Jamelle Bouie: Bad at Being President

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Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We are taping this Thursday, late afternoon. I have got a funeral in Iowa to go to on Friday.
Much love to my friend Grant.

Speaker 1 So, you know, if Donald Trump appoints Judge Box of Wine to be the Deputy Attorney General or something Friday morning, you'll know why we didn't cover it. I'm here today with a first-time guest.

Speaker 1 Very excited. Jamal Bowie.
He's the columnist of the New York Times opinion section. He's also the co-host of the podcast, Unclear and Present Danger, and a prominent figure in my TikTok for you page.

Speaker 1 TikTok wants us to be friends, Jamal. The Chinese, I think, were

Speaker 1 arranging this date.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you,

Speaker 1 Chairman Xi.

Speaker 1 I want to talk to you a little bit about the TikTok stuff at the end. I want to start just lightly.
We have some heavy fare to discuss.

Speaker 1 And this is actually maybe kind of heavy fare too, because we have some exciting news from the dystopian capital.

Speaker 1 Spotify is going to be hosting an inauguration day pop-up podcast studio and a brunch to celebrate the power of podcasts in this election.

Speaker 1 So I was just, I was wondering, as two prominent, semi-prominent podcasters, if you did you have an invite to that? I did not receive an invite to this.

Speaker 1 If I did, I would pretend like I didn't. You know, I I have no desire to go to the Spotify-sponsored podcast brunch.
Every word of that sounds like something I want no part of.

Speaker 1 And just on, you know, as a little, just cherry on top that it's the, you know, the morning of Donald Trump's second inauguration. That's exactly how you'd want to be spending it, I would imagine.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about your column after the, oh, I guess it wasn't the first column after the election, but you wrote one, I guess, last week.

Speaker 1 And it was for people feeling super down, which I include myself among.

Speaker 1 And I think probably 96% of the listeners, except for the handful of hate listeners who've got out there and who like Jeffrey Clark, who I love. How you doing, Jeff?

Speaker 1 And you wrote about a speech from Frederick Douglass late in life. Maybe his last speech.
And if you'll indulge me, I'd just like to read some of the excerpts that you wrote.

Speaker 1 It was from the period, the Counter-Reconstruction period. He wrote this, Post-Reconstruction is, it has shaken my faith in the nobility of the nation.

Speaker 1 I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me.

Speaker 1 He is a wiser man than I am who can tell how low the moral sentiment of this republic may yet fall.

Speaker 1 When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline and the wheel of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the one will fall or where the other may stop.

Speaker 1 It has more uplifting conclusion, but I want to start there first and ask

Speaker 1 what your sense is on how far things might go and and why you thought this excerpt gave you some comfort. I'll answer the second part first and then roll into the first.

Speaker 1 I have long been fascinated by Frederick Douglass for obvious reasons, one of the most important singular individuals of 19th century America.

Speaker 1 I would say one of the most important political philosophers of 19th century America.

Speaker 1 He's not often thought of in those terms, but I think he is throughout his life articulating a vision of like an American, you know, I don't want to call it liberal because like liberal doesn't really exist at the time, but a kind of American philosophy of action that is in dialogue with like other philosophers of the time who I admire.

Speaker 1 So a lot of things fascinate about Frederick Douglass in my view. But one of the most interesting is that he is this rare figure who basically lives to see his life goal accomplished.

Speaker 1 and then lives beyond that to see it begin to unravel, not completely, right? Like

Speaker 1 there's no reversal back to chattel slavery, but his vision of kind of flourishing for black Americans by the end of his life is quickly becoming

Speaker 1 quite clear that the country is rapidly moving backwards.

Speaker 1 And not just along the lines of Black rights, but across the board when it comes to the ability of ordinary people to live lives free of domination, of the domination of others.

Speaker 1 And so this speech, which is one of his last, I called it his last great speech.

Speaker 1 There is another speech he gives a couple, I think a couple months later to a group of school children that is, others might say, is his last great speech.

Speaker 1 But one of his final public speeches before he dies is him kind of reflecting on his experience throughout his life, his, what he witnesses, where he thinks things are going.

Speaker 1 And I think that it is useful

Speaker 1 to be reminded that

Speaker 1 the story of this country's history is not one of ceaseless and upwards progress.

Speaker 1 It is often one of long reversals, that people recognize that they were reversals at the time, and that nonetheless, people continued to act and behave as if their actions mattered, as if their struggles mattered, as if

Speaker 1 politics mattered, as if it mattered to be engaged in all of this. And at the end of the speech, Douglas says, you know, like, I wish I had more time.

Speaker 1 to join you in this fight, but like the fight will have to carry on and it must continue. And

Speaker 1 i find that inspirational i find it maybe a little comforting um but more than more than ever i find it useful a useful way of looking at the at the situation so to answer your first part of your question i think things can get pretty bad i think it's important to balance like you know malign intentions the fact that trump really does seem to want

Speaker 1 even if he can't articulate it in these terms to kind of like personalist authoritarian state and balance that against the fact that he is very bad at being president.

Speaker 1 This is a thing. He's very bad at this.
He's very bad at governing. He's very bad at managing like all the things one would have to do to accomplish the things he wants to accomplish.

Speaker 1 He's actually quite bad at. And we're kind of seeing this right now with his cabinet picks, right?

Speaker 1 Like very disturbing, but also haphazard and somewhat disastrous for his political capital, if you want to talk of such a thing. But, you know, the world of outcomes is wide.

Speaker 1 I think it could become very bad.

Speaker 1 And even if it doesn't become the worst, right, like there's still, from my perspective, reversals across a number of areas that I think will take a generation to claw back what was lost.

Speaker 1 And so even if we're just looking at that, I think Douglas's counsel is worthwhile. Yeah, I was with you.

Speaker 1 It was, it was needed, Colin, for me to read for that same perspective, right, about him kind of living through this period where there is a a clawing back.

Speaker 1 And you know, one way I've put it when speaking to some of my friends that are more on the progressive side is that

Speaker 1 there's a sense among progressives always they get motivated by it's right in there in the word, right? By creating change that will bring progress, right? By figuring out ways to

Speaker 1 further advance progress. I said maybe the one value I can bring to that world over the next couple of years is like having come from a conservative persuasion, like this sense of the conserve, right?

Speaker 1 Like that we're going through a period right now, this next little period, that will probably not be much about progress, but will be quite a bit about conserving.

Speaker 1 And I just wonder, as you kind of think about it in that framework, like what are the elements that you are the most worried about being able to conserve?

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 on the highest level, I'm most concerned about being able to conserve a constitutional order or a constitutional interpretation, which which the courts really do look out and are trying to give serious consideration to the rights of vulnerable people in the society and aren't willing to simply defer to state legislatures out of some principle of like neutrality.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm obviously referencing the recent oral arguments regarding gender-affirming care for trans youth, but the sort of the Constitution takes a neutral view towards social controversies, towards social inequality, as is also expressed in Dobbs.

Speaker 1 And I just find that a very dangerous way of viewing the Constitution because it, you know, neutrality of that sort opens up the door to, again, domination by people over others who may be more numerous in the community and are desiring of trampling on other people's rights.

Speaker 1 So, you know, I'm worried about that. I'm not sure the extent to which that can be considered.

Speaker 1 Like, I think we are passing into a new kind of constitutional order, and I'm not really sure there's much that can be done to conserve the old one, except as a guidepost for the future, for trying to, you know, bring it back.

Speaker 1 How do you then think about this question

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 what kind of limiting principles the left should have in thinking about trying to, you know, protect or change or reform that constitutional order, right?

Speaker 1 Because I think the question's become very intense.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, for even a hopeful change to return to something similar to the pre-constitutional order, that's going to be very challenging to do if it's a 6372 Supreme Court without doing things

Speaker 1 that will make some uncomfortable, right? Court packing or doing things that go outside of the traditional constitutional order to benefit the other side.

Speaker 1 How do you kind of think about those questions in the coming years? Listeners may be able to tell or not. I'm a guy who spends a lot of time thinking about the 19th century.

Speaker 1 And I think it's interesting, an interesting part of American history.

Speaker 1 One important takeaway when thinking about 19th century politics is how much, especially in the middle of the century, how much politics was about the Constitution and that like happening on the field of ordinary political combat was just like, you know, debates about what the Constitution is, how it should be utilized, what, not even like how to interpret it, but like what is it?

Speaker 1 What kind of document is it? Is it this purely legalistic document, just sort of another form of law? Is it something much more broader and more political?

Speaker 1 And I think that when I think about both the path towards change, maybe after this period, when I think about limiting principles, I think the foundation of that has to be bringing the Constitution back into politics and actually making a public case, like making a case to voters, to ordinary Americans, that this is what we think the Constitution is, and this is what we think the relationship of the court to the Constitution ought to be, and the relationship of the elected branch to the Constitution ought to be.

Speaker 1 And to the extent, right, that the court is out of balance within that relationship, then we should do something about it, right?

Speaker 1 So it's not an unlimited, we want to do this because we want to get our way, but it's an argument that you're making to the public that, listen, the courts are captured by a faction and they are acting in a way that is sort of divorced from any kind of popular accountability, divorced from any kind of recognition that the people themselves and the elected branches do have something to say about what constitutes our constitutional tradition.

Speaker 1 And to the extent that we can pull them back to where they ought to be using, you know, expanding the size of the court, imposing ethics rules, like whatever the answer may be.

Speaker 1 And I'm kind of agnostic about what ought to be done, but I am, I do feel quite strongly that the foundation has to be, this is part of politics again.

Speaker 1 And that for kind of too long, I think the broad center left, I'll say, has treated,

Speaker 1 has been almost like, I think embarrassed about serious constitutional argument, seeing it as something for

Speaker 1 conservatives, for the right. That's the thing that they're obsessed with.
In what sense? Why would it be embarrassing? Because when you start talking about,

Speaker 1 when you're getting into this discourse, right? You don't want to be the pocket constitution guy from the right? Is that really what it is? Yeah, you know, it's a little nerdy.

Speaker 1 It's a little, you know, and you're talking about the founders and you're kind of engaged in this kind of, this way of talking about things that is coded, I think, is quite conservative.

Speaker 1 Or is there some sense of like not, because many on the left don't share the reverence for the founders, that it's like, oh, we have to shout out the founders. I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 Hamilton was very founder. That was left-coded.
A lot of love on the left for Hamilton. A lot of founders' love.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would call that a strange, like, you know, that was like a, there was like a little boomblit.

Speaker 1 And we're not going to, I mean, this isn't a conversation with Hamilton, but I think people should be, I mean, the actual guy, Hamilton, you know, he's mixed opinions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay. So

Speaker 1 anyway,

Speaker 1 the long story short,

Speaker 1 to get back where they're going to need to be, the left is going to have to be more serious about arguing for reforms within the constitutional rubric, using those arguments. Right.

Speaker 1 And we need to be much more forthright about just like bringing this back into politics. Like, you know, one of the, I'll put it this way.

Speaker 1 One of the actual great powers of originalism as like a method of constitutional interpretation, like regardless of what you think about it as like legit or not, it's politically, very powerful.

Speaker 1 It's like very politically powerful to be able to say to voters, right? Like elect us and we will, we will treat the reverend constitution with its original meaning.

Speaker 1 Like that's a really powerful thing to be able to say. And there's like no, there's no response to that from the broad left.

Speaker 1 And there should be.

Speaker 1 I interrupted you because I wanted to go down that rabbit hole, but are there any other things that you are, you know, besides kind of those, the rights of the marginalized being trampled on?

Speaker 1 It seemed like there was something else you were going to mention. You know, it was just, it's just on sort of a lower level, you know, just the integrity of elections, right?

Speaker 1 I kind of go back and forth on this one because, you know, one of the funny things about Trump winning is that like, you know, Trump voters, like, will we trust elections again? Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 I saw a poll yesterday that was like 70 plus percent of Trump voters trust mail voting now. Right.
It's like, okay, well, resolved.

Speaker 1 And, you know, the fact that he won means there's like no, none of this energy to try to stop the steal.

Speaker 1 But like, I'm sort of, you know, does that translate to oh we're gonna you know come 2026 like are you know mega election boards you know at the state level gonna meddle and so you know one of the things i i've been you know sort of saying in various places is that the next year the year after these are gonna be really pivotal elections if nothing else because there's like still this opportunity to like secure the electoral process um and to and to do as much as possible to like maintain election integrity so that people have like an opportunity to you know vote out the the majority should they decide to do so.

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Speaker 1 I think that both of us, based on my consuming of your TikToks, are getting relatively weary with the autopsy type discussion, the tactics discussion with regards to what the Democrats should have done.

Speaker 1 But I would like to just kind of talk about two sort of broader elements that are less related to what David Pluff should have done and more about kind of the Democratic brand and

Speaker 1 what we learned from this election. So I'm just kind of wondering what your sense is about that.
Like, is the Democratic brand broadly semi-permanently tarnished?

Speaker 1 Is there a sense that they aren't representing key parts of America in a way that requires huge reinvention? Or do you kind of see this as more, this was circumstantial and

Speaker 1 the Democrats could win next time without really changing much at all? Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's a really good way of phrasing the question because I do see... Like, I do take the macro picture of this like really seriously, right?

Speaker 1 Sort of like, oh, yeah, incumbent parties around the world got hammered by, you know, not just inflation, but kind of like discontent with like the post-COVID era, with everything that means.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, given how narrow the result was, like, may very well be the case that you could change nothing and get a better result four years from now. Or you just re-roll the dice.

Speaker 1 I mean, you obviously cannot do this, but if you were to re-roll the election again, maybe you get a different result just because it's so narrow that so many different things could explain the outcome.

Speaker 1 With that said, like, the macro picture, you know, established, I both think that there are real problems and deficiencies with the Democratic Party and the Democratic brand that this election has made clear.

Speaker 1 But I also think it's important for everyone not to go overboard.

Speaker 1 So going overboard is like this sort of, what I understand is being kind of like self-loathing, self-flagellating, kind of like, you know, the Democratic Party is permanently separated, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 It's like, okay, listen.

Speaker 1 When all the votes are counted, they've basically been counted, Trump has won the popular vote by like one and a half points, like the narrow, narrowest popular vote win in quite some time.

Speaker 1 The electorate is basically split in half. And so it's like the field we're operating on isn't the electorate is basically 50-50.
So

Speaker 1 let's slow our roll about, you know,

Speaker 1 either durable majorities on one hand or durable minority position on the other hand.

Speaker 1 It seems clear to me that like both coalitions are engaged in what you might call a war position and are trying to kind of establish a hegemony in a way that they just have not been able to manage.

Speaker 1 Why can't Democrats manage it? I think that is the question. And I think it does get to sort of like a disconnect, both a disconnect of the party

Speaker 1 from its own base. And sort of like there clearly is a sense in which Democratic leaders, I don't think, quite are in line with what Democratic-based voters want from them.

Speaker 1 A separation from not the Democratic base, but kind of the voters who you might think would vote for Democrats, young people, working class people.

Speaker 1 There's a real disconnect there, maybe a cultural disconnect, maybe a communications disconnect, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 And then there's this extent to which in large parts of the country, the Democratic brand itself is kind of toxic, right?

Speaker 1 Like if you are a Democrat in Montana or Ohio or Florida, you are not going to get along well in a statewide election, no matter what you say, no matter what your positions are, because the notion of a Democrat seems to be just connected with a cultural image or with something that is toxic to a lot of voters.

Speaker 1 How you solve those problems,

Speaker 1 I don't really know. The social scientist in me thinks that

Speaker 1 part of the solution here is going to be the Democratic Party actually reimagining itself as a proper political party and not just sort of like

Speaker 1 when I say that I mean like an actual organization that is trying to build direct connections to voters on the ground, like the NRA might try to build with gun owners, right?

Speaker 1 Trying to actually become a presence that exists. I was watching some TikTok.
We'll talk about TikTok.

Speaker 1 I was watching a TikTok, and it was a young woman saying to her viewers, you got to get engaged in politics. And I was like, this is the message I love to hear.

Speaker 1 And she says, you know, you got to start at the local level and you should look up to see if there's like a democratic club in your city. And I was like, that's interesting because that doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 That's not a thing. Right.

Speaker 1 I can't go, I can't like Google or go to local paper and find the address of like the local Democratic club and like show up and be like, oh, is there anything for me to do?

Speaker 1 New York Republican has a club. They do have.
They have a club. They have a speakeasy.
I've been there. That's that to me is like the first step, right?

Speaker 1 It's sort of establishing this kind of on-the-ground presence everywhere.

Speaker 1 And it can be explicitly political, doesn't have to be, but trying to rebuild a connection to voters, you know, person to person as an organization and not just mediated through candidates, to me, is going to be a first step towards being able to both reestablish the brand, but also kind of cut through some of the noise, kind of reshape the information environment in a way that could advantage Democrats.

Speaker 1 Because as it stands, the extent to which Democrats are trying to do this ad hoc in an election year and when not in an election year through mainstream media organizations, it's not, it's not working.

Speaker 1 It doesn't work. Yeah, I have two thoughts thinking about that.
One is

Speaker 1 just about the brand having a problem overall. Something that I hadn't

Speaker 1 focused enough on the Ohio Senate race. So this just occurred to me over the weekend, a couple, like three weeks after the election.
Sherrod Brown actually did slightly worse than Tim Ryan.

Speaker 1 had done against

Speaker 1 J.D.

Speaker 1 Vance, which is interesting to me only in the sense that there's a big online fight happening happening of like the Democrats need to run more Tim Ryan type people and like the center right or center left type folks.

Speaker 1 And there's another group of populist left type folks who are like, we need to run more Sherrod Brown type people. And it's like, well, we just had a kind of case study, if you will.

Speaker 1 And it's a little different. One's a midterm, one's a general election.
And you ran both types of candidates and they did basically the same.

Speaker 1 Like Tim Ryan did a couple tenths of a point better, which is probably attributable more to the midterm than to anything.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, to me, that says that there's something fundamentally underlying that is a problem about the brand.

Speaker 1 And your solution to that, or not solution, but one way of doing it is just this more grassroots. I kind of wonder, is that going to help, though?

Speaker 1 Because is it something about like the types of folks that are visible Democrats are turning off

Speaker 1 people in places like Ohio? And that feels like a much harder problem to fix than some of this other stuff.

Speaker 1 Culturally turning them off.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's one of the problems where first you have to figure out like, what exactly, what exactly is it and one explanation i've seen for this and i i guess i kind of agree with is that it's not even so much that there are prominent democrats who are doing things that are like culturally alienating but that there's like there's like a media apparatus that basically sort of like you know plucks you know here is here is someone who you find objectionable culturally who's just a person right like not even not associated with the democratic party just a person who exists in the world and then says well this is these are what Democrats are, and this is what they think of you.

Speaker 1 Dems were owning the genocide Joe chanters, right? Like, they're calling, they're saying the president is doing a genocide, and like, there's a right-wing media apparatus.

Speaker 1 It's like, those are the people that, you know, you should be worried about. They'll be in charge.
Right.

Speaker 1 And it's like, how do you push back against that?

Speaker 1 And it is unreasonable to say everyone who's vaguely leftist center of the United States has to be on their best behavior all the time. It's like, that's insane.

Speaker 1 What you maybe can do is find some way to sort of short-circuit the transmission of those messages.

Speaker 1 And that's really only going to happen either through sort of like media saturation of the same kind or through some other way to reach ordinary people to have some sort of so that they have some other image in their head of what a Democrat is, right?

Speaker 1 So that instead of thinking of a Democrat as like some, you know, grad student in Portland who happened to get sucked up by the right-wing media machine.

Speaker 1 They think of a Democrat as a local teacher who, you know, is involved in

Speaker 1 the local party and does door-to-door stuff. You're like, oh, that's, you know, I know who, I know who that person is.
I like them. I respect them.
They are a Democrat.

Speaker 1 But even the latter is a project that requires work and investment and experimentation and a willingness just to sort of like

Speaker 1 see what sticks in terms of organization building and party building.

Speaker 1 I have two other thoughts in this. One is related to just kind of

Speaker 1 how do I put this? We just are going through this anti-elite backlash, you know, and like we have this, we've had like election cycle after election cycle that is a rejection of the status quo.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I wonder, like, maybe just because of the media environment, and part of this is the explicitly conservative media environment you're talking about, but I'm also just talking about just the fact that we know too much in our phones like constantly about everything and everyone and every annoying person.

Speaker 1 That like in the modern social media, digital media era, like we just had one change election after another. And I worry that the Democrats are just too associated with

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 cultural establishment, the cultural status quo.

Speaker 1 And that it's hard to break out of that a little bit, even when they aren't in power.

Speaker 1 And even though it's kind of ridiculous, you know, it's like the Republicans have the Supreme Court in the presidency and like the Democrats are the establishment.

Speaker 1 But the Democratic message is always about kind of in some sense preserving rather than reforming the status quo, like that, that they're not the rebels anymore.

Speaker 1 And that that is turning off a type of voter that used to be gettable. And that's something I think is challenging to fix, right?

Speaker 1 Like how do you go from being the incumbent to the challenger to the incumbent culturally? It's easy to do that politically, but how do you do it in a broader sense?

Speaker 1 Especially since, I mean, I think Democrats are trying to conserve something, and that is sort of what's left of the New Deal order.

Speaker 1 I mean, the party is still kind of oriented around the New Deal and its successor, kind of expansion of the welfare state.

Speaker 1 So it's like, yeah, I mean, you know, you're trying to conserve Social Security.

Speaker 1 You're trying to conserve Medicare, Medicaid, you're trying to expand it somewhat as well, but you're expanding on like an existing foundation. I think some of it is just going to be unavoidable.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 it is simply the case that what the broad left in this country wants is to use like the power of the state to improve people's lives. That's what it wants.
Like, it wants to expand social services.

Speaker 1 It wants to expand social insurance. It wants to do all these things.
And so, there's no way to be kind of an anti-system party when your basic orientation is that

Speaker 1 we're going to use the system. We're not going to try to dismantle it.
We're not going to destroy it. We're going to try to use it.
I do think there is a way

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 frame

Speaker 1 the state, the public, against

Speaker 1 private actors who

Speaker 1 may want to unravel the social insurance state, who may want to slash taxes to the bone and cut services.

Speaker 1 There's a way of kind of identifying villains and saying,

Speaker 1 we want to use the state on behalf of you and not let it be put in the hands of these other people who want to use it to enrich themselves. But that that requires

Speaker 1 Democrats doing something they really have not done, which is really, or with few exceptions, have done, which is really kind of articulate villains to say, like, these are the baddies.

Speaker 1 Yeah, besides Donald Trump, these forces, these, these, these kind of institutions, these, you know, these people, these are the people who are trying to harm you, and we want to do something about them.

Speaker 1 I do think that part of the absence of that kind of message is that there are these internal tensions within the Democratic coalition, right?

Speaker 1 Like Democrats, like Republicans, are reliant on the cash that comes from large, wealthy donors.

Speaker 1 They want to maintain this business-friendly appearance for practical reasons, of campaign cash, for governing reasons.

Speaker 1 They don't want to be perceived as antagonists to what you could say, like the establishment.

Speaker 1 And like right now, in addition to that, the Democrats have been forced,

Speaker 1 they're kind of put in this strategic corner on this. Like they're forced to be defensive kind of of like the FBI and the intelligence community, right?

Speaker 1 Like and the military, like the generals, right?

Speaker 1 It's like that Donald Trump is trying to tear down these things that there was traditionally left-wing criticism of the security state and the intelligence apparatus and the military-industrial complex.

Speaker 1 But when Trump comes for that, it kind of puts the Democrats in this weird position of

Speaker 1 having to be defensive of the status quo in those spaces too. And I think you're right.
That's maybe kind of leaves these big,

Speaker 1 you know, the big tech oligarchs or whatever as

Speaker 1 the potential way to kind of recapture that mantle. I don't know.
Right, because they're also connected. I mean,

Speaker 1 this gets to, I think, the role of kind of like the cultural image of what business is, right?

Speaker 1 Like people think of business, of businessmen, as being disruptors, as being, you know, these dynamic figures. And so it's sort of, it's very, actually very natural, kind of like

Speaker 1 very, it's a very natural discourse, you could say, right. You have your disruptive, dynamic businessmen, Trump.
Elon, you know, all these guys, irrespective of the truth of the matter, right?

Speaker 1 Like that's the image versus kind of like, you know, a party of bureaucrats. And Americans Republican aside with the former over the latter every time.

Speaker 1 I don't think Democrats can truly avoid being a party of bureaucrats because like ultimately, like that's kind of what they are.

Speaker 1 But there are ways, I think, maybe to redefine the other side that's not quite dynamic and not quite exciting, but something more sinister.

Speaker 1 And then also to reframe what it is that Democrats want, not in terms of we're going to like manage these programs, but in terms of, you know, our goal is to give you freedom from, you know, the worst of the market, right?

Speaker 1 Like our goal is not to keep you from succeeding, but is to, you know, shield you from, you know, economic unfairness and all these things that make your life worse.

Speaker 1 Interestingly enough, at the very beginning of the Harris campaign, you saw a little bit of this, a little bit of this like rethinking of what freedom is and what it means.

Speaker 1 And that that kind of got lost. George Lakoff, yeah, it got lost.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's tough. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Maybe you need an outsider candidate of their own that can be a face that puts a different, you know, the cover of the party of bureaucrats features a picture of a person that offers kind of a more dynamic which to an extent is what I mean.

Speaker 1 Trump is almost kind of in a lot of ways like a perfect kind of candidate for the Republican coalition because, you know, from my view, it's like, okay, we have a coalition of of social reactionaries and plutocrats whose front guy is a libertine with like working-class affectations.

Speaker 1 And it's sort of like, you know, voters, they look at Trump.

Speaker 1 So you say to voters, these people literally want to slash taxes for themselves so low that they'll be forced to cut benefits for your grandparents.

Speaker 1 And also, they want to ban birth control.

Speaker 1 And you say that, you say, that guy is their champion. And then people look at that guy and they're like, him,

Speaker 1 and they don't believe it. And

Speaker 1 it's a lot of work to get people to believe it. And you kind of want something like that for Democrats.
Like someone, you know, those are their school marms who don't want you to have fun.

Speaker 1 And it's like the Democratic nominee is Spuds McKenzie. Yeah, right.
This is like, and this is what the problem is.

Speaker 1 This is, this is maybe the other thing of value I can offer as a former Republican as the party goes forward is that the Democrats, God love them, find a nice person.

Speaker 1 They convinced themselves that Tim Walls was kind of going to be that person for them, like not a front man, like a secondary front man. That's like, oh, look, he's a, uh, knows how to hunt.

Speaker 1 He knows how to fix a carburetor. This guy can be a front man.
And people looked at him and they're like, I don't know. He just kind of looks like the liberal teacher.

Speaker 1 I'm not buying anything different from this guy. Nice guy.
Nice guy. Good guy.

Speaker 1 But it didn't actually, he only felt different to like, I think, people that lived in Brooklyn, I i think for the most part yeah i think i think that might be the case

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Speaker 1 I do want to just ask one more thing about that ticket and kind of the racial element of this. I don't, it's interesting, right?

Speaker 1 You have this, not nearly as much as in 2016 has there been like a dialogue about, oh, it was a loss because of sexism and racism. But this time you had a mixed-race female candidate.

Speaker 1 And I think part of that lack of dialogue is that, you know, the Republicans gained so much among voters of color, a little bit less among black voters, but some, more among Hispanic voters, and particularly immigrants.

Speaker 1 I wonder what you kind of think about that, tying it back to the Douglas at the start. Like, how much of the racial legacy of the country is kind of wrapped up in this L?

Speaker 1 Or was this kind of an L if instead of Kamala Harris

Speaker 1 Walls, it was Tim Walls and whatever, Gretchen Whitmer on the ticket?

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 unquestionably, just because of the nature of this country, like what this country's history is, that like race and gender obviously played a part in this.

Speaker 1 Like, Kamala Harris is trying to become the first, first woman and first black woman to become president of the United States. And it seems very silly to me to like dismiss, you know,

Speaker 1 potential racial or gender bias out of hand in that regard.

Speaker 1 Like, there was some research that came out last month, two months ago, that was just about sort of like the role of anti-black attitudes in shaping, you know, certain kind of political views.

Speaker 1 And there's no, there's no conclusion on like the causal thing. Like, was it that you have anti-black attitudes and you're more likely to support Trump?

Speaker 1 Or being likely to support Trump kind of like leads you to anti-black attitudes? Like, the causal direction was unclear, but it's certainly there. Right.
And it's like

Speaker 1 when you're thinking of

Speaker 1 non-white but non-black immigrant communities who themselves are like are coming from cultures where there's anti-black prejudice or coming into a culture where there is anti-black prejudice.

Speaker 1 And there's a black woman at the top of a major party ticket running for president. Like it seems silly to me to sort of dismiss out of hand the role any of that.

Speaker 1 I do think the absence of that from kind of broad public conversation does reflect, you know, Trump's gains.

Speaker 1 I think in a kind of shallow way, people are like, oh, if Trump made gains, how could like race and gender play any part of it? And it's like, well, it's complicated. It's a complicated relationship.

Speaker 1 I also think there's a bit of a,

Speaker 1 how do I put this?

Speaker 1 A bit of a,

Speaker 1 you know, there's a bit of like a cancel culture element here, right? Like you'll get, I think if you were to forthrightly make the argument, you might get shouted down.

Speaker 1 You're just one of those identity liberals who doesn't want to pay attention to what's really happening. So it's like, I think there's a couple of reasons why.
Reverse cancel culture. Yeah, reverse.

Speaker 1 I don't know what to call it. But I think it's certainly part of why that conversation has been absent.
My intuition is that, again, this is very much an all of the above situation, right?

Speaker 1 Like the margin's too narrow to attribute it to one thing or the other. So it's like a lot of things were happening.
And also electorates are big, kind of complicated things.

Speaker 1 So a lot of things are happening. There is the macro picture of incumbent parties losing.
There is a particular disconnect that Democrats have had from voters without college educations.

Speaker 1 There are questions and concerns of race and gender.

Speaker 1 It's entirely possible that a Democratic Party that was more connected, better connected to non-college voters, to working class voters, would be able to overcome the race and gender stuff, right?

Speaker 1 Like that was to some extent be Obama's story.

Speaker 1 Obama was able to overcome these things through personal force of will, personality, but also the Democratic Party just was more connected to those voters. So there's a lot going on.

Speaker 1 It's why I've been actually quite, quite hesitant to weigh in with a big picture of this is what happened, because I honestly i don't know and i think we have to wait to see we have to we have to collect more information we have to count more votes we have to interview more people we have to actually find out what voters were thinking were doing when they went to the polls and in the absence of that it seems like presumptuous to me to say well this is what happened but at this stage i do take a very kind of like

Speaker 1 shouldn't dismiss anything and should take seriously questions of identity, questions of prejudice and bias, as well as these sort of, you know, structural issues the Democratic Party appears to have, and the unique appeal and,

Speaker 1 you know, connection that Trump has with a lot of voters. Like, all of this is playing a part.
I guess the mailman's coming by there, so I'm glad you've got your guard dog out. Yes.

Speaker 1 The TikToks, and then I've got one final closing thing. It's a twofold question.
One, do you have any sort of moral or personal ethical compunction about TikTok? Because I like have some TikTok guilt.

Speaker 1 I'm not a poster there like you, but I'm an avid consumer. So that's part one.

Speaker 1 And part two, just as a broader thing, I think it's interesting that you're doing it because I think one of we've seen the Democrats' failures with this cycle.

Speaker 1 And I just think more broadly, is that there is a lack of just having normal.

Speaker 1 regular conversation with people like outside of these formal media, formal establishment media outlets.

Speaker 1 There's some of that that happening but i just think that there's so much more of it happening on the right i don't know if that was if that was the rationale for you starting to do it or if you just got bored but i'm curious what your thinking is on all that no so i didn't start because of any for any like political reasons it might it was very much to sort of

Speaker 1 i was consuming a lot of tick tock i was kind of observing kind of how like the tenor of political discourse on tick tock the way in which people talked about politics and thought to myself a a lot of people in here are saying a lot of things that are not right or not true.

Speaker 1 And I think I could maybe be a useful resource here as like an actual professional journalist.

Speaker 1 And after just like some experimentation and such, I kind of figured out what works for me as like a person posting things, which is just to be conversational, just to like, you know, have a bit of a chat, have a walk and chat, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 And a little bit to my own surprise, people seem to be into it. I do think you're right to observe that this kind of thing is much more common on the political right.

Speaker 1 Like, there aren't very many people associated with the political left, you know, the political center left, who are using these kind of platforms in this kind of way to just sort of like talk to people and not even necessarily with an aim of trying to sort of like win partisan allegiance, but just to sort of like, you know, talk about ideas and talk about, you know, what's going on in the country and just like the chat.

Speaker 1 And I think there should be much more of it. With With regards to sort of like moral or ethical confunctions about TikTok, I don't know.
I kind of, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 That's a good answer. Do I think that the Chinese Communist Party probably knows too much about me? Yes.
We both got six-year-olds. Would you put a 12-year-old on TikTok? 10-year-olds? I don't know.

Speaker 1 No, I mean, when it comes to like usage, oh, yeah, no, no, no. I mean, I wouldn't,

Speaker 1 I would not let anyone younger than like 22.

Speaker 1 age all right good okay i mean i think about i graduated from college in 2009 so i guess i had twitter in 2008

Speaker 1 and facebook maybe a little before that but that was like back when facebook was as much about

Speaker 1 meeting people who go to your college yeah right right so it's sort of like it facilitated hanging out with people in real life as it was sort of like exclusively digital relationships.

Speaker 1 But the kind of like algorithmic, you know, design to addict you, social media, that's basically crack cocaine. And I would not let anyone in their teens be exposed to it if I had it my way.
Concur.

Speaker 1 All right. We're tying your last question back to the first question.
On your election day piece that you wrote before the results, the final question was rhetorical.

Speaker 1 You wrote, now the question is: this, will the meaning of our republic change, or will we hold fast to the egalitarian ideal that shapes this country as we understand it?

Speaker 1 Will we keep striving to make good on a more inclusive vision of American democracy?

Speaker 1 I take it the answer to your question is no, given the results, but I would like to give you a chance to answer yourself. I think the answer to my question is we still have to wait and see.

Speaker 1 We still have to wait and see. I think that we're on a bad trajectory.
I think that we're on the path to a much less egalitarian and fair country.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 we'll have to see. You know, I don't know.
That's my answer. Like, this is a case of having to see what happens, what happens with this administration, how far it goes, and how people respond.

Speaker 1 And I don't have the answer to that yet. And so I wouldn't say I'm hopeful, but I'm just sort of like,

Speaker 1 we'll see how things play out and we'll cross the bridges as we come to them. Yeah, we're going to fight it.

Speaker 1 And he's had a rocky, and he hasn't even started yet, but he's had a rocky month of the pregame.

Speaker 1 This really is the thing that is like, I think if there's anything that people should actually take quite seriously, it's that like we're what, three, four weeks into, you know, the transition and he's just, he has like two major L's.

Speaker 1 His nominee for attorney general was promptly shot down. His threats to go to recess appointments were kind of ignored.
And he might lose his first pick for Secretary of Defense. That's actually.

Speaker 1 It's not just unusual. This doesn't happen.
Usually new presidents get a lot more leeway than this, and he's kind of squandering it.

Speaker 1 And everyone that falls, it doesn't actually make the chances of the others go up, make the chance of the non-traditional picks that much worse, right?

Speaker 1 It's sort of like, well, we didn't have to get Gates. We may not have to get Hegseth.
Do we have to get Tulsa Gabbert? Do we have to get RFK, right? Like maybe not.

Speaker 1 Senate at Republicans, I might say, you know, we'll happily confirm judges and cut taxes, but like we may not want to put this person in that position and we don't have to.

Speaker 1 So I would advise people, just as being a political observer, to not dismiss these things as, oh, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Like, no, actually, when you're a new president, you don't really have that much time to do things. You have like 18 months.

Speaker 1 And if it looks like you're going to spend the first third of that arguing with the Senate about you're picking for top jobs, that's, that's an L. That is an L.
That is an L. All right.

Speaker 1 Well, that is uplifting. And I'll also leave everybody with the, I read the traumatizing traumatizing part of the Frederick Douglass speech at the top.

Speaker 1 So I will close with the uplifting part that you left people with. It was this conclusion about thinking about the principles of the founding.

Speaker 1 Whatever may be in store for the country in the future, whether prosperity or adversity, whether it shall have foes without or foes within, whether there shall be peace or war, based on the internal principles of truth, justice, and humanity, and with no class having any cause of complaint or grievance, your republic will stand and flourish forever.

Speaker 1 Frederick Douglass went through all that shit and could believe that, so can we, right, Jamil? Absolutely. All right.
I appreciate you coming on the Bulwark podcast. Come back again soon.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Everybody else will see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal. Enjoy your weekend.
Peace.

Speaker 4 I grew up with reverence for the red, white, and blue. Spoke of God and liberty, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Speaker 4 Learn love of country from my own family. Some shivered and prayed approaching the beaches of Normandy.

Speaker 4 The flag waves high and that's how it should be. So many lives given and taken in the name of freedom.

Speaker 4 But the story's complicated and hard to read.

Speaker 4 Pages of the book obscured or torn out completely.

Speaker 4 I am a son of Uncle Sam

Speaker 4 And I struggle to understand

Speaker 4 the good and evil

Speaker 4 But I'm doing the best I can

Speaker 4 In a place built on stolen land with stolen

Speaker 4 people

Speaker 4 Blood in the soil with the cotton and tobacco

Speaker 4 Blood in the soil with the cotton and tobacco

Speaker 4 Blood in the soil with the cotton and tobacco

Speaker 4 A misnamed people and a kidnapped race Laws may change but we can't erase the scars of a nation

Speaker 4 Of children devalued and disavowed, displaced by greed and the arrogance of manifest destiny.

Speaker 4 Short-sighted to say it was a long time ago. Not even two lifetimes have passed since the days of Lincoln.

Speaker 4 The sins of Andrew Jackson, the shame of Jim Crow, And time moves slow, and the tragedies are beyond description.

Speaker 4 I am a son of Uncle Sam,

Speaker 4 and I struggle to understand

Speaker 4 the good and evil.

Speaker 4 But I'm doing the best I can

Speaker 4 in a place built on stolen land with stolen people.

Speaker 1 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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