to win, it'll
be because women went to the polls as opposed to
(10:53):
as opposed to anything else. My final point is that
you know how over summer on Newstalks they'd be we
do those like predictions for the coming year. Oh yes,
you and I do our like songs of summer and
all that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, I'm not there
necessarily bold enough to make a really strong call, but
I will gently remind everyone listening right now that in
my predictions for twenty twenty four, I said neither Joe
(11:16):
Biden or Donald Trump would be the next president of
the United States. So there you go. So you know,
if Kamela pulls it off, I will expect our producers.
Maybe Helen could go and do it right now at
the end of your show this morning, you could go
and dig out that audio so we can remind everyone
that well before KRMLA Harris was a candidate, I maybe
(11:36):
picked it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Wow, what would you have got on at the tab
for that?
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Holy he good call.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Jack, Thank you so much and I'm sure we'll be
hearing more of you over the next day in the
next couple of days. Fascinating time to be there, Jack
tamber And Live from Washington, DC, host of TV and
sis Q, and a news Talk said bees very Saturday
morning host having the time of his life.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
For more from Kerry Wooden Mornings, listen live to News
Talk said B for nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
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