Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/6/24: Krystal and Saagar REACT: Trump LANDSLIDE Victory

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump sweeping the swing states against Kamala.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Donald J. Trump officially declared the president-elect of the United States. He won the election last night. The AP called the race around four in the morning or so. He took to

the stage roughly around 2.30 to declare victory in a speech. We have some of that speech. This is the correct one this time. Let's take a listen and let's cue it up and watch. Well, I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends in this incredible movement. This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before.

And frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond. And now it's going to reach a new level of importance because we're going to help our country heal. We're going to help our country heal. We have a country that needs help, and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders. We're going to fix everything about our country. We made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that. We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we've achieved

the most incredible political thing. Look what happened. Is this crazy? But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before. Nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. And every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day I will be fighting for you. And with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve.

So there we go. That was the victory speech. It continued for a little bit while. Kamala Harris will be giving her concession a little bit later today. Guys, we can put that up on the screen. Roughly around 4 p.m. Eastern time here in Washington from Howard University, where she spent some of election night at her party on Tuesday, decided the news leaked out roughly around 2 a.m. that she wouldn't be taking the stage to give her concession at that time. But yeah, I mean, yeah, for those who were not watching live, we had a fun, like, you know, joke about the fact that the right is very

upset that she is not giving a concession. And I mean, on principle, I do agree that she just conceded last night and or this morning, like Hillary Clinton. But, yeah, she's decided to drag it out a little bit. Also, we have not heard a word from the White House, which is kind of crazy. For the people who weren't there for us. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Let them hear our decent counter, which is that Trump still to this day has not given his concession speech for 2020. Well, now he doesn't have to.

Now he never has to. He should get one. Now would be the time. What does he have to lose? He'll give his farewell speech. He'll be like, you know what? I actually did lose in 2020. JK, guys.

What did he say? He was being sarcastic or something? He said he was being sarcastic. Yeah, because he did actually sort of kind of admit that he lost. And then when he got asked about it at the debate, he was like, I wasn't being for real. Correct. I was just joking about that. Now he could do the reverse and be like, that will stop this deal stuff.

I didn't mean it. Anyway. It's over. It's finally over. I will say this is legitimately a huge lingering question for the MAGA right, which poured millions of dollars. Everyone knows, I mean, if you were in the conservative space for the last couple of years, all the donor energy and money was behind election integrity.

And they were yesterday, Donald Trump was saying, he was pointing to alleged irregularities all over the country. And so this is going to be a huge, huge question. Are they going to claim that the election integrity counter efforts worked? I mean, seriously. I think we'll never hear another word about it. Let's all be honest. It's all fake. It's just never going to happen that the election integrity counter efforts worked? I mean, seriously.

I think we'll never hear another word about it. Let's all be honest. We're never going to hear another word. It's all fake. It's just never going to happen. But this is actually a point I want to elaborate on because I was just on Piers Morgan with that guy Vinny from PPD. Okay. And he was saying all this, oh, my, the number one priority in the Trump administration needs to be election integrity because the Democrats flew all these illegals into swing states, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, well, if they did that, why didn't it deliver for them? Like, what happened? They voted for Trump. The plant fell apart. They voted for Trump. I guess that's it. The Latino shift. Like, you ended up winning them, so I guess you're welcome.

Anyways, so we do have an element that I think really hammers home just how titanic of an election this was. Let's go ahead and put the Financial Times chart, please, on the screen. It's in the rundown called the Red Wave chart. And basically, Donald Trump gained ground in 48 out of 50 states. Washington holding strong. Utah and Washington, where he did not improve his performance from last time around. And if you look at the map, like coast to coast, I mean, it is just a sea. It's a stamp.

That Washington Post map we kept pulling up last night and referring to that shows the shifts in every county, it's, like, just a wash in red. And so it wasn't just—the biggest shifts were among some of the demographic groups we talked about, Latinos in particular. That's the big thing of the night. The bro demographic, too. Donald Trump wins the Latino men. You know, young men. Gen X men actually were big, showed up big for Donald Trump as well. Gen X men.

That sounds like a TV show. Really bad one. Coming to TV land. But, you know, the gains were almost across the board. Yeah. It was basically every demographic. It was shocking. It makes it very hard to, you know, we're going to react to some of the media stuff later,

but it makes it very hard to be like, oh, it was, you know, Arab Americans. It was this. It was that. It really was a sort of national movement repudiation, which I think, you know, also makes it more difficult for liberals and Democratic Party supporters in certain ways to deal with in 2016. Because 2016, it was like, Comey, Russia, sexism, didn't go to Wisconsin, next time we'll get them. This time it's like, holy shit. What now?

We have our election guru, Logan, by the way. We're going to bring Logan in here now. Go ahead, Logan. I think you're right about that, Crystal. This is a tough day if you're a Democrat. But I also would say there's been like five times in the last 24, 28 years where a party thought they were completely out after a bad election. You know, from 1996 for Republicans to after 9-11 in 2004, Democrats thinking they were hopeless. Republicans feeling hopeless in a way. Like we just go through this all the time and I'm just starting the list, but I won't finish it.

So what were you? Well, no, you're not wrong that we should. This is not this is not an obituary forever, but it is a near term problem. Like it's a big problem. Not only problem, it's a narrative buster in so many ways. Like we have the Latino men who they went majority for Donald Trump. We had white suburban women who they bet the house on who also went majority for Donald Trump. We had white suburban women who they bet the house on who also went majority for Donald Trump. So we did see an overall increase in some of the female vote,

but one of the things actually that was incorrect was this idea that the gender gap was going to be exclusive amongst Gen Z. It's not. Actually, it was just roughly around 20 points, which is normal. It was just up and down the chain all the way from senior men to senior women. Total mirror image. Absolutely. In terms of the retrospective too, it's really interesting, you know, thinking about polls and modeling and kind of like what went wrong here. I haven't looked at the exact number, but I believe that the poll on average in the battleground states off by about 3.5% away from Donald Trump's direction. But really the big failure here, no offense, Logan, because it's not your fault, but it's everybody, for all of the modelers, was they simply had no idea how to facilitate a model where you had such major, independent, young voter, Latino voter, and even

black male voters all breaking for Trump in a way that they have never voted before in modern history. So I'm curious. And let me toss that to you, Logan, with a slight defense as well, a slight counter to Saugers, that if we're looking at like the RCP battleground averages and going back to where they actually ended up, it was still, these counts in these states, it's looking like it is marginal, to be fair. It's looking like maybe a three-point victory in Pennsylvania, what, a 1.5? That's marginal. That's pretty big. No, but I mean based on where the poll was. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you think about the margin of error. Yeah, exactly. You know, if you had a bunch of polls that were like tied, Trump plus one, Kamala plus one, you're looking at a margin of error kind of race. Right. Yeah, I would say it's on the outer bound of that, right? But not in like Wisconsin. So if we're looking at Wisconsin, if we're looking at, I guess, Georgia, North Carolina is looking more like Pennsylvania, Michigan. So, Logan, I mean, what does that tell us about how well or how poorly the pollsters actually performed here?

I think the pollsters did an OK job when it came to showing the shape of the electorate or the shape of the election, I should say, in that they were saying, hey, the swing states, they're way more competitive than the popular vote would suggest. And the popular vote ended up, you know, Democrats ended up outright losing it. But, you know, it could be to the point that even a 1% loss for Democrats could lead to a popular, to an electoral college victory. And really what happened is it was just a few points off, but the shape was roughly right. I mean, they did pick up some of the trends, you know, the Latino shift,

the African-American shift, the gender gap. I mean, there were some there, but I think you just have to say, after three election cycles of Trump outperforming the polls, that they just can't totally capture his coalition. And so the ones that were, like, trying to collude, like, well, we're just going to spot him a few points.

In hindsight, well, I guess that was the right thing to do. Well, also, it's a couple of things, because it's not only was his strength in rural voters so strong last night, it was his ability to drive it out everywhere across the board. So I have some fascinating numbers that actually show his blue state strength, which is, by the way, this is crazy just for popular vote purposes, considering that he won that, but also for how the GOP will conceive of itself

in the future. So in New York, for example, it went from Democrat plus 23 to Democrat plus 12. So that's almost what, a 12 point swing almost. New Jersey went from D16 to D plus four. It's only a four point margin. In Massachusetts, D33, D26. Rhode Island went D23, D13.

Connecticut, D20, D8. Vermont, 36, 32. That's the only one that stayed relatively flat. Maryland even had a 10-point swing towards Donald Trump. And even Joe Biden's home state of Delaware had a five-point swing towards Trump. So one policy implication I tweeted this morning is, by the way, salt cap, it's back on the table. There's no way. If you blow it out like this and you win, I think he did better in the city of New York, in Manhattan, than any Republican since like 1992, something like that, over 30 years. Actually, AOC's district in the Bronx increased his Hispanic vote share. So, I mean, it's just wild if you look at all of the – if anything to me, the swing state swing, the demos there and the movement is even less interesting than a lot of the stuff happening in California, in New York, in Texas, for example. We saw Star County, the most Latino county in the entire state, swing towards Donald Trump.

I think it's a 50 or 60-point swing from how they voted in 2016. So, I mean, that is to me the true, like, shocking thing. And, you know, the only mistake I think I made in my election prediction was not betting hard enough on the Latino realignment. Remember? Because that was my justification.

I was like, well, it's going to be a problem and all of this. But to be honest, a lot of these traditional political people, like our pollsters, people like Ann Seltzer,

I mean, she was wrong by what? 15? 17 or something. It's like the Marquette. No, It's like the Marquette poll in 2020. Lickman, dead. No, no, but see, the Marquette poll is talked about. Moody. Moody, dead.

Yeah, Moody, vindicated. Alive. Totally vindicated. No, no, no. It reminds me of when the Marquette poll came out in 2020. Everyone in D.C. thinks of the Marquette poll as the quote-unquote gold standard. People in Wisconsin are very proud of it. I've seen it be wrong many times, and that Marquette poll as the quote-unquote gold standard. People in Wisconsin are very proud of it.

I've seen it be wrong many times. And that Marquette poll that had Biden up by like 14 points in 2020, he won the state in Wisconsin, but it was not a 14-point victory. And so there's something really wrong in some of those polls that led. I mean, I think women, this is probably one of the interesting stories to come out of it, is if you're looking again at suburban Atlanta, suburban Milwaukee, Trump just did better with women than people expected. So let me say what I think happened and also why I got it so wrong. Because I think I overlearned the lesson of 2022 where we were going in like, this is going to be a red war. Like, it is a wrap. Look at these numbers, the economic numbers.

Inflation's bad. Biden's unpopular. Like, this is going to be a bloodbath. And Republicans won the these numbers, the economic numbers. Inflation's bad. Biden's unpopular. Like, this is going to be a bloodbath. And Republicans won the popular vote, to be fair. But it wasn't. And, you know, bucked historic trends. Democrats really outperform. And you look at, you know, at who did the worst.

And it was people who were really bad on abortion and states that had, you know, abortion as a live issue. And you also had, you also had this issue of extremism and the Stop the Steal candidates, people like Carrie Lake, et cetera. And so you look at that and you're like, oh, I need to adjust my view because I previously was saying like, this stuff is not really the thing to run on.

Stick to the bread and butter economics, populist economics, like that's been the mantra. I look at 2022, I'm like, my view was wrong. So I need to adjust. Like these issues are more important to people than I thought they would. And Roe really reshaped the electorate in a way that was much more precipitous than I expected.

But you have two things that are different in 23 things. Number one, hopefully I can remember three. I'm giving that. Rick Perry. Number one. I really set myself up for failure here. The thing is, we're actually tired. Unlike Rick Perry, who. Number one. I'm really setting myself up for failure here. Chris is so high. The thing is, we're actually tired,

unlike Rick Perry, who was just on Painkillers at the time. You don't know what Chris was on. You don't know my life. You don't know what Ryan's been doing over there. Number one, difference between general electorate and midterm. Definitely. Right? So much broader turnout. You know, in 2022, the ladies were fired up about abortion.

Low propensity voters. Yeah. That's exactly right. Number two, you just have more distance were fired up about abortion. Low propensity voters. Yeah. That's exactly right. Number two, you just have more distance between these events than now, right? It's been several years. Number three, the Donald Trump effect. Like, we were just talking before about how he overperformed every Republican. I mean, Kerry Lake is still going to lose, again, even in a Republican wave year.

Because other Republicans, he, listen, you know, Kamala, I'm going to give the Democrats a hard time here in a moment. But you also have to give him his credit that he is a uniquely compelling, charismatic figure. And that may be something, I mean, you know, that may be something Republicans have to grapple with in the future, given this will be his, you know, last term in office. But, you know, as I was thinking about, okay, well, what went wrong here? And you could certainly pinpoint, you know, micro campaign decisions that I think are consequential, the choice of like Mark Cuban and Liz Cheney over like Bernie Sanders and Sean Fain as those two different, you know, potential directions and who you're signaling to. And you did see, hey, Kamala, she won voters who make over $100,000. So this all played into the view that, oh, this is the party of the well-off and the rich and these elite concerns, et cetera. But I really think it's almost unfair to her to lay it all at her feet, because the truth of the

matter is, I think the Democratic Party has screwed themselves ever since they blocked Bernie Sanders back in 2016. And I know this sounds like the ultimate Bernie coat take. No, it's an interesting take. But the reality is that the neoliberal era is dead. And Trumpism represents the right-wing response to that. It's a response I disagree with. I think it scapegoats the wrong people. I think it's bad for the country.

I think it's anti-democratic. But it represents a coherent vision. On the left, in the Democratic side, they moved heaven and earth to block the left-wing populist response to the death of neoliberalism and the manifest failures of neoliberalism. And so you ask yourself, okay, well, you know, what would be the evidence for this. And when I think about it, like, who were the parts of Bernie Sanders' coalition, like, where he was the strongest? Latinos. Working class. Bros. AOC's district looks right now, like, AOC's district looks right now, according to Ryan Groduski, like it is having one of the biggest swings towards Trump in the country. Right. So, literally, you know, literally Joe Rogan, right? And those are all the people who are fleeing the fascists. So, you know, literally Joe Rogan. Right. And those are all the people who are fleeing the fascists.

So, you know, previously this idea that was put out by liberals of like the Bernie to Trump pipeline as a way of deriding the Bernie Sanders movement and saying, oh, this is just like a sort of glorified like way to, you know, to actually shift people to the right. That was wrong. But what is correct is that many people when they who were Bernie Sanders, part of that coalition, have gone to Trump. And the other thing you can say about that is that, you know, so you can never know if that like alternative left populist vision would be able to defeat the, you know, right populist, I would say authoritarian vision. But you do know that at the time when there was an ongoing choice between the Bernie Sanders model and the Trump model, those voters were going with the Bernie Sanders model. So I think Democrats, by completely blunting that movement and salting the earth, and Ryan has written literally the book about how that worked, not just with Bernie, but with the squad and with all of that, by really blocking that movement and salting the earth, they have screwed themselves. And, you know, I want to say, like, Biden has had in his administration some important breaks from the neoliberal era. Kamala ran some populist economic ads, like, really focused on that.

So it's not like they've done nothing. But you cannot say what a coherent Kamala Harris vision, like, post-neoliberal vision is because ultimately she is a neoliberal, all these people are, and that's what the, you know, Mark Cuban and the I won't say what I'm going to do on Lena Khan and the embrace of Liz Cheney, that's what that all communicates. And Tim Walz, I'm, Ryan, what do you make of this? Because I remember you guys were like feeling very happy with the Tim Walz book because it signaled sort of a bone to the Bernie wing who said, let's run boldly on full progressive policies and not run in the opposite direction. Be milquetoast. Let's go all in.

Bold colors, not pale pastels, as Ronald Reagan said from the right. Her polling at that point was like four or five points up from where it was. Well, was she, though? The ultimate question is whether any of this shit has been real. Her polling collapsed over the next month. Yeah, we did see that. I don't know. I mean, here's the thing is, no one can say for sure.

But you can say at that point there was a lot more energy and excitement around the campaign. You can say also, you know, Tim Walz, right after he got selected, he went on, I think it was with Ezra Klein, actually, and was like, I think we need to do paid family leave as a first act. And then you, like, never heard about it again. Part of why people like Ryan and I were excited is because Tim Walz came with this sort of package agenda, which was basically the parts of Build Back Better that didn't get done. And was it the Bernie Sanders agenda? No. But it was something. A lot of it was the Bernie agenda. Yeah, I can sink my teeth into this. I can understand how this would relate to my family. And again, I don't want to discount, they ran a lot of ads on some solid economic plans, but that was not foregrounded in terms of the media conversation. I actually think that the earned media piece, which was more focused around Liz Cheney, democracy, etc., ended up being much more significant than what any of the paid ads were. Look at the results in Minnesota. Kamala will win Minnesota by the margin that Donald Trump won the state of Pennsylvania.

That's nuts, considering the Tim Walz pick and what that ultimately means. I do think, to a certain extent, it's difficult to diagnose it. I think 2016 definitely is the demarcation point. I really can't think of anyone but Andrew Breitbart right now in terms of politics is downstream from culture. And, like, the truth is, like, 2016 was a major cultural demarcation point in which the Democratic elites and others, like, pioneered and decided to, like, really focus on identity politics as the way to defeat Donald Trump. And it's their explanation. Defeating Bernie. I was going to say, it the way to defeat Donald Trump. And it's their explanation. Defeating Bernie. I was going to say, it was actually to defeat Bernie.

The sloppy media conversation is like, oh, the left is responsible for all this cancel culture and wokeness and identity obsession. used by Hillary Clinton and her allies to pretend like Bernie Sanders was a racist and sexist because he talked in class-versus-universalist language versus fixating on different demographic groups. Yeah, and one thing people don't quite realize, I don't think, is that Democrats kind of jujitsu-ed themselves into an unelectable position by their embrace of identity politics in an effort to target Bernie Sanders. In other words, Hillary Clinton made the decision. She sensed that there was something populist going on, that people were angry about something, and that the left was kind of ascendant within the party.

And she decided that instead of saying, look, I'm the electable candidate, I'm more experienced, and I'm going to beat whoever the Republican is, she decided bizarrely in the Democratic primary that she was going to claim that she was actually the one. That was on the left. That was on the left. Yeah. The left of Bernie Sanders, because Bernie Sanders is out of step with the rise of what they called the Great Awokening at the time. Yes. She said breaking up the big banks won't end racism. She called it, and that's the start of my book, of her saying that Bernie Sanders is a single-issue candidate, and his single issue was the economy.

And then she goes in, breaking up the banks won't end sexism, it won't end racism. And so you then had this interesting perception where a bunch of people in the primaries actually thought Bernie Sanders was more moderate than he was because Hillary Clinton was attacking him from this woke left. Right. And so when people now say that Kamala Harris was too far left, they're referring to that. And so that's how they jujitsu themselves into this position of taking positions that are unpopular on the economy and kind of pragmatic, as Kamala Harris would call it, but basically friendly to Wall Street and friendly to business, but still being pegged as too far left in ways that nobody actually wanted. I'm curious if the identitarian left will be dealt like the blow that they need. Okay, but maybe, Ryan.

I mean, these are very, very powerful people. But will they see it that way? Yeah, will they see it that way? Doesn't matter what they see. What's the guy's name? Elie Mistal, is that his name?

Elie Mistal, yeah. Yeah, he's already being like, oh, the Latinos let our black brothers down. Yeah, but Ryan's right that they've been routed because the thing is even how Kamala ran this campaign.

Yeah. Like, she did not talk at all about, like, I'm a black woman and here's blah, blah, blah. She only had the hangover of it. And still paid the price for it. Right, right.

And they also, yeah, she had the hangover of it. That's exactly right. And also, I mean, already if you look at all the commentary on Morning Show and whatever, this is what they're blaming.

Yes. That and, you know, any other position that they could characterize as coming from the left. And, you know, in terms of the future electoral prospects, like I think Logan's point is apt, like, you know, to go back to when Democrats were in the wilderness after the Ronald Reagan era and George H.W. Bush, and they thought, God, we may never be able to win again, what their response was just to basically adopt the Republican framework. And I personally think we're already seeing that being the response from the Democrats. That's what embracing effectively the Republican view on

immigration, I know you guys might dispute that, but that's the reality, is ditching the idea of a path to citizenship. That's what that looks like. You know, Gavin Newsom, who was the most ambitious person in the entire world, is out there saying, hey, I'm going to go and personally raise homeless encampments and sign tough on crime legislation into law. So I think the response from the Democratic Party is going to be to help to cement, in the same way Bill Clinton helped to cement the neoliberal era, I think it's going to be to help to cement this sort of right-wing, populist, whatever you want to call it, Because they're running out of things they can hit them on.

They can't do immigration. But to be fair, he just won the popular vote on this. Also, Gascon in Los Angeles just got blown out. And Gascon is one of those progressive DAs. But do you hear what I'm saying? I'm saying that he won. I know. This is what we need to do. Because we would rather do that than, like, there's almost no going back for them to that Bernie Sanders moment to offer the alternative, like, left populist vision.

So what I'm saying basically is, like, you know, the reason I'm depressed is not because I don't think Democrats will ever win. I don't really give a shit that much about whether Democrats win again. It's because I think the ideological battle is basically done. Like there was a question after the financial crisis, you know, there was this stirring of popular sentiment on the left and the right. And there were truly competing visions for, okay, neoliberalism, like people are rejecting it. And we're, you know, there needs to be something different moving forward because they see the way that this was destructive to themselves, their lives, their communities, et cetera. You had two competing philosophies.

And, you know, one of them on the right was successfully able to take over the Republican party. And, you know, I could talk about like the fake populist aspects and how there's a lot of overlap actually with Mitch McConnell, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, let's just leave that aside for the moment. And the other one, because it was so oppositional both to Democratic elites but also to Capitol elites who backed the party. And own the networks. And own the networks and all of that. And, you know, Jeff Bezos doesn't like and owns the Washington Post, all of those things.

They pulled out every stop they could, both legitimate and illegitimate, to make sure that did not take root. And the vestiges of that, like the squad members that get elected to the House, number one, they embrace too much of the, like, identitarian view, and that makes them, like, not that popular. And number two, there has been just a war that you wrote a book about, waged on them to make sure that they either fall in line or they're kicked out. And so that's why I'm saying, like, you know, I'm not—I think that a much better direction for the Democratic Party would be to look at the guy, Bernie Sanders, who was winning these coalitions and say, what can we learn from him? I have zero expectation that's what they will do. I think instead they will just be the, like the kinder, gentler version of Trumpism. I think we'll see, all right, because I think there's still quite a bit of the identitarianism that is in the vestiges of MSNBC and CNN, which we're going to get to in a little bit for their overall response.

I think in general what we have seen with the popular vote, and specifically, actually, this really is a question to the Republicans as to whether they can follow through. I mean, GOP voters now have basically been begging them for 20 years to shut the border and stop immigration. So will they actually do it? I mean, you know, narrow house majority, we'll see. I think Democrats will make a deal with them on it.

I'm going to call it right now. But if it's a flake deal, I mean, not a flake deal, a Lankford deal. What is it, Gang of Eight or anything? The Gang of Eight. That stuff is not going to call it right now but if it's a flake deal I mean not a flake deal a Lankford deal what is it gang of eight that stuff is not going to fly this is Ted Cruz with the budget under Obama that's what this is going to be

I tweeted this several weeks ago and I was like I think if Trump wins it will just be like quote it's immigration stupid and I increasingly just believe that because if you look at the tone of the campaign and behind every Donald Trump press conference, there were, you know, in the, uh, in the stuff behind him, like for example, like the, uh, image right behind us, if you look at the, I'm forgetting what the thing is called, like whatever they put behind the candidate, it would be like end migrant

crime and mass deportation. Remember at the RNC, the big, the number one sign was literally just mass deportation. I'm like, okay, this is the uniting element of the entire Republican argument that went into this election. Now, is that the main reason he won? Maybe, but I think very clearly it is the number one thing of why Donald Trump won 2016, the primary, because he was the most vociferous on immigration and now has won a popular vote mandate in addition to a Republican advantage in the House and in the Senate, likely, at least for what we see right now. But the question of how that actually manifests in office is huge because this is what Crystal was just talking about.

The Capitol pushback to mass deportation and to immigration reform and E-Verify and all that, it is going to be crazy from what the lobbyists, I mean, the Chamber of Commerce and all these folks, they are licking their chops and they're ready to roll. They got billions of dollars to be ready to throw at E-Verify. They've also, there's big questions here around the actual, like how the Trump administration will staff itself and what it looks like. Is it going to look like the party that's just going to give Bill Ackman and Elon his tax cuts and not follow through on immigration? Because that's how you actually would lead to some sort of Bill Clinton, what was it called? Like the New Democratic Coalition, you know, the way that they could.

The DLC. The DLC, that's right. The DLC. How a DLC style like candidate would be able to come in. And I would not necessarily bet against that. You know, corporatism is a deeply strong force, especially in the immigration lobby. And I do still think they could still win on this, even though Donald Trump did win the election now. So it's a question actually of Republican

governance and to what direction that looks like. But it's also a big question of the media elites and the Democratic Party for how they respond to it. Because as you guys know, you were both booted off basically MSNBC, for talking about what you're talking about right now. So they don't even have the bones for it. That institutional memory is gone. It's been almost a decade since that's happened. To even acknowledge so many of the things that we have talked about here in the first

hour on our show is verboten over there. Except for Joe Scarborough for a while. No, sorry. Chris Matthews actually said some of this, what I'm talking about on immigration. But of course, he framed it in a very different way. Yeah. I mean, that's why I think that the Democrats are, I mean, they're already, their analysis is basically like, we need to move to the right.

Like, that's what we need to do. And specifically on the issue of immigration. And so you separated out from economics. And that's the economics and that's the only, that's the edit I would make is that, you know, as I was saying before, Trumpism and the, you know, right populism, I'll use that label to keep from offending anybody, right populism has a coherent ideology. It has a set of villains, one of those prominent villains being immigrants,

and it has a set of victims. It has a collective, like, that, you know, that we're all in this together. Yeah. And these are the groups, and it's predominantly, you know, it's the deep state, it's cultural elites, which overlaps but is not entirely, you know, consistent with rich people in capital.

Yes. And it in capital. Yes. And it's immigrants. Yes. Hollywood, the media. Yeah. And the idea is like these are the groups that are keeping you down. And that means economically, that means like they're the ones who are imposing things on your life that you don't like. They're changing your town.

You're changing your culture. Like whatever you're not happy with that's going on in your life, these are the people to blame. And so I don't think you can – I don't think you're wrong, Sagar, that immigration is an important part of that because that is part of what coheres the story. But it's not just, I reject the idea you can neatly separate like that's a cultural issue and that's an economic issue. Voters said their number one issue was inflation economics and I believe them. But I think, you know, Trump has presented this vision. I don't agree with it. I find it ugly. I think it's bad for the country. I think it's anti-democratic. But he's presented a coherent vision for if we go after these people, your life is going to get better. And Democrats rejected

the alternative vision that was on offer from Bernie Sanders. And so I think all they really have left to do now, because they're not going to now be like, you were right, Bernie, sorry, is to move right and try to be the softler, gentler version of what's on offer from the Republicans. I'm curious for your take on this real quick then. We just ended on that. Go ahead, Emily. Everybody sound off last time and then we have to get to the Dearborn mayor. All I was going to say is that immigration is the issue, and Republicans and, you know, to some extent, Bernie Sanders understood this on other issues. It is the bridge between economics and culture, and Bernie understood that in terms of, like, tax cuts for the rich.

And all of it, like, there are these points that are, you know, Occupy Wall Street was not just an economic movement. That was a cultural movement. The Tea Party was not just an economic movement. That was a cultural movement. The Tea Party was not just an economic movement. It was a cultural movement. That's what Bernie Sanders understood. And so, Ryan, just a quick flashback to 2022 midterms. We were interviewing Terry Schilling. He runs a group called the American Principles Project that was running up ads all over the suburbs on trans issues.

Remember that they, them ad that a lot of Republicans were running in swing districts and Trump was running. In fact, he said that was working. And when we're looking at low propensity voters coming out in a big way, it wasn't enough in the midterms, obviously for the red wave. But in this election, we had a big turnout.

It looks like low propensity voters. Voters, Trump made massive improvement, as Jeff Stein says, with voters under $50,000. That is not just in income. That is not just about the economics. That is about the marriage of economics and culture that Donald Trump understands in a way that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and other Republicans don't, and in a way that Kamala Harris absolutely could not tap into either. Yeah, I think that's very true. And you're not wrong, Crystal. A lot of it is separate. But as I often say, and people get mad at me, I don't believe a lot of voters sometimes whenever they talk either. Because people will say, oh, democracy or economic. And when one searches as economic, what are they really trying to get at? And I just think the beating heart of Trumpism is, you even use the word right populism. I don't even know if that's accurate. I think it's just straight up nationalism at this point.

That's what it is. We have literally autarkic trade policy, like mercantilist 18th century philosophy. We have anti-immigration in terms of— That's right populism. It's a flavor of it though. And so when I say nationalism, I'm saying the co the coherence between it and like what actually separates all of that is specifically what you just said with the cultural elite of where there may be some overlap, um, but is genuinely distinct and critically the average guy on the street. He knows what I mean, whenever we're talking about the Hollywood elite or the people who decided to come out and to vote for Donald Trump. And so I think that actually, and whether it is able to be fulfilled in legislation,

which is the ultimate big question mark for me, because I know a lot of people who are very pro-Trump. We met some of them yesterday, Ryan, and they're very enthusiastic. And I remember telling you as we were leaving, I was like, listen, bro, I was here in 2016, and I remember this whole thing, and it didn't work out so well for a lot of those folks. On that point, because there's this relationship between the culture and the economics, imagine four years from now, people are still angry.

I feel like the only hope that Democrats have is baked into the fact that Republicans also suck and our system sucks, and it's not going to be able to deliver anything that makes anybody happier four years from now. And feeding them immigration stuff four years from now and beating up on CNN and MSNBC isn't going to satisfy the itch when they're the governing power. What Dems should pray for is a repeat of 2017, 2018, where Trump fails on immigration, fails on the border wall, and his only accomplishment is to just pass max tax cut for corporations and rich people, right? That's what they should pray on their hands and knees for, just making sure that only corporatism basically succeeds and it

becomes some sort of major giveaway that leads to a lot of deep satisfaction in there. If he does accomplish a lot of this stuff, it's going to be a problem. They're going to have to blow up with a coherent explanation. If he does shut down immigration, he will drive up prices, for one. But two, then he'll take away that arrow as well. It's possible. I mean, look, first of all. Yeah, anyway, go ahead. Well, I mean, in the short, like, if he enacts his agenda, his stated agenda,

we've had this debate many times, but if he... But he won't do the... He's going to have Lighthizer back in the office doing trade policy, I think he'll be fine. Huge number of tariffs, mass deportation, mass austerity, which is the Elon plan. Slashing the bureaucracy.

It would be an economic catastrophe. Catastrophe, right? Prices would. Slashing the bureaucracy. It would be a economic catastrophe. Catastrophe, right? Prices would skyrocket across the board, housing people were expelled, all that stuff, right? Now, you're right. Do I think that he's actually going to do all of that stuff? No. But I think Ryan's point is an apt one, which is why I don't feel like this is doom and gloom for the Democratic Party, because I think there's a very good chance that, especially next time around, it's not going to be Trump making the case. It's going to be J.D. Vance, probably, who, you know, hasn't shown the same electoral prowess as Donald Trump has, who's just this, like, uniquely charismatic figure. So in any case, sure. But, you know, in any case, it may be tougher for him because then he has to defend Trumpism. And the people who have had to do that have not, by and large, done all that well, who are not themselves Donald Trump.

It's a tough position. He's basically going to find himself like H.W. in the Reagan consensus. You want to be a different person, but you also have to defend like Reagan. It was very complicated and part of the reason why he ended up losing. This is an iHeart Podcast.