Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau on the Road Ahead for Democrats

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

Jess and I are just thrilled to have the one and only John Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America here with us.

John, you've been on the front lines of Democratic, or I should say, I'm going to speak about John in the third person because he's very important.

John has been on the front lines of Democratic strategy and has seen plenty of political shifts.

So, given the outcome of the election,

we were

just a great go-to in terms of trying to contextualize what's going on here and just help us.

Help us.

Help us.

Just help ourselves yeah that's right help me there we go uh this yeah this is we're we're all sort of in i think this is the first step in recovery anyways jess uh why don't you kick us off

um so it's great to have you and thanks for having me good to be here um and i've been consuming your content like wildfire which maybe is part of the problem that a highly educated white liberal woman from New York City has been living off of pod save america and diet coke before it gets banned um But

you're not the first.

And I won't be the last.

But can you kind of give us an overview of what the vibes are over in Pod Save America world?

And I'm curious also from all the interviews and the autopsies that you've been doing, who do you think has gotten it the best of the guests that you've had on?

Hmm.

That's a good, that's a good question.

I had Ezra Klein on to be a guest host with me last week, and I thought that he had a pretty good handle on the situation, mostly because, look, it's another white college educated liberal in big cities who confirms all of my previous beliefs.

I'm more of a, like I try to look at the data, and you know, one challenge we have is the, like, all the really good data that you can actually look at all the different demographic groups.

That doesn't come for another couple of months, and Catalyst and Pew do that.

But you can start looking at county by county results, and you can look at exit polls for like broad attitudinal shifts.

And if as long as you don't go by,

break it down into small demographic groups.

So I think overall, there was a global anti-incumbent backlash over the cost of living, frustration, inflation, frustration over inflation.

And that could explain probably a lot of it.

Where Trump and Harris both campaigned in Battleground States, she outran the national shift to the right, sometimes significantly in Wisconsin, for example.

But

all that said,

I think Democrats going forward need to figure out like, how do we build a party that isn't a spike in inflation away from losing to an authoritarian?

Because we have been not only polarized, but pretty evenly divided and polarized in the electorate for some time now.

And I think if Democrats want to not just continue to be a coin flip away from losing, then, you know, we got to take stock of what went wrong.

And I think there's a lot of different explanations.

Once you get beyond cost of living, I think there's also frustration over immigration.

There's sort of a like a hangover from the pandemic, right?

Like a sort of a malaise

that, you know, it's taken hold here in the United States, but also all over the world.

And that has led to all sorts of disorder, especially in cities.

And I think that

I think that we also have a communications challenge in that, you know, if you look at polls about news consumption, you see that, you know, people who read the New York Times, who listen to podcasts, who consume a lot of media, you know, Harris won those voters by a large margin.

And it's not just like people who get their news from social media and YouTube and places like that voted for Trump, or most of them voted for Trump.

It's that people who don't consume much news at all.

right, who just don't really follow politics closely or follow the news all that closely, Trump won those voters as well.

So there are a pretty big segment of voters in this country who do turn out, you know, on election day to vote, but they don't consume a lot of news.

They don't pay much attention to politics.

They tend to not have college degrees.

They tend to be younger.

They tend to be more male than female.

And they tend to be disproportionately Black, Latino, and Asian American.

And those are probably the, you know, if you, again, we have to wait for the really good data to come out, but if you look at some of the counties, the biggest swings away from Biden's performance in 20 for Harris were in,

you know, Hispanic counties, heavily Hispanic counties, heavily Native American counties, counties with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents.

That was correlated with a swing away from

a swing away from Biden.

And then, of course, counties where cost of living was highest or correlated with a swing away from Biden.

So that's sort of my overall view, but I can obviously get into

all the different aspects of this loss and where we go from here.

So I want to put forward a thesis, John, and have you respond to it.

And I'm generally open to feedback here because I recognize you're going to forget more about.

Just generally.

Well, I recognize you're going to forget more about this than I'm ever going to know.

And my saying or passion project is struggling young men in America, so everything I see is a nail and everything is one degree removed from this.

But I want to put forward a thesis around happen here, what happened here and have you respond to it.

The age group that swung most violently away from their 2020 endorsement of Biden towards Trump were 18 to 29-year-olds.

And generally speaking, for the first time in our history, someone...

at the age of 30 isn't doing as well as his or her parents.

I see that as the epicenter of this earthquake and that the fault line, if you will, was masculinity.

Specifically, young men are doing so poorly that we still have this phenomenon in America where their girlfriends, mothers, and wives will vote for what they see as good or bad for their partner.

And young men have fallen further faster than any demographic group in America, four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated.

And then the other age group that swung most violently towards Trump was 45 to 64 year olds.

And I describe this loosely, and this is pure speculation, as their mothers.

And when your son is in the basement vaping and playing video games, territorial sovereignty in the Ukraine or trans rights takes a distant back seat.

So my thesis is the following.

This was about failing young men and a view that if my son is failing or my kids are not doing well, I don't want change.

I want disruption.

And whoever brings that level of chaos or disruption, I will vote for it because I am so upset about this first time scenario where my kids aren't doing as well as me.

Your thoughts?

I think there's definitely something to that.

You know,

I've talked to a lot of the same people you have for either Pod Save America or my other podcast offline, which you've been on, which is all about what the internet's doing and what being on social media is doing to our world.

Spoiler, nothing great.

But I do think that there's a couple of things to tease out here.

One,

there was also a swing among young women in the 18 to 29 group.

So it's not just a masculinity problem, though clearly young men swung more than young women.

I did focus groups around the midterms and I watched a lot of focus groups over this last couple years.

And what struck me when I talked to young people, when I saw young people in the focus groups, was sort of the gap between what young voters who are swing voters in focus groups feel are the main problems in their lives and with politics versus the young people you see on Twitter or on social media, right?

And so I went into a lot of these groups thinking that they were going to talk about climate change and the war in Gaza and a lot of the other topics that we see debated all the time.

And cost of living was.

by far the number one issue that every single young person of every race all over the country brought up all the time.

And specifically, it was around housing or rent.

They thought, I'm never going to be able to move out of my parents' house, or I'm never going to be able to move out of this group house where I have all these roommates and I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to get a job that actually supports a family.

Or I was talking to John DeLa Volpe, who is a Democratic pollster who really specializes in the youth vote.

And he said the number of young people in focus groups he spoke to who had college degrees and a job and were still homeless, homeless, like shocked him.

Yeah.

And so I think that there's, there's absolutely, and look, I don't, I don't want to say that it's just financial or economic related, because I think obviously, you know, the general disorder or the feeling of, you know, like you talked about the mothers who have their sons in the basements and then they're sort of alienated and isolated.

I think that all plays into it.

It's tougher to tease out in the data, but yeah, I think there's definitely a problem.

I think this, this younger generation is

it's different than you know i'm a millennial it's different than what we dealt with right which is after the economic crisis in 2009

that was more about like how are we going to find a job right and because because it was mostly about job loss now a lot of these kids have jobs and they're in debt because they went to college and yet they're still not making enough money to to really live or live well.

And that's causing all kinds of other problems.

So I think as an extension of that, and we're about the same age, elder millennials, and kind of came of age, obviously you more closely than me, like in the Obama era or starting your professional life that way.

And it just feels so wildly different.

And I think a big part of that or the difference and why people are prioritizing their finances and kind of leaving the rest of it or excluding it.

to vote for a Donald Trump is because we don't have strong senses of community.

Like people not part of things anymore.

And that speaks to Scott's isolation, the living in the basement and all of that.

But I feel like that's something that the Democratic Party used to do so well,

kind of foster those things, whether it was the religious institutions that you were a part of or things that are more politically aligned.

And I'm hopeful that that is going to be part of whatever this rebrand that's coming.

But do you, do you think that was a big part of this, that everyone is just like on their own path by themselves and

not reading a paper and then ending up in this, we call it like the island of the misfit toys, right?

With Trump and Elon and

absolutely.

And I think it's not just not consuming news because they are on their phones all the time and they're on social media, but having all your relationships on your phone is like the illusion of connection and community and having relationships, but it's just not real.

It's not the same, you know?

And it's very true of social media, but it's even true of like if you're spending all your time just texting friends as opposed to like being in person, because you know, there's people don't get your tone and you can't really dig in and you can't have the, you know,

we're meant to look at each other.

Which is important.

Right.

Yes, which is important.

And so, like, do I think that the Democrats could have fixed that?

No, that's obviously a larger societal problem.

But I do think in our messaging, I mean, Barack Obama was the first black president.

And

I think because of that, because he was biracial, right, when he was running to, and because he had a foot in so many different worlds, he lived abroad, he lived here, it didn't make him deliver a message that was more specific to each individual identity and group.

It was actually the opposite.

He believed that when he was, you know, whenever we were writing speeches, whenever he was talking, that he wanted to speak to universal aspirations and universal values that people held in this country, no matter what they look like, where you come from, you know,

what language you speak, what religion

you believe in.

And I think that is really important.

And we have

kind of gone away from that a little bit.

And I understand why, right?

Because, you know, people want to in the Democratic Party and they should like stand up for vulnerable, marginalized communities and groups.

And that is important as well.

But I think you have to have a message that speaks to everyone.

I really do.

And

I think that we've gotten away from that a little bit.

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So

a guy who has been

found liable for rape, a convicted felon,

won seven of seven swing states and pretty much increased his voter percentage across almost every demographic group and across almost every region.

And my fear is that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and we're not taking this seriously enough.

And you brought up something that I think is a potential problem and solution, and that is I believe the Democratic Party should absolutely get out of identity politics.

And to your point, and Obama, talk about the middle class, talk about young people.

But when you have a website that says who we serve and it lists 16 demographic groups that encompass 76% of the population, you're not advancing the rights of 76% of the population.

You're discriminating against the 24%.

Would your advice, or what do you think of the idea of that the Democratic Party should just get out of

identity politics and focus on economics, recognizing it's about the economy, stupid, it always is, and try to resist taking the bait and making trans rights the centerpiece or a centerpiece of our platform to just get, to stop talking.

Didn't this election, I apologize for the word solid, did this election show us that people, that demographics aren't destiny, that people identify with their economic needs,

not their specific identity?

Certainly, that's what the election results showed.

I think it's a challenge for the Democratic Party because the Republican Party has gone all in on identity politics, right?

So if we know, if Democrats never say anything again or didn't have, you know, a spot on the website for all 18 identities, Republicans would still do their thing.

I mean, I was reminded of this just yesterday because Nancy Mace, Republican from North Carolina, decided to introduce a bill saying that Sarah McBride, who's a trans woman who's just elected to Congress from Delaware, can't use the women's bathroom in Congress.

One person, a bill just targeting one person in Congress.

And Saber McBride

basically tweets something like, you know, I'm just here to help all people.

And I, you know, didn't, didn't, doesn't really want to get into it.

And yet Nancy Mays did it because she knows it's going to get a reaction.

And will it get a reaction from elected Democrats?

Probably not, because a lot of elected Democrats get what you're saying, Scott, right?

But

she knows that it'll go far online and then people will get riled up and then it'll be a big thing and there'll be Fox segments and then there'll be CNN segments and then suddenly everyone's talking about it.

And then to the voter who doesn't pay much attention to the news, if they just happen to see a headline or a Chiron that says like trans issue in capital with bathroom, blah, blah, blah, they're probably thinking to themselves, wow, why is everyone so obsessed with the trans issue?

And why isn't anyone thinking about economics?

And but when you see how it started, you're like, well, what are Democrats supposed to do about that?

You know, and so I'm not saying that we don't have agency here and that we should just sit back and do nothing.

All I'm saying is that it is a complicated issue to sort of command and direct attention in this information environment, which is so,

you know, it's not just fractured anymore.

It's like atomized, right?

Everyone has their own, you know, personal algorithmic drip

that they're getting.

And so

when the information environment's like that, it's just very, very difficult to draw people's to what you want to talk about, which is, I think, a big challenge the Democrats have to figure out.

Yeah, I mean, that was the crux of the New York Times piece from the weekend that we both liked, and then people really didn't like us for liking.

That Adam Gentleson wrote about saying no to special interests.

And I actually think the Sarah McBride example is a perfect encapsulation of this because people are on the side of dignity, they are not on the side of things that they think are absurd, like Leah Thomas competing against women in swimming.

And

I noticed and, you know, working in a conservative media environment that Kamala Harris, whose refusal to play the identity politics game ended up hurting her, I think Blueprint has it like 83% of late deciders thought that she was for trans surgeries for undocumented people in prisons and that they them versus you ad really clinched this.

for them.

And I, you know, embarrassed to say, I thought it was a stupid strategy that they were spending the most on trans ads versus the economy.

But I ended up with the egg on my face and having to deal with this for four years.

So

how do you think that that needle can be effectively threaded where you make it clear that we see you as an individual group?

And it should be noted as well, like Kamala had to do that town hall with Charlemagne because Black voters were demanding identity politics, right?

We're saying like, tell me exactly what you're going to give me for my vote.

so how do we do that and how do we rebuild the coalition the obamo coalition plus liz cheney because i think that that did alienate people

so there's a yeah sorry there's like any questions no no that's good i'm just trying to i'm on i want to make sure i get it all i do think just to your point about black voters i think there is a challenge to like I am a college educated elite white voter, right?

I do not speak for non-college educated white voters in rural America.

No one thinks that I would, right?

I do think that most black voters, most Latino voters out in the country aren't seeing their identity in the same way as college educated, more elite, more

black voters and Latino voters.

And I do think that the education divide in some ways is more salient than the racial divide.

That's certainly true in the election results.

So it is interesting about like, you know, and I think in Kamala on when she did Trailman's show, she was like, well, look, this is an agenda for Black America, but really it's an agenda for all Americans, right?

Like she wanted to keep emphasizing that.

The Jenelson op-ed is very interesting, partly because the reaction to the op-ed is precisely one of the challenges he raises, right?

Which is that ad that everyone, I mean, it's like shorthand to call it like the anti-trans ad.

I believe if you took the gender-affirming care part out of that ad completely and you just said that Kamala Harris is for giving undocumented immigrants health care in prison, right?

It still would have been damaging.

The damaging part of that ad was not the necessarily the trans part.

It is the idea that Democrats are for special treatment for certain people and not for you, even if you're working hard.

And I think she should have rebutted that.

I think that they should have responded to that.

But look, the interest group thing that Adam raised, like I have, I have seen this in action.

Like in 2019, when they had the Democratic primary and they all, they asked for a show of hands, who's for decriminalizing border crossings?

And they all raised their hand except for Joe Biden and maybe Michael Bennett.

And I, on the next day on Pate of America, I was like, I think that, look, I'm for a pathway to citizenship.

I'm for, you know, protecting the dreamers, all kinds of things, but I do think decriminalizing border crossings is a bad policy.

And I like ended up, I got so much shit from immigration activists.

I had to do a call with immigrant rights groups and I was like, well, you know, what is the, what is the challenge?

And they couldn't really articulate why decriminalizing border crossings was a good policy.

They just thought that if you were against it, you were against immigrants.

And that's, that kind of thinking is just not, it's not helpful.

It's not true.

And

sometimes I think that like the reaction to Adam's op-ed, like, there's just not a lot of nuance in how we see these things.

And like, I believe that Democrats can successfully win elections by focusing on the economy, but also, like you said, standing up for the dignity of all LGBT Americans and immigrants who want to work hard and follow the law and contribute to this country and black Americans and Latino Americans and everyone else.

You know, like you, you can still be a big tent party that stands up for people who need help, but you can also make your message broad as long as you don't don't go down all these rabbit holes and sort of try to fight every single issue as if it, every single minor policy issue, as if that one policy position is like the civil rights issue of our time.

I'm curious, John, I'd love to just have you stack rank from least crazy to craziest or just your general thoughts on the nominees or the people being put forward for cabinet positions.

I mean,

I think Matt Gates is

horrendous.

Well, and I think it's because of the, it's less about the person and about the position, right?

Like, I think

once you, and look, I think Tulsi is as DNI and

Hegset at Defense 2 are not great either, just because those positions, right?

Like, if you are an aspiring authoritarian and you are in direct control of law enforcement, intelligence, and the military, like that's it.

You got everything.

And so whatever the character of the people, which I know everyone's going to keep focusing on, you know, Gates's problems and Hegset's, all this kind of stuff, that to me is less of an issue than having people in those roles that just are loyal to Donald Trump and Donald Trump only.

And when he wants to prosecute people, when he wants to arrest people, when he wants to make people's lives miserable, he's going to be able to do it.

And he's going to have people in those roles who are going to be able to do it.

And that's to say nothing about like what it means for our foreign relations and the ability for other dictators to,

you know, just

get whatever they want out of Trump because all you have to do is flatter him.

I agree with you.

Tulsi was my top anxiety.

pick of all of it.

And Pete, I mean, who I know very well, that was complicated.

but I agree with you.

But I think the attitude of like these people are going to get through, like maybe one or two don't, but in general, this is what we're looking at is a healthier place to be.

And I've heard you guys talk about that.

I think some people are like, we're going to resist like 2016.

And that's just not the way that this is going to go because we don't have the mandate to do that.

What are you guys at Crooked on PSA, et cetera,

doing or thinking about changing to reflect what just happened in the election, right?

Like the Manosphere podcast that ended up being so powerful and the kind of echo chamber that we're living in.

Like, are you guys toying with anything new or just the way you approach your conversations?

Or you think like we can rebuild from the place that we are and everything's going to be fine?

Because you guys are one of the most powerful voices on the left side of the spectrum by far.

And you're dudes, which, you know.

Man, we're dudes.

Yeah.

It's finally, finally the moment for gross.

You've finally, you've made it yeah right so thank god i mean it's been waiting so long of course um no we we're thinking about that now uh we

haven't really had a chance to sit down and have a bunch of strategy meetings about this but my instinct here is like i i just want i think the social media is just a horrible place for conversations to happen for debate to happen and i do think we want to have more interesting conversations where we disagree with people whether it's people on the left, whether it's people in the center, people on the right, because I think that,

and I say this to our staff all the time, like

we started Crooked not just to be like a progressive media outlet, but to be a place where we can have respectful conversations like across the pro-democracy coalition, let's say.

And, you know, a coalition that spans from, you know, AOC to Joe Manchin and Liz Cheney now, right?

And I think that that doesn't mean that we all have to agree because we're not going to agree, but we should be able to sort of like have these conversations where you dig into the nuance and subtlety of a lot of these issues while still approaching the person that you're disagreeing with in good faith and realizing that like fundamentally we all want the same things and we're open to being persuaded and we're open to saying, you know, you tried to persuade me and it didn't work.

I'm still sticking with my position.

That's fine too.

So I think we want to have like more of those conversations.

And then, look, I do think that the best work ahead of this last election, it happens on the ground.

It happens organizing, right?

Like Wisconsin was the one of the narrowest margins for Joe Biden in 2020.

It was the toughest of the blue wall states for Joe Biden in 2020.

And it was the best state for Kamala Harris of all the swing states.

Why?

You know, Ben Wickler, who's the party chair there and the entire Wisconsin Democratic Party, they have been organizing on the ground,

rural areas, Republican areas, you name it in Wisconsin, going everywhere and talking to voters and building relationships with them, not just like a couple months before an election, but all year round.

And to our earlier conversation about social media and being alienated and disconnected, like getting back on the ground as a party and just like having building relationships with people that are face to face, that isn't like the Democratic Party, all parties used to do that

decades ago.

And we've gotten away from that.

So I do do think figuring out how we can help with sort of on-the-ground organizing efforts, not just in the sake, in the sense of like resist and protest and marches, but like building the relationships with people that are going to bear fruit once we get to an election.

So this really was the podcast.

I can't imagine, and I do hope you.

And you guys are thoughtful guys.

He'll do this, but you're number one.

I'm obsessed with the rankings.

You're number one in politics.

You're one of the top 10 podcasts in the world.

And this election, I would argue, was a podcast election.

While we were so excited about how many people were knocking on doors in Pennsylvania, Trump was just going on Manosphere podcasts.

And a million people watching MSNBC, 45 to 55 million see him on Joe Rogan.

So you guys really do.

You not only play an important role, you play a singular role.

Of the top 10 podcasts,

you're literally the only, I mean, Ezra is sort of up there, but that's about it.

It really is a sea of red in a medium that has kind of identified itself as seminal in terms of influence here.

Like, what can we do?

We call ourselves raging moderates, and we get

a lot of pushback that we're raging, but not that moderate.

But what do people in the middle, moderates or center left, quite frankly, let's be honest, what can we do to try and bring more balance to a medium that is increasingly important and dominated by red?

It's a great question.

I always say, like, we love more competition on our side, right?

Like,

I think that it's a, look, it's a, it's an Democratic Party, capital D, like more elite Democratic Party issue, where I think a lot of Democratic politicians and the staff, because they're all in D.C., we're out here in Los Angeles, and they still think that like.

Putting your boss on MSNBC or CNN is going to be a bigger deal and reach more people than, you know, the Obama guys with the podcast.

And

even though they like us and we've had a lot of their bosses on, most of their bosses on,

but they just, that's not the first thought.

And so maybe, you know, one takeaway from this election for a lot of folks in DC

and Democrats who work on the Hill and work for Democratic politicians all over the country is like either, you know, you're always welcome, everyone's always welcome on Podsave America, but also like start other podcasts.

Like other people can start podcasts too that are center left.

There are some like lefty podcasts.

That's the other thing in the Democratic Party is that like we're certainly one of the only center left or mainstream Democratic podcasts out there.

There's a like, you know, you've got Hassan Piker on Twitch who's got a huge following and a lot of the, you know, the Chapo guys and there's a lot of like lefty podcasts, but that is also sort of a, that's a limited audience

on the far left, right?

And so yeah, we want more competition and

more people should take podcasts as seriously as they do cable news.

So just before we wrap up here, John, while we have you, would you be comfortable making a couple predictions about what you think the media gets wrong or conventional wisdom gets wrong about the upcoming year of the first year of the Trump administration?

Hmm.

I hesitate to make predictions because I'm always bad at it.

I don't know if what,

oh, I know.

There has been, I've seen this narrative that like, okay, the resistance is gone now and everyone's tired, and everyone's,

no one cares anymore.

And I don't think that's necessarily true.

I think what's happening is

because of the res, as you pointed out, Scott, like because it was a bigger loss than we faced in 2016,

I think that people are taking the time to reflect and strategize and not just react, because I think there's been a lot of just knee-jerk reaction to Trump over the last eight years.

I've been part of that myself.

And I think that it's probably better for the Democratic Party and sort of the pro-democracy coalition to step back and think about like, how can we retake power strategically and win elections and not just like swing at every pitch?

And so I think that work is going to.

start happening.

And so I think that the

reports of the death of the resistance resistance are greatly exaggerated.

Thank you so much, John, for joining us.

It was a real thrill.

John, you know what gives me hope?

You know what gives me hope?

What's that?

John Favreau and Jess Tarla, both incredibly smart, incredibly young, and most importantly, incredibly good looking.

The only Democrats that have any influence have to be really good looking.

The two of you give me hope.

Thanks, John.

Thanks, John.