The Chaser Report - How Did Trump Win? | PEP

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

It's another PEPisode for you hungry US politics listeners. Today, Chas is joined by Melina Wicks and Richard Cooke to unpack the election result, and the impact of race and gender on the result for the Harris campaign. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. This is Dom. Look, it's been a very big week. It's been an emotional rollercoaster. Plus, Charles and I both have issues with our kids. Mine has a virus.

Charles's has a birthday. Happy birthday, Angus. And if you haven't heard Angus's episode of the Chaser Report a few weeks ago, it was very entertaining indeed. Thank you for that. On this episode of PEP, the Planet Extra podcast, our good friend Chas from The Chaser, also from Planet America on ABC TV these days, reacts to the election result with Melina Wicks and Richard Cook.

They discuss several theories on why Donald Trump won and look at the impact of race and misogyny in the election. So we know our audience is enjoying the US politics. Epps, this is one from some genuine experts. And if you want to hear far more of this, don't forget, PEP generally weighs in at about three hours per episode. and my tip as always is check out the index so you can listen to the bits that you think

will be most interesting for you. We will return with a brand new episode for you very soon, presumably tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the analysis. See you later. For now, I have two giants of the pep world, well, one physical giant, one kind of the opposite. Neither of whom ever raises the stakes

on inconsequential views. It's writer Richard Cook and TV producer and Planet America Breakout star Melina Wicks. Hello, folks. Hello. Chaz. We are the only people left in the ABC

that are not currently on the junket to America. We're going to sort of have a risky business style election special where we're just dancing around with our pants off in our underwear, in our parents' house, sliding around. It's probably a reference that's so old but no one's going to get it. And it's just going to sound really kind of,

pervy. That's all right. I was going to say how assured Pep has been and that anyone who listened to Pep, as I do, would not be especially surprised by this result because these trends have been talked about for a long time. And I was going to say that in fact, everybody here had correctly privately predicted a Trump victory. Certainly last time you and I spoke about this, you had predicted a Trump victory. And I find out, that you huffed a massive amount of liberal copium on the morning of the election and incorrectly panicked and predicted a Harris win. I literally...

Is this true? I literally, for the past 12 months, have been saying, I thought Trump would win and would probably just win the blue wall again. I'd say for 12 months, literally the morning of the election, I woke up. I was breaking down some polls and I noticed a trend which got me excited because I was the only one who'd noticed it, which was if you went through, the last six poles, six proper polls. And you compared the second last version of each of those polls to the last version. The independence were favouring Harris by Moore in each of them.

And I thought, oh, and maybe she's going to win. And so I then went on, I spoke to Fev on on breakfast radio, Feb who, unsurprisingly, he's a big gambler and I think he put his house on Trump. And he wasn't happy with what to say about saying, I've changed a mine. I think, I think that, uh, that Harris is going to do it. And he just rubbish me. And he was right. This is, you know more about US politics than almost anybody in the world. And you were a worse picker of the winner. Yeah, I got out thunk by Brendan Favola, who's not known for outthinking many people. So, well, this is, this is the story of the election, isn't it? That elites getting it wrong. So, so. So anyway, yeah, I have to, I have to,

I have to, I have to, yeah, take my lumps on that one, I'm afraid. Let's start off with. Let's start off with what actually happened, and then we can start to try and explain it. Well, we should hear from someone who was right. Melina, what happened? I'm actually a note one, I had been predicting for a long time that Trump would win, but more quietly predicting that I would sooner bet on a Trump blowout than a Harris victory, and I wish I'd said that more, because then I really would have been on record in a good way. But I think a lot of things happened.

I mean, like, there's already a lot of think pieces with everyone trying to say, you know, Harris lost because of this. Trump won because of this. And in reality, 70 million plus people voted for Trump, that's going to be for a lot of different reasons. And, you know, we can get into all of that in more detail as the podcast goes on. But, you know, I think the first kind of fallacy is to try and ascribe it to one singular thing that's happening. Obviously, everyone's saying, you know, the economy is a big thing. Obviously, it was. I think another big issue was that people are clearly unhappy in general in America with the way things are going and have been for a long time, decades now.

And people are not interested in voting for incrementalism. People want big changes. And I can understand that. And I think you can see Trump, but also Obama in that pattern of people coming and promising to shake up Washington and be really different and have sort of a big vision for how to change the country. And Biden, I think, is the exception to the trend, even though he's kind of the more traditional politician in the broader arc of recent history, sort of more mid to recent history. I think in the sense that, you know, 2020 was the COVID election, people, things were so crazy, just that specific year that people wanted to break and wanted to feel like they could go back to normal for a little bit. But more broadly over the past 20 years, I think we've seen a lot

of frustration in the electorate and a lot of push for significant change. And I think Kamala Harris's political instincts are all about incrementalism. And she's not a big vision politician. And I don't mean that as a knock. I think that there's definitely room in politics for people who are more about making small incremental changes. They're probably better suited politically to the Senate than the presidency, where people do look for the sort of bigger visionary speakers as a rule. And she also didn't have the long track record of someone like Biden, who did have the relationships on the Senate to achieve more from a policy perspective. But I think that fundamentally, people were not looking for someone who was promising to defend the status quo, but rather someone who's

promising to upend it. That's a really good point. But before we just go on, I should just actually just say what happened. Trump won. Okay, so there's still Nevada and Arizona out, although Trump's going to win both of them. It's looking very much like Trump's won 312 electoral college votes to 226 for Kamala Harris. Essentially, the difference between this election and the last one is that Biden won Nevada, he won Arizona, he won Georgia. They're all gone back to Trump. And also Trump's taken the blue wall, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which means the map is basically identical to the Hillary Clinton map back in 2016. I think, I think she took Nevada.

So it's slightly worse than hers, although electoral college-wise, the numbers have all changed because they've been redistributed since then. So it doesn't quite compare. But basically, Harris is one state worse than Hillary Clinton in 2016. What are your thoughts so far? This is on paper, before we even get to who it is in the kind of hole that they have over their party and their voters. On paper, this is one of the most powerful presidencies since FDR.

It's effectively a second term, we're not going to say incumbent. It's a Grover Cleveland-style comeback, which has not happened for over a century, holding the House, holding the Senate, and with a Supreme Court understanding of his power, that is pretty much unprecedented. So this is, you know, a very, very powerful presidency before we get to the fact that that is held by Donald Trump, who has a lot of additional cultural powers behind him. On paper, this is also a catastrophe for liberalism. Democrats, is it a catastrophe for Kamala Harris personally? I think it's a sign that she ran an OK campaign, given the circumstances. It's not dazzling, but she was really given a very challenging situation to deal with and has done roughly as well as Hillary Clinton. So not very well, but kind of par for a losing Democrat. I think that the Senate drop-off is not an indictment on her. And I'd love to hear what Melina thinks of her performance. and the picture overall. Another theory that a lot of people have been thrown around in the last two or three days is that, in fact, I heard someone throwing it around today on Planned America.

That is all about racism and misogyny. That's what this is all about. Carla Harris is the second woman to not get the gong after Hillary Clinton. The map is almost identical. The numbers are almost identical. Also against Trump. I don't see. a lot of evidence for that in the exit polls,

but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just means they didn't ask about that. There are no shortage of female governors out there. Not so many black governors out there, admittedly. There's, I think, four in history there's been. But remember that uniform swing across America. And I remember, I didn't read you out before the list of the cities. These are the swings since 2020.

Manhattan shifted nine points. Brooklyn shifted 12, Queens shifted 21. Bronx. The Bronx shifted 22. New York State shifted, went from D plus 23 to D plus 12. New Jersey went from 16 Democratic advantage to six, six, New Jersey. Illinois went from 18 Democratic advantage to five, Illinois. All of those are closer than Florida, by the way, now. Florida is plus 13. California, Carma Harris's home state went from 29 plus Democrat to 17 plus Democrat. 12 points swing in California. Still counting, though.

Houston shifted eight points. San Antonio shifted eight points. Dallas shifted 10 points. Philadelphia shifted five points. Detroit shifted nine points. Chicago shifted 11 points. That's when I stopped taking count. That was enough.

There's a swing everywhere. If there was sexism and misogyny and racism, wouldn't it be unevenly distributed across America? Maybe it wouldn't. But that's the, that is the kind of thing which I'm thinking about. But then, I read the correspondence, which I want to read you guys.

This is the only correspondence for today. I wasn't going to do it, but I really loved this one. And so I just wanted to share it, and today was the perfect day. Melissa wrote this. I do take exception to a point Chaz made about Carmelah in relation to her extreme caution during interviews.

Honestly, that kind of thought appears to come from a fairly privileged male perspective. of traditional male presidential candidates in standard campaigns. I'd argue that it's worth considering why she is so cautious. As a female candidate, she's incredibly aware of the stakes and the sense of longing coming from many, including around the world, who think a female American president is long overdue.

Hillary dealt with this also, but it's worth bearing in mind how much extra scrutiny, as well as judgment, Kamala receives compared to Trump. When Kamala was announced a few months ago as a new candidate, there were whispers in America and around the world to the effect of, but is America ready for a black South Asian woman as a president? The Republican wolves are bane for blood and ready to pounce at absolutely any tiny faux par or slip up from her.

And she knows they will amplify the howls of sea. She can't possibly cut it as a president to the point where those claims will saturate the media for days on end. I think Kamler is rightly, extremely cautious at this point, because this was a week ago, by the way, at this point because it really only takes one decent faux par for her to lose the faith of many. And in a time-compressed campaign she's found herself in,

she literally has no time to correct or smooth them over, which she otherwise would have in a standard campaign. Criticising Kamala's speech as cautious word salad when it's really pretty standard political speak, as opposed to Trump's extraordinary incoherence, doesn't give Kamala enough credit for tightly holding everything together and being risk-averse under pretty extreme conditions and immense pressure. Why I'm reading that is to then ask you, well, number one, do you think, at a top line level, misogyny and racism is a problem in this race. And if it's not the top line level,

is it a problem in setting unequal expectations for Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump? I said I think last time that I was here that I think it's not impossible for women and people of colour, obviously because it's happened to be, to win the presidency, but they need to be pretty much perfect. Because I do think that there is a higher standard of judgment and, also there's often a, you have to contend with people finding it harder to imagine you in that role because it hasn't happened before. And like I did hear interviews with people saying, you know, they're not comfortable with the idea of a woman as president. So it's not most people, but there's definitely people out there. You raise the issue of there being women governors where

there's 50 places where you can be governor in America and only one where you can be president. So, you know, when you have a greater odd of succeeding across the board there and, you know, some states are much more liberal than others or some, you know, you could just a very conservative and, you know, if you're a very conservative woman, you can sort of cut through in a certain way. But so I think that's, I mean, you see the same thing in Australia. We've obviously had a female prime minister, but we've had female leaders be more successful at the state level and with less sort of scrutiny and intensity of backlash than we saw at the federal level. So I think that that is a thing. You know, if you look at someone like Obama, when I say you need to be perfect, obviously I'm

not saying I think he's a perfect person or that he was a perfect president. But I mean, what I mean is, like, someone like him, he was incredibly charismatic. He was a, you know, it was a very unusually talented politician. He had no scandals of significance in his background. Like, he was quite exceptional for, you know, just amongst all his competitors politically. And so I think there's going to be some woman at some point who is the female version of that. But that's what it's going to take, I think, because there are lots of structural reasons why it's hard. There are people who are sexist, not just conservatives, there are sexist left-wing people too. You know, you are dealing particularly at the moment where there is a lot of

cultural backlash among not all men, but certain proportions of men at the perceived advancements that have happened for women in recent times. I mean, it feels overblown to me in the sense that, you know, men are still dominating in all the areas that count. Like, yes, women are more likely to go to uni, but if they're not more likely to get paid better and be executives and all those kinds of things at the end of it, then you just have more college debt. You're not actually doing better for yourself, but whatever, you know, I think that one of the kind of dynamics that I've just observed in my life, and I will give a anonymized anecdote to illustrate it, was there was a time once I was working on a show a long time ago, and I was working on a comedy show as a writer,

and a male friend of mine who was a left-wing person, hearing that I was working on this show, complained to me that he had a male friend who had been up for a writing job on that show but allegedly didn't get it because they had to hire a woman. On this show, in that writer's room, there were nine men and three women. So I would argue if you're not the ninth best man, don't blame the third best woman for taking your job. But this is someone who would not think of himself as a sexist at all, like would think of himself as a progressive person. And that's just like an underlying attitude that he's not even questioning. But, you know, if you're a woman in the world, you kind of see things like that. And you're like, okay. That's how people think

about us. So, you know, I think that the level of sexism that exists in society is still huge. And the barriers that women face in their day to day lives, obviously not as bad as they used to be. And many ways are more subtle than they used to be, which is a sign of it being like, I think I don't think that's worse. I think things are better. But when it is more subtle, it kind of can be harder to combat because people will deny it even exists. But you know, you certainly feel it. And so I think, you know, like for me personally, just looking at my experience in the world, I can't deny that there's sexism that is making it harder for a woman to be present than not. I don't think it's impossible. I do think it will happen one day. But I do think it will take an exceptional person who is kind of basically beyond reproach. Because I mean, look at everything Trump gets away with. It's like, you know, but not even just Trump, like, you know, just people like, you know, J.D. Vance screwed up a million times. No one cares. You know, I do think that things stick more easily to women and minorities. And so it is something you have to contend with. And I can see why that makes her very cautious. That's probably partly Kamala Harris's personality as well. But I'm sure

at all. But, you know, personality is also formed by your lived experiences over 60 years. So, yeah. Yeah. Richard, do you have anything to add to that? I think any time we're talking about sexism and racism with Trump, let's look at the inverse of the argument. Is it really, do you really think that, you know, grab them by the pussy Trump, the Trump who became a political figure by denying that the first black president was a citizen in the United States, that his rise has nothing to do with sexism and racism? Of course it does. They're always in the room with him. What complicates this picture is when that becomes a kind of catch-all or headline-level indictment, which doesn't get into the complexities of how these behaviours operate in the real world.

Molina said everything or a lot of what needs to be said about sexism, so I won't add much to that. Yeah, I take the points you made. They were very well-made. I get the feeling this is something that probably you've thought once or twice about before. The points roll up the turn quite down. Quite nice look. Thank you very much, Melina. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Richie. Thank you, Chas. Thank you, Melina. Thank you, Richie. That will do, folks. Thank you very much for sticking with till the end. I'll be back with you next week. Until then, stay peppy.